“Good design can solve most land-use problems.”
And I don’t think this is a grammatical issue so much as it is a stylistic one. I’d call it an example of tautology, which you can bust out when your skeptical colleague asks for a technical explanation.
I’d also say that failing to hyphenate “land-use” when used as a compound adjective in front of the noun would constitute an additional stylistic fault. Any takers?
There’s nothing wrong with the grammar, as far as I can see. Semantically, the sentence makes no sense, because you can’t solve a solution. If it helps, take out the phrases in the sentence:
The solution can be solved.
Now it’s easier to see why the sentence doesn’t make any sense, even though the grammar is fine.
Don’t get me started. Oops, too late: Way back in the 20th. C. some sort of zoning rules were set up in New York to deal w/ sanitation problems. In 1922, Herbert Hoover, as Secretary of Commerce, came up with a standard zoning enabling act. In 1926 SCOTUS decides in the “Euclid case” that zoining is legal, thus droves of communities adopt zoning laws based on the law passed in Euclid, Ohio. This they call “Euclidian zoning.” Now come so-called New Urbanists. They say that Euclidian zoning finds spatial solutions to land-use problems; New Urbanism supposedly offers design solutions to land-use problems. So instead of zoning areas commercial or residential, they’re supposed to be mixed up and governed by “form-based zoning.” Don’t ask.
I recently completed the Citizen Planner program through the Michigan State University Extension program. The session on innovative planning and best practices was ridiculous. The case against Euclidian zoning was basically an advanced course in how to lie with statistics; however, the instructor never pointed out that was what he was doing—he seemed to believe the nonsense, too. The recommended policies were boneheaded and often didn’t even address the problems they wanted to solve. Ugh!
Which is not to say that there aren’t some good ideas; e.g., why disallow a corner store in a neighborhood? But even the real-world examples the instructor held up as models to go by didn’t have corner stores in the neighborhoods!
Here is a typical example. We are told that amenities, such as shopping, schools, parks, churches, &c., should be close enough to walk to. We are also told that a McDonald’s resturaunt (sp?) can be designed so that it looks just like a historic home and will fit right into any neighborhood. Taking these two facts into consideration and having perused the book Taxicab Geometry, I ask how to set up and solve the problem of locating the amenities so as to minimize the distance for the most number of residents. After all, if the corner stores and fast-food resturaunts can be seamlessly tucked into residential neighborhoods, then all we have is a math problem to solve, right? Aparently not. He informs me that the problem is not a math problem of minimizing walking distance to & from various points on a 2-space grid; apparently the problem is actually an architectural problem—it’s a design problem! And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling New Urbanists! I was stunned to learn that whether granny is able to walk to church, the store, and the park isn’t a function of her relationship to them in space, it’s a function of how the church, store, and park are designed.
I’m going to quit before I really get going. Thank you for your time.
[/hijack]
“The solution to most land use problems can be solved with good design.”
seems to be an amalgam of the following two sentences:
“The solution to most land use problems is good design.”
“Most land use problems can be solved with good design.”
Somehow you refomulated what you meant to say halfway through.
Since you are saying in the original: “The solution(to most land use problems) can be solved with good design.”
Good Lord–I am sorry I asked!
I can see “designing” a development as a whole–but even that involves space and distance and time. I can see plotting usages–willingness of residents to walk X distance or ability to do same ( example-aren’t there longer “walk” signs for places that have elderly populations?) but I don’t see how (unless one is designing the entire subdivision/neighborhood) architecture plays a part.
Certainly architecture can negatively effect the ambience of a locale–some shopping malls etc are poorly designed and seem cold and inhuman–alot of downtowns are not scaled to human use. They may be striking and even beautiful in their way, but that doesn’t mean that they will be used and enjoyed by people. Or a building can just be an eyesore d/t its lack of fitting in with the other buildings (that one huge tower office building in Paris comes to mind–it looks terrible, like a sore thumb).
So, I hafta say that I disagree with the above statement–I agree that the architecture may make granny reluctant/uncomfortable to visit that particular building–but what that has to do with accessiblity takes me aback.
And I agree that it is semantics, not grammar. Approach whoever it is with that and see how it goes.
Yep. This weekend I started actually working through Taxicab Geometry and if what New Urbanists have taught me about New Urbanism is true, then about 36% of a perfectly-designed New Urbanist project is not “walkable.” It is ironic because walkability is a very important component of the whole ideology.
I’ll second that, though this rule is followed so seldomly in cases like this that it will be read by most readers as “wrong”. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I would have hyphenated (sp?) it as well, which you can see from other posts of mine on this thread.
In Modern American Usage the hyphenation of compound adjectives is referred to as, IIRC, a “Germanism.” The author (or the person who revised it?) wrote that instead of “ready-to-eat meals” we should use “meals ready to eat.” To be honest, I really didn’t understand the whole entry on that point, but I have tried to rewrite when it seems appropriate so that I’m not putting in a lot of hyphenated words. I’m probably doing it wrong…
Not to hijack, but I have a really bad land use problem. Can anyone think of how I could solve it?
With good design. 
[Just in case you weren’t joking, what’s the problem?]
Well, it has to do with Mariana’s Trench…
Oh, then it’s an architectural problem, I’m sure.