Are political leaders and planners just naturally "tone-deaf"?

An article in the Vancouver Globe & Mail details the anger and frustration expressed by community residents over plans to re-develop two major parts of the city.  It also sounds a lot like Fairfax County.

So here was the promise:

After a series of public rebellions against new developments in Vancouver the last four years, the city’s recently hired planning manager promised that things would be different.

Instead of getting embroiled in one-off battles over individual projects, general manager Brian Jackson said planners would develop thoughtful blueprints for four key neighbourhoods. They would listen to the residents. They would provide specific details about height and density so no one would be surprised by anything that came along. Their community plans would provide a model for future planning in other city neighbourhoods as Vancouver strives to accommodate more residents.

And here are the results:

That utopian vision has taken a beating in the last couple of weeks after major uproars about two of the plans – one covering the city’s popular Commercial Drive area, called Grandview-Woodland, the other in the Marpole area near the Fraser River.

In Grandview, the community was outraged over the news that planners envisioned a 37-storey tower and a cluster of other smaller towers around the area’s major transit hub. In Marpole, the igniting spark was a city proposal to cut one street in half and allow houses to be built on the other half.

In both cases, residents said those weren’t their ideas at all, but concepts that seemed to come out of nowhere.

And activists in the two other communities slated for plans – the West End and the Downtown Eastside – say more public opposition is coming.

The city has now backed off the two most controversial ideas.

And here's where it stands:

One of the city’s most persistent critics, West End activist Randy Helten, said most people in the city understand new residents are coming and there needs to be new buildings for them to live in.

But he believes there’s now a huge level of mistrust about how new development will be integrated, because of the city’s poor approach to consultation.

Mr. Jackson’s (planning) staff went back to the drawing board last week at a new planning session, where residents were invited to use Styrofoam blocks to show what kind of building density they preferred. That showed that many preferred a lower, European-style approach to density, with clusters of eight- to 10-storey buildings.

But the uproar has demonstrated to many residents that the city’s political leaders and planners are still tone-deaf when it comes to hearing what kind of city people want. . . .

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