CITYBUILDING | Pop Culture Urbanism Explains Why We Think Developers are Evil
Since the 1970s, Hollywood has doubled and tripled down on the narrative
Written By Gwen McCarter Nagle
Pop Culture Urbanism, a video series by city planner Nolan Gray, explains how a negative view of developers came to be reflected in and reinforced by Hollywood. The idea that developers, and development, are evil seems normal today. Gray’s analysis shows that cities have the power to turn this assumption on its head.
We don’t have to go that far back to see where this trope became fixed. “By the late eighties,” says Gray, “developers aren’t the shiny, futuristic hero of tomorrow. They’re greedy, corrupt, immoral, pushy—the types of people who would throw their own grandmother out onto the street just to make a penny.” Fast-forward thirty years, and preconceived notions about development are everywhere. Just look at the comments section on any post announcing new “luxury apartments” in your city.
This may be where we are. But Gray poses a vital question: “If you’re a city enthusiast like me, what can we be doing better?”
As Gray puts it when he invokes the film It’s a Wonderful Life: “If we want to build better, stronger communities for everyone with more jobs and opportunity and better housing, we need to build a system that gets us fewer Mr. Potters and more George Baileys.”
So, what’s stopping us? The problem is,
…the way we plan cities makes developers do bad things. If you were to take George Bailey out of the world of “‘It’s a Wonderful Life”' and drop him off into a modern city with all the zoning and regulations, what would happen? He’ll have to go through discretionary approvals, get permits and insurance from all different kinds of agencies, buddy up with all different kinds of public officials, take jabs from every direction from city council. Here’s what he’ll end up having to do: Either sweet, wholesome George Bailey is gonna realize he doesn’t want to have anything to do with this political racket and he’s going to find another career, or George ultimately becomes the crony that the system forces him to be. He’s gonna have to play the game, buddy up with power players and policymakers. Over time, George becomes Mr. Potter.
To address this issue, our solutions must be rooted in place. Across the South, each locale has a different web of challenges to contend with.
Triangle-based developer Jim Anthony told the Townbuilders podcast about a major obstacle common to executing good development today:
When I first landed here in 1983, the home building landscape was dominated by locals. Homegrown companies probably represented 75 percent of all the construction in the early 80s, and I’ll bet you today 80 percent or even 85 percent of all the units that get built in the Triangle are built by regional or national home builders, and you get a very different product when that happens. So we in our market have I think suffered from having a dearth of the quality builder who has the financial capacity to work through a project with enough scale to make a difference.
Improving the quality of development here may take time, but there are two areas where we can start.
For one thing, here in North Carolina, we must make it easier (i.e., faster, and cheaper) for land to get entitled. This shift would allow developers to get money out faster. As it is, the lengthy entitlement process means there is pressure to sell off to public builders who have no intent to build a traditional neighborhood development complete with good design and urbanist ideals.
In addition, we need more developers who have a personal stake in how their projects impact the community. We should be recruiting mission-minded locals who are willing to prioritize design when deciding what to do with their land.
Everywhere, there are good examples of development and bad ones. When we change our assumptions about what developers can do—and, most importantly, when we help create the conditions where good developers can thrive—we can usher in a new era of citybuilding across the South.
Gwen McCarter Nagle served as Editor In Chief of Southern Urbanism Quarterly. She has earned degrees from the University of Virginia and Harvard and has been writing or editing one thing or another forever. After a lengthy stint in brand trategy, she now enjoys helping thought leaders turn their ideas into powerful pieces of content that can have a positive impact on the world. @gwenmccarter