|
Land should serve people says New Jersey 'radical planner' |
|
|
|
"I would argue that the highest and best use is how (land) serves the needs of a community," says Tom Knoche, a planner in Camden, New Jersey.
In graduate school, he says, he realised that professional planning could and should be a tool for social justice. "I don't want to sound like an ideologue," says Knoche, a self-described radical whose personal politics are reflected by a poster inside his State Street apartment that proclaims in Spanish that Christopher Columbus' legacy is written in blood.
He goes on to say that "capitalism and the sacredness of private property in our society" are a primary reason why so much planning is oriented toward "increasing the value of land" rather than, say, encouraging the economic empowerment of poor people.
For that reason, the "highest and best use" of the city's most precious resource - its location - is seen as whatever will create the most tax revenue, rents and investment, Knoche says.
Read the full interview at the Courier Post Online.
|
