IDEO's smart pre-planning

There's a fascinating case study documenting some outcomes of IDEO's new-ish division for built environments in this month's Metropolis. One proposition:

IDEO’s approach could be seen as a desperately needed fix to the broken instrument of urban planning, a way to energize a public process that too often skews places to the lowest common denominator

resonates with me, particularly as more planners and organizations jump on the "placemaking" bandwagon for marketing, with high gloss and little else to show for it.

IDEO's approach, in practice, risks being as simplistic as other lowest common denominator alternatives, (e.g., "Now that we've looked at what 18th and Vine needs for establishing itself as a viable neighborhood...how can we differentiate itself from other destinations to attract more people?") but immersion in the neighborhood - people, daily and weekly routines - is something I wish more design companies, planners and architects included, would commit to and incorporate. I mean, what proof does anyone really have that a community needs cafe tables with umbrellas over something else? In the end, suggestions like those smack of paternalism when it is offered without ethnographic research to back it up.

The problem is that words like "community input" and now even in some ways "placemaking" are now political terms used to either sell a new development or deflect potential conflict from the community, rather than really keeping an eye on the overarching purpose for an upgraded or new design. That purpose is still pretty simple: a good place that people want to use, though it sure is hard to get there.