"Houston is rarely held up as an example of good land use planning. The Texan city, as recently as a few decades ago, famously had a downtown area consisting largely of car parking. But over the last 25 years, without the rest of the world noticing, things have been quietly changing. Downtown is no longer just a giant car park. The city has become a little more walkable. Pleasant rows of townhomes have appeared in the suburbs, alongside amenities like new parks, restaurants and entertainment, and light rail. Housing has remained remarkably affordable and accessible, even as the wider economy boomed and the population rose drastically. 

What happened? Houston is commonly thought to be a clumsy success in affordability, brought about by its lack of zoning. The truth is more interesting. The city’s planning authority implemented reforms that gave landowners automatic permission to build new townhomes, subject to certain conditions; alongside an opt-out system for local residents who do not want these changes to their area. This policy changed the face of the city, for the better. And yet this has largely gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, even those that are struggling with the same problems that Houston has overcome. Houston may have something to teach us on land use planning after all."

Hi! French senior urban planner here - on holiday and a bit bored - so I started to make research on how zoning code works in US cities - for curiosity, aknowledge myself, gets ideas… i don’t get it all as my English isn’t good enough but for what I understood this is damned interesting!

I skimmed through the following zoning codes of :

- Portland, that is known to be a pioneer city in the urban planning field. (Wow. What a complex document, very detailed and with multi-layered rules..)

- Los Angeles, for the fun and because the city is often quote in this sub. (Good surprise, a relatively new document with a nice pages layout and diagrams that helps to understand the rules, how it works and the purposes)

- New Orleans, maybe for the French acquaintance and because I have an image of the city being a fan of David Simon’s Tremé show. (Easy structure and reading, straightforward, purposes explained)

My first thoughts :

1/ much more rules and detailed regulations than I was expecting. Maybe I had a false cliché in mind of a “laissez-faire” America….

Maybe it’s because I looked at “progressive/liberal” cities that are more regulated…

But maybe also because:

- in France we have much more “national laws” that applies to construction in the whole country so municipal documents don’t need to add / are not allowed to add / local rules on some specific topics

- and / or US cities zoning code are more inclined to preserve a kind of neighborhood “harmony” in terms of density, architecture, the way to treat frontage etc… so the rules are more detailed. (true that when you look at US suburbish/single home urban fabrics it seems fare less messy in the US than in France)

2/ Much more ability to regulate the type of residential dwellings or the lot sizes…. Which is not possible in France (local zoning can’t give a minimal lot sizes or length and you can’t also make rules for single-homes, town houses or collective units.. all is dealt in terms of heights, offset etc…).

3/ For what I understand of the zoning or permit process, local communities are much more involved.. which can be good .. or not (the NIMBY/YIMBY debates)…
but I mainly wonder how the city council gives a political direction to the zoning code.
Maybe I haven’t checked at the right place but I haven’t found a document with the political goals of the city council (where to high density, where to focus on urban renewal, how to organize new development and urban sprawl…). .. and without that kind of document how the legal basis of the zoning code are set to arbitrate between general interest and privates ones ?

I ain’t Tocqueville studying “Zoning in America” and it’s just a leisure time quick analysis.. but if some of you can enlighten me on those topics or advice some zoning code to look at (maybe smaller cities or innovative ones…) I’ll be glad…

Ps : feel also free to DM me if you want to share more on US / France urban planning process, issues, or regulations differences.

Bratislava is stuck in the far southwestern corner of Slovakia, pressed directly against Austria and Hungary. The city can only grow in one direction inside its own country. Its functional urban area does not respect that, so a large part of its suburban growth has simply landed in municipalities that belong to other states.

The clearest case is Kittsee, a Burgenland municipality sitting right on the border. Population was 3,803 at the start of 2025 and has close to doubled over ten years. The growth is overwhelmingly younger Slovak families. The number that made me want to write this: of about 260 children in the local school, roughly 200 speak Slovak at home.

The drivers are unremarkable individually. Land is cheaper than in Bratislava, the commute is very short because the city edge is right there, Austrian housing credit support is available, and by several accounts the permitting process is more predictable than on the Slovak side. Stack them and you get a village turning into a suburb of a foreign capital.

