Planning for the future

What is the future of our City? How can we best plan for it to make sure that we are able to meet needs of future generations? What guiding principles and objectives should we put in place to guide the development of our City?

One of the most consistent comments I get from people regards the desire of people to retain a bucolic ideal while allowing for the inevitable development. Cities are dynamic things. The political environment that prevails today may not be the same environment that exists in the future.

In the United States, we have always had a love-hate relationship with the bucolic ideal and the need to tame the wilderness. We long for a world gone by, perhaps a function of our immigrant status (which is perhaps why we love quaint European cities for their ancientness) while at the same time struggle to create something here that hearkens back to that ideal. We love the natural environment, but allow people to mow down trees and pave over fields of amber waves of grain. We have the world's first and finest national parks, but right outside the gates we set up convenience stores and motels to ease the weary traveller. At a recent visit to Zion National Park, I was stunned to see there was an IMAX theater set up right at the park's entrance. Can you imagine such a thing? Zion National Park, with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, has an IMAX theater? Why?

This is just a symptom, the result of the way our culture has evolved. We don't want to go out and hike around and view the ACTUAL park; we want someone to do it for us - with the helicopter flyovers and the park rangers interpreting everything for us - while we sit in air conditioned comfort. So drive out to Zion and sit in a theater. What's the point of that? I could have stayed home...