For reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnham_Plan_of_Chicago?wprov=sfti1

Just got back, wondering if anyone else here went and what your thoughts were. Feel inspired, tired? Any sessions you particularly enjoyed?

Surely there's something out there. I'm sure this varies a good bit with density, layout, vehicle usage, geography, etc.

Put another way, if all large cities in the world were x size, all medium cities y size, and all small towns z size, what would be the ideal x, y, and z?

Broadly speaking, I assume bases would include economics, logistics, happiness, or politics.

Due to urban migrations, I have a hunch that the megacities will way overshoot it and the small towns/cities will be way under.

Hey folks. I get the impressions that there are many people here plugged into this aspect, heat island mitigation, of Urban Planning.

I’m looking for recommendations for professional resources that you use in day to day work.

I’ve searched and found a few already and want to see if any of them pop-up from the hive-mind.

Thanks!

America is trapped in a housing paradox. In the same breath, we demand housing be “a good investment” and “broadly affordable.” And yet, it can’t be both.

This is the housing trap.

In their new book, “Escaping The Housing Trap,” Charles "Chuck" Marohn and Daniel Herriges unravel this trap. They investigate the rise of housing financial products, Euclidean zoning, and post-WW2 development patterns to answer, “How did we get here, and how can we escape?”

On Friday, April 19th starting at 9:30 AM Central, Chuck is hosting an AMA on /r/IamA to answer your questions and engage in discussion about the housing crisis.

Folks, I've got what might be a neat but tricky question: what was the final "true" town/city to be built in America? i.e. the last settlement that had some kind of grid or pre-hierarchical street network, an actual Main Street drag, a place that an average person would recognize as a "small town" or as an urban-ish environment over a suburban one. (I'm not counting New Urbanist or planned towns here, I'm thinking of the final legacy town before we switched over to car orientation.)

Someone on social media pointed me to New Town, North Dakota, built from scratch in 1950. It has a Levittown-looking residential area and a single-story Main Street drag without parking lots. I'm so curious if it's possible to identify the very last place built on this pattern.

I’m part of a local downtown festival committee and part of the streetscape aspect. Just curious if there are any must-reads on the subject(s).

A bit of a tactical urbanism moderation trial to help concentrate common questions around career and education advice.

The current soft trial will:

- To the extent possible, refer users posting these threads to the scheduled posts.

- Test the waters for aggregating this sort of discussion

- Take feedback (in this thread) about whether this is useful

If it goes well:

- We would add a formal rule to direct conversation about education or career advice to these threads

- Ask users to help direct users to these threads

Goal:

To reduce the number of posts asking somewhat similar questions about Education or Career advice and to make the previous discussions more readily accessible.

I'm curious how city planning teams decide upon the aesthetic/design of architecture, infrastructure, and/or products that are used to make a city functional? Is there a unified vision that planning teams try to drive toward? What is the decision making process like? Is there a committee that agrees that a specific style of a product fits into a the overall vision of how the city will be perceived?

I'm particularly interested in how something like pedestrian light fixtures, with all the varying styles of luminaries and poles, are chosen to fit within the look/feel of a city.

Hey all,

For those unfamiliar, Cary is in the Research Triangle of NC and historically was a commuter suburb of its larger neighbors (Raleigh, Durham).

Today, its population is 180K , it is still relatively affordable with excellent nearby job centers and its downtown area is rapidly getting dense, interesting, and walkable (take a look at their new downtown park): https://downtowncarypark.com/welcome-to-downtown-cary-park

Seems like new townhouses, apartments, and retail are going up by the day.

Are there similar towns that started as a suburb and have grown into "something else", after almost all the suburban infrastructure was built out? Curious if the re-development will spread beyond the downtown core and spill over into the suburbs, and if so, if there will be a push by developers etc, to rezone single family etc. Curious to read up on similar cities, success cases, failures, etc. Is there a roadmap for what is happening in Cary?

I think Cary is a wonderful place that is changing for the better, could be a template for other suburban areas to evolve.

Note the conditional in the title. This post is just for some silly fun :).

So, if the suburbs are worth 'urbanizing', what's a good first step? Putting down a logical, consistent street grid? Cul de sac cut throughs? Narrowing streets plus traffic calming? Complete streets?

Rapid transit expansion with TOD around the stations? Better local bus service? Para transit?

Densification? Getting rid of single family zoning? Allowing ADUs, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes etc?

Obviously all of the above will probably happen eventually, but in your mind as a planner, if somehow the political tides changed for more urban suburbs, what would be your strategy as a good first step?

As an enthusiast whose taken a few uni courses, I'd say I would do some combination of rapid transit expansion, TOD and densification through getting rid of single family zoning in remaining areas. (Except pedestrian cut throughs in cul de sacs are cheap and are huge boosts to pedestrian mobility).

Is it because those areas don’t experience population growth?

I’m pretty early on in my planning career (I am 25 years old). I have a masters degree in urban and environmental planning, and I have worked at my municipality for 3 years. Started as an intern and now I’m a P2, making 75k a year. Lately I’ve felt so burnt out, and half our staff left last year and now we have all new people and it’s been a very difficult transition. I interned at a firm for a couple months and I really liked it, and that same firm has a Planner position open. This firm is also a frequent customer for big city projects so it might cause some tensions between the higher ups if I leave. I am really trying to figure out if making switch like this will be worth it and I could probably negotiate a higher salary. Looking to hear everyone’s experience in private vs public as I’m trying to figure out if this move would be worth it.

As urban planners and those interested in it, you've probably heard of induced demand. The classic example is that when adding lanes to a road to reduce traffic, trips that previously would not have taken place will now be viable to drivers, thus increasing traffic again - defeating the whole point of adding lanes.

I think this probably applies to housing demand as well. When I see statistics that California needs to expand it's housing supply by 20-30% to meet current demand, I'm wondering if that's really a helpful statistic. California has pretty objectively great weather, great food and amenities, and a really solid job market. Even if many units were built, it seems very possible to me that many people who currently don't live in California because of expense and long commute times would move there if those barriers were erased through housing supply and the expansion of public transit.

Every American? No, but it would not surprise me if there were 10-30 million Americans who currently live elsewhere would be open to making the move if California was genuinely affordable and commutable (even though now, with those constraints, it's not even on their radar). There are currently 39 million Californians. Bringing that number to 50-70 million would necessitate a total transformation of California's major metros.

LA may need to look more like Tokyo to truly meet the latent demand that exists for California housing (I'd be ok with that, but doubt the political will to do that exists, given opposition to basic construction). Until then, adding new units may primarily just bring more people in, rather than meaningfully lowering housing costs.

Interested to hear thoughts if anyone has them.

​

The 10-30 million number of course came out of thin air - this would be extremely difficult to measure - but seeing the population boom in the sun belt states over the past 30 years, would not surprise me.

So I just started reading her book and was wondering how it has held up to modern day? I've always been interested in city planning and decided to start with her book.