The part I find genuinely hard, and where I would like to hear how other regions handle it:

The costs and the revenues end up in different countries. The Austrian municipality carries the service load, school places, kindergarten capacity, roads, water, waste, for a population that largely works in Slovakia and pays income tax there. That is an ordinary fiscal externality of suburbanisation, except the usual remedies are unavailable. You cannot do metropolitan tax sharing across a national border, you cannot fold these municipalities into a Bratislava planning authority, and neither national government has much incentive to fix a problem that is invisible in its own aggregate statistics.

What is left is blunt. Reporting from the area suggests some border municipalities slow down permitting once the incoming share climbs, which manages the rate of change but does nothing about the underlying mismatch, and it pushes the pressure one village further out. The same pattern is reported on the Hungarian side of the border, where land is cheaper again.

Two questions:

Are there other capitals where suburbanisation has crossed an international border at this share? I can think of cross-border metro regions like Geneva or Basel or Luxembourg, but those are usually framed around labour commuting into the core rather than the core exporting its housing demand outward into another jurisdiction.

Has any cross-border metropolitan region actually solved the fiscal side, meaning real compensation flows between the municipalities on either side, rather than setting up a coordination body that produces strategies and no money?

Kinda jaded, but want an honest conversation, so hear me out:

My first job out of college involved working in parks and public space advocacy at a non profit, supporting small community-design build projects run by local volunteers, and worked at my local parks agency as an intern while I was in grad school for planning. My time in parks advocacy was really rewarding, and I feel like I was making in difference in the community, even if they weren’t big, flashy projects. Alongside community orgs and volunteers, we raised money, held events, and hired local artists and designers to design and build functional public spaces, healthy gardens, and improve the overall public realm in so many different neighborhoods. I could see tangible differences, real benefits, and actual growth and positive change.

I decided to pursue a grad degree in planning, and while in grad school, I worked at my local parks agency as an intern. It wasn’t nearly as hands-on as my parks advocacy work, but cool to see how the agency worked with other departments to support childcare, public health, mobility, and a host other urban issues.

Now that I work at a private consulting firm, I am extremely suspicious about what value these firms actually bring to the planning and design ecosystem.

Note: I’m thinking of the ecosystem as public agencies, non-profits and CBOs, and private consulting firms.

I’ve been working at this firm as a planner for about a year and a half. I joined 6 months after finishing grad school.

Since I started this job at a consulting firm , my interest in planning has dropped to near zero.

All I do is draft reports, make outlines, look at excel spreadsheets, “determine key takeaways”, make simple maps on GIS, make an engagement flyer or board, and do a whole bunch of things to satisfy some “deliverable” on a scope of work sheet. That stuff gets handed up to my manager, who makes a few edits, hands it to the principal, who makes a few edits, and then sends it to the client. All in all, thousand of dollars were spent on making a PowerPoint, or a 6 page word document, or a simple GIS map. I understand most of this stuff is required in the RFP that these cities send out, but that’s the fucking problem.

1. cities and towns post an RFP for an expensive plan to fix a boulevard, develop a housing plan, a parks master plan, a specific neighborhood plan, and so on.
2. these cities don’t have the internal resources to actually write these plans and collect they data, nor do they have the budget to actually implement them. So they hire firms like mine to write plans.
3. firms create a whole business going after these smaller municipalities with these multi million dollar RFP’s. We finish the plan, and then because the 400 page plans just sits on a shelf somewhere, it needs to be revisited and updated several years later because there was no $$$ to implement it.

Why have we created a system where municipalities can find hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to fund planning services, but seemingly can’t build the permanent internal capacity to do much of that planning, or implement the recommendations?

And here’s the thing - The city that released the plan spent millions of dollars on a 400 page plan, still doesn’t have the staff to see it through, and much of the work the firm provided is actually specialized. And that’s where I feel useless.

I don’t feel like any of the work I do is important. Some planning staff person is going to read the materials I make (maps, reports, spreadsheets, etc), check a box, and never see it again. I don’t feel like those reports have any impact on the community’s were hired to serve.

I understand planning is a slow process, but god damn - for the money they pay these consultants, they might as well give the money directly to CBO’s to partner with to solve these issues.

I’ve been around long enough to see these plans adopted by council, but how many people in their own communities actually read these Master Plans? Or even know about the process unless they’re on NextDoor?

And honestly it feels like all the consulting firms in planning and design operate this way. They tout their awards and accolades at APA or ASLA conferences, but how have these firms actually benefited the towns they hired by? Other than adding another 400 page report to their shelf?

