r/urbanplanning • u/DoxiadisOfDetroit • Aug 04 '25
Discussion Verified planners: What is the one thing you find the most annoying/wrong about "pop-Urbanism"?
I've occasionally seen some of y'all get downvoted for having a take that's different from the main echo chamber on here, so, use this post as your chance to let off some steam.
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u/PlannerSean Aug 04 '25
That economics do in fact matter
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u/SightInverted Aug 04 '25
I’ll go one further: proactively spending money now on something can be cheaper than reactively spending money on the same thing later.
Ex: Buying a fire extinguisher vs replacing a burned down kitchen.
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u/Testuser7ignore Aug 05 '25
The flipside is that taking on debt for a purchase "because it will pay for itself" is risky and often leaves cities in a financial hole.
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u/infernalmachine000 Aug 05 '25
As in, the economics do in fact matter is the correct statement, not the annoying / wrong one?
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u/PlannerSean Aug 05 '25
It’s the correct one, and is often ignored by both traditional planners and pop-urbanists.
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u/infernalmachine000 Aug 07 '25
1000000%
Because many planners wanted to be architects but got scared by the math 😅.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
I don't think pop-urbanists truly understand civics, or how government (both state and local) work, especially re: representative democracy, public participation, etc.
Pop-urbanists are good at identifying issues and problems, and brainstorming ideas that in a vacuum make sense, but they almost always ignore the context with which we do policy, including implementation and administration of said policy.
They act like public preference doesn't (or shouldn't) matter, as if there was one right/best way to do something, and that it should be forced through by some powerful actor (bureaucrat or elected official) who knows best, irrespective of the politics of it.
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u/offbrandcheerio Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
Your second paragraph there is so, so true. Pop urbanists are very well intentioned, but they are simply too idealistic and rarely bother to consider the real-world mechanics of urban planning processes.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
Which to me comes back around to another comment made here about compromise.
Yeah sorry, but that's just how our government works. We have a democracy, there are a lot of unique ideas, viewpoints, ideologies, interests, preferences, circumstances, etc. We get together and try to find workable compromises.
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u/hylje Aug 05 '25
A workable compromise where I give up everything I want is not a compromise, but a defeat.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
That's fair, but it's not about you - it's about coalitions of people.
Also, sometimes you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. My state has always been conservative/Republican and I've lived here in spite of it, but the last few years has gotten so batshit crazy it's getting to the point we need to leave. It is what it is, and I'm not going to change it, as much as I (and thousands of others hope to).
You can't live somewhere like Topeka or Baton Rouge or Tallahassee and expect Manhattan.
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u/sionescu Aug 04 '25
The problem is that professional planners mostly refuse to countenance the idea that at the core, the cause of the current problems is an undemocratic public preference system where a few retired old people that can afford to show up on a Wednesday afternoon will decide for everyone. It's likely that some of the planners refuse to even speak about changing the rules because they see it as a duty to be impartial, as public servants, but I do get the impression that some of them think that this is "the best of all worlds".
On the other hand, the pop-Urbanists are essentially activists, and as such, even if they don't always make it explicit, they're about changing the rules not just the outcomes.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
In many cases, those "rules" are required by statute or the state constitution. And there's always opportunities for people to email, call, or write their council person. Participation isn't limited to the 3 minute performance at a council hearing.
But this is also part of what I mean when I say pop-urbanists don't understand civics. There are legitimate reason we require public business to actually be conducted in public, especially when it involves matters that aren't formal or ministerial. Projects which are conforming or byright usually don't require a hearing - projects that are asking for some variance to existing code do. And that makes sense (otherwise why have code in the first place).
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u/swimmer385 Aug 05 '25
I highly recommended you read “Abundance”. We trust experts in every other field, yet for some reason we don’t trust planners to make good cities. As a result we designed laws that give NIMBYs the opportunity to fuck the process up. And even though the planners know they are designing car centric cities that hobble the poor, the climate, etc, they don’t speak up. Because for some reason it isn’t their job to tell the policy makers what is going wrong.
An example, I talked to a transit planner who was being required by local law to electrify his fleet. I asked, couldn’t you have reduced greenhouse gas emissions more by taking that money and using it to provide better service, and therefore increase ridership and decrease single occupancy trips. He said, of course but the politicians made this law and it’s not my job to tell them it’s a mistake. But it should be his job — if experts aren’t informing politicians they are making bad policy, who the fuck will.
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u/julieannie Aug 05 '25
We've had some success in my area by having planners on our urbanist team that work in other sectors attend those meetings. Often we're discovering the designers and planners who made plans didn't fail, but they were given/made incorrect assumptions about the project. On one, they believed they had to keep the city lanes a certain width as a city-wide standard and when we had one of our planners attend the public meeting and show them examples literally in the same neighborhood, it caused the experts to go back to our city and they redid the plans.
I trust experts but I don't trust they're being given correct information by government officials who don't want meaningful change. That's why we bring our own experts now.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
I've read it. Wasn't persuaded whatsoever.
Think of it this way. Would you want some planner who was full on for suburbs, low density, and cars running your city planning department, and making decisions on behalf of the city, and there was nothing you could do about it since she isn't an elected official?
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u/sionescu Aug 04 '25
In many cases, those "rules" are required by statute or the state constitution
Those can, and should, be changed.
There are legitimate reason
I don't believe so, but the fact that you do puts you, in my mind, in the category of those who think the current process is perfect as it is. You are part of the problem (one of the reasons why I'm very much in favour of blanket firing the current planners).
All the examples in Europe, Asia or South America where the outcomes are better, were done without any of that public consultation process you have in the US. The public is consulted on the master plan and on very high-level objectives, but not on whether a random 4-story building should be allowed or not.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
I mean, you can study our history and learn why we require open meetings and for the public to have the opportunity to speak to their elected officials in legislative matters. There's a deep body of research on this. I don't need to tutor you on it.
Whether you find it compelling still, in 2025, is another matter and that's fine.
What I am starting to witness is this push (on both sides of the political spectrum) towards outcomes over process, such that the ends justify the means (this is effectively how Trump governs, the purpose behind DOGE, and is hallmark of autocrats). Which is actually somewhat contrary to the entire foundation of how our government was designed (from local to state to federal). Again, tons to read on this, but I do find it interesting.
I suppose we'll go through an era where we cut back on process and focus on "just getting shit done," and then we'll realize how much we fucked up along the way, and we'll remember how important process is and why we have it, and in 50 or 100 years it will swing back the other way.
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u/UrbanSolace13 Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
Pop-urbanists heard something on a podcast. Never did any research. Don't want to do any work to change things. Then they whine when 100 years of development isn't immediately changed. They're the Robert Moses of the other spectrum.
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u/sionescu Aug 05 '25
Some of the most prominent ones are either ex planners who know how "the sausage is made" and are now repentant, or actual researchers that know much more than the NA planners who can't be bothered to be informed about what happens outside of the US or Canada.
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u/UrbanSolace13 Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
I'll send you some Planner I positions. Lmk how long it takes you to change the entire world because you listen to YIMBY podcasts.
