1. L AURA W OLF -P OWERS U NIVERSITY OF P ENNSYLVANIA D EPARTMENT OF C ITY AND R EGIONAL P LANNING Teaching Planners to Deal TEACHING PLANNERS TO DEAL: THE PEDAGOGICAL VALUE OF A (SIMULATED) DEVELOPMENT NEGOTIATION PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH GROUP “EMERGING VOICES” SERIES UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, MARCH 15, 2012

2. C ONTEXT i. Public/private partnership DISTINCT PROCESS PARADIGMS IN URBAN REDEVELOPMENT Negotiation of Contracts/Deals ii. Public participation Deliberative Non-hierarchical Interactive

3. C ONTEXT

4. A GENDA As seen through a public/private negotiation lens CASE OF GATES RUBBER REDEVELOPMENT IN DENVER As seen through participatory planning/ democratic deliberation lens Designing and implementing a classroom exercise Reflections (from Students and instructor)

6. G ATES B ASICS PROJECT $1 billion plan to develop on site of former rubber factory Mixed-use; adjacent to new rail line; 4000 units of housing 7m sq ft of retail Denver Dept of Community Planning and development KEY PLAYERS Denver Urban Renewal Authority Front Range Economic Strategy Center Affordable housing and environmental justice advocates Denver City Council Cherokee Denver LLC Tax increment financing requested -- $126m

7. “The plan must also receive a go-ahead vote by City Council This is your leverage point. Several Council members have indicated that they will vote “no” on the TIF in the absence of a credible community benefits package. Your job is to come up with this package and to win it, whether directly from Portico or via negotiation with DURA to induce that agency to negotiate with Portico” demands on Portico. “More than the other groups, you have an internal negotiation at this stage as you figure out how to relate to DURA and Portico as advocates.”

8. “The controversy in the Council and the press is leading you to think about how much subsidy you really need in this deal to get a minimally acceptable return”

9. “It is your job to negotiate the best possible deal for Dartsville. Your leverage points are the TIF and the zoning change.”

10. Harm mitigation vs. distributive justice view of “planning obligations” Legitimacy of participation by advocates –democratic participation vs. “interest group politics” Baseline desirability of project

11. I SSUES Negotiation paradigm oriented around value creation and best contracting practices Public participation paradigm oriented around inclusivity, justice – Justice of process (representative; consensus-seeking; reliant on good will) – Justice of outcome (normative; value-inflected; cognizant of power) Fainstein: The choice of justice as the governing norm for evaluating urban policy is obviously value laden. It reacts to the current emphasis on competitiveness and the dominance in policy making of neoliberal formulations that aim at reducing government intervention and enabling market processes. Flyvberg: “For students of power, communication is more typically characterized by rhetoric and maintenance of interests than by freedom from domination and consensus-seeking…The researcher must ask how communication takes place and how power operates…How do consensus seeking and rhetoric, freedom from domination and the exercise of power, eventually come together in individual acts of communication?” (my emphasis)

12. Stakeholders participating through conventional channels of participation can (and sometimes do) succeed in achieving ‘non-reformist reforms.’* However the rise of movements for accountable development, not to mention opposition to development and deep mistrust of government-led participatory mechanisms suggest that standard mechanisms of inclusion are not working well. *defined by Nancy Fraser as reforms operating within existing social frameworks but contributing to a trajectory of more radical change

13. Public sector planner Public interest threshold not met Project fails fiscal value test Project should mitigate direct harms Project should involve redistribution as a condition of public subsidy Public interest threshold met participatory input Participatory input participatory input participatory input advocacy

14. Do negotiation and participatory paradigms, alone or in combination, suffice to achieve just outcomes? – Public/private negotiation paradigm: bent on value creation – Participation paradigm: bent on justice of process

15. N EGOTIATION AROUND THE T ERMS OF TIF 2004-2006 Developer and Coalition meet – developer agrees to no big box retail Zoning changes and development plan approved with Coalition support Coalition raises issue of affordable housing (beyond city’s Inclusionary requirement), construction prevailing wage, and retail and service worker living wage Advocates lobby City Council and raise public awareness around housing shortage, environmental issues, wage issues Developer ceases meeting with Coalition – advocates now relying on participatory process

16. N EGOTIATION AROUND THE T ERMS OF TIF 2004-2006 Urban Renewal Authority negotiates with Cherokee -- outcomes are enhanced housing plan, new first source hiring program, formal citizen involvement in monitoring of brownfield cleanup, living wage ordinance applied to parking & building management workers but not workers of developer tenants; union construction on infrastructure but not “vertical development Coalition testifies before City Council in support of TIF

17. I SSUES THAT WOULD COME UP MORE STRENUOUSLY IF THE CASE WERE DIFFERENT Baseline project desirability – Brooklyn Atlantic Yards case, Yankee Stadium, Gateway Center Potential breakdown over profound mistrust of government as an instrument of the public interest – Detroit,