America is full of brilliant people, many of them devoted to improving our cities and the lives of those that live in them. The most brilliant innovations in building cities, however, won't come from the current generation of politicians, professionals and advocates. That brilliance is already embodied in the traditional development pattern, a foolproof approach to building places that was developed the hard way: slowly and incrementally over time. If we want to build strong towns, we should once again embrace that hard won wisdom.

After working for five years as an engineer, I returned to graduate school to get a master's degree in urban and regional planning. My inspiration— particularly as I was prompted to start my own planning company during my first months there—was to get out in front of the bad engineering projects I had done up to that point. If we only did a better job of planning (or so I thought) then we wouldn't need to do these heroic and expensive engineering fixes.

After working about the same amount of time as a professional planner as I had a professional engineer, I started to have serious doubts about the ability of better planning to solve anything. I had recruited and trained a firm of very intelligent and skilled planners, yet we were besieged by all the same shortcomings I had seen others struggle with. In the end, we were just as incapable of doing things any better, even though doing things better was the central mission and obsessive focus of our organization.

In the dark nights I lay awake pondering what to make of it all, I found myself echoing things I had heard my parents say. They were teachers—good people—and when they (and to be fair, their colleagues, whom I also was around a lot while growing up) were frustrated with how things we going, their laments were predictable: It was parents' fault for not having their kids ready to learn. It was administrators' fault for putting so many obstacles in their way. It was the states' fault for cutting their funding or voters' for not approving that referendum. If only these other things would go the right way, they could do their job successfully.

Like them, I was doing everything I could with all the best intentions, but I was not getting the results our cities needed. We'd put together that awesome plan and then it wouldn't get implemented (blame the incompetent people at city hall). We'd set up the perfect zoning code and the first application in the door would challenge its underlying principle and the city council would give out a variance (blame the politicians). We'd work on a new development and get it all approved and then it would sit empty for a decade (and still counting) while the city plowed snow off the road so the realtors could show the lots (blame the market or the developer).

Worse yet, when things did work out, we credited our own genius for the success. We aren't alone. Go to any American Planning Association conference and you'll experience a lineup of stunning success stories. Session after session touts success after success, sterilizing any unsavory details to create a narrative that is proactive and affirming, as if the unique brilliance of the firm or planner presenting will create outcomes elusive to the rest of us. If only we were all so gifted or could just follow their approach.