Who knew… there are different schools of thought when it come to planning. Top Down and Bottom UP. The city of Wichita seems to practice Top Down. Both pass debt to the next generation. Here is a primer on philosophies. Many of Wichitans are discouraged by the process by which citizens may opposes inappropriate development and are unaware, if passed the second phase of Places for People elliminates the process altogether. No one at the city has offered to tell us what will our recourse be should our property and lives be impacted by a business or development.
Decoding the processes
Top-down planning traditionally involves defining organizational goals on a high level and breaking them down into specific objectives which are then addressed in phases. As the name indicates, top-down planning is an approach that aims at moving gradually from the top to the lower levels of a given hierarchy.
Consider the case of financial forecasting for a retail business. Adopting a top-down approach in this scenario would mean a first step that involves assessing the market as a whole, gauging relevant sales trends based on the current market size and segmenting the market in terms of readiness to buy your product or service. Based on the trends, the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s core areas are assessed. These insights are then used to help position and promote the company’s products while additional strategies are targeted at expanding the product and/or service offering. The same approach, when explained in terms of organizational hierarchy, requires senior management to broadly elucidate plans which are then passed down for execution among staff members.
Quite the opposite, bottom-up planning works toward setting a plan at the most detailed level of classification. A bottom-up analysis focuses specifically on the product or service you are trying to sell and gathers details around it such as production capacity, department-specific expenses, and finally the market trends, in order to make an accurate sales projection. In this method, where planning is done at a store level rather than from a market perspective, it is easier to determine store replenishment requirements based on future customer demand, region specific geographic sales and demographics. Additionally, it also seeks to provide more flexibility to manage off-season and promotional demand patterns appropriately.
Link to source: http://www.maibpo.com/Blogs/top-down-or-bottom-up-planning-what-works-best-for-your-business.html#:~:text=On%20a%20very%20basic%20level,are%20to%20specific%20business%20areas.
When it comes to local rule, what is more local than residents who live within 200ft of a proposed development?