What’s Behind “THE VISION” in Your Town?
Posted on Freedom Advocates on February 15th 2005
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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 NGOs (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.
America’s 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 people’s 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,” it’s best to understand the Smart Growth plan behind the façade.
What’s Behind THE VISION in Your Town? by Susanna L. Jennings Related Articles: The Consensus Process by Henry Lamb Let’s Stop Being Manipulated! The Delphi Technique by Albert V. Burns
