Hello!

I'm currently making a little map for myself of every place I've been and I'm defining my places as either the lowest-level municipality or the lowest-level governing body over a region which has either no municipality or locations with no municipal government. I've overcomplicating things for myself by listing the type of municipality they are, such as a city, town, village, or just a municipality if there's no other title given. It's been going pretty well as most places I've been to have been in the US, where most states clearly state the difference between them. However, a few of them outside the US are tougher.

For example, in Switzerland, Zürich is considered a city but Kilchberg is just a municipality. Some sources online call Kilchberg a town and some only define it as a municipality. Which is correct? Also, I just visited the Dominican Republic and they have municipal districts within municipalities which contain their own governments as well, which then wouldn't that make these districts fit the definition of municipality? Even then, what makes one municipality a city and another not? Which should I use?

I'd really appreciate some help T.T I can't just mark whatever places inconsistently because it makes my brain go crazy so thank you!!

tldr: What's the difference between different terms for municipalities worldwide?

Yo, I'm writing my diss on transportation infrastructure. Does anyone know what the earliest academic example of someone discussing the impacts of different types of transportation has on people? I feel like this has been a long-held conversation, but I can't find anything from more than a few decades

I had a conversion with BingAI and the following is a mix of it's suggestions and my own:

This helps to address common pitfalls with the community engagement process. Especially the prevalence of misinformation about (eg traffic and parking impact), fear that developments will not be visually harmonious or appealing, consulting only the incumbent residents of a neighborhood rather than the wider community, consulting only a minority of those incumbent residents (eg disproportionately wealthy, old, white NIMBYs that may not represent the interests or values of incumbent residents who may be more ambivalent or even supportive of change. Finally, it also addresses the opposite side of the spectrum of concerns, namely technocracy and efforts by planners to centrally plan communities without engagement (something fortunately much less common nowadays).

Enhanced Community Engagement Plan

1. Define Clear Objectives and Goals:

   • Articulate why community engagement is essential.
   • Specify what changes or improvements you aim to achieve.
   • Set measurable goals (e.g., increased participation, informed decision-making).

2. Understand Community Members:

   • Conduct stakeholder analysis: Identify key groups, demographics, and influencers.
   • Understand their needs, concerns, and aspirations.
   • Use empathy to build rapport.

3. Design an Inclusive Engagement Approach:

   • Community Surveys and Questionnaires:
     • Create well-structured surveys with critical questions.
     • Make them accessible (online and offline).
     • Ensure demographic representation.
   • Public Workshops and Town Halls:
     • Organize face-to-face workshops and virtual town halls.
     • Encourage open dialogue.
     • Invite experts and community members to share insights.

4. Fact Checking and Myth Debunking:

   • Establish a fact-checking team.
   • Address common misconceptions transparently.
   • Share evidence-based information through various channels (websites, social media, newsletters).

5. Two-Way Dialogue:

   • Consultation:
     • Actively seek community input in decision-making.
     • Use feedback loops to refine plans.
   • Collaboration:
     • Involve community members in co-creating solutions.
     • Build partnerships with local organizations.

6. Experts On Tap, Not On Top:

   • Expert Involvement:
     • Invite urban planners, architects, and subject-matter experts.
     • Ensure they listen actively and respect community knowledge.
   • Community Panels:
     • Form panels with diverse expertise (residents, experts, local leaders).
     • Collaborate on design, policy, and implementation.

7. Site Tours and Walkabouts:

   • Virtual Reality (VR) Tours:
     • Create immersive virtual tours of proposed developments.
     • Show before-and-after visualizations.
   • Recorded AR/VR Tours:
     • Share these on social media and community platforms.
     • Explain design choices, safety measures, and benefits.

8. Leverage Technology and Data:

   • Online Platforms:
     • Use community websites, social media, and mobile apps.
     • Share updates, engage in discussions, and collect feedback.
   • AI-Generated Content:
     • Use AI tools for content creation (blogs, infographics, videos).
     • Ensure accuracy and relevance.

9. Regular OCP Updates and Development Consistency:

   • Mandatory OCP Updates:
     • Enforce laws requiring municipalities to review and update OCPs at regular intervals (e.g., every 5 years).
     • Involve community input during OCP reviews.
   • As-of-Right Development:
     • Allow development consistent with existing OCPs without additional spot re-zoning.
     • Streamline the process for projects aligned with OCP goals.

