Metro Pulse/Editor's Corner/It's the Process, Stupid

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It's the stupid process.

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

Remember that scene from Apollo 13 where the NASA engineers have to scramble to piece together a ramshackle life-support system so the astronauts don't die before they get back to earth?

That's kind of what our city government is doing these days with its haphazard, helter-skelter, rickety rickshaw job on downtown development. Mayor Victor Ashe's announcements the other week that the city will offer assorted assistance and incentives to residential development, along with funding for downtown concerts and events, were welcome. They were also about five or 10 years late, and they were the product—like so much else in the Ashe administration—of hasty-pudding politics rather than well considered policy.

Ashe wants to propose some version of the Public Building Authority's version of developer Worsham Watkins' plan for downtown. But the mayor, who pays attention to the dynamics of civic discussion if not the substance of it, knows the plan is vulnerable on many counts. His sudden enthusiasm for tax incentives to smaller scale developers, following years of sodden indifference, can't help but seem like a sop to those most offended by the broad-scale sweep, swoop and swagger of PBA/WW. Or, at most, a belated recognition of his earlier oversights.

That sounds ungrateful, and I guess it is. Now is the time for everyone to come together for the good of the city, etc. etc. Fair enough. As with the agonized effort to preserve at least pieces of the Fort Sanders neighborhood, it's better to do good things late than never, and far better than doing bad things at any time.

But. Still. Really.

The city could have had a better, faster, more successful, and almost certainly less expensive outcome if it had approached downtown redevelopment as a comprehensive process, complete with public input and a sense of purpose and direction. If it had started, for example, by bringing the community into a discussion of what people want in a downtown, what they like and don't like, what has worked and hasn't in other places. If the leaders were less concerned about putting their own megalithic stamp on the city and more concerned with the quality of life of its citizens. If they were more interested in listening than dictating.

That is, of course, anathema to the grand poobahs of behind-the-scenes deal-brokering hereabouts (Tom McAdams, please come to the white courtesy phone). And it seems conceptually alien even to many of our earnest public servants, who sincerely believe they know exactly what you need if you'd just stop squirming and let them give it to you.

But governments in general, and our city and county governments in particular, get themselves into trouble time and again by forgetting that the prepositions in front of "the people" are "by, for and of," not "over, against and through."

I've heard well-intentioned politicos gnash their teeth many times during my few years in Knoxville about the intractability of the local populace. "You can never do anything in this town," they say. "Everybody's always against everything." I remember one city official, whom I generally respect, telling me that everything would be all right if only "we could get people to understand the reasons for our decisions." Maybe, I said. But maybe you need to do more than just explain your decisions. Maybe you need to include people in making the decisions in the first place. As I recall, all I got in response was the kind of stare I associate with women who are about to turn me down for a date.

In a telling email last year, developer Earl Worsham, half of the WW team, complained that his critics were focusing too much on the details of how and why WW had been chosen for the job and not enough on their actual ideas. Don't tell us what you think of the process, he wrote. Tell us what you think of the plan.

The thing is, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the process is the plan. You cannot separate the answer from the question. Where you are is directly related to how you got there. How you feel about Knoxville, for example, could well depend on whether you came here of your own free will, hitched a ride and got stranded, or were abducted, blindfolded, and dumped off on a street corner. These things matter.

For some pointers, local leaders could look to two efforts already under way: the Nine Counties One Vision process and the Zone Advisory Councils established to set priorities for Knoxville's Empowerment Zone funding. Both have their flaws and their detractors, but both have been conducted entirely in the open, via consensus-building among whoever happened to show up at the meetings. (And if you're feeling participative yourself, come on down to the old Watson's building on Market Square tonight from 5-7 p.m. The Market Square Association is hosting an open house, with the tagline, "Come Share Your Vision for Market Square." Now, wouldn't it have been nice if someone in, say, city government or the Public Building Authority had issued that invitation a year or two ago?)

My brother-in-law works for NASA. He's designing life-support systems for the new space station. He tells me the agency's engineers learned a lot from the Apollo 13 mission about what to do and what not to do. Assuming the downtown redevelopment plans don't burn up in the atmosphere and we all survive with a livable city, it would be nice to believe the experience will have a similarly educational effect on future Knoxville decision-making.