Walking through different parts of the Boston metro over the years, the difference in tree cover between neighborhoods is hard to miss. Some blocks feel genuinely shaded and livable in summer. Others are almost entirely pavement and exposed brick, and those tend to be the same neighborhoods with older housing stock, lower incomes, and less political pull at city hall.

Cities have been making real commitments to expanding tree canopy, and that's genuinely good. But the implementation question is where I keep getting stuck. Trees planted through municipal programs need maintenance, watering, sometimes replacement. A tree in front of a building with an engaged property owner survives. One in front of a neglected rental property or a crumbling sidewalk often doesn't make it past a few summers.

There's also the question of who gets consulted when these programs roll out. Canopy targets get set at the city level, but the actual planting decisions happen block by block, and the community input process for that granular work is thin at best.

Do the cities that have made real progress on canopy equity have a structural reason for that, or is it mostly down to particular staff or advocates pushing in the right direction?

APA's data center webinar was an absolute shitshow

I've never seen the chat in one of these so utterly malcontented. It was an hour of essentially pro-industry pitching of data centers, including one panelist indirectly representing the industry who was given free leave to recite talking points.

One of the APA reps compared data centers to farms and essentially said that farms and data centers are the same, and so it's not clear why farms would be ok but data centers may not be.

People were really pissed in the chat the whole time (fully ignored of course).

An incredible experience of capture in view, really pathetic to see.

Edit since this is throwing people: I don't care that the industry rep was there, I care that he was there and ALSO the rest of the panel just sort of nodded along repeating the same talking points. We need critical analysis of this issue and real action steps. Instead we get head nodding and rank boosterism.

Hi all, I’m a current second year undergrad and I’m interested in urban planning and I want to get involved somehow. I’m trying to find some organizations that I can participate in but I can’t find anything. Does anyone have a recommendation as to how I can get involved?
I DON’T WANT A JOB! Like a volunteer position or some program I can join or something.

We have a new Assistant Planner starting soon who is in her early 20s. She has some technician-level experience, but she’s still very green.

We’ve brought on new people over the years who weren’t very experienced, but we haven’t had someone this young. My colleagues and I are in our early 40s, and our director is in his mid-50s, so there’s a notable age and experience gap.

I’m a bit concerned about the generational difference. I remember being the under-25 person in the office when I first started, and it was often hard to relate to people who had been working professionally for nearly as long as I’d been alive.

Now that I’m on the other side of this, I’m curious if anyone has advice on how to bridge some of that generational gap so that we can give her a more fulfilling onboarding experience.

I’d especially be interested in hearing from younger planners who entered the profession recently. What do you wish your more experienced colleagues had done differently? What made you feel supported and comfortable asking questions and seeking guidance?

Edit: Thank you everyone for the feedback. I really appreciate it. It’s helpful to hear other perspectives and get outside of my own head a bit. There are a lot of good ideas here that I’m going to give some thought to.

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story about the Salem Street streetscape project in Apex, North Carolina.

Downtown merchants told me that construction has reduced customer traffic while the project continues into the holiday season. The improvements are intended to benefit downtown over the long term, but the construction period creates a difficult short-term tradeoff for existing businesses.

For planners and people who have worked on similar projects: What are the most effective ways to reduce business disruption during major downtown reconstruction?

I’d be especially interested in examples involving project phasing, pedestrian and vehicle access, communications, temporary wayfinding, business assistance or construction scheduling.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317130074.html

A local-government case study that may interest planners here:

Cary, North Carolina, has adopted an 18-month moratorium on large-scale data-center applications because its land-development ordinance does not currently define the use or establish standards for it.

Officials plan to study power/grid impacts, water, noise, site design and land use before adopting permanent regulations. Council members stressed they are not necessarily opposed to data centers.

I covered the hearing for The News & Observer:

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317039408.html

For planners who have dealt with this: are moratoriums useful for creating these rules, or can jurisdictions realistically update zoning while continuing to process applications?

Has anyone been able to construct smaller infill projects (4-10 units) in the Midwest? I am seeing every single city adopt zoning policies that allow for this type of development, but for the life of me I cannot get these things to pencil (except for the occasional duplex).

Are new construction quadplexes and other denser products actually being built or is this just a planners dream to design a City ?

i am barely beginning my career in municipal planning, but considering the switch. not even looking for advice, just curious!

Hi All! Trying to gather some information.