10. Evaluate and Adapt:

    • Regularly assess the effectiveness of engagement efforts.
    • Adjust strategies based on feedback and outcomes.
    • Celebrate successes and learn from challenges.

11. Promote Inclusivity and Trust:

    • Language Accessibility:
      • Translate materials into multiple languages.
      • Ensure cultural sensitivity.
    • Transparency and Trust Building:
      • Share progress reports.
      • Acknowledge community contributions.

I’m seriously considering a job with a BID (business improvement district / neighborhood collective organization). But I’m curious if it will allow for me to still stretch my urban planning “wings”, if you will. If anyone here has experience in working for these organizations and could provide me with some insights or advice, it’d be appreciated!

I've been trying to use my car less and take more public transit. I'm not an urban planner but I enjoy watching a lot of urbanist videos such as RMtransit of Not Just Bikes. Often they make good points about how transit can be better. The one thing they never seem to talk about is the fact that it's public. The other day I got off the Go (commuter) train from Toronto to Mississauga where I live. You can take the bus free if transferring from the Go train so I though great I'll do this instead of taking the car. I get on the bus and after a few minutes I hear a guy yelling loudly "You wanna fight!". Then it keeps escalating with the guy yelling profanities at someone.
Bus driver pulls over and yells "Everybody off the bus! This bus is going out of service!" We all kind of look at each other. Like why is entire bus getting punished for this guy. The driver finally yells to the guy "You need to behave or I'm taking this bus out of service". It should be noted I live in a very safe area. So guess how I'm getting to and from to Go station now. I'm taking my car and using the park and ride.
This was the biggest incident but I've had a lot of smaller things happen when taking transit. Delayed because of a security incident, bus having to pull over because the police need to talk to someone and we have to wait for them to get here, people watching videos on the phones without headphones, trying to find a seat on a busy train where there's lots but have the seats are taken up by people's purses, backpacks ect.
Thing is I don't really like driving. However If I'm going to people screaming and then possibly get kicked of a bus for something I have no control over I'm taking my car. I feel like this is something that often gets missed when discussing transit issues.

I have five projects going to a public hearing next month. Four are snoozers, and one is controversial with tens of commenters. Where do folks put controversial items on the agenda? Do you go by application submission date and have people wait, or do you put them up front and get it over with? Do you put it at the end so everyone has a chance to settle down?

Thanks for any input.

I am looking to do a tear down and new build in a old neighborhood on a long dead end street.
The site sits directly in the middle of the street. It is steeper street (10%), and my lot is only .2 acre (80' x 100').

I am in the permit planning phase and the city is requiring me to put in a modern truck fire truck turnaround. Issue is there is absolutely nowhere one would fit. Not even a hammerhead. I submitted for deviation and provided reasons why with photo evidence and slope data. This was prepared by a civil engineer. Still no luck.

Local fire Marshall saw the site, and stated that since there is no dedicated fire truck turn around, therefore a sprinkler system is required. That's totally fine by me. But the city didn't care, they still want their fire truck turn around.

This feels entirely stupid. I have to fix a street that is 50 years old just to tear down and rebuild a house?They are asking for the impossible. If this was a new development and new street I entirely agree, but how could this be put on a single lot in a half century old street where every parcel is already developed
!?

Mind you there are new builds currently occurring on this street as we speak, but apparently their permits were approved before this new law was put in place.

How do you deal with situations like this, do I lawyer up?

I am a manager charged with planning the community engagement and public input solicitation around a shelter our city is planning. (Think: empty low functioning hotel being converted into a shelter for homeless people who will eventually be getting jobs and, various treatment, if applicable).

We are holding several town hall style meetings where the nonprofit that will run the shelter will present their programming plan and my team will discuss the zoning/development/building piece of it.

As you can imagine, we’ve already gotten tons of emails/letters. There seems to be a common theme where people are requesting the shelter house WOMEN INSTEAD OF MEN in some of the preliminary notes.

My view is that this is sexist. It also leads to a slippery slope. (Ex. Someone starts by saying “we want women over men” and next thing you know it could be, “white people over black people”, or “Christians over Jews” etc.)

