Mess Might Just be the Secret Weapon That Planners Forgot

This review is part of a special collaboration between Planetizen and Booked on Planning, a biweekly podcast where AICP planners Stephanie Rouse and Jennifer Hiatt chat with authors of the latest books shaping urban planning today. Listen to the episode with today’s author in the player below.

In an era of hyper-curated smart cities and glass-tower developments that look the same from Dubai to Denver, “Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything” arrives like a breath of fresh, slightly chaotic air. Throughout its 42 essays, it provides a multifaceted defense of the unplanned elements that actually make urban life worth living.

Rather than viewing urban mess such as graffiti, makeshift kiosks, unkempt parks, or the jumble of old signage as a problem to be solved, each contributor argues that these are the vital signs of a city’s pulse. The book serves as a necessary corrective to the sterile city syndrome. It reminds us that when we over-sanitize our surroundings, we often scrub away the very diversity and spontaneity that foster community.

The book editors break the essays out into six categories - Reflections, Localities, Ecologies, Built Forms, Global Cities, and Urban systems. The essays in each category lay out their arguments about the superiority of a city designed for and used by its people or in some instances, not designed at all, but left to grow organically.

The editors ask the reader to consider rebranding “messy” and asking questions such as is a meadow messy? If not, why do we consider natural yards in a residential development a mess? Or why do we view Tokyo’s jumble of land uses and signage as interesting, but strictly regulate both in North American cities? Who gets to decide what a mess is? Whose messiness is it anyway?

A messy city is a readable city. A clean city is hard to decipher, hard to get to know. To wander through messy urbanism is to walk through a city that can be negotiated and understood along the way, where details big and small, underground or popular, can be gleaned from the streets themselves.

Shawn Micallef, “Messy Cities”

“Messy Cities” is more than just a book for urban planners; it’s for anyone who has ever felt more at home in a bustling, cluttered neighborhood than in a pristine shopping mall. It’s written with warmth, wit, and a deep affection for the desire lines we carve through the world. This is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand why the most successful neighborhoods are often the ones that the planners forgot to polish. It’s a celebratory, insightful, and deeply human look at the places we call home.