Libertarian Planning

An interesting dialogue between Christopher Alexander and Bruce Snider, editor of Custom Home can be found here.
The town under discussion is Northport, Maine.

Bruce

Unfortunately, most of them think things are perfectly fine the way they stand. Historically, the town has been very resistant to planning or land-use regulation of any kind. This is New England, and there is a very strong sense of, "Nobody's going to tell me what I can't do on my property." Also, many local families have been here for generations, living a very modest life. If they can finally make some money by selling a piece of the farm, then who could blame them? I don't think my neighbors want to see fundamental change, but their distaste for regulation makes the town easy pickings for developers and large retailers.

Chris

And what sort of regulation do you propose?

Bruce

A regulatory mechanism, protection, rules, something -- something, even if we don't know what it is -- to control the onset of development!

That's where I come up blank. I would say a comprehensive plan, but I've seen the results of comprehensive plans in other towns, and that's not what I'm after at all. There must be some way to steer the town's development so that we end up with a real town--with a town center, real neighborhoods, and so on--rather than the kind of centerless sprawl we see all around the country. I would like to think there is some mechanism by which we can accomplish this.

This dialogue is interesting because it focusses on the tension between the desire to physically make the world in which we live a better place and the loss of freedom which it seems is teh inevitable result - and more to the point it recognises that tension and doesn't resort to sloganising whether 'free markets' or 'better plans'.

Bruce

I recognize the contradiction in what I am saying, and it's something I struggle with. Clearly, the places I value most did not result from planning. I would like to get beyond the argument between those who favor development and those who reject it out of hand. That argument is frozen in place, and the resulting compromise is the lousy pattern of development we see, in which "undesirable" uses are segregated from places where people live and so become truly undesirable. What I seek, lacking the tacit consensus that guided the growth of towns like Belfast, is some way to generate a new consensus. A developer can hire Andres Duany to invent a town; how can a town a town invent itself, following the wishes of those who live there, protecting what they treasure most?