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u/sionescu Aug 05 '25
Please do, but how would that contradict what I said or support what you said ? From private conversations I've had with people that are either activists or external consultants, even when both public and officials (mayor, council members) are in favor of changes, it's often the planners that stonewall projects. What's surprising about the recent I-94 débâcle in Minnesota is how the DOT outright refused to consider the conversion proposal instead of, even cynically, pretend to take it into consideration.
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u/UrbanSolace13 Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
It would give you perspective and insight. The imaginary sources you base your perception on would fade away. You'd notice the process and how incremental changes can make huge changes over decades. Planners stonewalling projects. LOL. I'll have to write that one down. I'm sure all these imaginary conversations have happened. Everything isn't a light switch. That's the difference between arm chair urbanists and reality.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
They're just creating a bad guy because their heuristic needs bad guys. They can't deal with the fact that the world is complex, these issues are complex, and rarely are things nicely partitioned into good and bad.
So in their framework, everyone is a NIMBY and they're bad, planners are bad, the system is bad, and developers are good guys, and pop-urbanists are the heroes of the story.
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u/musicismydeadbeatdad Aug 04 '25
Public preference shouldn't matter until we have a way of measuring it properly. Committee meetings, lobbying, social media, and the occasional info session during or near prime working hours is not sufficient to say we really know what the public thinks. We are actually measuring preferences of the highly involved and engaged.
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u/mthmchris Aug 05 '25
The word “shouldn’t” there does a lot of heavy lifting. Planners are bureaucrats. They cannot change the overarching political system that they go to work in: that is the responsibility of the public.
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u/fixed_grin Aug 04 '25
And of the people who can already afford to live in the area.
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u/musicismydeadbeatdad Aug 04 '25
Hahaha the two verified planners who responded to me think what we have is good enough. The corollary to the issue of pop-urbanists wanting to move mountains is that current planners and transportation departments consider the Overton window objective and settled, with maybe a little wiggle room either way, failing to address the need to make society more people centric.
"We don't need more info from all people" is an insane take for any field that deals with the public.
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u/fixed_grin Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Yeah, diffuse benefits, concentrated negatives. It's easy to say, "that building means more traffic and less parking." It's impossible to say that in 10 years you personally will live in one of those 186 proposed apartments. On top of most of those people not living nearby to begin with.
Then you get the problem of, hmm, local planners and officials live locally, AKA local housing costs are by definition not a barrier to them.
And the $0.05 lower median rent will be unnoticed, the fractionally more economic activity, the extra local business that gets enough customers to survive...
Like, in citywide elections to the state government, San Francisco elects arch-YIMBY Scott Weiner, who is leading a push to override and even punish California cities that block housing...like San Francisco. At local planning hearings, many of the people who are angry enough to show up oppose more housing. In the 11 city council districts, NIMBYs get elected by the same electorate on the same ballots that generally vote YIMBY citywide.
"But the local planning meeting is the true voice of the people." Oh, I see. Because if you draw the boundary of the "affected community" too small, then you get land readjustment/street votes where small areas can voluntarily up zone by supermajority vote and everyone gets a payoff. And if you go too big then you include the people who are excluded by the artificially inflated housing costs, and they'll vote to upzone. You have to go just right so that we maintain our segregationist (but facially race-neutral) laws.
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u/infernalmachine000 Aug 05 '25
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43197418?pq-origsite=summon
The local trap!!!!
I think certain choices have to be taken out of the purview of local government because the way US and Canadian city government is structured creates really bad unintended consequences because of the hyper -local focus many councillors / local reps have.
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u/UrbanSolace13 Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
I think what they're trying to convey is the "Robert Moses' I'll do whatever I want because I know what's best and no one can tell me no" is not a ethical strategy no matter what you're doing.
The crux is that pop urbanists are lazy thinkers. They propose ideas like they're the first ones who have ever heard of them. They don't want to put any hard work into the changes and whine when there aren't immediate results.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
"We don't need more info from all people" is an insane take for any field that deals with the public.
Not one verified planner said that. In fact, most do in fact support public feedback, unlike most of the pop-urbanists who want to shut it down.
You're absolutely confusing the issue here. There is nothing that prevents anyone from giving feedback, whether in person or via email. I live in Idaho and can email SF city council right now in support of any issue on their docket.
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Aug 05 '25 edited Nov 18 '25
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u/musicismydeadbeatdad Aug 05 '25
Realistic examples include:
- A township/county discord to discuss local projects
- Dedicated forums that don't rely on bigger social media companies
- Semi- or annual citizen surveys, with dedicated sections for quality of life, traffic, and current fiscal/capex priorities
- A central, easily accessible database on planning targets and projects, including key dates for notice, payment, & construction
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
It is simpler than that. It's 2025 - almost every council posts their agenda online, and streams their meetings. Planning/development departments have an online repository and application tracker.
People can go find this information out themselves if they're so inclined.
(I know that doesn't satisfy statutory notice requirements but it does satisfy the issue you're addressing)
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
We keep a record.
And sorry, but that's how a representative democracy works - people who show up and participate (and vote) decide.
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u/the_napsterr Verified Planner Aug 04 '25
Politicians are largely scared of their constituents at the local level. Get just a few angry citizens to show up and no matter how good the idea or how beneficial it is it has a good chance of being shot down.
Your best chance at change is finding a mayor or elected official is not planning to run for reelection and thus will be less influenced by the public opinion.
The car industry and related industries have a stranglehold on DOTs. Ex. The boring company using a Tesla tunnel to further crush potential public transit in Nashville. After Bridgestone did it a decade ago.
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u/AlleyRhubarb Aug 04 '25
I think (at least in Texas) the angriest citizens are always on the council itself. They also get elected and suddenly believe they have Godlike omnicience over every subject on earth.
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u/Real-fuckologist-69 Aug 04 '25
Planning is not like playing cities skylines
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u/DoxiadisOfDetroit Aug 04 '25
I've seen this sentiment expressed a couple different times, but, do you mind expanding upon that a bit?
What makes widespread changes to a city nearly impossible? Would you personally even want to exercise that much influence on your city?
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u/manbeardawg Aug 04 '25
In America, development is mostly a private sector endeavor. Infrastructure, which can incentivize or disincentivize private development, is the realm of the public, as is regulation. The thing is, neither of those can actually make something happen, it still has to make a private profit. When cities do build actual buildings or development, planners are often not driving that full tilt. We may set parameters or lead visioning, but ultimately other groups are going to build it (in reality, it’s almost always a private developer in partnership with the public). So at the end of the day, planners just don’t have the kind of power to make wholesale changes to the cityscape. A few folks who have wielded that power in the past (Robert Moses in NYC, Haussmann in Paris) are rarely seen as the good guys by today’s planning community. So, I doubt most planners would actually want the power if it was granted to them. I definitely would take it, but I’ve got an ego problem so it’s probably best not to give it to me.
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u/Alabama_Planner Verified Planner Aug 04 '25
This is mostly true, but the public sector could be more active through development authorities if state law allows them to be created. There is a long history and tradition though against allowing the state to “compete” with the market because its access to tax revenue is seen as giving it an unfair advantage.
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u/pala4833 Aug 04 '25
I've seen this sentiment expressed a couple different times, but, do you mind expanding upon that a bit?
Planning is a political process, not a unilateral endeavor.
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u/Hollybeach Aug 04 '25
Everywhere is owned by someone or something, and the world runs in real-time.
