In a provocative essay, Mitchell Sutika Sipus examines the dangers of subscribing to conventions such as style or planning trends, and argues why planners must forgo ideologies to create better solutions for community problems.
Says Sipus: "Smokestack chasing. Garden cities. Tactical Urbanism. New Urbanism. Creative cities. What do all these have in common? They all reveal the greatest weakness of urban planning as a discipline. The reliance upon urban development trends, which shift every few years, has ruined neighborhoods, devastated communities, and undermined economies. Yet we keep doing it.
What we as urban planners believe to be true and good in ideology can just as likely wield a terribly destructive power. Certainly urban planning trends are drawn from observable social processes, and many of the ideas, such as sustainability, are not bad things on first review. But urban planners who measure and respond with a customized solution will forever create better solutions for community problems than those who apply preconceived notions of community or development.
Measurement is the core of urban planning. The ability to fuse social, economic, spatial, environmental, and cultural data into an observable model provides planners the ability to determine structural weaknesses in a community. These structural weaknesses may be offset through direct internal realignment, manipulation of broader legal frameworks, or offset by outside interventions. But the application of broad concepts as a cure-all is not a solution, it simply is a waste of resources, or at worst, an act of imperialism."
Thanks to Mitchell Sutika Sipus
FULL STORY: Urban Planning Trends are Bad Medicine
Density Doesn't Measure the Success of Cities
Using density as a metric of urban quality is misleading and inadequate, according to an article on CityLab.
Design our industrial future
I previously lamented the apparent death of industrial use in our cities by the widespread application of terms like “post-industrial” and “rust-belt.” While semantics is an issue, let’s not forget that design matters and, in terms of industrial use, it hasn’t seemed to matter enough in recent years. In times past, industrial use was often a form of pride. Many of the hulking, multi-story industrial buildings in older cities are (still) beautiful additions to our cityscapes. In some cities, those that went vacant have spawned a new form of urban scavenge hunting by those seeking to fuel their appreciation for our industrial past through photography and exploration. Think as well of the WPA posters, many of which used stylized industrial themes to promote our “American” identity.
Planning Lessons from an Olympic Beauty Contest
Last week, my home city, Los Angeles, lost out to Chicago for the right to represent the United States in the international competition to host the 2016 Olympics. Since an Olympic city selection represents the ultimate inter-urban beauty contest – dare I say, a kind of urban “International Idol” – what did this process tell us about the state of urban planning in two of America’s largest cities?
The Top Urban Planning Books of 2022
An annual list of the must-read books related to urban planning and its intersecting fields.
European Cities Act on Density
The sprawling mass of suburbia has been a disaster for the environment. But now smaller, denser cities herald a renaissance in city living.
Nashville Sets Downtown Parking Maximums
Nashville is the latest city to enact a substantive change to the parking requirements set by the city’s zoning code—doing away with parking minimums and setting parking maximums in the city’s Urban Zoning Overlay.
Advice for a Post-Parking Mandate World
After abolishing parking requirements, what can cities do to make the most of new space and revenue and avoid backlash?
Western Voters: Yes to Conservation, No to Extremism
Voters in Western states generally favored candidates who support public land conservation in this November’s election and rejected extremist rhetoric.
Detailing the Boring Company’s Poor Track Record
Elon Musk’s promised solution for congestion—the Boring Co.—has proven most successful at disappearing on the governments that trusted them.
PlaceWorks
City of Oakland, California
Rural Innovation Strategies, Inc
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Georgia Tech
California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority)
Missoula Redevelopment Agency
City of Joliet
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.
