To Make Planning Relevant, Turn to Open-Source Methods

Urban planning is falling into obsolescence, according to this piece, but employing old bottom-up techniques that value input from a variety of sources will make it relevant again.

2 minute read

April 30, 2009, 10:00 AM PDT

By Judy Chang


"The lack of sufficient time to plan brings with it an atmosphere of higher risk. If planning is to remain relevant - economically, environmentally, socially, and politically - amidst the instability of the future, it must to be rethought in a manner that assumes risk and does not avoid it. Instead of simplistically putting all its eggs into a future based on past and present trends, urban planning must provide sufficient looseness within future scenarios while attempting to tilt the odds in favor of certain directions.

Cities must be strategized not just in terms of how they are intended to work currently, but also how else they might work under extremely different (unforeseen and inconceivable) circumstances. As such, similar to well-designed software, urban plans must posses a variety of alternative organizational patterns as opposed to not the standard one.

Furthermore, urban planning must balance top-down and bottom-up thinking as a means of creating a variety of plans of equal value. This will necessarily be multi-disciplinary. However, the versatility created - like diversified stock portfolios - will allow a given design strategy to spread the risk and decrease its susceptibility to failure or obsolescence due to change in conditions. Additionally, it will recognize the emergent intelligence of its citizens to give appropriate physical form to the pressures being placed on them - to be refined, not created, by 'higher-level' professionals."

Wednesday, April 29, 2009 in re:place Magazine

portrait of professional woman

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

Cover CM Credits, Earn Certificates, Push Your Career Forward

Aerial view of town of Wailuku in Maui, Hawaii with mountains in background against cloudy sunset sky.

Maui's Vacation Rental Debate Turns Ugly

Verbal attacks, misinformation campaigns and fistfights plague a high-stakes debate to convert thousands of vacation rentals into long-term housing.

July 1, 2025 - Honolulu Civil Beat

Logo for Planetizen Federal Action Tracker with black and white image of U.S. Capitol with water ripple overlay.

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker

A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

July 2, 2025 - Diana Ionescu

White and purple sign for Slow Street in San Francisco, California with people crossing crosswalk.

San Francisco Suspends Traffic Calming Amidst Record Deaths

Citing “a challenging fiscal landscape,” the city will cease the program on the heels of 42 traffic deaths, including 24 pedestrians.

July 1, 2025 - KQED

Google street view image of strip mall in suburban Duncanville, Texas.

Adaptive Reuse Will Create Housing in a Suburban Texas Strip Mall

A developer is reimagining a strip mall property as a mixed-use complex with housing and retail.

2 hours ago - Parking Reform Network

Blue tarps covering tents set up by unhoused people along chain link fence on concrete sidewalk.

Study: Anti-Homelessness Laws Don’t Work

Research shows that punitive measures that criminalized unhoused people don’t help reduce homelessness.

4 hours ago - Next City

Aerial tram moving along cable in hilly area in Medellin, Colombia.

In U.S., Urban Gondolas Face Uphill Battle

Cities in Latin America and Europe have embraced aerial transitways — AKA gondolas — as sustainable, convenient urban transport, especially in tricky geographies. American cities have yet to catch up.

6 hours ago - InTransition Magazine