Planning By The Plate

Most people don't know anything about planning. Sure, they may understand the general gist of it, but many planning concepts just haven't yet made it into the public consciousness. In an effort to accelerate the education of the public, here's an easy-to-use pictorial guide that relates some of those not-so-familiar planning concepts to something we're all familiar with: food.

3 minute read

October 22, 2007, 1:50 AM PDT

By Nate Berg


Most people don't know anything about planning. Sure, they may understand the general gist of it, but many planning concepts just haven't yet made it into the public consciousness. In an effort to accelerate the education of the public, here's an easy-to-use pictorial guide that relates some of those not-so-familiar planning concepts to something we're all familiar with: food.

Here's a few examples of some planning concepts made more accessible through food-based analogies.

General Plan - The basic framework for making and maintaining a city.

General Plan (Source: Flickr user Nate Steiner)

 

Zoning - The land-use regulations that dictate which uses go where. Often creates a separation between development types.

Zoning (Source: WikiCommons)

 

Mixed Use Development - Integration of different land use types in the same area.

Mixed Use (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

High Density - The concentration of more people, developments and land uses in smaller areas.

High Density (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Eminent Domain - The taking of private land by the government for the benefit of the community.

Eminent Domain (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Sprawl - Expansive development beyond the urban fringe, occupying huge amounts of land.

Sprawl (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Adaptive Reuse - The redevelopment of an area or a property into a new land use type for which it was not originally intended.

Adaptive Reuse (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Infrastructure (Ideal) - The backbone of cities, consisting of essential services such as water piping, sewage disposal, energy transmission, roads and transit, and other core services that operate efficiently and in a well-maintained fashion.

Infrastructure (Ideal) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Infrastructure (Actual) - The real state of the city's essential services: undermaintained, insufficient and out of date.

Infrastructure (Actual) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Blight - Properties of degraded or lower physical qualities that bring down the quality of the immediate surrounds.

Blight (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Infill Development - New development built to replace underperforming or abandoned properties in existing high density urban areas.

Infill Development (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Affordable Housing (Projects Style) - Large, high density public housing projects offering low- and no-frills affordable housing in dense urban areas.

Affordable Housing (Projects Style) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Affordable Housing (Modern Style) -

Architecturally-experimental housing built for low-income residents -- often in garish and gaudy colors -- meant to help the low-income better fit in with their neighbors and to downplay the stigma associated with public housing.

Affordable Housing (Modern Style) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)


McMansion - A grossly oversized home.

McMansion (Source: Flickr user Russell)

 

High Rise Buildings - Tall or skyscraping buildings typically found in dense urban areas and central business districts.

High Rise Buildings (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Historic Preservation - The practice of identifying, renovating, and preserving properties and places of historic value.

Historic Preservation (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Transit Oriented Development - Development that is located adjacent or near to public transportation lines and stations.

Transit Oriented Development (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Garden City - Master-planned communities surrounded by greenbelts that were part of the late-18th Century Garden City Movement founded by Ebenezer Howard.

Garden City (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Design Charrette - A participatory planning exericse that brings community members and design professionals together to collaborate on city design.

Design Charrette (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Form-Based Codes - Guidelines that regulate the aesthetic features of new developments.

Design Charrette (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Dedicated Lanes - Street lanes that are set aside from car traffic for exclusive use by modes such as bus rapid transit or bicycles.

Dedicated Lanes (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Green Roofs - Integration of organic and living substances on the roofs of buildings.

Green Roofs (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Tax Incentives - Perks and tax breaks provided by cities to developers based on the prediction that whatever they develop will generate an economic benefit to the city greater than what was provided as the incentive.

Tax Incentives (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

--

OK, well some of those were a little bit of a stretch, but the basic principles are there. In fact, they're all around. So if you're having trouble wrapping a non-planner's noggin around some obscure concepts, skip the jargon and open your fridge.

 

All images courtesy Wikimedia Commons (except General Plan by Flickr user Nate Steiner, and McMansion by Flickr user Russell).


Nate Berg

Nate Berg is a former contributing editor for Planetizen and a freelance journalist. He has contributed to The New York Times, National Public Radio, Wired, Fast Company, Metropolis, Next American City, Dwell, the Christian Science Monitor, the Guardian, and Domus, among others. Nate studied print journalism and environmental planning at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.

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