I dont get it. There is a huge push in gen z and millineals for fun unique dense areas yet the fastest growing places are boring cramed tract homes surrounded by stroads.

In my role, I collaborate with municipalities within my state, offering planning assistance tailored to their needs. This typically involves evaluating proposed subdivisions, addressing constituent inquiries on zoning regulations, and drafting amendments to zoning ordinances. However, there are occasions that stand out, such as the following:

A recent case involves a woman seeking a permit to reside in her camper on her property while she constructs a new house because the current existing structure is derelict. Our communication, primarily conducted through phone calls and emails, reveals her as an elderly individual with limited understanding of local and state planning ordinances.

Her need for this permit stems from the fact that her town's zoning ordinance prohibits inhabiting temporary structures during the renovation of principal structures, a contrast to neighboring municipalities' policies.

We have a hearing scheduled next week where she will present her case to the Board of Zoning Appeals. Prior to this, I will prepare a memorandum outlining the case's facts, pertinent sections of the zoning ordinance, and my recommendation.

The Town Manager has expressed reservations about this application without specifying reasons. Additionally, both my supervisor and colleague suggest recommending denial based on the special use permit language in the zoning ordinance. They propose rejecting the application but advising the Planning Commission to amend the ordinance to accommodate temporary structures on residential lots during renovations, arguing that the current language reserves special use permits for unforeseen circumstances like Acts of God. I will paste a snippet below:

"...such that the use of a temporary residential structure is necessary in order to prevent an exceptional hardship on the (Town Name) Zoning Ordinance 38 applicant; such as the repair of the principle residence damaged by fire; provided that such temporary structure does not represent a hazard to safety, health, or welfare of the community."

To me, that sounds a little more loose than an Act of God. Here is how I see things:

1. Would the denial of the special use permit present an exceptional hardship on the applicant? Yes, she would be unable to live on the land she lawfully owns and would be forced to incur additional costs on top of the thousands she has already put down for renovations, permit applications, septic installation, etc.
2. Does the temporary structure represent a hazard to safety, health, or welfare of the community? No, she lives on a parcel just over 2.75 acres with the nearest neighboring building is more than 500 sq. ft. away, the setbacks are still being adhered to, she has a permit for her septic system, and construction on her new house is expected to conclude within 2 months, barring catastrophic weather conditions.
3. If we are in favor of amending the zoning ordinance to allow for exactly what this woman is asking for instead of making her get a permit... why do we not grant this woman the permit WHILE working on amending the zoning ordinance? A zoning ordinance amendment takes over three months to be fully put into effect after the various hearings and readings.

While I deeply respect my colleagues' viewpoints and acknowledge my limited experience in this role (approximately four months), I believe this approach is fundamentally flawed. Even if the zoning ordinance is primarily intended for extraordinary events, we must engage in critical thinking. Are we genuinely prepared to deny a woman the right to reside in a camper on her property during renovations simply because of the wording of legal code?

When I raised the possibility of offering assistance in the interim, my boss simply dismissed it, stating that it fell outside our purview. However, I strongly believe that given the impact of our decision on this woman's personal residence, it does indeed fall within our realm of responsibility. I would feel uneasy not attempting to extend some form of aid.

As a newcomer to the team, I am naturally hesitant to directly oppose my colleagues, especially on such a significant matter. Nonetheless, I cannot ignore the sense of obligation I feel toward finding a solution that supports this woman in her predicament, even if it entails challenging the prevailing approach.

I am curious to know what you all think, and I will provide extra details as necessary.

TL;DR In my job, I help towns and cities with planning, like evaluating subdivisions and changing zoning rules. But there's this lady who wants to live in her camper while she fixes her house, and she's getting denied. I think it's unfair, so I'm pushing back and suggesting we help her temporarily while we figure out a solution.

