Writing for Planners

A Handbook for Students and Professionals in Writing, Editing, and Document Production

Claudia Kousoulas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429758492
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Pianificazione urbana e paesaggistica

Writing is never easy, but this book can make it easier. With attentiveness and experience, Claudia Kousoulas gives readers applied writing, editing, and production approaches that provide a clear path to completing a document and tools that ensure it is engaging and professional. The book follows a project's path from initial assignment and conception, through sorting out what's significant, shaping it into a message, and guiding readers to an action. It addresses the different types of documents planners have to create, the different media they use, and the different audiences they address. Its strategies will help writers start a project and see it through to a clear and coherent piece of work that serves its purpose.

This book will help planners meet the challenges of creating work that is accurate, creative, and useful. Students will find it helpful in providing professional standards and quick reference information, and professionals will carry it through their careers as a reference, and as a way to establish workplace standards and improve their own work.

Before You Write

Writing (and too often, reading) reports, plans, and staff memos is not much fun. It’s dutiful, serious writing—not an opportunity for wit and levity. Planners deal with serious topics—data that may keep a reservoir clean, a design that may save a pedestrian’s life—supporting decisions that will affect lives, bank accounts, and landscapes. It’s easy to get lost in abstractions, even if the topic is a reservoir or crosswalk, when writing is about decision choices, data variables, and policy positions.

Trying to convey authority can strangle a human voice, and it’s easy, even reassuring, to slip into bureaucratic language. Planners’ topics are figuratively, and sometimes literally, concrete. They are the experiences we have every day—traffic congestion, the view of our neighbors from the kitchen window, a safe walk to the local library. And it should be easy to write about them.

But it’s hard. The minutiae of details obscures ideas, issues that seem solid suddenly evaporate when you write them down, and you get stuck trying to fit your rough work into a final format.

Writing seems to be tied to our emotions—we reveal ourselves, our weaknesses, our lack of knowledge. We present ourselves to the public for judgment and hope we won’t be found foolish.

If it helps, start by thinking of writing as simply another business task, like filling out your timesheet, checking tax records, or moving through a submission checklist. It can be tedious, it requires more than one pass, you will make mistakes. But that’s all true for a lot of work, from making a pie crust to sewing a hem. Why do you think there are bench knives and seam rippers?

Take pride in authorship—it helps you do a good job—but put your work out there to help your colleagues and audience. Allow them to engage with it and, perhaps, make it better. And remember, it’s business, not personal.

Use the author’s authority; your hand is on the document so people will assume you know what you are writing about. Take confidence from that—you’re already a step ahead—and be active in shaping and refining ideas. Dive into your work with questions: What’s the main point, what do readers need to know, who and what (other agencies or communities) are relevant—either in contrast or complement. What are details that shouldn’t be overlooked, who should you talk to (colleagues, community, advocates). And keep your eye out for story or through-line—the point you’re trying to make, the place you want to get to. Start with the main point, elaborate with details, findings, and facts, and then finish strong.

There are few things as revealing as writing. It forces you to face what you know about your topic and about writing. You’re sharing it with others—trying to convince them—and who knows what they’ll think. We all have tics when we write—words we use over and over, sentence constructions that we fall into. Or worse, windy language that we use to obscure what we don’t know but that, ironically, ends up revealing it.

But you probably know more than you think you do and if you don’t, it’s easy to find out what you need. Prepare yourself by developing expertise. Make it a practice to take a conscious approach to the work—planning, writing, and presentation—which will help you build credibility and confidence.

Developing Expertise

Every planning practice is different. Sometimes you’re quickly swept up in a wave of phone calls, responding to immediate issues with little time to reflect or research. Sometimes, tasks are long-term, unfolding over years, and steeped in details. Some work is public, even controversial, while other work is of interest to specialist colleagues. Some work is groundbreaking, some the routine process of meeting requirements and regulations.

But no matter what type of work you do as a planner, public or private, you should consciously seek to develop your expertise. Developing expertise will make your work easier and more creative when you can pull facts and make connections. But if planning practice is so varied, what constitutes expertise?

Expertise can be sorted into four levels—the theory learned in school, the practice based on the standards and role of your agency and position, the particulars of your community, and the technical knowledge of a geographic planning or topic area. Over time, this expertise comes from your planning degree and experience. It is an active blending of book learning with street smarts.

Planning Theory

As with any profession, you have to develop expertise in the concepts, tools, and norms of the profession. For example, you know that a plan without public input or community review will not succeed.

But planning is a broad field—you might have studied at an architecture school, a school of public policy and government, or in a landscape or environmental program. In 25 years of practice I read a site plan once but completed numerous master plans. I have colleagues who are experts on their topics but never did a master plan.

