The Most Popular Urban Planning Articles of 2019

The most-read news, features, and blogs on Planetizen in 2019.

December 27, 2019, 1:00 PM PST

By James Brasuell

Every year since the beginning of the century, Planetizen has posted 3,100 features, blogs, and news articles—that's 60 posts per week, with a few small reductions for holidays.

The posts listed below all finished above 83rd on the list of every single content type on the site, including landing pages, older posts, and school, announcement, jobs, and other content Planetizen posts throughout the year. In short, this list includes are the absolute, without-a-doubt, most popular posts of the year on Planetizen—the first among many, many. (Check out the 2018 list too.)

A couple of trends emerge from the posts that populate this list.

First is the obvious popularity of lists and authoritative takes on the big issues of planning and urbanism. For example, every year, the "Top Schools for Urban Planners" post is by far the most-read piece of content on Planetizen. This year, the same year as the release of the new 6th Edition of the Planetizen Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs, that fact was especially true. The "Top Schools" post has more than 40 times the number of "Pageviews" as the least popular of the very popular posts listed here. That post, coupled with the popularity of articles on the subjects of books, apps, websites, and more, show the need for the kinds of posts with lasting relevancy, and a curatorial approach to a broad survey of available data and material.

The second trend to emerge from this list is the power of search results to drive traffic. On several occasions this year, we watched a post gain momentum from search engine acquisition—specifically through Google's AMP technology, which speeds up search results for use on mobile devices. Large amounts of traffic came to Planetizen via AMP to articles like "A New Bridge to Connect Brooklyn and Queens" and "Sea-Level Rise Report: Bad News for South Florida." Planetizen welcomes the possibility of new audiences finding information about planning on Planetizen, thus broadening the audience for planning news and commentary. But Planetizen also hopes to achieve this kind of popularity organically—not by chasing viral success with clickbait. We couldn't have predicted, for instance, the kind of search acquisition success attained by "A New Bridge to Connect Brooklyn and Queens" and "Sea-Level Rise Report: Bad News for South Florida."

Planetizen uses Google Analytics to track traffic to the site throughout the year. The Pageviews metric, which accounts for repeated views, was used to rank the popularity of these articles. The list includes articles posted in late November and December of 2018, but nothing prior to November 26, 2018. There are always a few articles with staying power across the years that could have been included on this list, but this list is created for insight into relevance to developments, news, and ideas generated in the past year. For more insight, see also the list of least popular articles from the beginning of 2019.