erative change, even in the private sector, needs political support to get going,
which may be difficult to retract if the sooner-than-later indications are that a
project should be abandoned. Shackling political support to a project at an initial
stage, which later fails project evaluation, usually means a defeat for logic and
reason when a fired-up political ‘champion’ is committed to holding fast to ‘their’
project. Much criticism is offered on the inanity of regional political input, but it
has also to be taken into account that political representatives have not always
been well served by their advisers. Of course technocrats declaim that politicians
always ‘go their own way’ regardless of what they are advised. This quarter-truth
serves to highlight an imperative, in the spirit of ethical integrity: namely, that the
planning adviser must give a full range of advice to political mentors and indicate
and register their own technical preference.
The regional planner-analyst who joins the political fray with his or her own
personal assumptions ‘predetermined’ ends up in an ethical quagmire; whereas
the regional analyst prepared to put up all the options and accept a setback when
an indicated and recommended optimum is passed over, is always in the clear,
ready to fight another cause on another day. Political involvement at the ‘initial
evaluation’ stage is unavoidable: the planner’s challenge being to provide politi-
cians with sound advice.
Identifying economic development and resource conservancy project propaga-
tion as adviser-led and politics-driven is a useful operational starter. Indeed at the
forefront of every regional agency there needs to be an effective political cham-
pion for every cause. This advocacy is best viewed as an adjunct to the regional
interest, a driving part of the ‘means’ rather than a functional part of the
‘outcome’. Another notion to scotch is that economic upsurge, in and of itself, is
the main underlying reason for development, the prime motivebeing the genera-
tion of permanent ‘jobs’ – conversely understood as the alleviation of under-
employment and unemployment. Holding out for job-creation consequential to
growth, links with the observation that job seekers are frequently less than mobile,
whereas many jobs are now highly mobile.
The emphases to flag are: first, that the lead focus to economic development
and resource conservancy projects is the creation of new and additional employ-
ment opportunities; second, that a lower rate of capitalization per workplace has
the potential to create more jobs – most perceptibly within conservancy, but also
with the likes of tourism development. From this couplet there can be identified
a tacit understanding that the bottom line determining factors are developer
‘profit’ and conservancy ‘gain’ generating more jobs, manifesting as a lowering
rate of unemployment.
Additional to low-capitalization job creation, satisfactory-to-the-community
responses are required when the following four questions are put:
- Will the project be a net longer-haul contributor, or burden, to the national,
local, and regional economies? - Is there a valid expectation of social improvement to individual and commu-
nity wellbeing, with betterment to the natural environment and the human
habitat?^9
Growth Pattern Management 135