A team of architects and business leaders met in secret for many months to devise a big proposal for the Olympics in DC. Some parts of it have merit (and some don’t), and ideas should always be welcome. But some things about the way they talk about the need to “transform” DC feel wrong.

Hand drawing city photo from Shutterstock.

It’s terrific that some wealthy business leaders want to help the District. A generation ago, people in the suburbs were turning their backs on DC. Even now, as Jonathan O’Connell notes in his article on the Olympic bid, too often DC, Maryland, and Virginia compete to out-subsidize large businesses just so they’ll move a few miles across a border.

The Olympic bid group didn’t have that attitude. Russ Ramsey, who led the effort, lives in Great Falls, Virginia, but he wanted the Olympics to revive the area around the Anacostia River. The Anacostia can certainly benefit from having more friends, and areas around it more investment.

However, there’s something a little disquieting about a group of business leaders and architects formulating this plan in secret, drawing pictures of stadiums on all manner of public land and arguing it would have lasting benefits for the city without really speaking to the public about what they’d like to be left with after an Olympics.

Let’s call this “planning down”

There was a lot of discussion recently about “punching down” as a concept in comedy (see: criticisms of Trevor Noah, or criticisms by Garry Trudeau). Basically, it’s when comedians make fun of groups of people who are less powerful in society than themselves. This secret planning feels like something similar; let’s call it, “planning down.”

“Planning down” would be what happens when one group of people decide they know what’s best for another area whose populace is less powerful. Many residents felt this way when they heard about the machinations for the Olympics. Those of us who did should hold on to the feeling, as residents in poorer neighborhoods feel the same far more often.

John Muller, for example, has often written about communities in Historic Anacostia, Barry Farm, and elsewhere where residents feel government officials come in for “public meetings” seemingly already having decided what they want. (The same thing often happens in more politically powerful neighborhoods, but residents have more success forcing their views into the debate.)

We need to have discussions about the futures of such communities that truly engage residents in thinking about what they want for their communities. (Some government agencies have indeed done this.) There are certainly constraints — there are specific economic criteria a neighborhood needs to support a grocery store, for instance. But I think people can understand these constraints and work with them if given the chance.

The planning profession, in fact, enshrined principles around public participation in its ethical codes after the era of urban renewal which demolished many working-class neighborhoods to build “towers in the park,” like in DC’s Southwest Waterfront and parts of many other US cities. (You’re more likely to encounter dismissive non-listening from certain transportation engineers.)

However, public engagement isn’t the same as “letting the neighborhood decide.” Sometimes, deferring to neighbors means letting a more-powerful group use zoning, preservation, or other tools to exclude others. For a non-Washington example, look at Toronto’s “density creep” controversy, where a group of people in million-dollar homes worried about new half-million-dollar homes hurting their property values. You could say those doing the excluding are “zoning down”; it’s not planning down to criticize the practice.

Some decision-makers fear taking any action unless every community stakeholder is in agreement. That’s not the way to avoid planning down. It’s possible to involve people in a conversation, then move ahead with some decision recognizing that no choice, whether to act or not act, will be universally popular. The key is to listen first (and hopefully make the right choice).

Superhero businessman photo from Shutterstock.

DC doesn’t need to be “saved”

O’Connell concludes his article on the Olympic bid by asking, “The question is, who will be the private-sector leader for the future of Washington?” It would be most welcome to have private-sector individuals wanting to do more for DC, or the region, or their specific communities. We just need them to lead more from behind, facilitating conversations rather than deciding unilaterally what the future should be.

Many of us in the Greater Greater Washington community are somewhat more privileged than many DC residents as well. We should keep these same lessons in mind just as much when we talk about neighborhoods east of the Anacostia or elsewhere, especially if we don’t know many people in those areas.

We can’t just say we know what’s right for other, less privileged areas; we need to understand the circumstances and hopes of the people who live there. We can’t do that entirely on a blog that’s easiest to read if you work in an office with a computer, either.

We can all do more to strengthen the public dialogue around planning, to encourage planning up instead of planning down. And we should. Greater Greater Washington is going to be working on building these bridges and elevating voices from diverse communities much more in the future. Stay tuned.