Tompkins County planners don’t counsel – they conspire.
We no longer create our communities by living in them – we just inhabit the communities our government creates.
They do all the planning. They have all the planners. They have all the power. They have all the cards.
![“The World According to Doctrine” — Form Based Code Cornell [formerly Lansing] NY](https://i0.wp.com/www.ruraltompkins.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/9982_Form-Based-Code-Living-Lansing_FLAT.jpg?resize=660%2C912&ssl=1)
Form Based Codes are a simplified form; for a simplified government: themselves. Form Based Codes bring zoning into line with modern authoritative thinking: 100% public comments – 0% meaningful participation.
Form Based Codes are the perfect tool for Urban Colonialism: the preservation of urban spaces – and the resettlement and destruction of the rural community. A “streamlined” tool for taking.
“The real tragedy of these small enclaves of marginality and poverty is that people are playing a game of life that has been structured in such a way that they are required to play but prevented from winning.” — Janet Fitchen, “Poverty in Rural America”
In rural New York; No one can hear you scream.
It’s a “takers” society – and as the events, policies, and media hype swirl around us: there’s an erosion of individual worth and the “work ethic” – and all ethical conduct.
Rewards come; not from the persistence of hard work – but from the persistence of a fox circling the henhouse. Life is not the opportunity to achieve – but the opportunity to take.
The legitimacy of our government is no longer based on ethics; but on the profitability of its policies. Politicians and experts have swelled their egos to become the deciders:
They are reshaping the world — and some people are just excess population.
If you want to experience the futility of our future: attend a Public Hearing.
What fools we are! Our taxes pay for the lawyers that advise our local governments on how to legally minimize or eliminate public participation in the decision making process – and all the new regulatory programs enacted – like Form Based Codes and Nine-Point Plans – remove the public from any authority or oversight; even in the most radical and far reaching policy decisions.
It’s hard to blame the public for being apathetic; when the sole result of attending public hearings is the legitimizing of decisions that are anything but public mandates.
Publicly presenting your thought out and well-documented criticisms; to a Town Board that approves the policy within seconds of your speaking — is like voting in an election with only one candidate.
The sound of one hand clapping? It’s meaningful public participation.
Contrary to the American Planning Association’s Policy Guide on Smart Growth’s guideline of “refocusing a larger share of regional growth within central cities, urbanized areas” – Tompkins County planners are destroying the rural town of Lansing, NY by bulldozing it’s woods and meadows; and building thousands of new houses for Cornell’s workers along with affordable housing units for Ithaca’s unwanted poor, criminal, and substance addicted. The City of Ithaca is frequently listed as the best college town in America and is characterized by wood-frame houses and small shops. This artificially maintained “small town feel” city is also one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in – and is surrounded on three sides by the Town of Ithaca’s parks, preserves and many tree lined winding roads with small houses that only the rich can afford.
Lansing’s rural/agricultural community has been fragmented and destroyed by an Ithaca urban sprawl bedroom community “mini-city” — with sewers, water, utilities, and Form Based Codes being added to insure its continued growth.
Tompkins County’s “Best Planning Practices” are based on career longevity and cronyism — and Cornell calls all the shots.
When people ask you; “How are you doing?” – just say “Good” or “I’m doing OK” – because most people don’t want to hear your problems — the same thing is true of surveys.
Our Town survey, like everything to do with policy and politics, comes from Cornell. The cold-call telephone questions were loaded, open for interpretation, and asked well in advance of public awareness of the issues they would be used for. When the agenda of the survey emerged – its authors quickly backpedaled in an angry Town meeting: claiming it was only a preliminary indication; and of no great importance — this same survey was later used as the sole determining mandate from the residents for the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and all future development.
Surveys are used to provide an appearance of public legitimacy to the unilateral decision making of Cornell County planners. When residents claim that they are inadequate, biased, or deceptive – county officials merely defend the results; and make no changes,
People may not make the right decisions — and surveys are an important step to prevent that.
Lying is just another way to get what you want — and it’s a way that has seen a phenomenal growth in recent decades. With a government that cannot be questioned or held accountable — lying is the only form of public involvement left.
If you question their lies; they shut down. If you question anything; they shut down. If they feel like it; they shut down. What are you able to do about it?
In Tompkins County; the people just say that their government is corrupt and there is no meaningful participation — and go back to doing whatever they’re doing.
There may be a little cause and effect in this situation.
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“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” has been published and is available as a free ePub download on Smashwords.com; and as Kindle and in paperback on Amazon.com.
With “black box” Planning Flow; there’s nothing to trip you up – a few quick steps and “fait accompli” you’re done.
For a more detailed examination of how planning is approved in “Cornithaca” County: “Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” has been published as a free ePub download on Smashwords.com; and as Kindle and soon a paperback on Amazon.com.
Cornell’s Design Connect: Transportation Issue Assessment and Best Practices Guide leaves out the most important planning ingredient: the people. Its self-serving New Urbanism vision sees rural Lansing’s urban sprawl bedroom community as a solution; not a problem – and its recommendations are designed to maximize the community’s size and density. The town’s original rural residents are never mentioned – except as an obstacle. They are “outside the Study area” — outsiders in their own town.
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COMPLETE STREETS
A children’s puzzle-book approach to solving real-world problems
It’s NIMBY planning with Ivy League backing: Cornell’s Design Connect Complete Streets transportation “design interventions” drop the traffic and esthetic of a “mini-city” urban sprawl bedroom community into the middle of a green rural landscape.
It’s part of the University’s plan to solve Ithaca’s residential development and housing problems — by dumping them on someone else: the rural town of Lansing.
Cornell’s Design Connect isn’t just looking to help residents; they’re advocating “changes to town policy and planning procedure” as well.