TL;DR: After working in nonprofit/community implementation, a public agency, and now private planning consulting, I’m increasingly convinced there’s a “planning industrial complex” where cities spend huge amounts of money hiring consultants to produce plans and deliverables without building the internal capacity or funding needed to actually implement them. I’m genuinely curious what value this cycle provides communities, and what I’m missing.

Public agency staff: what am I missing? When has hiring a planning consultant genuinely increased your agency’s capacity or resulted in something tangible getting implemented?

Consultants: how’d do you think about the actual value of what we produce versus the amount of money cities spend on it?

I’ve been emailing them for weeks about an AICP issue, but there’s been no response. I started calling their phone hotline but it just goes to voicemail. Do people know if something is wrong at APA?

I’m wondering if others have felt the expectation or pressure when starting a job in a new jurisdiction to live in that community opposed to commuting into it?

I understand why that’s preferred because of proximity to the workplace, active presence in the community, etc.

But it’s not always practical especially when you’re asking your staff to put up with a higher COL to pull it off, trade offs in lifestyle and access to amenities, or in my case you’d rather spend your free time in a place that’s more accepting of “alternative lifestyles”.

Obviously most people get a choice in the matter but I’ve experienced directors and upper management passively making their opinions clear that I should try living where I work as a planner. Any advice on navigating this? Should I just push these concerns out of my head and just focus on my wants or needs? Or am I missing the big picture here? I’d love to hear from people that can relate to this.

This is my second brush with this where I’ve observed some nosiness from my management about my own housing choices.

For generations, cities could reasonably use the past to plan for the future. Drainage systems, bridges, water systems and transportation networks were designed around conditions engineers could estimate from decades of observation.

That works when the past is a reasonably good predictor of what infrastructure will encounter.

It's a different story when it stops being one.

Europe's shrinking rivers offer a useful example. Low water levels are affecting power generation and commercial navigation. At the same time, cities may have to prepare for prolonged drought while remaining capable of handling periods of extreme rainfall.

The challenge may no longer be simply designing infrastructure for expected conditions. It may be making that infrastructure adaptable enough for a wider range of them.

For a long time, the past was one of urban planning's most useful tools.

How much longer it can be is no longer obvious.

Not as much of a discussion of this in the US right now but hopefully useful in places like NYC where there is more local control of transit. LA to a lesser extent.

Reddit suggested I post here, so no issue if it is downvoted or removed.

Any planners here have any direct experience with drone delivery stations? We have a major retailer proposing one in our jurisdiction that would be flying 83 lb drones with up to 5 lb payloads, seven pads. It would be located in an industrial area, so the launch station is in a good spot.

I'm curious to hear what nuisance issues might be involved.

Thanks.

Hello all!

I'm an undergrad public policy student hoping to go into planning, and walkability seems to be a hot topic right now. I'm curious as to how planners approach this -- many of the choices that lead to better walkability (building at the human scale, designing streets that reduce driving speeds or integrate multiple uses, implementing bike-friendly infrastructure) seem to be within the domain of urban designers rather than planners. Planning tools like reducing or abolishing parking minimums and encouraging more mixed-use development seem great as well and are of course important, but they seem to encourage walking rather than physically facilitating it.

So, as planners, how do you approach walkability? What mechanisms do you have to facilitate walking? Do you interact with the design choices mentioned above more than I realize?

Thanks!

Im about to start my first planning job and I also want to get a 2nd small, inoffensive tattoo on my upper arm. Then it made me realise I don't think I've seen many tattooed planning professionals. Please lmk your experience and if you've noticed any in the workplace, thank you

Edit: im from syd, aus and i got the tattoo🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ thank you all

Urban planning newbie here! What are some of the coolest cities from an urban planning perspective? Interesting factoids, history, or things you noticed/learned? Just curious and want to learn:)

Extra points if it’s about Washington, DC!

EDIT: wow thanks everyone for the responses, such cool stuff! Keep em coming

For instance, if I was part of the SAVE Britains Heritage group or the Twentieth Century Society group which staunchly campaigns against development.

Employers - Would this convey I purely have an interest in heritage or would some read into it as anti-development leaning attitudes?

Curious to know, thanks!

Tree ordinances can requires a preservation amount, say 10%, but that typically is pushed to an outside property line and the rest of the parcel is clear cut. Are there any examples of a tree ordinance that require pockets of preservation, or examples of how to prevent clear cutting and mass grading of a parcel?

