When is it too much?

This week's topic is inspired by Lewis Hopkin's How Plans Work.


Daniel Burnham, who was involved in the creation of plans for Washington DC and Chicago, proclaimed

"Make no little plans....make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble logical diagram, once recorded will never die."

Somewhere along the way the power of ‘a noble logical diagram’ has been lost. Today there are many plans, there are plans for parks, for transport, for urban renewal, and for neighbourhoods, but within all these plans the cohesion and direction for a city is often lost. So maybe it is time to go back, to big plans, where local authorities can have a clear direction and ability to implement the plan rather than just having lots of little plans sitting on a shelf unopened, and unused.


In Canberra there is the Territory Plan, the Social plan, the Sustainable Transport Plan, master plans, neighbourhood plans and then there are the National Capital Authority plans, it all can be very confusing, in implementation and interpretation, for professionals and the public. So how do we ensure that a plan is able to be implemented in its entirety?


I believe the biggest influences on the implementation of plans are governance infrastructure, money for investment and regulations to ensure execution. If these fundamentals are not in place it is hard to put into action the elements of a plan to ensure a successful outcome.