It isn’t surprising that their policy recommendations echo every other “helping” voice – since it’s all the same voice and the same agenda. While the Design Connect study uses every possible reason for increasing the construction of residential housing in Lansing; it declares that the town should: “Limit the acreage of land zoned for commercial and light industrial uses in the Town. Dis-courage strip commercial development through appropriate zoning mechanisms. Limit heavy industry to existing Industrial/Research (IR) Districts.”
“County” planning has decided that Ithaca should be the only business center, and has actively worked to block Lansing’s attempts bring businesses into town — the Tompkins County Legislature actually went to Albany to stop NYSEG from supplying Lansing with the natural gas that was needed for new commercial and industrial development.
“. . . the southern portion of the town of Lansing will likely continue to serve as a bedroom community for Ithaca professionals and other workers.”
Design Connect’s “Best Planning Practices” not only accept the existence of a major urban sprawl bedroom community in the rural town of Lansing; they seek to greatly increase its size and density through “urban design overlay zones,” and recommend that the town “increase density and provide affordable housing,” change zoning with “reduced minimum open space requirements,” “Density Bonuses,” and “Amended Density Requirements,” – and build a new infrastructure to accommodate that increase – merely tacking on the goals of efficiency and low carbon emissions onto what is clearly not the “best planning practice” for a rural community.
Their recommendations for Lansing include “redevelopment of underutilized properties”; while at the same time there are block after block of old wood-frame houses in downtown Ithaca that would be perfect sites for redevelopment as high-density housing, and thousands of unused acres suitable for building surrounding the City’s core.
The redevelopment of Ithaca’s unused and underutilized building lots, and creation of affordable and appropriate urban housing, will solve the housing shortage, require no new infrastructures, efficiently use existing bus routes, be in the closest proximity to jobs in the education, business, institutional, and health care sectors, increase access to the cultural center of the county, and have the highest possible walkability and the greatest alternative transport choices for residents, while at the same time reducing the carbon footprint for transportation to a minimum.
It would solve every one of Lansing’s housing and transportation problems but one: Cornell does not want that solution.
Everywhere; there is the exhortation for more higher-density housing in the town of Lansing: high-density housing for affordable housing, high-density housing for sustainability, high-density housing for the environment, high-density housing for lower taxes, for the aging, for reducing carbon emissions, for curing cancer, for bringing about World Peace . . . the high-density housing that is needed in rural Lansing to maintain Ithaca’s gentrified, college-town pastiche for students – taking four years of memories, going to a six-figure salary, and adding more coin to Cornell’s corporate coffers.
In “The List of Adrian Messenger” – the victim’s last words were a breathless, “Clean sweep. Clean sweep.” — A fitting epitaph for Euclidean zoning’s humanist precepts under the heel of Form Based Code (FBC) regimentation.
This New Urbanism regulatory device has an authoritarian clout that garners approval from all those who aspire to be those authorities.
Our “old fashioned” and “inefficient” Euclidean zoning is ridiculed by Form Based Code proponents; who want to replace “what can we agree on?” with “do this because we say so.”
In the darkening of our enlightenment; experts and professionals increasingly cleave to the Political-Corporate-Institutional Centrality for profit — and survival.
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What’s really wrong with “Euclidean” zoning?
It’s one area of government where people still have the right to discuss and to decide — as neighbors – and as themselves.
Form Based Code proponents want to change all that.
Form Based Codes ensure only one thing; the overriding regulatory power of authorities to enforce conformity to their wishes — once that power is given; there is no taking it back.
Like the “Nine-Point Plans” that are so beloved by agricultural polluters and their cronies – Form Based Code implementation limits the public to ineffectual commenters; with no meaningful participation or oversight in the decision making process. All the pre-planning sales talk of multi-day “charrettes” and public input is merely window dressing with no legally defined existence. Form Based Codes are designed to promote development, not to protect residents.
Contrary to common ethical standards; the discussion surrounding the adoption of Form Based Codes is limited to praising its beneficence; and never touches on its inherent flaws nor discloses the extent of its authoritarian powers.
The dream of planners: to design communities as efficient interlocking parts; and only afterward “populate” them – and the desire of authorities: to control all within their sphere [without annoying objections and obstacles] – combine in the creation of Form Based Code environments: the biggest threat to human worth and individuality since the Skinner Box.
The inclusion of Form Based Codes into the Town of Lansing’s Comprehensive Plan strategy reveals much about the process and intent of government in Tompkins County:
The “Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan” could more accurately be called: “Cornell’s Plan for the Town of Lansing.”
The complete marginalization of Lansing’s residents took place in three steps:
1. Cornell’s Survey Research Institute prepared and administered a questionable survey; the results of which were recanted during public outcry, and later quietly reinstated as the underpinning mandate for all the Town’s Comprehensive Plan policy decisions.
2. Cornell’s fraudulent “Rural Sprawl” domino effect scenario was adopted without debate by Lansing Town authorities; a fear provoking concoction designed to suppress rural opposition and legitimize the creation of a “mini-city” with thousands of housing units; thus artificially maintaining Ithaca’s “small-town living” as an attraction for the students and professionals needed by an ever-expanding University and growing business center — and keeping thousands of acres of suitable building land in Ithaca untouched and taxes lower by placing the housing for their workers and families, and the high cost of services, in another municipality.
3. Cornell’s Design Connect Form Based Code planning offered an unopposable regulatory power to block any possibility of resident oversight or revision.
What was the Town of Lansing’s decision process for the inclusion of a Form Based Code future in their Comprehensive Plan?
A simple one:
This is how things work in Tompkins County Government: authorities “identify a need” – they develop a plan – and they adopt the plan. Form Based Codes streamline the development planning and approval process by removing the public from any planning or approving — that’s one more reason why politicians, planners, and developers everywhere are so enamored with this tool of power.