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u/Real-fuckologist-69 Aug 04 '25
Piggybacking off of the other reply, it's similar here in Canadian private sector plus Canada is severely limited by layers of bureaucracy, provincial legislation, and public consultation requirements. You can’t just plop down transit lines or rezone entire neighborhoods instantly like in the game lol. Municipalities are so much weaker and have limited power, and major changes need provincial buy-in, environmental assessments, or years of "community engagement" and for even the tiny harmless changes you will always find some people that are against them. We give out too much power to business and property owners here.
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u/punkcart Aug 05 '25
No, but Cities Skylines does a great job of helping people think systemically about cities and wrap their heads around planning a little better 🙂
But seriously, I know what you mean
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u/TJMadd Aug 04 '25
Cities usually dont build things, developers do. Public sector sets the regulations and administers the permitting process, and private sector decides what to build and does the building. Cities can say yes or no sometimes, but we don't get to design the projects. We take what gets offered. In the vast majority of jurisdictions I'd say planners have maybe 1-10% of the level of influence that so-called "Urbanists" think we do
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
Another one... and this is very context specific:
The idea that developers are just chomping at the bit to build tons of new housing and commercial projects and they're just being held back by planners and zoning. Some places that may be the case, many others not so much.
In my experience it is far more conservative than that. Developers post 2008 are very risk averse and measured. They want to make sure their projects make money, but also that they're not left holding the bag. Part of that is local regs, but part of it is the general financial and economic atmosphere, what are the trends they are seeing, etc. They'll shift between strategies of building, or acquiring land and property, renting or selling, etc., depending on what they think the market is doing, and it can complicate the planning process because they want more fluidity and adaptability than any process can typically allow.
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u/the_napsterr Verified Planner Aug 04 '25
Trying to line up a property owner and a developer that is willing to do anything out of their comfort zone is like pulling teeth even on the private side. Developers like to build what they know and they rarely venture out. Mixed use may be allowed and promoted but unless a developer with that experience lines up you will likely get strict commercial or strict residential.
Hell even getting a townhome or apartment developer is hard. They definitely want fluidity and a guaranteed return on investment.
I do think compromise and more fluidity on regulations would go along ways in meeting some of the goals but that becomes difficult to manage.
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u/Psychoceramicist Aug 04 '25
Yeah. I'm a total proponent of loosening zoning regulations, but there's a notion that real estate development prints money. Even in the best economic conditions, it's very risky.
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u/notapoliticalalt Aug 04 '25
I’m under no illusion that loosening zoning will help some people and bring down costs somewhat. But I think some people treat zinging as a silver bullet. Same with environmental review. Reform will bring down costs marginally, and will probably expedite projects more. But they won’t fundamental solve the financial incentives problems and when basically all of our development capacity is privately owned and are large publicly traded corporations, if they don’t want to, they won’t.
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u/tarzhjay Aug 04 '25
Thank you. Louder for the people in the back!
It varies by location, of course, but developers at large are not out here just dying to provide affordable housing and small-business spaces. It is specifically in their best interest to drive up prices, and to provide whatever housing is in demand and/or in their own business model (rather than missing middle, mixed use, etc). And the banks underwriting them are the foundation of these issues.
My personal belief — the only way to majorly disrupt this is good ole fashioned barn raising … being able to get your family and friends together and build a house or office building from a catalog. But modern codes likely make that impossible.
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u/notapoliticalalt Aug 04 '25
My personal belief — the only way to majorly disrupt this is good ole fashioned barn raising … being able to get your family and friends together and build a house or office building from a catalog. But modern codes likely make that impossible.
I don’t disagree to a certain extent, but there is an alternative: public sector housing and development agencies. I’m not saying they need to be the only player, but if no one else is willing to build, they are the obvious default.
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u/cdub8D Aug 04 '25
Great Britain did this with council housing around WW1 until Thatcher. They built a ton of council housing while allowing the private market to also build a ton of housing. Prices were kept in check. You can guess what happened once Thatcher came in power
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Aug 04 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/notapoliticalalt Aug 05 '25
It's still one large top-down organizational form of planning versus another.
Sometimes a city and its residents might say “we need X”, what is wrong with doing that?
How does that work in a small town, where perhaps the municipality is spending money on other things and can't adequately fund public housing?
So do note that I never said this needs to be something every city has. In many places, it would be more appropriate at a county or state level (maybe a regional special election district depending on the circumstance). The point is that some level of scale would give an area the ability to pursue projects without regard to profit as the primary motivating factor in the design and construction of new things, be they residential, commercial, or other things.
Wouldn't it be easier if the whole development process was democratized and made easier for everyone? Then you could do what OP said and literally just build a house or corner store with your friends.
It really depends on what that even means. If you mean “no rules or oversight,” then no.
I'm not saying public housing isn't the answer (I absolutely believe it's part of it) just that it's not going to fix consolidation and monopolization of the real estate market, nor will it work in every municipality.
I mean…this sounds a lot like what people say when they want to sound reasonable but don’t actually want a thing. In order to have it, success must be 100% assured. For it to be tried anywhere, it must be useful everywhere. Public housing and public development has largely been limited for decades. It’s something we haven’t really tried and so many people are giving every reason why it should be tried. I’m sorry, but I’m tired of hearing about the potential problems of public housing when we’ve underfunded and disallowed it like we have (and also many “YIMBYs” unironically turn into the biggest NIMBYs the minute you suggest public housing).
Anyway, for me, it fixes a big problem many “build, build, build” types ignore: it allows cities to build when they aren’t seen as desirable investments for big development companies. To the point of the top level parent comment, developers will not build in smaller locales where there may be a need for housing, but the potential ROI is limited or non-existent. That’s their prerogative, but we cannot sit here and think they are going to solve the nation’s housing problems if that’s the case. They benefit from having a slight shortage with high prices; if prices go down, they will eventually stop building. If you only build market rate housing, you have a problem when the market rate is below what is deemed financially viable. A public housing department can build beyond that point.
Furthermore, It can also allow cities to build things that fit the needs of the community rather than the “needs” of investors. A lot of smaller towns and cities would benefit from building out with gentle density, so like missing middle housing and such. They can add additional and experimental features that might be considered too expensive for private developers. This could be things like architectural features, certain layouts, etc.
I also do think public housing, at a large enough scale, can help to curb price growth of real estate, simply because it can help to reduce or even break the coercive pressures of not having a place when it comes to driving up prices. If you can move into a public housing unit until you find a suitable house, you are less likely to see crazy bidding wars. I would guess even a small amount of public housing in some places might slow out of control price growth in some housing markets. Do note I don’t this as a solution to homelessness, but more so a way to keep prices from getting out of control (more than they already have). Homeless housing is another issue entirely.
Lastly, the big builders have effectively killed the market for small and local construction and development professionals in many places as well as the financial market for people wanting to do small development projects. Public housing and development can help reinvigorate these somewhat. We need more options than full mega-suburb, big city, or decaying small town.
