The distribution of powers and responsibilities in the United States is done through the constitution. The Constitution of the United States does not list and separate powers between state governments and the national government. Instead, it delegates given specific powers and responsibilities to the national government leaving the rest to the states subject to prohibition (Levy, 2013). This arrangement is a clear reflection of the nature of historical circumstances and experiences that made it necessary to write and adopt the current constitution of the United States.
The current United States constitution was written and adopted at the end of the 18th century (1787). The writers’ main concern was to ensure that liberty and the state of political science are duly protected (Schattschneider, 2017) . This has basically resulted in unique political patterns that are characterized by conflict and cooperation between the states and the National governments. This comes as a result of overlapping responsibilities and powers in the real operations of the contemporary United States of America’s federalism.
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The U.S political system reflects power distribution in a well-coordinated manner where the powers at the top are shared among the three branches of the government: the executive led by the president of the United States, the legislative branch also known as the Congress and the Judiciary which is headed by the chief justice (Levy, 2013). In a nutshell, this indicates that the branches play a major role in the way this powers and responsibilities are distributed and discharged. Each one of them is expected to spearhead and accord full support to the political agenda of the party or political divide from which the majority of their members hail from or belong despite the fact that the three are branches of the government (Schattschneider, 2017) . This is because the members constituting these branches are expected to pay allegiance to the political party that they belong and they have the responsibility to uphold the political agenda of the party. For example, if the president is a Republican, and both the majority of Supreme Court justices as well as the majority of the Congress representatives is Republican, it is clear that the Republican political agenda will sail on as all the three branches of the government will support it fully and work towards its implementation. The opposite is true if the majority from the three branches is Democrats.
Urban planning is defined as the implementation of decisions from policy-makers. Political planning is defined as the involvement of urban planners in the urban planning activities with a political awareness about the policy-making process (Levy, 2013). Politics is defined as the interference and intervention of politics in administration and management while politicians in planning refer to the involvement of politicians who are motivated by a political reward in the planning process. So, the urban planning stakeholders and coordinators must be in a position to work together with the local politics because urban planning touches on important aspects of the urban centres and as a result, it may impact the towns or cities positively or negatively (Schattschneider, 2017) . This ranges from the quality of residential life, economic loss and profit, urban historical preservation and urban renewal.
There are many ways in which urban planning assumes political nature ranging from presence of many actors, conflict of interest by various parties, presence of frequent power struggles, presence of persuasion and negotiations, engagement in politics and taking political sides and stands by urban planners and the overlapping roles between urban planners and politicians in various towns and cities (Levy, 2013). The many participants and actors in the whole process of urban planning include planners, entrepreneurs, politicians, bureaucrats and the general public. Just like in a typical political setting all these participants and actors are there for a personal, group or institutional interest leading to conflicting interests amongst them. The urban planners are ever engaged by these parties in frequent power struggles, persuasion, and negotiations (Schattschneider, 2017) . So, the planners are not only focused on the technical and professional aspect of the urban planning but also on the effect of these interests. In as much as the planners are not expected to take sides or engage in politics, cities are often den of politics and are controlled by politicians. In their attempt to appropriately respond to urban planning crises, they need to be aware of political impacts in their work.
References
Levy, J. M. (2013), Contemporary urban planning (8th ed.). Upper saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall Press.
Schattschneider, E. (2017). Party government: American government in action . Routledge.
