Central planning ignores the free market reality

When will they learn?

The curmudgeonesk city planners who are determined to revitalize Columbus' downtown fail to recognize what is obvious to the rest of us: Downtown moved to the suburbs.

Common sense has never played a role in central planners. No wonder, considering they have your tax dollars at their disposal.

The ramblings of Richard Florida, for example, have been heeded by the cultural architects who drive city planning in Columbus. The notion is that attracting the "Creative Class" (a term for gay professionals) will boost a community's economy.

Normal people can see through the spoof. We're no more impressed than with the clothes-free goddess Eos plopped in the midst of Fifth St. greeting visitors to Columbus and, not coincidentally, the Cummins World Headquarters.

San Francisco, long the epicenter of the "creative class," proves their folly: According to the Wall Street Journal, "San Francisco [had] a whopping domestic outflow of 10%...." The time frame compared 2006 to 2000.

In other words, folks are abandoning the hub of the creative class.

So when will they learn?

Turn to the Liberty Tree News for a hint.

Frank Jerome has an article in the upcoming edition in which he wonders why the city can afford a new parking garage catacorner from Cummins World Headquarters. Cummins couldn't afford it, he notes. Apparently taxpayers will flip the bill.

The sum of it all is that central planning seldom works — except for the power brokers who could benefit from a new parking garage. And hotel.

Two architectural marvels — the Commons Mall and the majestic Post Office — both have dates with the wrecking ball. (Apparently the goddess is annoyed with the 18-wheelers rumbling in and out of the Bulk Mail Unit's parking lot; also across the street from Cummins.) And both were central to central planning of the not-too-distant past.

The city fathers (and mums) labeled their current wreck-and-build-(slash)-tax-and-spend efforts "Vision 2020" or "2020Vision" or something akin to the year 2020. Those of us with 20/20 vision can see it all too clearly: The epi-center of the effort to revitalize downtown Columbus with gay bars, nekid godesses and mall-with-a-street-down-the-middle is the squashy Cummins World Headquarters.

It's a point lost on the pointy-headed ones; those who know all too well what's best for the rest of us (financed with tax dollars, of course). What they fail to realize is that downtown is as vital as it ever was. It just moved to the suburbs. There you will find Walmart and the new Coldstones Creamery that opened Saturday without central planning or tax dollars.

It's an odd thing that Columbus, the world's most celebrated architectural community, ignores the two fundamentals of architectural planning: First, form follows function (note the 18-wheelers trying to maneuver in the grandiose Post Office parking lot) and wait until the grass is worn to build sidewalks.

While the central planners at city hall continue to fund the downtown revitalization project, the free market is luring real people to Walmart and all their tax-funded projects won't change that.

There is a reason why fast-food, motels and mattress shops are building along Jonathan Moore Parkway and not Third and Washington.

When will they learn? Apparently never.

My guess is that — 100 years from now when commerce is done online — some curmudgeon city planners will be plotting a Vision 2120 strategy to revitalize Walmart.