Posted on 02/16/2005 6:15:55 PM PST by hedgetrimmer
The visioning process includes: values research, how to run "facilitated" workshops and to how to use consensus building to create scenarios for area change. When public officials and NGO's (non-government organizations) use the term "visioning" it really means Agenda 21 principles are being implemented.
Television makeover programs that transform men and women from sloppy to slick are popular. Makeup artists, hair dressers and clothing specialists remake their passive subjects and the new look is shown off to gasping friends and family. Transformational changes are not limited to people these days. American neighborhoods, swarming with central planners and government funds are getting made over too.
Americas new look starts with federal and state funded visioning councils who impose their plan utilizing compliant politicians, compliant business people and paid representatives from foundation and tax-funded non-profit organizations. The unsuspecting public becomes the recipient of a vision that implements Smart Growth.
Smart Growth restricts housing construction to high-density subsidized (cost-shifted) apartments or condominiums. Cities are filled in by building vertically and cramming people together. Occupants living in these new developments are often subject to increasing rules and regulations administered by Associations or Housing Trusts. Cluster developments with purposely limited parking (near train or bus stops) are designed to take people out of their cars, thereby frustrating peoples ability to get around as they might choose.
Some planners in the Western United States learned their terminology and techniques from a group called Envision Utah. Through Envision Utah planners learned about the visioning process. Planners return from the regional visioning workshop with a mission in place. Our visioning sets up a framework project for zoning, says Gordon Garry, Director of Research and Analysis for the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.
Once the framework for zoning is in place, local governments, non-elected regional councils and public/private partnerships, begin to change residential neighborhoods to mixed uses, often utilizing processes that work outside constitutional governmental procedures. By transforming the look of the town, planners and politicians are also engineering social changes that will negatively affect the lives and the lifestyles of existing residents.
If your town is working toward a vision, its best to understand the Smart Growth plan behind the façade.
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Another great wake-up call here. Thanks.
We have a plan called 'The Overlay' to reform our little burb into cluster.
Another aspect of this we are seeing on the SF Peninsula is that they are subtly trying to move the existing detached housing stock in the direction of gay / single / DINK friendly (coincidentally, two of these subcultures tend to vote to the Left, en masse). Here's how they are doing it. Firstly, they are really emphasizing "picture postcard perfect" which means making the existing (typically too small) houses look more New Englandeasque (they don't like Spanish Style, in spite of our location and real history). They also make it tough to accomodate more than one or two vehicles by refusing to allow driveway - parking pad expansions. They stiffle additions by not allowing cuts and slope modifications in backyards and by having a 28 foot peak roofline to ground level height limit. And recently, they made it clear they don't like what they consider to be "rednecks" by banning parking of boats, RVs and the like in front of homes. Etc. Is it a conspiracy? As I mentioned on a related thread, I overheard, in a coffeehouse frequented by the "smart set" a couple of, shall we say, alternative lifestyle living, politically connected people, specifically scheming on how to use zoning to put pressure on "breeders" to move out. Any questions?
We had overlay district planning too. In our case, it was an attempt to transcend the boundaries of local government (who wouldn't support anything THAT radical) but "taking it to the people", getting a model ordinance written (which they did), then taking it to all municipalities to pass. They wrote the ordinance, but even here in planning crazy Centre Region I don't think any municipality adopted it. It was being sold as the way to prevent our community from ending up like Breezewood (at the interface between I-80 and I-79 in southern PA). As we stated repeatedly, there were already plenty of regulations in place that would eliminate that possibility - why add more? The model ordinance included things like what exterior coverings were acceptable on buildings in the overlay district (natural materials only); limitations on the quantity and reflectivity of glass; requirements on landscaping that would pretty much ensure that if you didn't know a business was there you wouldn't know it; sign restrictions so businesses couldn't put at readable signs to identify their hidden businesses, etc. I told people it was almost like they wanted to put out a "keep out, no strangers welcome" sign at every entrance to the region - LOL! It was ridiculed enough that it didn't pass though.
Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus - ( http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1998/nov98/focus.html ).
The Delphi Technique How to Disrupt It. - ( http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf002.htm ).
About Consensus and Facilitation - ( http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/~consensus.htm ).
What American Citizens Need to Know About Consensus and Facilitation - ( http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/acf004.htm ).
Consensus and Facilitation: When You Hear These Words, Beware of Being Suckered - ( http://baltimorechronicle.com/consensus_oct02.html ).
Conventional Design
Conservation Approach
New Urbanist Design
http://www.csc.noaa.gov/alternatives/views_3d.html
"When you force people to live in collective situations, its easier to engineer them into thinking like a collectivist and thinking that individualism and self government is bad."
hmmmmm...you mean like in college dorms?
Part of the problem mention above is that the local city commisions are packed with real estate brokers and agents who make profit by the devolopment of land they own.
They buy up houses and then use the fact they granted ONE variance to get their little clusters approved for micro condominiums/townhouses.
Real estate agents will become the new used care salesmen or lawyers as far as public scorn.
I don't want to go off subject, but I'd like to thank you for bringing up the Hegelian dialectic and Delphi. People need to be very worried and very alert. The same tactics are being used in new psychotherapy techniques and in religion. My Roman Catholic Church uses the Hegelian technique in the new Purpose-Drive Life circle groups. I've stayed away.
I don't want to go off subject, but I'd like to thank you for bringing up the Hegelian dialectic and Delphi. People need to be very worried and very alert. The same tactics are being used in new psychotherapy techniques and in religion. My Roman Catholic Church uses the Hegelian technique in the new Purpose-Drive Life circle groups. I've stayed away.
Thanks for the information/links.
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