“To design is human, to implement, divine,” I have argued in loose adaptation of Alexander Pope’s well-known aphorism. By implement, I mean the carrying out of a design or plan for the city through a specific set of tactics and techniques that I sometimes analogize to a three-legged stool with legs of law, finance, and politics. Without implementation, the city doesn’t happen.
My argument arises out of an empirical observation: Many design practices and pedagogies, operating under the banner of urbanism, shrink from serious intellectual or professional engagement with the very tactics and techniques that make things realistically happen in cities. Such disengagement deeply disadvantages design professionals who would want their visions to shape the built environment.
Since this all sounds obvious enough, why would anyone designing the city have an allergy to learning about and wielding implementation tactics and techniques? Answers are varied. For some, implementation is understood as a separate operation. First we do the design or plan, and then we think about implementation, if we think about it at all. By making implementation a serial rather than simultaneous or iterative operation, implementation intellectually and professionally is separated from the act of designing.