(05-03-2021, 03:59 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: I can’t help but wonder if this attitude isn’t exactly the problem with planners. Pretending to care and assuming that they know what they are doing when they clearly do not (at least, not all the time) are not the route to optimal projects.
While it is a fact that many of the comments are B.S. (to the extent that something as imprecise as that can be a fact), there are bound to be missed local context or thought provoking ideas in the feedback, sadly mixed in. As an expert in my own domain, this is my experience with client feedback, and I’ve seen enough to be certain that it is the same in the architecture/urban planning realm.
I don't think there are many missed ideas here to be honest. Planners are highly educated people, they aren't waiting on some random nobody to point out major problems...that's why they study this. It's all considered before hand, though indeed they may miss some issues (in our case, one big complaint was accessibility of stations or pedestrian access as danbrotherston mentioned). In architecture (which is my field) that's why we do things like shadow, aesthetic, economic or environmental etc studies. We don't need some old man down the street to write an angry email telling us that a modern building doesn't look like something built in 1930 or that we ought to dig up the soil and test it because a gas station was there in 1952. If someone had a truly thought provoking idea, it would have been thought of already or brought to attention in some other fashion, rather than through some shitty website where random NIMBYs can pseudoanonymously air their grievances.