FTA: "...including the fact that once I'd built East Didsbury, the strip of shops in Northenden stopped making as much money as they once were, and some were even beginning to close down as my time ran out. Walk along Northenden high street, and you'll know that feeling."
This is interesting. Urban planners out there, do these types of simulations occur before an area is zoned?
The problem with a lot of small to medium sized towns is that the people in charge of making zoning decisions are just local good ol' boys (or girls) who got voted in office because people knew who they were. They are in no way qualified to make these kinds of decisions.
Having politicians appoint people they know is not going to be demonstrably better than having those same politicians ask people they know to run for that office instead.
There are ways of shielding those decisions from politics. Relying on appointed people is one such way. No shielding is perfect – but it’s better than nothing.
You can do a lot of analysis for urban planning. ArcGIS is a very powerful piece software that will handle mapping and some types of analysis. And i2maps is a geocomputing environment that will handle traffic analysis
I was just reading the Environmental Impact Report for rebuilding a Safeway supermarket in Oakland, and it does in fact have a section about predicting whether the store will "blight" any other nearby retail areas by drawing too much business away from them.
(They conclude that it will not have such an effect, even though there are already vacant retail spaces right across the street from the Safeway site.)
But just because the studies are done doesn't mean people will make the decisions that optimize everybody's lives. Every town wants the tax revenue from a new big box store, even if it means destroying the retail economy of the next town over.
I'm not sure urban planning has the same impact in 'old' towns; Northenden has been around for a thousand years and other than being engulfed by Wythenshaw hasn't really undergone dramatic redevelopment.
This is interesting. Urban planners out there, do these types of simulations occur before an area is zoned?