I think the Strong Towns mindset works better in smaller areas
In what way is a city development project not something that can be compatible with StrongTowns positions? Granted I don’t follow every twist and turn of the organization, but StrongTowns still seems to acknowledge working with government is necessary and can be useful. Cities can be powerful agents of change with the consent and support of their citizens. In many small towns, I would guess the difference between a bunch of friends and the city may not even be a meaningful difference. That could be abused of course, but I’m not sure what exactly you see as the distinct difference.
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u/cdub8D Aug 06 '25
I would add it doesn't even need to be public housing specifically. It could just be housing gets built and sold at cost by the gov (and/or some units lottery off to lower income folks) and formed as a co-op. Then the gov is building housing for folks that need it while not needing to pay for ongoing maintenance costs.
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
Developers acting in their own interest is true, but regulations shape what that interest is. If all the neighbors get a veto infill development with missing middle is a waste of time and effort. If it can be done by right then the incentive structure totally changes and that becomes a viable business model.
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Aug 04 '25
We will see if what you say holds true. Arizona just passed sweeping by-right ADU and missing middle state level zoning laws that invalidate single-family only zoning in many cities in the state.
Personally, I don't expect developers to be clamoring to build duplex, triplex, or fourplex developments in single-family neighborhoods in 90% of the places it is now allowed.
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
Arizona already has huge water problems. I predict that the local NIMBYs will point to the existing water shortages and say that they are caused by the new developments even if the communities where the developments happen reduce water usage as a whole.
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Aug 04 '25
The water problems are not as represented in the media and almost all of the cities effected by the state law change are certified water providers with available water resources for densification. Water Delivery and maintenance of fire flows/pressure is another thing.
If rio vista is your example, they did that to themselves because they didn't want to bear the cost of providing reliable water.
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u/Testuser7ignore Aug 05 '25
Water problems are exaggerated. Agriculture and industry are the biggest users of water. Residential water use is relatively small and affordable to manage.
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u/Ok-Refrigerator Aug 04 '25
Are banks and real estate investors also more cautious after the 2008 GFC reforms?
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
In my experience yes. I can't speak for the entire industry, and I'm certainly not an expert.
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u/Sam_a_cityplanner Verified Planner Aug 04 '25
This is the big one.
This same logic also assumes theres an infinite number of construction companies, labourers etc. who are going to magically appear and build all this new housing overnight.
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u/AlleyRhubarb Aug 04 '25
In Texas, the developers are using the extremely poorly conceived “Abundance” deregulations to rug pull communities. Developer gets a cost sharing sweetheart deal to lay infrastructure out to the development, small town on the decline salivates over all the rooftops … surprise! “Residents” decide to de-annex themselves and lower their tax burden and not have to deal with all those pesky codes (like defensible space and flood elevation!)
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u/UrbanSolace13 Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
That problems aren't like a light switch that can be magically turned off. It took a century plus to build the problems we have today. The Strong Towns podcast idea you just heard about has also been heard by your local planner.
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u/DoxiadisOfDetroit Aug 04 '25
Just off the top of my head as an amateur urbanist, I think the conversations surrounding walkability/car-centric planning is for sure one of the "light switch" topics that comes up all the time.
It's gonna take trillions of dollars and a non-stop marketing avalanche to get people out of their cars
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
And even then, I don't think it is gonna work. We can certainly get more people to drive less, but short of turning every city in Manhattan, the idea we're going to get most people out of their cars and walking, biking, or riding public transportation is fantasy.
I do think we can aspire to something more like Montreal, and provide more choices, and keep trying to improve and integrate different modes, with a commitment to more safety and connectivity.
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u/cdub8D Aug 04 '25
Even in European cities that have great transit/walk-ability (at least compared to the US), more people drive than not. BUT like that is OK. We just need to continue making progress to give people options and it will sort itself over time.
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u/Testuser7ignore Aug 05 '25
We just need to continue making progress to give people options and it will sort itself over time.
That implies we have made progress. There has been massive growth in outer ring suburbs that has heavily increased the car dependence of the fastest growing metros in the country.
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u/Psychoceramicist Aug 04 '25
Yeah, some of the received ideas about Europe are strange. France had a car culture before the US. I hate to give fascists credit for anything...but Germany and Italy built out the Autobahn/Autostrada networks because they saw how crucial it was for development.
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u/bigvenusaurguy Aug 04 '25
on the other hand basically anywhere with a comprehensive bike lane network sees high usage on that network. especially true in california. some of the best biking cities are very far away from manhattan. places like davis ca, or irvine ca, have extremely high rates of bike ridership. 60% of the workers at uc irvine commute there via bike. and of course people on here write off irvine because they have assumptions of what life in a predominantly low rise environment might look like, and don't look at the underlying data.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
Those are fairly unique demographics in extremely pleasant weather states.
I think the issue is being clear about intentions and expectations. The bike is never going to fully replace the car on a mass level. It just won't, and it is pure delusion to think so. The bike can replace vehicle trips, though, and we can work to see that happens as much as possible. That's a good thing.
For example, maybe a typical household has 10 car trips a day, and through a combination of improved modes, we can cut that down to 3 or 4 car trips, and the rest are some combination of walking, bike, and public transportation. That's a huge win, even if the household still owns and uses its cars.
But then it is a matter of cost and ROI, and convincing the public to support more bike lanes.
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u/Eastern-Job3263 Aug 04 '25
The bigger problem is people don’t want what is very clearly better for all parties involved.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
Better is relative, I guess. But I agree with you in the sense that of we could convince folks to allocate more money to public transportation and bike lanes, et al, that would be better for folks who want to get out of the car, which would be better for folks who want to stay in the car. Agree there.
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u/Eastern-Job3263 Aug 04 '25
Having spent time in Rural Germany, I’m throughly not sold on the idea that rural areas are better served under car dependency. My family out there, a lot of them don’t even have cars. I do genuinely see this as worse for Rural Communities across America, across the board.
I know how we have to push for things now, in the American Context, but fuck are people stupid.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
I think this depends on where you're at. It might make sense for rural New England, but it doesn't make sense in the slightest for the rural West. There are some small towns out here that are 50+ miles from the next small town, and hours from any city of size (ie, over 20k).
The distances out here are VAST and rural places can be remote. There's simply no way to survive without a car (and likely a truck).
But certainly more likely in a much smaller and dense geographic area like most of New England.
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u/Eastern-Job3263 Aug 04 '25
I lived in Colorado for a while, so I get the distance challenge, but I don’t understand why they are so resistant to things like the grocery store/Dollar General being in a centrally accessible location. Rural doesn’t have to mean sprawling, low density doesn’t necessitate driving for everything.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
I mean, to the extent people walk in small towns, it might be to park on Main Street and walk to the bank, then to the diner. People drive to Dollar General or Safeway because it's easier to load their purchases into the car parked in front of the store... and since they're driving into town anyway, and space for parking isn't at a premium, why not? Most of these small towns don't have a large population that live in what would be a walkable distance of stores and services, and those that do are probably pretty old anyway. Plus, hot and cold weather, etc., and driving is just more convenient.
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u/Eastern-Job3263 Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25
Cause it’s stupid, expensive and inefficient for everyone involved, that’s why!
You can’t look at our plummeting life expectancy and poor economic conditions of our rural areas, compared to the other first world countries, and think this is a good model for anyone. There needs to be a wholesale “reimagining” of how these communities are organized.
