The point of planning

(Maybe I am just no fun.)

From email:

From my favorite cycling forum earlier today:

"cities only really come to life when the adults find ways to play in
them."

I really like that. Is this our job?

My response:

what I say our job is is to stabilize, maintain, and extend the quality of life for residents, and the centrality of the city as a place to visit, work, conduct business, learn, and conduct inquiry.

So planning, zoning, and building regulation activities and decisions should always be measured on whether or not each action ("outcome") accomplishes this.

When it does not, then you need to look backwards at your programs, structures, and systems to determine why the process does not in fact generate the desired outcome.

Then you need to fix the system and reorient all aspects of the process so that it generates the preferred outcomes.