Mayor Lanier pushes “antiplanner” O’Toole

David Crossley, Jan 09, 08.

Former Mayor Bob Lanier, developer Richard Weekley, and construction executive Leo Linbeck last week sent a letter to Houston Mayor Bill White and each City Council member expressing their "growing concern that the City is embarking...down a path of more extensive planning and regulations," a path that the trio says has "Ill-served cities across our nation." (See Chronicle story)

Included with their letter was a book and a paper called "Planning and Houston's Future" by self-proclaimed "economist" Randal O'Toole, a leading critic of urban life, and particularly of transit. O'Toole calls himself "The Antiplanner" and publishes a Cato Institute website by that name, "Dedicated to the sunset of government planning." He has said "it is likely that planners in our city governments will do far more harm to our personal and economic freedoms than communists in the State Department."

O'Toole, whose background is in forestry, is most well known for his long assault on Portland, Oregon, his former home town. Although all of his claims about "failure" in Portland have been repeatedly rebutted by a variety of experts, O'Toole maintains his position.

The letter from Lanier, Weekley, and Linbeck refers to "Mr. O'Toole's fine book about the pitfalls and the opportunities of modern urban progress." The book warns against taking into account the public interest when planning road projects, charges that planners intentionally work to create traffic congestion and make roads more dangerous, and includes a chapter on "The Ideal Communist City."

The paper O'Toole wrote about Houston mentions the idea of the City embarking on a General Plan "based on citizen vision, values, and goals," and concludes by warning citizens not to attempt that, but instead to "focus on maintaining a responsive government that provides the services people need." Because we at the Gulf Coast Institute began the push for a General Plan, we disagree, of course, and also note that citizens have the right and responsibility to work together toward a future we all want. As with many other civic ventures, we use our government and our taxes to to do that.

We know we're in good company in holding this view. In surveys by Rice University sociologist Stephen L. Klineberg, Ph.D., 83% of Houstonians repeatedly say they want the City to have a General Plan for its future. At least one study has shown that the City spends about 11% more than it needs to each year because it has no plan, and if this is true, this kind of waste of public resources seems unconscionable to us and apparently to most citizens as well.

The issue Mayor Lanier and the others are trying to address is sustainable prosperity for the City's future. We all want that, and need to spend a lot of civic time debating how to get there. But to base their arguments on the ideas of someone who has been discredited so many times seems ill-advised. Over the next few days and weeks we will post a series that explores a little more about O'Toole (and the few other writers who drive the road and sprawl agenda). In the process, we'll make some distinctions between planning and regulations, and also look at the issue of housing prices and home ownership in major cities.

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