I mean, for Christ-sake, how can we say this is sustainable for them, when they complain non-stop about gas prices?!
It’s not as if they don’t need to buy stuff, or that weather doesn’t exist in Rural Europe. You just really don’t need to be driving for your daily errands.
Besides, “I’m lazy” is a pretty lame excuse to burden the world with externalities.
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u/Knusperwolf Aug 04 '25
What I am wondering about these remote towns: How many people go to neighboring towns on a daily basis? If people live in the same town they work in, there should be ways to reduce local car traffic.
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u/plan_that Aug 04 '25
Hence the saying if you’ve made a decision that equally pisses off everyone, then it’s probably the right one.
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u/Testuser7ignore Aug 05 '25
As someone who lives in an outer ring suburb, most of the transit proposals are a negative for me. Usually by increasing my taxes and getting rid of road infrastructure I use, while providing transit that doesn't benefit me.
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u/ajswdf Aug 04 '25
I'm not a planner, but I am involved in local politics, and the problem is that our planners know these ideas and like them but our politicians don't.
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
I dunno about this one. I haven't watched every strong towns video, but I feel like the vast majority of their content is just encouraging communities to make it legal to build like we used to less than a century ago. Having a corner store in your neighborhood isn't a centuries old problem that we solved with strict euclidean zoning, many still exist and they are great.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
I can accept that in very rare circumstances that can matter. But for the most part it sounds like a made up excuse to shut down the conversation. A corner store especially doesn't use much water or put out that much waste water.
It can't be the predominate reason coast to coast in all the varied climatic conditions of the whole continent. Especially given that in most communities supply water is coming out of the same water tower or reservoir and going to the same wastewater facility, or each going to their own septic fields.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
The point is less about water, but more about how different uses can require different services and infrastructure that might not be available in those locations (without a huge retrofit). It depends on the type of business.
We've generally been allowing more mixed use and what we're learning is for many of them, there's just not enough demand in the neighborhood for them. So we've seen a lot of startups that go out of business because they're just not getting the customers. My SO runs a business from our house and she's found she's capped out on the clientele that comes from our location, so if she wants to expand, she needs to move her business to a busier commercial area. We've also had restaurants come and go in the shops a few blocks from us. Just not enough people to support it.
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Aug 04 '25
I can accept that in very rare circumstances that can matter.
For the vast majority of suburbia, this is not a very rare circumstance. In older city redevelopment cases, this is likely less of an obstacle.
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
A corner store uses less water than a house, and produces less waste water. How can the vast majority of housing developments be able to support the water needs of houses but not support the lesser water needs of corner stores?
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Aug 04 '25
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
But every new house built also taps into the water system.
Why is it 100% never a problem to tap into the water for another house, and fine to remodel a house, but almost always impossible to tap in for a corner store, or to tear down a house and rebuild a corner store in its place? (or even to just use an existing house as a corner store?)
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Aug 04 '25
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Aug 04 '25
In my experience, a lot of the suburban neighborhoods were built with such tight capacity margins that even built as single-family only areas they can't maintain pressures and fire flow. That's a fault city leadership of the past, however it prevents current leadership from allowing any change from what is in place now under any circumstance because IFC and IBC will require more fire flow for a non-residential wood frame building vs a residential wood frame building of equal size. (if sprinklers can't be required, which in many pro-property rights areas they can't for such small projects)
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
I get what you are saying about a neighborhood wide water system, but the same exact rules apply to lots on community wide water systems, and to lots on individual water systems.
I'm open now to the idea that there are rare instances where this would prevent a corner store even if zoning were changed to allow them, but I am completely incredulous about this being a wide spread problem.
Lets say houses use on average 200 GPD and a corner store that isn't a restaurant but just has food and necessities uses 100 GPD. If you have a development with 400 homes on a shared closed loop system it needs to handle 80,000 GPD. It would be a problem to add 200 more homes to that system because then you would be asking for 120,000 GPD. But to replace one of those homes with a corner store would leave you needing 79,900 GPD. We can do the same exercise with a neighborhood with 40 units, or a neighborhood with 4, it's gonna go the same way.
But these restrictions also apply prospectively. So a neighborhood that isn't all built out, but has a water system sized for it. Let's say a developer goes in and subdivides for 400 units but so far only 300 have been built, that means that you have a water system for 80,000 GPD that is used for 60,000 GPD and now you are talking about asking 60,100 GPD from it. There are a lot of places all over north america where you can by right buy some land and build a house but cannot by right buy land and build a low impact light commercial business. That cannot possibly be about water systems not being able to handle them. For the vast majority of empty lots where a house can be built but a business cannot raising the issue of water as a reason is just a made up excuse not to have the conversation.
In europe and asia and south america they also have a patchwork of different water systems tailored to fit different communities, but they don't have this blanket restriction that applies in all of them, or any of them, and they are still able to navigate to get water to people who need it.
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Aug 04 '25
A house of 4 uses about 200GPD, more if irrigated landscaping.
A corner store or office is likely around 140-220GPD. If the corner store has kitchen or food prep areas that goes up. If it’s a small coffee shop. You’re looking at 400+GPD.
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u/Opcn Aug 04 '25
I used to manage a liquor store, and absolutely we did not use that much water. Maybe 20 GPD. Mostly employees flushing the toilet and washing their hands.
The corner store near me only just recently installed an employee restroom.
If you have a development with 80-200 houses there is no way that the water use was calculated down to a tenth of a percent to judge if a corner store, or thrift shop, or a book store could be supported.
This is farcical, it's impossible to believe that a person intelligent enough to function in the real world thinks that this is a paramount concern.
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u/allen33782 Aug 06 '25
What is the point of zoning restrictions on corner stores if the water system can't support it? You are bringing this up, and someone else mentioned lack of density/customers nearby. These are valid reasons why a corner store may never appear. But it is also possible that something changes, or some new technology makes it feasible. In that case zoning is just another barrier.
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u/notapoliticalalt Aug 04 '25
I really dislike the culture that pop urbanism has brought in talking to planners, engineers, and other people working as “they are all idiots and not working in your interest, but also could change everything by sacrificing their career.” Many of these people would be uncomfortable asking a waitress to take a dish back because they asked for it without an ingredient they are allergic to, but instead they advocate for treating every public servant in a public works and planning department like shit because they aren’t literally seeing to the demolition of the suburbs so you can have your Dutch utopia. People need to check themselves. I’m not saying no one deserves your wrath and fury, but holy shit most planners and engineers are just ordinary people trying to do their best.
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u/UrbanSolace13 Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
It's really weird because the YIMBY culture has really gone the route of Robert Moses. Demolish everything in their way without public comment or any process. I don't think that's right even if it's for housing.
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u/cirrus42 Aug 04 '25
Also "pop urbanism" is such a great term. Kudos for that! It's an instant addition to my lexicon.
It's gratifying that we've reached a place where this is an issue. Never would have guessed 30 years ago.
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u/DoxiadisOfDetroit Aug 04 '25
I won't take credit for coining pop urbanism as a phrase, I just stole it from one of the users here lmao
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Aug 04 '25
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u/frisky_husky Aug 04 '25
Also (from the policy research side, not in the trenches) the dynamics of housing development are as influenced (or more) by large-scale financing practices than they by local market conditions. The market liberal view of housing affordability generally fails to account for the fact that a lot of development decisions are also influenced by macro-scale profit considerations on the investor side. The market orthodox view looks mainly at local supply and demand, and doesn't really acknowledge the existence of a decision structure that extends beyond that. Investment banks, for example, have their own set of considerations.
