The master planning side of our practice frequently intersects with public policy.  Most master plans for large institutions (such as universities and large corporate concerns), as well as those for civic and government-related entities, naturally involve interactions with public land.  I'm going to concentrate primarily on cities in this article.  As the closest level of government to most of us, it impacts us more than state, federal, or even county government does.  The issues resonate more clearly, and they frequently impact us more directly, than those at higher -- usually more distant and abstract -- levels.

 

When we work on master plans, our primary consideration is not money.  It's the quality and character of the spaces that will result from the planning.  That perspective leads us to better, more enjoyable, more livable spaces.  And because those kinds of spaces attract and retain people, they frequently lead to a more interesting, diverse, and yes, more fiscally sound city.

 

The San Antonio River Improvements Project is San Antonio's shining example of this strategy.  Various public agencies spent millions upon millions of dollars to create what was ultimately a very nice linear park.  If that money had been spent on traditional parks, it certainly would have gone further.  But it certainly would not have lit off a boom of investment in the heart of the city, and we would not now be reaping the benefits of an expanded tax base, our city would be much less walkable, and we would be having even more trouble attracting workers for a diversified economy.

You might think that land owned by cities stays owned by cities, especially the parcels which are nearest areas of value, whether that be parks, downtown property or similar.  That's not true.  Certainly, cities generally have slower and more involved processes for dealing with property acquisition and sale, yes, but they certainly do sell land.  Some of the most difficult situations come when the actual dollar value of land differs from the perceived value of the land to groups which have interest in it.  That sentence resolves, essentially, to "things get tough when people care."  And they do, and that's the heart of most of the disputes over land at the city level.  Some good examples?  The Alamo Brewery/Hays Street Bridge controversy, Healy Murphy Park, and the recent flap over an SAISD plot of land on the edge of Brackenridge Park.  

 

As our cities densify past what are basically suburban development standards, land becomes more important, more valuable, and more contentious.  San Antonio, in particular, reached a critical point with the redevelopment of the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River, and medium-scale development densities are now reaching out along the Broadway and South Flores corridors.  This pattern is changing what have been long-held ideas about the relative values and trajectories of land development in their respective areas, and the pains (and opportunities) associated with that revaluation are crossing demographic strata.

One of the issues with this rapid growth is that government hasn't caught up with the private sector in terms of how to value land.  Banks can (and should) value based on set precedent and comparisons to present value.  The city should value based on thoughtful analysis of where things will be in ten or 20 years and what part an asset can play in creating that future.  The best example of this right now is Brackenridge Park, where we're currently working on a master plan.  Are we planning for a future that looks just like the present?  Absolutely not; we're planning for a future where higher-density residential surrounds the park and where land values have skyrocketed.  We're planning for a future which includes many more people wanting to use the park much more intensely than they do currently.  Most importantly, we're planning on green space being much, much more valuable than it is now.  

 

At a larger level, and in many different ways, city leadership must make these same kinds of evaluations of how our present will translate into the future.  Doing so will lead to public challenges; it's always easier to make a case for the present rather than the future, and it's exceedingly difficult to make intelligent judgements about what the future will hold.  But it must be done to make San Antonio a great city.

Government at all levels has a greater responsibility to citizens than a strictly fiduciary interest.  Government must act in the best interest of all of its citizens, and cash on the barrel head, so to speak, is only one factor.  The structure of how our city develops; the usefulness, beauty, and health of its spaces; the meaningfulness of what we do now for the future: these are considerations, too.  And these considerations may, at times, overwhelm the financial ones.  Right now, this happens through public pressure, usually applied by those with direct interests in the situation.  In a better future, it can be debated and codified; made official through a deeper understanding of what the public interest really is.

 

These are important days for the city.  It's not as though development never happened in the past; it did, and it built the city we live in now.  But San Antonio has awakened from its sleep.  It's important to make sure that we don't return to a quiet dreamland because we chased return in the present rather than the future.