Wise Development and Conflicts of Interest

Wise community development allows us to increase the cultural benefits of growth while minimizing the negative impacts of uncontrolled development. By increasing our quality of life we also increase our desirability for business development. This tends to increase economic diversity which helps create economic stability. Wise development creates a balance that prioritizes business growth and a growth in quality of life at the same time.

Wise development is more complicated and difficult than the sort of sprawl that occurs in an unrestricted environment. Like other aspects of human achievement, good urban design requires a certain level of sophistication. That sophistication comes in the form of more complex equations that deal with the increased number of variables that are inevitable with an increased population.

The city must be an engaged partner if we are going to encourage and, better yet, develop a development community capable of delivering this more sophisticated for of growth. Currently the development community is being dominated by those who are advocating a lowest common denominator, unrestricted, quick buck form of development. These developers tend to get angry with and disregard citizen concerns rather than working with citizens as an ally in achieving a common goal.

The best example of this can be found with the Weingarten efforts. It is not the case that the East Side residents did not want development. There are many types of development that they suggested and would have embraced. But these types of development take more time to design and develop and as such do not fit Weingarten’s formula of fast big box development. With strip centers at our major gateway we are less likely to attract the kinds of developers that seek to better integrate profits and community values.

And the problem is not just outside developers. Our local developers also are reluctant to adapt to our changing needs for better practices. Improved development will not happen without the proactive support of our great city staff. When we allow people from the development community to sit on our city council and have undue representation on our citizen boards we, in essence, tie the hands of our city staff. While this has been allowed to happen in the past I believe that we have learned from our mistakes. This is perhaps the silver lining of the dark Weingarten cloud.