My Redacted Life: Chapter 15

Things didn’t always go smoothly as I continued my adventures as an urban planning consultant. Take my second trip to Malvern, for example. It still smarts.

There was pretty much a routine case on the agenda. A developer wanted to build a cheap apartment building smack dab in the middle of a middle-class African-American neighborhood. There wasn’t any way to “pretty this one up.” I received numerous calls from the concerned neighbors, and three or four letters expressing dismay at the prospect. They all promised to be at the planning commission meeting.

I included the letters in my report and mentioned the calls. I included some statements on neighborhood stability. My thoughts were pretty clear.

Unfortunately.

I arrived on time and took my place with the commissioners at the head of the table. There was only this one item on the addenda. I was surprised, to say the least, to see that none of the neighbors involved in the case showed for the hearing.

There were four men in the audience. Three I didn’t know. The forth owned the largest reality company in town and one of the banks. I knew he had a mean streak. He had once killed a major development for the city through his influence with the utility commission. Seems that the land sale was going to a rival firm.

He was the stereotype small town businessman who would receive a Rotary award at lunch, evict a family buying a house on contract from him at noon for missing their first payment in years, and take a neighboring widow a sack of tomatoes from his garden that evening.

It was a not-too-well-kept secret around town that he was a mean one. And I posed a target for his wrath.

After the Chairman opened the hearing for discussion, he ambled to the podium, took a deep breath, and turned to me.

“It seems,” he said, “that the only person in the room who is against this project is this young man from Little Rock. I don’t know how they do things in Little Rock. I don’t live there. Never wanted to. I like Malvern. This young man doesn’t.”

He continued in this vein, listing my inadequacies until he began to approach his regard of my Sainted Mother and her child-raising abilities. As I started to rise, the Chairman shut things down and called for a vote. I’m sure I don’t have mention how it turned out.

On the way home that night, I resolved to abandon this sill dream the next day. I wasn’t going to stand abuse like that. No one could treat me that way. I could go back into the Navy, or go on to California. To hell with this racket. It wasn't the last time I would form this resolve.

Dawn rose. I rose. I went to work with the conviction that I would leave the business if and when I damned-well chose. No two-bit hustler would chase me away. I don’t have to tell you how that turned out. I would prevail and, as the story goes, there are always obituaries that don’t make me cry. In short, I prevailed.

I would become a little more diligent about learning whose bank was going to finance projects in the future and which banks held mortgages. And I would respect the stance of others. Later, I ran into the man who had been the most vocal neighbor before the hearing.

When I asked what happened to him and the others, he looked at the ground. “Nothing,” he said. “We just all have mortgages along with jobs that were hard to come by and can be hard to keep.”

They don’t teach case studies like this in graduate school. I always figured it was worth a couple of hours of credit. I learned to survive and to keep on keeping on.

Oh, and the asshole in question got his second “Man of the Year,” award a few years later, I seem to remember.

The treacherous will be with us always.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Twelve

As the summer of 1971 passed into fall, I was traveling a lot. The company was serving as planners on contract with a number of cities. These were vibrant communities having yet to encounter the trials that were to face them in the near future. I was soaking in experience like a dry sponge.

I began to notice some minor change in the makeup of planning commissions. When I had first began attending commission meetings, the commissioners, were, without exception, middle-aged men of Caucasian background, overly represented by real estate and insurance professionals. These overlapped, as many real estate brokers in communities sold insurance as well. Sometimes they also owned banks. Power stayed close to the center in most communities.

As time passed, though, I noticed a slight change in the makeup of many planning commissions. An African-American face would appear from nowhere. It would belong to a local professional in the Black community. A local dentist proved a common choice. Whatever the background, the choice would be a safe one for the power structure. There would be no independent thinking.

In fact, there wasn’t much independent thinking evident among most planning commissions. Each boasted a “bell cow,” usually the local developer or his representative. When a vote was called, no head would turn toward the appointed leader, but the votes would signal a pre-arranged agreement.