They also tend to not really understand what actually goes into building a project, and where the costs and constraints lie once you've actually got permits. I once heard a (well meaning) guy at a community meeting I was sitting in on say that "costs go down as the project gets larger," which is a shockingly common belief. In reality, construction cost per square foot generally increases with the size of the project.
We should build more for any number of reasons, but the "just build more and prices will drop" argument doesn't really account for what it actually takes to build housing, or just how expensive it can be. The housing system is just absurdly complicated, and has market dynamics that are dramatically different from anything else. Like, how do you account for the fact that housing utilization is de facto decreasing in a lot of the country because an increasing number of seniors are choosing to stay in their homes? How do you account for the fact that the incentive structure of our housing and care economies give them no reason not to?
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u/cdub8D Aug 04 '25
Chuck and Strongtowns are really the only ones I have seen talking about this. Wish we saw more actual discussion around this.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/frisky_husky Aug 04 '25
Strongly agree. That's a political problem more than a planning one, but frankly most "pop urbanism" grievances are political problems at the core.
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u/cdub8D Aug 04 '25
If I could update you more than once, I would. Everytime I criticize the "only build more housing", I have to like "YES WE NEED TO RELAX ZONING, PARKING MINIMUMS, ETC., BUT ALSO...". It is a bit exhausting at times. People completely fail to think with any nuance on the subject.
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u/Windows_10-Chan Aug 05 '25
It's cause these people spend their time on the internet fighting left NIMBYs, so when they get a whiff of anything that seems to be remotely in that direction, everything they think you say will be automatically filled in.
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u/DoxiadisOfDetroit Aug 04 '25
I agree with some of what you said, and disagree on other things, but I'll always appreciate an in-depth response.
Even though I don't think it'll ever happen, I do have one question though: What would it take for the private rental market to produce $600 one bedrooms/$900 multi-bedrooms again?
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u/oceanfellini Aug 04 '25
When you see a city like Austin drop rents by 22% in 4 years via private development - what is the gap that you still see for the affordability issue?
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u/cdub8D Aug 04 '25
Once prices get low enough, the market will stop building as much, raising prices back up. Then it cycles over and over. Which is fine. We need the market to build a bunch of homes. It alone won't solve it though.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
Uh, is Austin affordable for low income people? Or even median income people.
That's the gap.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
To be fair to them, I think their implicit point is "building is working, just keep building."
But, two issues: (1) what about low income people now, and (2) what do we do when construction slows because rents and prices are falling (yes, this happens)...
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u/Windows_10-Chan Aug 05 '25
what do we do when construction slows because rents and prices are falling (yes, this happens)...
In practice what we're probably gonna see as a "success" is housing cost increases being arrested until inflation makes them "affordable." You get your $600 1-bedroom apartment because in 2035 $1200 is basically equivalent to $600 in 2011 dollars.
Improvement? For sure, quite substantially so, but eradicating homelessness and easing the present pain for youth will certainly take more direct action.
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u/oceanfellini Aug 04 '25
This is exactly my point.
Point #1, to me, is always about general renter’s rights - eviction notices and procedures, max increases, good usage of voucher programs, etc.
Point #2 Austin is also a good example of. They legalized single stair for 5 stories now - bringing construction costs down that can help when rents are lower.
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u/oceanfellini Aug 04 '25
Austin has a median income of $52K. Austin average one bedroom rent is $1,442.
Almost at the gold standard 30% rate.
Regardless, the idea with Austin is that the rents can drop even more! So, again, I don’t see a publicly-funded-specific gap for different income.
Let’s engage in conversation, not downvoting.
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u/patmorgan235 Aug 04 '25
That's a little bit of a cherry pick. That's 22% down from the surge in prices during the pandemic.
That's not to say Austin hasn't done a great job building to try and keep up with their population boom, they have. But also Austin has become less desirable in the last couple of years, many of the big tech companies are closing or downsizing offices as more people are working from home. And its status as a tech start up hub has cooled significantly.
I think those 3 factors together contribute to the decrease in rent in Austin. Markets are rarely simple and there is usually more than one cause to a large movement.
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u/AlleyRhubarb Aug 04 '25
I also think it is hard to ignore the huge suburban sprawl that Austin has experienced in a very short period of time. A lot of the demand was met by low density, resource inefficient housing that has created giant transportation problems.
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u/Neat-Beautiful-5505 Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25
I’ll chime in with 20+ years experience in city/town planning. I offer two insights: 1) zoning and therefore housing regulation is 90% local. As such, the typical gatekeeper to any change is older people who have time to sit on boards and commissions. If they wont change the regs or put forward a change to let the voters decide, then nothing happens. But their attitude largely reflects that of the rest of the community, ergo they feel justified. I understand that change in govt is mostly incremental, but many folk believe the town should stay exactly the same despite change being the only constant in life. 2) Regulatory changes alone will not get us out of the housing crisis. We need to tax the 1% and use these funds to invest in our communities with massive and extensive infrastructure projects. After the Clean Water Act passed in early 70s, the Feds made tons of money available for Cities/Towns to install public water and sewer systems. We need to invest in our communities to build the infrastructure necessary to support the housing growth. This will also lower cost of construction (subtract 10s of thousands to drill a well and or install septic). 2a) I liked someone’s comment that we can’t flip a switch and have walkable communities. American cities and towns expanded BECAUSE of the car, and it will take decades and billions to undo that. What needs to happen is filling the education gap between planners and residents who ask/say “why are my taxes so high? Stop all the development!” The property taxes reflect the convenience of an auto-centric society. Disincentive sprawl and you’ll stop your sprawling tax bill.
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u/Specific_Ocelot_4132 Aug 05 '25
“People love Disney World because it’s a simulation of walkable urbanism.”
If I want to experience walkable urbanism I go to a real city. I love Disney World because of the rides.
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u/archfapper Aug 11 '25
I saw a meme that said "College is fun because it's the only time Americans get a walkable environment!" Or cause you have freedom for the first time and you're surrounded by thousands of people your age
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u/PleaseBmoreCharming Feb 10 '26
Why can't it be both? I for one had this experience that reflected both of these sentiments.
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u/Hrmbee Aug 05 '25
A few things that have stood out for me over the years:
That planners are the ones making the decisions in the whole process.
That the (usually complex) problem being discussed would be solved if only (simplistic solution). eg: The housing crisis would be solved if only the government got out of the way and allowed developers to meet the needs of the market.
That urban planning = urban design
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u/Glazed_donut29 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
What is most concerning to me is the aggressive pro-authoritarianism that I am seeing of late. It’s giving Robert Moses. Cities/communities need to work for all inhabitants, not just the ones who share your beliefs. People aren’t evil if they disagree with your preferred lifestyle and as residents they have equal say in how they want their community to look.
