We usually look at familiar urban places as our habits dictate, rarely changing from our default viewpoint. This narrowed perspective limits our effectiveness as designers and planners, writes Bruce F. Donnelly.
"There are, of course, many different experiential layers to urban experience. However, three essential layers, in an effective order, are:
* Beauty
* Stories
* Representation.
Once we learn to pay attention, we can combine the layers with the circumstances of a particular situation to decide, say, whether the beauty of a place and the stories of its lives mesh. Through reverse-engineering successes and failures, then, we can better understand success and failure, and therefore move more knowledgably and elegantly through the city.
...
Part of reverse-engineering success and failure is to find information that's not apparent on the groundâ€"demographics, business ownership, unit costs, and so on. In this case, the planner’s blindnessâ€"not to such circumstances, but to the North End’s beauties, stories, and the way it represented itselfâ€"made him blind to the place’s worth.
If we are to avoid being quite so insensitive to cities, we must attend not just to statistics, and not just to our personal preferences, but also to the levels of experience that help make them good or bad. It means that we must open ourselves to places’ beauties, and take note of their absences, too. It means that we must pay attention to the ways that people use spaceâ€"to their everyday stories."
FULL STORY: Experiential Layers Of The City

Maui's Vacation Rental Debate Turns Ugly
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

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Cal Fire Chatbot Fails to Answer Basic Questions
An AI chatbot designed to provide information about wildfires can’t answer questions about evacuation orders, among other problems.

What Happens if Trump Kills Section 8?
The Trump admin aims to slash federal rental aid by nearly half and shift distribution to states. Experts warn this could spike homelessness and destabilize communities nationwide.

Sean Duffy Targets Rainbow Crosswalks in Road Safety Efforts
Despite evidence that colorful crosswalks actually improve intersection safety — and the lack of almost any crosswalks at all on the nation’s most dangerous arterial roads — U.S. Transportation Secretary Duffy is calling on states to remove them.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Appalachian Highlands Housing Partners
Gallatin County Department of Planning & Community Development
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
Mpact (founded as Rail~Volution)
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
City of Portland
City of Laramie