A Contrast in Studies

by Bob Kellum

Two studies were the subject at the April meeting of the Lenawee Chapter of the Michigan Townships Association. One was an update presentation on the I-73 feasibility study, the other was a proposal to generate public input to shape the new County Land Use Plan. Both studies seek information useful in determining the future of the area and both are being conducted by professionals at the request of other bodies: the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), and the Lenawee County Planning Commission. That is where the similarities end.

The road feasibility study skips past basic questions of the purpose and need for the roadway in order to address only questions of its location and type. In contrast, county planning skips past nothing to offer citizens the opportunity to address any such fundamental questions. One process sets the bar where we can kick or step over it. The other asks citizens to set the bar as high as they dare.

Federal funding specifically mandates the feasibility study of a new roadway and MDOT is the broker for the power that flows with that funding. In this process, MDOT must answer to remote guidelines and legal precedent, but only perfunctorily, to the people of the area. It is a classic case of the tail in Lansing and Washington wagging the dog in Southeast Michigan. MDOT defines its task narrowly and bulls ahead, conceding little to polarizing public sentiment. Later, after its foot is in the door and feasibility has been established, MDOT promises that purpose and need will be addressed. The implication is that although we are free to endorse or condemn a new road, open discussion of its premise poses an unacceptable risk to the end concept.

Thus far the study has been professional and timely, but end driven. It appears intent to grease the skids to wider roads that accommodate heavier traffic at greater speeds. Its assumptions are biased toward personal freedom, material wealth and economic development, and against personal responsibility, spiritual well-being and community development.

The very questions of the road’s purpose and need dangle like an incomplete sentence. Why are some of us interested in a new road, what issues are at stake and are there other ways we can address them? Should we question our increasing dependence on an automotive transportation system that is decreasingly defensible? An obligatory “purpose and need” statement, authored by road proponents and buried in the feasibility study, offers little justice to those whose homes, land and way of life would be sacrificed for the new road.

It is sad commentary on our politics that we permit a public process that presumes an end result while it avoids meaningful dialogue with those who would suffer its indignity. Justice grants such power only to the people on the ground. The opportunity in the moment lies not in dividing ourselves for or against the proposed roadway, but in the possibility that we might join together, the better to ask who we are and why we are here.

The county planning process is intended to create just such an opportunity for people, ideas and information to come together. It invites the community to become something greater than the sum of its parts as it offers area residents a substantive alternative to standard political fare. By taking such an initiative, the community seeks to fulfill a responsibility that it otherwise abdicates.

County land use plans are notorious for becoming dusty shelf ornaments. As toothless recommendations, they are easily cowered by their more aggressive canine cousins: the law, the ordinance and of course, the federal mandate. If the planning process does not capture the community’s imagination and cultivate the sense of a greater community whole, then ornamentation will be its greatest value. Its unwritten pages have no agenda and offer no guarantees, they simply beg the question: can we be more than an assemblage of individuals resigned if not content to withstand alone the chill wind of change.

The evolving county proposal recommends a series of meetings to encourage open and creative discussion. If this planning process is to realize even a fraction of its potential, it must find, nurture and embrace the living community spirit. Good planning is not an isolated event, it is an ongoing form of consensus political interaction, a virtual way of being, that creates community empowerment of the highest order. However, the proverbial bar will remain low to the ground unless we, as individuals, set the higher goal of assimilating where it is we come from, who we are, and where it is we should be going. In such inquiries lie the opportunity to see beyond the horizons of our time, to deepen the knowledge of our values and to more clearly understand our purpose.

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