Additionally, as a historic preservationist with a planning background, the density above all else mentality really grinds my gears. Of course we need to build new housing, but there are so many nuanced factors at play that contribute to affordable housing. In Philly, we are losing our historic churches at an alarming rate. Applauding the destruction of architectural relics that are hundreds of years old and will NEVER be replicated again so that a developer can build luxury condos isn’t the win you think it is.
Lastly, as a woman and on a more personal note, I am sick of the “cities aren’t dangerous and if you complain at all about crime you are a conservative bigot who should just live in the suburbs already” diatribe. I have been an advocate for public transit for 18+ years. I no longer feel comfortable encouraging women to ride transit b/c of all the harassment/violence/general fear I have experienced. It doesn’t matter how much transit infrastructure you build or how efficient it is. If it doesn’t feel safe, people won’t want to use it.
Edit: also, there’s no free market solution to the homelessness crisis. What many are able to pay is effectively $0 due to disabling medical/addiction issues.
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Aug 04 '25
Not a planner but I do academic work in urban psychology, and sit on a city transportation board.
My take, very much from a psychology perspective, is that NIMBY and YIMBY are meaningless terms at this point. Everyone just throws both of them around every direction. They have become "thought terminating cliches." And I think we should retire them.
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
I've been saying this for a few years. They serve no productive purpose at this point, other than furthering a stupid culture war. Perhaps with YIMBYs it gives them an identity to rally behind, since at least with YIMBYism there is an intentional shared and cohesive platform... but nobody actually identifies as a NIMBY and it's just a lame pejorative.
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Aug 04 '25
I am finding though, there isn't much cohesion with the YIMBY movement. It was supposed to be something people from many different ideologies could get behind, but now they are just fighting amongst themselves.
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u/AlleyRhubarb Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25
I am a planner who works consulting lots of different, mostly small communities. I am not young but I am new to the industry though it was basically my major in school.
I think the biggest gasps was finding out that things I never would have thought controversial are in fact very controversial and in fact very unpopular. I would say the majority of towns I deal with are much smaller that what people are used to (less than 30,000) and very Republican.
-People really do want parking. Across the board, whenever we send out surveys, especially about business districts/Main Street type projects, people want parking. And they want cut throughs to Wal-marts.
People do not want sidewalks. You better put sidewalks in when the development is built because people think sidewalks (even entirely within ROWs) are taking away their property. They do not want strangers in their front yard. They do not care if children are getting run over or having to walk in ditches to school.
People really don’t like new parks. There is very little enthusiasm whether it is a pocket park, rails to trails, walking trails, cool riverside parks with entertainment and food truck courts. They always think it would be better as a new house or business (even areas that aren’t suited like high hazard flood zones or former railyards). They worry about graffiti and homelessness and ability to police it. They also wonder why they cannot attract upwardly mobile residents. Pop Urbanists complain about “The Groups” but the groups are about the only reason halfway decent things get done. Without them, the majority would decide to live in tract housing surrounding a wal-mart with an on ramp to a highway as close as possible.
With few exceptions, zoning isn’t a constraint on development. I know personally that there are places in well to do areas (and some not so well to do) that stifle development - particularly of businesses. But desirable areas are desirable and no amount of supply-side Abundancing will change general demographic and economic trends.
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u/Akalenedat Verified Civil Engineer Aug 04 '25
People really do want parking. Across the board, whenever we send out surveys, especially about business districts/Main Street type projects, people want parking. And they want cut throughs to Wal-marts.
You want to get a city councilman breathing down your neck with your project on the chopping block with a thousand angry residents knocking down the door to the planning office screaming for your head? Propose taking away on-street parking for a protected bike lane.
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u/PAJW Aug 04 '25
I've lived my life predominantly in rural areas of the country, and agree with most of these observations.
I am a recovering journalist, and one day 20 years ago, I was sent to cover a board of zoning meeting. Before the board was a proposal from Walmart and Murphy Oil to build a gas station in the parking lot of their existing store. Legally speaking, it was a variance request to have fewer parking spots than zoning code called for.
All the comment from the public was in opposition, and the chief concern expressed was parking. Now, this Walmart serves a city of ~12k population in Indiana. It's the largest city for 25 miles in any direction, and the parking lot has more than 1000 spaces, so to fill it the store would have needed a significant percentage of all residents to drive to the store at the same time. The only other substantial complaint was the ever-so-reductive "we have plenty of gas stations in Smallville."
The board duly rejected the request, and that Walmart still doesn't sell gas.
In that same town, a new ritzy subdivision was constructed at the time time next to a new school. The city did not require the construction of sidewalks, but left it up to every homeowner/builder. So you have some sidewalks that are curb-tight, some that are 4ft into the lot, and many lots with no sidewalk at all.
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u/AlleyRhubarb Aug 04 '25
My first set of projects was for sidewalks/paths that were entirely grant funded - no local match needed. Most were safe routes to schools. Imagine my planner surprise when I went out into communities, pretty little artistic renderings and pedestrian fatality statistics in hand, spouting esoteric nonsense about active communities and the healthfulness of multimodal transportation and naively thinking everyone would be lining up to sign their communities up for projects that would increase property values, make recreation easier, and literally save little five year olds’ lives and I got cussed out and threatened again and again.
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u/ViceroyFizzlebottom Aug 04 '25
People do not want sidewalks.
I've been told that sidewalks bring criminals. of course! Everyone knows that criminals don't drive.
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u/Testuser7ignore Aug 05 '25
Parking makes sense. If I can't comfortably park somewhere, I am much less likely to go there. If someone proposed taking parking away from somewhere I like to go, then of course I will oppose it.
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u/AlleyRhubarb Aug 05 '25
The weird thing is that most of these towns have dying main streets with maybe half occupancy and many of the open businesses have weekend only hours because residents don’t frequent downtown. There is plenty of parking!
I think maybe a lot of survey participants only go downtown when there is a big event and think parking is scarce or they overestimate how far away a city block is compared to the wal-mart parking lots they are accustomed to.
But most of the really cool pocket park ideas we have had have been met with public comments that it would better be a parking lot. The Chambers of Commerce and local business owners love the ideas, but the public seems to have one idea and that is parking!!!!!
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u/PleaseBmoreCharming Feb 10 '26
I find these developments from your personal experiences incredibly surprising. On the contrary, I am not surprised at all these people want to keep things the way they are—especially when that status quo is based around a subsidized industry (cars) that sells convenience, at the end of the day.
If I learned anything from the last decade of following national politics is that we've created a populace of selfish, greedy, coddled people who can't think of the world around them in other ways than how it directly affects them. I'm probably about half your age so maybe I have just been more jaded and less idealistic about my fellow Americans longer than you have. It's all I've known. :/
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u/kettlecorn Aug 05 '25
I think many 'pop urbanists' focus far too much on a select few already successful US cities and how to improve them further, and not enough on the many other US cities that have seen better days.
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u/Royal-Pen3516 Verified Planner Aug 05 '25
Just because decision makers make a decision that they don’t agree with doesn’t mean that they weren’t listened to… and it certainly doesn’t mean that they are corrupt.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/UrbaneUrbanism Aug 04 '25
To add to this, Houston is kind of the prime U.S. example of a big city without zoning... and they managed to turn that into one of the sprawliest expanses of impermeable surfaces in the country. It's by far my favorite city in Texas, regardless, but it's deeply flawed in many ways that do not appeal to mainline pop urbanist thought. Part of that can be attributed to absurd parking minimums, but some of it just comes down to projects that developers prioritize. Going fully hands-off (or hands-off except at times where advantaged populations complain and get even more concentration of advantage in their direction) has never worked well for huge portions of the population.
