Life is hard. So are baseball, soccer, and a bunch of other stuff that require making good enough guesses to size opportunities and duck calamity. With apologies from Ben Brown for beating up on David Brooks.
"In his July 10 New York Times column, David Brooks noodled about in a Brooksian sort of way with the notion of what is and what is not within the realm of predictability. Using Brazil’s loss in the World Cup as a hook, he argues that soccer — unlike baseball, which has been reimagined by math nerds — turns out to be too complex a game to bow easily to predictive modeling."
Ben Brown talks through David Brooks assumptions, and concludes by encouraging us to "plan or get planned."
"The trouble we’re having with planning as a nation, as regions and as communities is that too many of us deny the need to make a choice, figuring that if we do nothing, nothing will happen. It’s an option off the table in sports, where refusing to choose a strategy is tantamount to forfeiting the game. But in the broader reality, complicated by unclarified goals and untested strategies for an uncertain future, we can maintain the delusion — at least temporarily — that we can preserve our options without affecting the consequences of indecision."
FULL STORY: The Chorus of "No Planning, Please" is Making My Head Hurt
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
New York Transit Agency Launches Performance Dashboard
The tool increases transparency about the agency’s performance on a variety of metrics.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
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.