My question is: do you put up parameters around the type of dialogue you’ll accept at your meetings like this? Would it be wrong for me to set a boundary stating members of the public cannot state a preference for one demographic over another at the outset of the meeting?

The dept is stuck on this question.

TL;DR: is it right or wrong to set a boundary at the outset of public meetings stating that we will not accept comment or testimony where someone says they would prefer one demographic over another demographic.

Are there any arguments for or against bike lanes running down the middle of the street? Going down 18th street in Pilsen, Chicago, the bike lanes are usually full of double parked cars or tight to parked and driving cars. The road is narrow so it makes sense why. Putting the bike lanes between the cars and sidewalk does not seem ideal because of how active the street is and the amount of pedestrians. It also makes it very hard to be seen coming up to intersections. Would putting the bike lanes down the middle of the road with a curb be a feasible solution? The road is pretty low speed but tight and active so it has different challenges from most. There are no left turn lanes to navigate so getting through an intersection would be the same difficulty as navigating through cars turning right except with added visibility. Thoughts?

Hi, I'm not an urban planner I'm a gardener, but while working I was in a meeting with my small city's neighborhood planner. They were mentioning a new mixed use development in one of our most walkable neighborhoods, and how people were initially excited that the ground floor retail might be something interesting like a new restaurant. However they mentioned that the developer is only interested in having something like a bank be in the ground floor.

I was just curious if there's anything planners could do to influence the type of business that gets put into a mixed use building? This only serves my curiosity as I'm a very inquisitive person. Thank you.

This question is specific to those familiar with California’s Senate Bill 9 Urban Lot Split ministerial review provisions: do they apply to air space lots?

I’ve been researching this for a long time but have had no luck so far.

I know this is a very, very specific question but I figure why not ask at this point. Thanks for any insight at all!

*SB 9 has been struck down as unconstitutional in a few cities, but I’m a planner in a city where the ruling doesn’t apply.

I've picked through my state's profile Urban & Regional Planner profile on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the APA salary survey from 2018. Where else should I be looking?

Very nice interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrTUb-k0KSg) which I encourage everyone to listen to with an open mind. Because most won't, I took the liberty of jotting down some of Jan Sramek's best quotes (sorry in advance for a lot of text, but it's worth reading IMO). TLDR this guy gets it; he wants to build a great place built for humans and not for automobiles. Of course he will not be allowed to. Maybe, just maybe, some other state will see the effort and invite him in someday. Anyway, here are the quotes:

"^(What's different is we're not building a subdivision; we're building a complete community. We're building something that someone who grew up in an old neighborhood would recognize: a complete community with homes and apartments and schools and shops and jobs and churches...we have really good examples of cities that were started by a person or a company that turned out spectacular. Some of our most beloved cities in America were stated this way: Savannah, GA, Philadelphia, Irvine in Southern California.")

^("I spent two years reading the history of all of these (planned)) ^(projects and I think they failed in one of two ways: either people were building them in a place where there was no demand, which is not the Bay Area, or the developers came in with some kind of singular vision they were going to impose on the city and it's going to be this perfect kind of master plan, and our approach to it is very, very different. Our approach is very similar to how a place like SF or NY were built...which is you lay down a street grid and then you think of the city as a platform, and you don't say the houses are going to be beige and this is where the residential is going to go; instead you do the bare amount of correct planning in the beginning and then we let the city emerge out of that."))

^("My interest in this from the beginning was very simple: I really care about the built environment; I really think that walkable, dense places are special; I think walkable cities have amazing impact other sense of community and creativity and human health and knowing your neighbors...if you look at these old neighborhoods like parts of SF, or Georgetown or the West Village, it's clear that a huge proportion of Americans love them, but they've become oases for the rich because we've stopped building them. And so these walkable communities today, working families just can't afford them. And so for me it was about building a place like that. ")

^("I wish that some of the elected officials had kept more of an open mind instead of condemning the project in the beginning. It's totally fair for people to say, "you know, this looks like a really big idea I'm not sure it works but I'm going to stay open minded and look at it when there's more details". I think a lot of people rushed to conclusions without merit. And I think that's particularly concerning when they have presided over the situation getting worse and worse and worse for working families for the last 20 years.")

You may not like the project, but it's tough to sit there and say he's being dishonest about what he wants to build.

Especially on what they’re doing right vs what they’re doing wrong in a decent amount of detail?

