If you think living in the present is tough, imagine spending your life in the future. That’s what city planners do, and perhaps too well for their own good and ours.

The point was made in dramatic fashion this week when the Urban Land Institute hosted a gathering of senior planners from the Greater Toronto Area. Meet the Chiefs, as the event was titled, attracted representation from Toronto, Mississauga, Uxbridge, Whitby, Vaughan and Burlington, to name a few.

The climax of the evening — we use the term loosely — came when 22 chiefs assembled on stage to speak their minds. The chat was all about densities, transit, growth, development, the usual pieties heard at such discussions.

It all made perfect sense, except for the fact that the overwhelming majority of these “cities” are up to their neck in sprawl. For a few hours, however, the vast gap between what planners say and what they have done seemed to disappear.

Still, one can’t help wonder about a profession that requires practitioners to exist in such a profound state of disconnection. The future may be where we’re all headed, but, of course, we never arrive. Perhaps planners are so fixated on what lies ahead that they forget everything else. After all, from a planner’s perspective, present might as well be past. Both have already happened and, therefore, lie beyond their grasp. Planning is only meaningful before the fact.

To make matters worse, little of what planners have allowed is anything to be proud of. Thanks in part to their efforts, much of southern Ontario has been replaced by an endless loop of cul de sacs, subdivisions and super-centres.

In light of the growing environmental crisis, there’s less justification than ever for the suburban planning regimes that still hold sway across most of the GTA. Let’s not forget, the onetime Queen of Sprawl herself, Mississauga’s long-serving former mayor, Hazel McCallion, ended her term calling for smart growth.

The hard truth is that planners have little to say and lack the powers to enforce their schemes anyway. Developers are in control, and only the province has the authority to demand better. Suburban builders argue they provide affordable housing. But as several studies have pointed out, if the cost of cars is included, the real price of suburban living isn’t so cheap.

Still, planners cling to their illusions. According to one senior practitioner, “Land is our most valuable asset.” And yet we squander land as if there were no end of it. The “multiplication by subdivision” approach depends on an endless supply of fully serviced but cheap real estate.

Many municipalities still see themselves as facilitators, handmaidens to the developers who give money to the planners’ political masters when they face election.

It was instructive to hear a planner from Burlington complain about how that city doesn’t have enough land left to do many of the things it has always wanted. This is hard to take seriously. Burlington densities are so low, it is made up largely of empty space.

Jaime Lerner’s name didn’t come up Tuesday evening, but the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, and author of Urban Acupuncture might have been worth a mention. Lerner’s reality-based book examines small “pin-prick” projects that deal with specific city issues, public realm and otherwise. He documents pedestrian zones, benches, river cleanups and the like that have transformed cities.

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But that requires a sense of experimentation and innovation generally lacking among GTA planners, regardless of where they work. In fact, a city’s greatest asset isn’t land, but learning how to use it intelligently.