Before the Master Plan - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 25

4 BeforetheMasterPlan

A Framework and Some
Difficult Questions for
Regional Land Use Planning

Carl Steinitz

Before the objectives outlined in the master plan for the Iraqi marshlands (USAID
2004) can be met, there is a need to examine the methodology at arriving at that
stage. I would like to focus in this chapter on the issue from the perspective of mod-
ern development, rather than the marshes. I believe that the marshes are part of the
situation but won't, in the long run, drive the sustainable social ecology of that area.
If you see the issue as a modern development issue (see the foreword), you may
end up asking different questions. No one has asked the question “What happens if
there really is no water for these people in their territory?” And no one has asked the
question “What's the smallest wetland that is sustainable, and what is the largest wet-
land that's sustainable?” These questions are hard questions. I'm not underestimating
the difficulty of trying to do something positive in a devastated social ecology. That's
an enormous task, and you have to admire the people who are doing it. But you also
have to ask additional questions: what is the time horizon? What really is the best use
of Italian and American money and Turkish, Iranian, and Iraqi water? And how long
in the future and for whom are you really talking about?
I have organized around thirty regional studies (e.g., Steinitz et al. 1996, 2003; see
also France 2006 for other examples as well as the case study described in chapter 15
of this topic), and I'm not good at the end game of making decisions. I don't do that.
I'm experienced in the beginning game of trying to figure out how change comes to a
region and how that might be planned for. “Plan” isn't exactly the right word. Rather,
how can change be managed as a process? I'm well aware that the Iraqi marsh situa-
tion is one that has had a decade or more of very serious people doing very important
work on it. And in a sense, that trajectory is like a rolling train. And some fair ques-
tions might be “Is it aiming in the right direction?” and “Are there several directions
and branches that have to come together, but that might not?”

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