Conflict would occur on occasion because of a local power struggle. If the community was large enough, there could be competing factions, usually from competing banks, sometimes competing real estate companies. Often, a faction represented both. It could provide entertainment unless it turned tragic, as one did when the patriarch of the losing faction went to his office one evening and took his own life.

Not all of the lessons I was learning came from textbooks.

It wasn’t that the power brokers were evil. They were just protective of their privileges. Once they had taken care of those, they would, in the fashion of the 1970s South, take care of the communities. They established water and sewer systems that served all citizens. They cleaned up environmental dangers. They built fire stations. They built parks, segregated parks, but parks. They built, or sought funding for the building of, new traffic arteries. They sought sources of new jobs.

It seemed that, deep in their hearts, they believed that a harbor served humanity best when its tides lifted all ships. The fact that the tides lifted some ships higher than others simply represented the proper and given order of things. As long as most citizens benefitted a bit, it was okay for a few to benefit a lot. The banquet table was spread for all, but the rich and powerful dined first. For the common masses, as the heroine of a popular novel would later comment, “Enough is as good as feast.”

Then there were the locally owned newspapers, usually independent in their thinking. They did a good job of protecting the powerful from any of their baser instincts.

I watched our cities grow and I watched myself grow as 1971 moved toward a close. The year, overall, had been good to me. Even adversity had, by not destroying me, made me stronger. As it drew to a close, one might have observed me and said, “He was almost always happy, I think.”

Yep.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Seven (Cont._5)

As 1971 wore on, I began to learn lessons about urban planning that weren’t in the books I was reading. In fact, I learned a big lesson late that spring. It has stayed with me until this day, although a unified solution still evades.

It concerned a city in the northwest area of the state, a city that I have mentioned earlier it this venture, so there is no use in further identification. Suffice it to say that the firm was still receiving a small retainer to attend monthly planning commission meetings. Whenever possible, I would accompany Jim Vines to the meetings and take the opportunity to watch democracy in action, or so I thought.

Understand, although they were my bosses, we were all close to the same age, our late twenties. Despite a surfeit of education and enthusiasm, we were just a bunch of kids in a world dominated by alpha-males who had fought their way to the top of the heap and had no intention of either sharing or relinquishing control

I was perhaps more starry-eyed than the rest, having just played a major part, I had been assured, in saving the world from godless Communism and my country’s domination by the evil empire headed by Russia. Whew.

Jim Vines had his moments of naivete as well. He dutifully prepared reports on the cases coming before the planning commission, including recommendations as to appropriate action. On this particular trip, he had examined one outlandish request coming before the commission and rightfully recommended disapproval.

The reasons included a possibility of spot zoning (a small zoning that violates the land use plan and affords benefit to one property owner that wouldn’t be allowed for others). Also, the approval would allow a destabilizing effect on the neighborhood and set a questionable precedent leading to further destabilization. Finally, the city’s street system wasn’t designed for the recommended use.

It was clear to any observer that the request had no merit. Oh, wait. There was one factor in favor of granting the request.

The applicant was a close personal friend and supporter of the mayor.

There was quite a little set-to about the case before unanimous approval in the disapproving faces of a crowd of concerned citizens. The mayor sat stone-faced to one side and never said a word. His eyes spoke with exquisite eloquence, however.

We drove back to Little Rock in silence. Somehow, it seemed that we were overtaken and passed along the way by a letter formally stating that the firm’s service would no longer be needed in that city.

The incident provided, as I say some valuable lessons. Urban planning is as much, maybe more, about politics as it is about purity of intent. Also, one should make every effort to learn the territory. It is not unusual in our state to see enmity between two powerful groups, the cause of which may date back generations. Sadly, a city may be damaged more by its own citizens than by strangers or external forces. Somehow, they feel they have that right.

And finally, we can always learn from our friends who fight our wars for us when they tell us that one had best carefully consider what hill is worth dying upon before committing our all. In ensuing years, I’ve practiced that warning assiduously and managed to bumble my way through life.

As a consultant you learn, sometimes the hard way, that it is their city and they may or may not listen to you. Your best efforts may offend and alienate.  I would also learn that your own city might regard you with even less respect.

Well I'll swan.