Seasoned City Planners Like Leon Churchill Steer Cities Away From Crises

By Author: Casey Carpenter
Total Articles: 9
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Cities the world over are growing larger as more and more people are moving into them. It’s been estimated that by 2025 over 1.2 billion people will be living in large urban centers. This is mainly because of the high concentration of profitable jobs and basic services in these metropolitan areas. However, the problem with this population boom is the accompanying issues related to unprepared infrastructure, like lack of housing and inadequate law enforcement.

This is where skilled city managers like Leon Churchill come in. City managers are responsible for overseeing all the administrative tasks that keep a city going like maintaining the city budget as well as supervising the city’s employees, such as those in the fire and police departments. Importantly, city managers anticipate the problems that a community might face and develop programs to aptly address them.

One of the main problems facing cities is where to get sufficient funds to pay for the development and maintenance of infrastructure. Since city managers are in charge of the city budget, they ...
... need to develop plans to create additional revenue. This can range from selling off city property to attracting companies to set up shop locally so as to generate jobs and taxes like the recent opening of the Amazon Warehouse in Moreno Valley, California, which created over a thousand jobs for the locals.

Another problem that needs to be addressed is the development of truly long-term plans. It’s not going to be enough to plan for the next year or the next five years. To be absolutely prepared, at least 40-year plans should be developed so as to be ready for the challenges of the future. An excellent example of this would be the development of a multi-generational perspective when it comes to housing. For one, people age and this needs to be taken into account when it comes to zoning and how an elderly-friendly housing can be established.

Finally, critical issues should have policies placed so that they can be handled smoothly. Some examples would be to have a dedicated stand on creating affordable housing to avoid slums, or developing roads and car alternatives to ease the local traffic situation.

Cities are great places to live, but they take a lot of work and skill to keep running. This is why we need forward-thinking planners like Leon Churchill to identify and understand a city’s needs. To know about the themes and things that a reliable city manager focuses on, you can visit theconversation.com/ten-themes-that-will-help-build-cities-designed-for-people-25525.