Former planner here. If it helps, I am located in Arizona where we have to update ours every 10 years or so. I know each state has their own requirements for content as well.

My city has their General Plan on the ballot coming up soon. I never worked on a GP, so I am curious:

What happens if voters shoot down the proposed General Plan? I assume that means the City has to go back and rework it and bring it back to voters?

What does the process of revising the plan entail? Is there a time limit for how soon it has to be brought back to the voters?

As I said, I am in Arizona, US, but I am open to hearing about anywhere in the world. I am curious as I don't think I have ever heard of one failing in my region (or any region I have lived in). To add to that, I plan to vote on the GP. If I vote no, could it just get worse? Would it be smarter from a voter's perspective to vote yes on something that is improved from the last update but still not great?

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.

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.

I’m not sure since in the Randstad for example, barely anyone goes from Amsterdam to Rotterdam for work, and they all stay in their own city. And the suburbs aren’t even that low density for suburbs.

If City ADU guidelines allow single family residences to have two ADUs ('one structure or separate'), capped at 800 sf, does it follow that a max 1600 sf duplex unit would be acceptable?

I'm entertaining ideas for adding two ADUs to my .20 acre property that already has my 1200sf home on it. If I want to develop a retirement income stream and provide a couple of housing units in a community that badly needs them, it seems like it might be possible to affordably build a simple rectangle that contains two 500sf 1br/1ba units, perhaps with shared laundry. I've never heard of anyone taking such an approach and wonder if you've seen examples of this.

^(also interested in ideas/resources/opinions for such a simple duplex design, from custom built vs something prefab and delivered on a flatbed. I imagine a rectangular construction containing mirror-image units, perhaps the only difference being door placement for variety and because 'the front of the house shall have only one exterior entrance.' FWIW: cost does matter)

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/63c6e7553e4ba85e3eb60467/c09a3c5d-d8ed-4691-b269-56a5c045b868/Drone+Photography+of+Lakewood+2022+by+Aerial+Agents-6.jpg?format=750w

This aerial view is a part of Lakewood, OH and I have yet to learn of another town in the US with this type of dense commercial, public, and residential spaces so interspersed, so I hope someone can help me find others.

Right up the middle of this photo is homes, city hall/police department, homes, middle school, apartments, elderly care facilities, high school, grocery store. Up the left includes mechanic, convenience store, bar, apartments, laundromat, barber, restaurants, gas station. Homes all around.

I get excited when people talk about “walkable” neighborhoods but get disappointed when it turns out to only be walkable after you find a place to park or exit an Uber or a bus/train etc. not straight from their house.

Someone living here could walk to work, the park, school, various stores, the dentist, entertainment, groceries, etc. all less than 10 minutes away. Bonus is Lake Erie 15 minutes walk and great trails in the Rocky River Reservation a 10 minute bike ride away.

I do not offer any of this info as a “this town is better than any others”just as examples of what I am looking for. Anyone know of other towns in the US like this?

I am unsure if this is the best Reddit forum to inquire about this, but I was wondering if there has been any positive benefit (or any effect in general) towards transportation infrastructure within opportunity zones based on whether a Census Tract is designated as an opportunity zone? Have any opportunity zone projects, either directly or indirectly, resulted in transportation impacts?

One problem with the online discourse on zoning is that it seems to be dominated by one liner phrases and thought terminating cliches from people who never bother to study the issue in depth. That's not to say that I necessarily like every feature of the American planning system. Zoning is blamed for everything from urban sprawl, to racial segregation in housing, and housing affordability, but I believe people are blaming the wrong culprits here.

