On Blogging and Planning

Blogs
are emerging as important information sources in the contemporary discourse on cities and city planning.

Among the best-known include
Randall Crane's Urban Planning Research
which covers a wide range of topics and includes articles by guest posters;
Peter Gordon's Blog on urban economics and real estate; and Randal
O'Toole's Antiplanner,
which is harshly critical of most public planning, advocating instead
free-market approaches.

As these blogs demonstrate, blogging can
afford the planner an excellent venue for exploring and discussing current
issues facing cities, especially controversial "hot-button" topics that are making news in the mass media. For example, the fallout from the Kelo
decision has been the topic hundreds of blog postings.

Blogs allow the planner to contribute to such debate in a very timely way,
as opposed to waiting for the sometimes lengthy publication cycles of standard magazines
and journals. This is of course not to say that blogs are better than print sources or should replace them, but simply that they can augment our deliberations elsewhere.

Because of the social nature of the web, postings are always subject to commentary and refutation, so they are great for initiating dialogue. And as other
people can link to your postings in their own blogs and use them to fuel further deliberations,
the planning blog can be a method for disseminating information to the general public
that might otherwise appear only in those specialist publications.

It's important however to consider the
blog not only for its external audiences, but for one's own internal thought
processes. Given the rapid pace of change in cities and the natural environment
-- and the responses in the profession and the larger culture to both -- the blog can help the planner
to keep track of, understand and more importantly mentally integrate these
changes. By synthesizing perspectives from multiple sources and combining them
with one's own thoughts and observations the planner can become much more
intimately aware of trends and challenges than would be possible from simply
reading articles passively.

The blog post can therefore be much
more than just one's own writing – it becomes a window to other information sources and opinions. I sometimes refer students
seeking assistance with their research to my own postings if they're relevant to their
topics, simply for the quality of the links I've documented.

I have also found that blog entries can
stimulate my work in other professional writing: I've often adapted postings or
passages from them into other more formal research and projects. They can also
become a bridge to mainstream publishing venues: postings can easily be
re-worked for submissions to the local newspaper or other publications. Bear in mind though that such external
publishing may not result in increased traffic to your own blog, as readers are
accessing your work elsewhere.

There are
institutional applications too. Some municipal planning departments are using
blogs to keep citizens informed about local planning news, events and services, as
well linking to local municipal information sources and databases. For some examples, check out the Montgomery County (Maryland)
planning department blog, The Home Stretch
and the Town of Dennis (Massachussetts) Planning Department Weblog.

Such planning
blogs can become a forum for users not employed by the city to post their own
content, such as guest editorials on planning issues. In this way – and with
appropriate monitoring to ensure civil discourse – the planning department blog
can contribute significantly to local planning debates.

As a form of communication with colleagues and the
public; an attractive environment for citizen engagement; a way to track
trends and issues; and as a resource for the planning educator – the blog can
become an important and exciting part of the planner's professional
toolkit.