Title

What if, instead of aspiring toward infinite growth, the tourism industry was leveraged to tap into the latent potential of not just the natural resources of a destination, but the latent potential of the collective cooperation and imagination of the local people and visitors of a place, too?
Where a “sustainability” framework uses benchmarks and metrics to monitor discrete parts of a system, the authors argued a “regenerative” one would focus on optimizing the potential of a system as a whole

https://hothouse.substack.com/p/the-hard-and-soft-power-behind-hawaiis

So the other day, I went to some open houses for a new development. For context, I live in a very suburban town outside a big Canadian city. I looked at two homes. A 3 story, rowhome which was non-strata and attached on both sides. 3 bed. Concrete walls for noise insulation and two decently sized balconies plus a two car garage. Also a strata townhouse across two stories, two bed plus den and an ok sized balcony plus a HUGE shared courtyard and a concrete slab between the floors for noise insulation between units.

Previously, I've looked at a lovely 1 bedroom apartment unit and also a 2000 plus square foot detached house with a two car garage on just under a 4000 square foot lot.

The whole thing is mixed use and the developers also include a mural with a Jane Jacob's quote.

And to reiterate, this is in the suburbs. While I live in a bit of a swing suburb, it looks like it'll go conservative in the next election based on current polling.

So, urbanism can work in the suburbs. You can convince middle class suburbanites, even conservative ones, of the benefits of urbanism if you have thoughtful developers that aren't gonna cheap out on what makes multi family development nice.

I'm looking at a job offer at a law firm with the title Land Use Planner. However, I am concerned about being boxed into the "planner" role when I'm more interested generally in public policy. The firm is open to altering the job title, and I'm looking for thoughts from you all on different job titles you might have. The job will inherently include lots of land use analysis that a planner would do, but also look more generally at energy and land use policy, as well as real estate policy. Don't want to be at this job for 5 years and then be boxed into only applying for Planner jobs despite a wider interest in public policy.

What are some job titles that combine something like "Legislative Manager" or "Policy Analyst" with a traditional planner title?

What are some methods North American cities might actually be able to implement to discourage the increasing amount of larger vehicles for personal use? Obviously in an ideal situation vehicle design guidelines would be changed at the source, but I am sketpical this will ever happen due to pushback from auto manufacturers and broken emissions standards laws.

A few basic ideas include parking and congesting pricing based on vehicle size, with an exception or reduction for commercial vehicles. It would still be hard to implement but considering most cities already have pay parking and congestion pricing is finally starting to be implemented by large cities, it might be a first step.

I am not a professional urban planner, but would like to know what to expect from my city planners.

I see that most of the urbanism content is focused on walkability and public transport, which is mostly relevant to an environment where you would enjoy staying outside for long periods.

I live in a desert city with temps higher that 30C for most part of the year in shade, so walking around more than 5 minutes is not the first choice even if the distance is short. People prefer spending time moving around and socializing in closed air conditioned spaces.

I see the city doing a lot of investment following the approach that is considered best practice in the urbanism community - building parks, wide sidewalks for walkability, converting car lanes to bike lanes, but it feels to me this investment in misplaced, since I don't want to ride on a bike or sit on a lawn in 30C-40C heat.

I wonder are there any popular resources that are dedicated to the hot climate urbanism.

I've seen some resources but they are not very approachable, and have mostly basic advice - in short, do "harm reduction" using less water and more shade.

I wonder if there is some vision of making cities in hot climates actually enjoyable, and not "a nice European city but shitty because hot".

EDIT: Huh, my post got auto rejected by a bot, but then I see it published...
I published a version of it in the r/urbandesign in the meantime...
I'm a bit confused how the publishing system works on this sub.

How common is it for a developer to ask for a land change amendment without providing a concept plan?

Isn’t it important to see what is being proposed in order to have say on LID, etc?

Thanks!

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 very much an urbanist, but I come from a conservative background and know a lot of folks who like some urbanist ideas but don't trust the movement, sort of. I wrote about urbanism basically needing to get out of the progressive echo chamber a bit. Do you think this is too "accommodating" of skeptics who will never care about our priorities, or necessary rhetorical messaging?

https://thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/kids-and-the-city

Should national governments play a role in, say, coordinating comprehensive plans, regulate or provide oversight to zoning rules, dedicate more resources to local issues like infill development, etc.?