1. America has a housing crisis and zoning is to blame -

I. It is incorrect to say that America a whole has a housing crisis. In fact American housing is some of the most affordable in the world. We have had year on year price increases, but that is not the same as a crisis, and not something that local government have control over as they are driven by factors such as materials cost, interest rates and labor costs. We have a lower price to income ratio for homes than most developed countries do. Home ownership is more affordable in the US than it is many other countries as a result. US housing units are also generally much more spacious than counterparts in other countries. Us does have rent to income ratios similar or some cases higher than European countries, but rental units in the Us are generally larger than European and Asian ones, so rents per square would be lower once this is taken into account. See here: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings\_by\_country.jsp and https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1cajkf7/using\_square\_feet\_the\_average\_home\_size\_by\_state/ plus here https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/brief_international_housing_carliner_marya.pdf
II. To the extent the US has an affordability problem it is concentrated in certain places like New Jersey, Connecticut, Downstate NY, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Virginia, Colorado, Oregon, California, Hawaii and Washington
III. While all regulation adds cost, it would be wrong to blame zoning for affordability problems. If zoning in general and single family zoning in particular caused housing unaffordability, than places like Oklahoma City, Louisville, KY, Dallas, TX, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio should as unaffordable as California cities are, but they aren't. Zoning in America is ubiquitous, but housing affordability problems are concentrated in a few regions of the US. The real driver of affordability issues in certain regions is a combination of inclusionary zoning/rent regulation/rent control, anti-sprawl policies such as urban growth boundaries, multi acre minimum lot sizes, and agriculture/open space zoning, high impact fees, long approval times and something specific to California, CEQA. See here: https://reason.com/2022/03/13/how-the-war-on-sprawl-caused-high-housing-prices/ https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-regulatory-labyrinth https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/two-cheers-for-zoning/ https://californiapolicycenter.org/the-density-delusion/ https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Development_Fees_Slide_Deck_Final_1.pdf
IV. Entitlement in most places is roughly 5% of the cost of development - https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-developer-fees 2. Zoning is racist and exclusionary - Another common assertion is that single family zoning is racist or exclusionary. It is true that zoning has been used for racist purposes in the past like in Berkeley. That said nothing about zoning is inherently racist or exclusionary. The desire for single family zoning specifically comes from the desire to live in neighborhood of single family homes and live next to other single family homes, nothing about that is racist. Zoning exists from a planning perspective to ensure that infrastructure and government services aren't overloaded by development and that development is orderly (whether it accomplishes this is your own opinion), not to exclude minorities or the poor.
Single family housing on per square foot basis is generally pretty affordable and there are many places with single family zoning that are affordable. While exclusive suburbs exist, affordable ones exist too. Not every American suburb is the Hamptons, Wilmette, Darien or Winnetka. Go to any majority black suburb or city and people there can be just as nimby as whites are and just as opposed to density. Most non-whites, except for Asians, have housing and neighborhood preferences similar to white people: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/02/majority-of-americans-prefer-a-community-with-big-houses-even-if-local-amenities-are-farther-away/ 3. Zoning the main driver of urban sprawl - The problem with this is that while most municipalities have zoning, not all land in America is zoned. In my own state of Illinois, counties are permitted to, but not required to zone, and roughly half of Illinois Counties don't zone. Nearby Indiana, Wisconsin, and Missouri are similar in this regard. In Texas counties aren't allowed to zone without consent of the state legislature, and only a few do. Outside of the ETJ (Extra Territorial Jurisdiction) of Texas cities most land is unzoned. In cities that do have zoning, flexibility exists in the form of Planned Area or Planned Unit Developments, that allow to build development that doesn't fit into the zoning code. Finally Houston Texas has no zoning code and still resembles most sunbelt cities. The most you could say is that zoning helps to preserve sprawl that already got built. 4. Houston has zoning by another name - The reality is that Houston really does lack zoning and most of Houston's regulations are minimal. The regulations that do exist in Houston are either being repealed or being rolled back, such as the minimum lot size requirements. The city is more often than not very generous with granting variances, such as with setback regulations. So while Houston may not be an Anarcho-capitalist free for all, as no society is, it's a pretty good approximation of what market driven land use would look like. Some people will argue that deed restrictions and HOAs are the same thing as zoning, but in reality they are private agreements are an example of the market at work. Developers themselves, not the city of Houston, put deed restrictions on houses, because it makes the house more likely to sell. The zoning by another name cliche is just a way to get around the market not producing outcomes that you want. 5. Dense housing is 'illegal' - Saying that apartments are 'illegal' because an area is zoned single family is silly. This ignores rezonings, variances and conditional use permits. Other options include buying parcels already zoned for dense housing or building a planned area or planned unit development. Saying that dense housing is 'illegal' because building it requires a permit is like saying alcohol is illegal because selling alcohol requires a permit. If there really was some overwhelming demand for dense housing, developers would build it more than they do as developers are driven by the market place and by the almighty dollar.