Future Forward: Meet a Siloam Springs City Planner
Meet Benjamin Rhoads, Senior Planner for the City of Siloam Springs
Meet Benjamin Rhoads, Senior Planner for the City of Siloam Springs
Lexington, KY until I was 16, then I moved to Shreveport, LA.
University of Colorado at Boulder for undergrad and the University of Colorado at Denver for my Masters, in Urban and Regional Planning.
Approximately 25 years.
Originally, I wanted to be an architect, however after my first semester I decided it was not for me. My architecture program allowed architecture, planning, and landscape architects’ students to take the same core classes. I had a few planning classes and decided to change my major to Environmental Design, which encompasses city planning.
The 2008 Comprehensive Plan, Forward Siloam Springs. This plan, with some outside assistance from the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, was created entirely “in house” through my efforts and that of the City staff at the time.
City Planning is a vast field with many tendrils, including urban design, law, social advocacy, politics, and geography. One can go many places and do many things and call themselves a “planner”. To me, planning is the profession that helps shape cities into the places where we collectively want to live, work, and play. This centered, in my case, on working as a municipal planner to improve the community I live in for future generations.
I love history, one place that really impressed is Colonial Williamsburg. It is a beautiful place, very walkable and picturesque. I also lived in Cambridge, England for about six months between high school and college and was inspired by the beautiful architecture, walkable city design, and its public places.
I think it is the broader effort of educating the public as to what planning is and informing decision makers of the inter connectiveness of decision-making. Rather than taking the immediate “quick fix” to a perceived issue, my aim is to shift the focus to longer term solutions which results in a better outcome.
Our biggest effort at this time is a new Unified Development Code (UDC). This involves taking seven different codes and seamlessly combining them into a single chapter. This is done in an effort to eliminate some of the red tape and redundancies found in the codes as well as to modernize them in the process. We hope to present a final UDC for approval in the spring to early summer next year.
For the region, it will be to maintain as much of our identity as possible not only as individual cities but also as a collective region. The growth is going to come, the question is what will that look like. I think good planning is a key ingredient to ensure that the growth is well laid out and has a proper balance between land uses. Forethought through the correct application of community visioning allows cities to be built for an improved quality of life for its existing and future residents.
City planning is a critical piece of the puzzle for place making. When there is no planning, each landowner develops their property to its highest and best use, but often without taking into consideration how that property may impact the ones around it and the community as a whole. This is where city planning comes in. City planning seeks to balance all needs and land uses, but also works to ensure that land development is harmonious with the city’s values so that development better serves everyone and preserves and enhances the community’s desired quality of life.