This question came to me when my college town was talking about how the bus drivers don’t make enough to live closer than an hour drive from work. And I couldn’t help but think, in a truly car-free/lite city, how do the transit operators get around? Does transit run 24/7 and they are transported by the outgoing shift? Is the walking and biking infrastructure and housing access so that they don’t need a car or transit to get to work? I’m curious your thoughts on this, because if anyone should get to enjoy the benefits of transit it should be the people who make it work on the day to day.

Please use this thread for memes and other types of shitposting not normally allowed on the sub. This thread will be moderated minimally; have at it.

Feel free to also post about what you're up to lately, questions that don't warrant a full thread, advice, etc. Really anything goes.

Note: these threads will be replaced monthly.

As a bus operator, what part of the current bus booking process do you find most cumbersome?

Hello! As an urban planning student in an East Asian city, I am curious about the urban planning pratices around the world. My school mainly focuses on East Asian (duh) and American cities, but I also have the opportunities to learn more about Australia and some European cities during my assignments. Comparatively, I have little knowledge about urban planning in Africa and would love to learn more about this beautiful continent!

I have heard that infrastructure is a problem in some parts of Africa, and public transport is meh in a lot of cities. But I also wonder if there are any African cities that are more forward-thinking and doing great? I would also like to hear your thoughts on the present and future urban planning practices in (any particular part of) Africa, and basically just any insights that allow me to learn more about the continent :)

Thank you so much!

Hey!

I hope this sub is the right place to ask. I'm reviewing an intersection renewal project in my city, as a local advocate, and I'm trying to create an alternate concept.

My Sketchup design is here. I feel like I might be on the right track, but I'm missing a path for bikes coming from the right and turning left.

T-intersection for motor vehicles, 4-way for bikes, the shorter branch of the T is one-way. The city wants to create there some variation of protected intersection, with traffic lights, wait areas, etc., even though those streets are pretty low traffic. It doesn't seem like the best option here, as it would create unnecessary friction and wait, which would lead to the lights not being respected.

What would be the most convenient and safe option for bikes here? Would putting a mini-roundabout (mountable) in the middle make sense?

Any cities that have liberalized zoning codes to allow more townhomes and have actually seen growth?

There are plenty of cities in the USA that are filled with parking lot in city centers but do not have any parking minimum laws. Besides land value tax, What are some examples to encourage infill? Without making laws that force property owners to develop their land.

What are good ways to prevent properties from becoming derelict or sitting abandoned?

Our Public Works division is stonewalling any street trees in the ROW in our development code rewrite. I’m sure you can guess the reason - maintenance impacts to utility lines. It’s a valid point that’s been used by every PW division since the dawn of time. Except in places that have figured out a workaround.

So are you aware of any municipalities that permit street trees in the ROW, and how were they able to mitigate the negative effects without losing a dense urban form?

I’m in Florida and desperate for some shade.

EDIT: Sorry, I should have specified that they have a problem with roots interacting with underground utility lines.

Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone can shed some light into this question.

if I want to develop an Industrial zoned property into a multi-family homes in other words, if I want to build a multi-family community in a property that is zoned as Industrial, can I do it with California’s housing mandate? Is there an approved bill that I can use in order to do this?

I’ve noticed that a lot of American downtowns have been ‘densifying’, yet, 70% of the hight of these buildings is just parking. If these cities are trying to become less car dependent and assuming the proper transit and pedestrian infrastructure eventually gets created, what will happen to those buildings that have parking incorporated into them? It feels quite wasteful to demolish large buildings like that, but parking garages seem like a hard structure to convert to other uses.

I've heard it a lot, that working in another nation as a planner is very difficult. I get it from an application stand point, however I can see positions like urban design being plausible (im not paticular fussy on position). This is concern to me as I am looking to work in Lisbon (from the UK), on a graduate scheme or doing a part time masters if possible. I just worry that actual plausibility of this and would appreciate some input.

What kind of data is most important for making cities smarter and better planned? Think about things like traffic, energy use, or anything else that helps cities run smoothly. Share your thoughts on which data really makes a difference for our urban areas.

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