Taking classes outside your specialty will add a new perspective to your approach. Participating in professional groups may seem like more of the same, but they’ll connect you with projects, resources, and people that will add to your expertise. Planning is a broad field, touching on how we live, how we move, and what we invest in. Participating in the local library board, environmental group, historic society, or school PTA will extend your knowledge and give you a chance to refine your skills in research, argument, and presentation.

Planning Practice

Over time, norms and tools change—I finished graduate school using a typewriter, went to an office with a secretary who typed our hand-written memos, moved to another office with a single word processor for the department, then to a word processor on every desk (and eventually with two or more screens per desk). Likewise, we’ve seen bicycles move from a child’s toy to a transportation option that requires reallocating and establishing new standards for public space.

New policies and technologies may require reorganization of the work. Change creates new roles, like webmasters and bicycle planners, whose work has to be integrated into the larger mission in a coherent and useful way. You can’t ignore the work of a bicycle planner in doing a transportation plan, just as you can’t allow each planning team to set up an independent website. You need to know the assets and responsibilities of your agency or group in order to make creative and effective recommendations or to develop new systems for work and for planning. As a staffer, it’s your responsibility to educate yourself and keep up with changes; as a manager, it’s your responsibility to set standards and expectations.

This applies to writing and planning communication as well. Working and reviewing to an agency style guide will save time and limit conflicts, as will developing a standard for print and online publications.

Once you know these “rules”—the office culture, professional standards, legal requirements—you can follow them to make your work effective. Or you can judge when to step outside them to make your work effective—set up a new peer review system, model a plan on a comic book, or propose new regulations to serve new transportation modes.

No matter what you study or where you work, you eventually learn that in planning, there is no single solution; you have to adapt your expertise in planning theory and use it to shape how you approach an issue, frame the problem, and work toward a solution.

Don’t overlook creative knowledge—reading widely, visiting different places, and talking with people in different fields will spark ideas. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of finding commonality in seemingly unrelated things. Part of expertise is being an open-minded and flexible thinker.

You also have to learn how your agency or organization works. Does it have an advisory or decision-making role? Can it enforce the recommendations it makes through zoning and permitting? Who makes the decisions and with what input? Can you hire a consultant or are you the consultant who delivers specialized information?

From the larger questions of roles and responsibilities, to the daily details of finding information and working to standards, figure out how a place works. Learning who has influence or when and how to present proposals, will make you more effective.

Synthesizing Information

Beyond the nuts and bolts of topic or issue, the planner has to know why they’re doing a given piece of work—moving beyond just accepting an assignment to being aware of the desired outcome. Is the goal to educate, influence, generate support, or gain approval? Planners have to be aware of all the moving parts. They have to write:

• in different forms: staff reports, master plans, technical papers, blog posts, fact sheets, etc.
• in different media: online and printed
• to different ends: convincing, educating, arguing, inspiring
• to different audiences: boss, colleagues, clients, lay board, citizens, developer representatives, and experts
• in different versions that change with ideas added and subtracted as the project moves through the process.

Community Context

At the most basic level a planner should learn their community’s physical and social shape, including its demographics and its development and planning history. Drawing boundaries and gathering information that realistically reflects the community may reveal uncompleted projects or potential conflicts.

A planner should also understand and work at the level of the community’s capacity—not over-promise—to be effective. While an urban designer may be inspired by a grand European square and sculpture, it may be more realistic to recommend a roots-up art program in a community with limited funds, depending on established policy positions, political drivers, and the planning process.

It’s the planner’s job to understand the policy environment that shapes a community and then make appropriate recommendations. Residents of a Florida beach town may be very concerned about climate change and feeling its impacts. They know the beach is a significant economic driver for their town and that rising water may create more frequent flooding for residents. But developing a sensible response requires knowledge of who governs what. The town’s roads, which could break up under flooding or could be made more resilient, are under county and State jurisdiction. The State also sets standards for the beaches and waters. The county sets building codes and recycling rules. The Federal EPA sets emission and water quality standards, and the international community makes carbon agreements.

Even within the correct policy framework, community discussion and decision-makers can be hamstrung. Frustrated parents may show up to a meeting about a land use plan which would impact school enrollment, but wanting to discuss topics like classroom size, scheduling, and boundaries that are school operation issues—immediate concerns that aren’t affected in a long-term master plan. Or a planner charged with a sustainability plan might be tempted to go through the motions, recommending solutions that aren’t relevant and can’t be implemented at the local level. To be effective, the planner needs to understand and adapt to local concerns and capacity, educate participants on what’s possible, and frame issues as well as potential solutions at the appropriate level.

Planner...