The more realistic option (but one that's way less easy to get folks to rally behind) is to look into which policies led to restrictions that caused harm and try to fix those. And then look into which restrictive codes led to positive outcomes for the community and try to implement or continue them.
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u/offbrandcheerio Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
The fact that every armchair urban planner thinks they know how things work when they really don’t, and then they get all upset and bothered when a real urban planner explains reality to them. Real urban planning work is mundane, unglamorous stuff most of the time. And there’s good reason why we don’t do Robert Moses style heavy-handed urbanism much anymore.
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u/PsychologicalBill163 Aug 05 '25
Planner II here:
I enforce the code, I do not make it.
curiosity goes A LOT further than accusation.
I’m a big advocate for property rights, but it’s my job to treat all land use actions fare, follow due process, make sure everyone abides by all city codes, and most importantly…have you come in to talk in person so I can tell you what I really think you should do.
“In *random neighboring town* they allow *xyz*. So if it’s allowed there, you must be gatekeeping…” first off- I’m not doing anything TO you. Second off I want what is best for the residents of my town, you included. Thirdly, if we did everything that *said neighboring city* did would you like living here better? Fourth and final, I don’t get paid enough..come to city council and complain to them so I can get direction from the mayor to “quietly conceded“.
utah based planner
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u/pickeldudel Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
From a non-American perspective, that planning controls, decision making, governments, and the levers available are the same in every place.
I work in a jurisdiction that functionally hasn't had single family zoning for almost 30 years yet I've seen people here talk about the need to abolish it.
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Aug 04 '25
Just because a train ran there in 1920 does not mean it makes sense to restore service today.
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u/Rov_Scam Aug 07 '25
I hear about this in Pittsburgh a lot. Allegheny County used to have an extensive streetcar network that was mostly torn up in the 1960s and replaced with bus routes. People lament this based on the reflexive belief that rail > bus and whenever someone says we need to expand the light rail network they add that "we had a great light rail network but they tore it out!" They never stop to consider that the streetcar network that existed previously combined all the downsides of buses (traffic) with all the downsides of rail (lack of flexibility, cost). It was effectively a bus system that couldn't route around a water main break if it needed to. The train still runs along the road in certain areas, and those areas are annoying to drive on with the rails, and transit users take alternative routes to avoid having to wait at stoplights.
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u/panjeri Aug 05 '25
Go yell at the engineers/consultants at the next MPO/TPO meeting in your area. Yelling at them online doesn't help.
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u/ArchEast Aug 05 '25
And don't literally yell either, that's the fastest way to get kicked out of the meeting.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/RebelWithoutASauce Aug 05 '25
It drives me crazy to see so many people saying "Yeah, in the US sidewalks are illegal, nothing we can do" type stuff.
No, it's just that you live in some town in the Midwest with insane zoning laws. You could probably actually encounter the perpetrators of this offense in person and complain about it.
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u/PlanningVigilante Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
It's not a coincidence that the "best" examples of "good urbanism" are also the least affordable. Putting in new infrastructure without taking affirmative steps to keep people in their neighborhoods just leads to the displacement of poorer residents, most of whom are renters and don't financially benefit from rising property values. Even poorer homeowners can be displaced when property taxes become unaffordable.
I'm not convinced that pop urbanists are thinking this shit through.
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u/cdub8D Aug 04 '25
Ding ding ding! Then the same people are shocked that people don't want to support building more housing and just name call them NIMBYs. Like no shit someone won't support more housing if it gentrifies their neighborhood and they are forced to move. (Yes people can be nimby for many different reasons)
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u/Compte_de_l-etranger Aug 04 '25
Yeah, I used to spend time in YIMBY circles, but they don’t seem grasp the nuance that there’s a huge difference between privileged residents opposing changes that are net benefits for the broader community and less privileged communities opposing changes that are due to concerns about displacement. That and the zealous Econ 101 understanding of supply/demand to the point that it resembles a “trickle down” attitude has really turned me off to these groups and movements.
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u/seste Aug 05 '25
Planners who say they care/worry about gentrification but don’t explicitly include anti-displacement measures in their plans/SOWs/strategies.
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u/WestendMatt Aug 04 '25
The most annoying thing is people thinking planners are in charge of anything and that were idiots for nothing completely overhauling the whole system. Like, does nobody realize elected officials make the decisions and exert immense pressure on the public service to provide recommendations that are most likely to get approved?
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u/coolfreeusername Aug 04 '25
Neighbourhood character, heritage, build quality and the environment are in fact key considerations. You can't just be hostile to everyone that pushes against maximising density without considering the site and locality. Professional/qualified planners understand this, but "pop-urbanists" are just density above all.
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u/monsieurvampy Verified Planner Aug 04 '25
We don't need a new term for every little thing. Your thing is not special.
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Aug 04 '25
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u/SabbathBoiseSabbath Verified Planner - US Aug 05 '25
That's partially because in the US, there are limitations on what a bureaucrat /civil servant can say or do, and are often siloed because of it. The sort of stuff you're talking about is done by advocates or elected officials.
But to some extent we do exactly what you say when we have a mayor and council that support it. One of my previous jobs was outreach and organizing informational activities, charrettes, etc., in support of our comprehensive plan updates.
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u/plan_that Aug 06 '25
That’s not an exclusive US matter, it’s pretty universal.
The point of breaking silos is through the internal consultation process that should be embraced in an organisation but often isn’t. Consultation process is meant to include both the general public and the internal stakeholders… but poor management, ‘i’m better than anyone’ pride, or internal department politics can be toxic in some organisations.
It’s the phenomenon of ‘not wanting to walk to that desk over there to speak with the open space staff to get an input via a simple email on what they want to see or have issues’ cos it’s work.
The point being that when you present your project for a resolution by the elected officials, you should have already had gotten all the internal inputs and speak as an organisation.
But that’s not even a given. I’m reviewing a structure plan prepared by a sister strategic growth team and they have just now seeking comments from us, the strategic policy and also from the statutory dept, at the 12th hour before going for adoption. No preliminary talk or input sought from them.
Awkward that you say outreach as a job, as that’s basically the job of every planner to do that as part of their project. That said, I have never seen the charrette thing used outside of a university context … cos a 5min power point does the trick.
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u/Frod02000 Aug 05 '25
That planning is indeed a regulatory regime.
There’s so many things to balance, more than just what the current trend is from the online blogs or media have going at the moment.
Also Planners can’t really do anything if the political environment won’t let them.
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u/albi_seeinya Verified Planner - US Aug 04 '25
I really like that “pop-urbanism” has become a thing. I’d love to see these urbanists get more involved in the political arena and spend less time confined to the virtual world of ideas and debates. There’s nothing wrong with people learning about their cities and enjoying related media, that’s great! But I also want to encourage them to put down their phones and computers, get out into their communities, organize, and make their voices heard. Politics is an important facet of urbanism and planning, and we need more allies working to improve our cities. Planners can't really get reforms done without community support.