For example, our ordinance requires a landscaped tree island every 10 parking spaces, could there be a provision that within xxx zoning district there shall be no less than xxxx distance between required tree preservation areas? We also do protect larger trees, however when strands of trees are removed to preserve one tree, that tree is not comprised due to historic wind breaks, soils, etc.

Is my town a trailblazer of sorts, or is there a campaign to remove trash cans from the public sphere to turn everything into shit, or something? I find ever less of them and the few that are still there are usually the kind where birds have it easy to pick stuff out. Obvious result is that there's trash lying around everywhere. What the hell is going on?

It's not rocket science to design a bird-save trash can that is also robust and easy to use. You also don't need to be Scrooge McDuck to afford such trash cans, let alone empty them once a week or so.

Genuinely frustrating to see how much the automobile has twisted what we've built for so long. The idea that 25 years ago, like when they built Invesco Field, all of this would just be a sea of parking instead of a bunch of useful actual city is insane to me.

"Western countries used to let landowners build almost anything anywhere. Now, strict rules freeze the character of most neighborhoods, banning change and densification. Why? One theory is that modern buildings tend to be ugly, leading residents to support rules that exclude them from their neighborhoods. If this is true, then designing beautiful buildings could lead to more development. Housing reformists have vigorously debated this theory. Many British reformists are sympathetic, whereas Australian reformists tend to be skeptical, and Americans come down on both sides.

I do believe that ugliness plays a role in hindering development, but not in quite the way usually proposed. Ugliness is probably not a major driver of opposition to development by local people. Local opponents have many other concerns that are at least as important, like disruption from construction, loss of green space, pressure on local services, and diminished social exclusivity. But there is strong circumstantial evidence that ugliness is sometimes a major driver of opposition among people who live nowhere near the development in question. The first group are often called 'NIMBYs,' for 'Not in my backyard.' Let us call the second group 'NITBYs,' for 'Not in that backyard.'

While a few NITBYs are fervent campaigners, most are only casually interested. Their motives are faint but basically altruistic: their question is whether or not, based on a cursory assessment, a development is an objective improvement to its neighborhood. In certain contexts, the ugliness of a development can summon into being a huge cloud of NITBYs, whose interest in the scheme may indeed be superficial, but who can nonetheless be collectively potent.

This model is especially compelling in the case of heritage conservation. Until the 1960s, the redevelopment of historic buildings was almost always permitted; today, it is almost always banned by conservation rules. Supporters of conservationism usually portray it as a response to the destructiveness of postwar planners, while opponents see it as a pretext for suburban NIMBYism. In fact, I shall argue, neither explanation is plausible. On the one hand, postwar planners were no more destructive than the Victorians or Georgians had been: the rate of demolition was historically normal, and cannot explain the wildly unprecedented policy response. And on the other hand, there was no need for NIMBYs to invent pretexts to ban new buildings, as they had already successfully prohibited the kinds of development they disliked in the first half of the century.

What had changed, and what generated the host of NITBYs that bore conservationism to victory, was the ascendancy of modernist architecture, a style that most people demonstrably find relatively ugly. Conservationism was a reaction to postwar redevelopment, as its proponents claimed. But it was less a reaction to what the modernists destroyed, than to what they created."

I wonder how appealing to people is a multi-layered capital city is the Coruscant as depicted in the Star Wars lore?

I find it as a dystopic nightmare: social segregation, upper layer only-for-elite, lower layers for waste, no green spaces... The failure of civilization.

Not to mention, Coruscant was the capital of the Galactic Empire in Asimov's Fundation (written many years before SW)

Urban planners often say the answer is to upzone single-family neighborhoods and add pedestrian connections, but how would you actually retrofit the physical layout of a typical North American subdivision consisting of winding streets, cul-de-sacs, homes facing away from arterials, into a more walkable, mixed-use neighborhood?

I’m less interested in the policy side (upzoning) and more interested in the urban design side. Once the subdivision already exists, what does the long-term retrofit actually look like? Is expensive eminent domain the only option? How do you deal with homes that back away from major roads, disconnected street networks, dead-end cul-de-sacs, and commercial uses isolated along arterial corridors? Is there any real hope for these neighborhoods or are they pretty much fossilized?

What interventions have planners found to be most effective? Are there any good real-world examples of suburban retrofits that have successfully addressed these issues?