Now that Gregg Lintern has been named Toronto’s chief planner, the position has been returned to where it came from, the murky middle of the municipal bureaucracy. No surprise, then, that Lintern’s first post-appointment tweet was addressed to his staff. “First foremost and always,” he wrote, “my journey has been about my ‪@CityPlanTO team ...”

In case you wondered, CityPlanTO is social media code for Toronto’s planning division. Like so much about the department he now leads, its meaning isn’t immediately clear. But, Lintern wants us to know, his team comprises “people who work hard every day to figure out solutions that make ‪#Toronto better for everyone — today and for the future of this great city.”

Such generalities sound odd coming from a planner known for his attention to detail, which we are told endlessly, is where both god and the devil are to be found. Well, yes and no. Like everything else, details are open to interpretation. Meaning depends on context. For a planner, that hinges on what sort of city we have, what sort of city we want, and how to get from one to the other.

Perhaps because Lintern has served as acting chief planner and departmental second-in-command, he has never had to enunciate his vision for Toronto — detailed or otherwise. For all her brittleness and inexperience, Lintern’s predecessor, Jennifer Keesmaat, had lots to say about the kind of city she hoped Toronto would become. Indeed, in recent decades only she and Paul Bedford, chief planner from 1996 to 2004, grasped that the real purpose of the job is to be the face of urban planning and communicate a clear sense of where the city needs to be in the future.

And to be fair, city planners merely advise council, an admittedly thankless task. Though nothing the municipal bureaucracy does is more fundamental than planning, neither is anything more political. Toronto’s ward-based governance exacerbates this tendency, which makes the application of sound planning principles even more difficult to achieve. The appalling situation in which a scheme to civilize Yonge St. between Sheppard and Finch Aves. now finds itself — stalled indefinitely — is a depressing example of how the crass parochialism of local politics can trump the best of intentions and reality itself.

The Yonge St. controversy is also an example of the failure of planning. As Jane Jacobs put it, “The pseudo-science of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.” Yonge’s six lanes were as meticulously planned and misguided as the rest of former mayor Mel Lastman’s hubristic scheme to create Toronto’s second downtown, all conceived by city planners. We look back at their work now and see how wrong it was.

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One can’t help but wonder whether planners are more a problem than a solution. Certainly, the mess they have left in this city will be with us forever. Bad planning has left postwar Toronto stunted and ill-prepared for the 21st century. Lintern, who began his career in Etobicoke, has at least had a chance to see the damage up close. Though the core is a whole lot sexier, the suburbs are where Toronto’s future will play out. So far, city planners, unlike those in, say, Mississauga, have contributed little. Sad to say, in many respects, they have made things worse. Just look at the bottom end of Etobicoke, which planners and developers have turned into a dog’s breakfast.

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One thing is certain: Lintern has his work cut out for him. With Ontario Municipal Board reform looming, city planners and politicians will have to grow up fast. As much as they insist the OMB — a tribunal that settles land-use disputes — represents an obstacle to civic greatness, the truth is that it enables them to tell the NIMBY hordes what they wanted to hear and blame the board when it turns out differently.

“Toronto is lucky to have him,” Keesmaat said of her successor in her post-appointment tweet. Actually, it’s the other way around; Lintern is lucky to have Toronto. The city remains strong despite the best efforts of planners, politicians, developers and ratepayers. That can’t last forever and Toronto has started to fray around the edges, literally and figuratively. The city has served a succession of takers. Now it needs givers, people willing to put the city’s needs ahead of their own. If Lintern learns that lesson, Toronto will reward his efforts richly.

Christopher Hume is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @HumeChristopher