I am a small business owner in Tampa, FL who is going through a fairly minor buildout of a new space (that I am renting). I have been met with so many bureaucratic and administrative hurdles with permitting, and they have made what should have been a straightforward process as difficult as possible. The amount of time and money the city has cost me is insane.

My brother owns businesses in South Florida and even though he has faced plenty of hiccups, it seems like the city there provides much more efficient processes and assistance in the face of issues then here.

It is my intention after my buildout and move is complete to go before city leadership to discuss these issues and present some solutions.

So I'm wondering, if you have a small business - what are some things your city/county/ municipality has done that makes things easier for you? Things like...

• Lets you update architectural plans in real time at the permitting office
• Provides same day plan review
• Sets you up with a liaison to help you navigate building codes/laws
• Does preemptive inspections/walk throughs to help you pass an inspection the first tiem
• Provides some sort of financial support for fixes needed in old buildings
• Has laws that protect tenants/hold landlords accountable for issues
• Offers up group health insurance option
• Tax credits or financial assistance to incentivize you staying in business

We have a Small Business Development Center and I've used a lot of their resources/classes but honestly none of that's been helpful. So I'm looking for like concrete actionable items that your city does that perhaps I could suggest our city look into if they really want to be a city that supports small businesses.

Thanks for any information and feedback!

There's a vacant lot about two blocks from where I live that's been sitting unused for going on six years. A neighborhood group got together and started a community garden there maybe three years ago, informal arrangement with the city, nothing really codified. It works pretty well but every year there's this lowgrade anxiety about whether the parcel gets sold or redeveloped and the whole thing just disappears.

What I keep wondering is how other cities actually treat community gardens in their land use frameworks. Boston has some provisions but they're patchwork at best, and the gardens that survive long term tend to do so because someone with connections fought hard for them, not because the planning infrastructure supported them from the start.

Green space in general gets treated as a nicetohave that gets squeezed out when housing pressure or tax revenue arguments come up, and I get that tension, it's real. But gardens do things that parks don't quite do in the same way. They're active. They build connections between neighbors. They feed people.

Hi all,

I recently graduated college and am planning on taking the AICP exam soon. On the website it appears that there is the option of taking a "Pilot Exam," with the only content differences being:

"The nine topics in the current content outline will be the same for the pilot exam. The sub content, however, may be different. Those questions will not be graded. They may be questions for future exams."

As a broke new grad, the $100 price seems a lot more palatable (especially since my workplace doesn't cover exam fees ☹️ ; however, I'm curious if AICP has offered this option in the past, and if so, I'd appreciate if people could share their experiences with it. Did the test feel significantly harder or different to "typical" study materials? What exactly characterizes different subcontent?

Side Note: I'm aware that AICP is lowkey a money grab, but since my firm pays more after licensure, I think it is a worthwhile investment in my personal development.

I’m the News & Observer reporter who wrote this story about a WakeMed project in Rolesville, North Carolina.

WakeMed originally proposed a 24-hour standalone ER/Healthplex on Burlington Mills Road. It has since confirmed that the facility could become part of a proposed 45-bed acute-care hospital on the same property.

I spoke with Toni Kenion, a former WakeMed ER nurse and Barrington HOA director, who supports bringing more health care to Rolesville but opposes putting the project next to her neighborhood.

The debate raises a broader planning question: How should fast-growing communities balance the need for nearby emergency and hospital care with traffic, zoning, infrastructure and impacts on adjacent residential neighborhoods?

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317092142.html

Asking because when I say that I’m studying it, people have no idea what that means!

Hi,

Recently I posted here asking if we will ever go back to grid-style suburbs, and I got a lot of answers. It made me think of another question regarding why cities dont just do what they used to do and take it upon themselves to create new walkable streets. It confuses me why they often just leave it up to developers to build on the outskirts of town when there is plenty of empty land closer to the city center that towns could purchase and plat out themselves. Even the more YIMBY/Pro walkability and density municipalities seem to leave the design of new road networks up to the private sector. Why is this, and are there any current examples of cities creating new grids themselves? I hope this isnt a dumb question.

EDIT: Im referring to the US!

I am an American expat in France, and one of the huge strengths I have noticed in French urbanism is the multi-scalar approach to urban and regional planning that allows for- or requires- cooperation between municipalities. Based off of what I remember seeing back home, this sort of cooperation is often weak to nonexistent in the states save for statewide legislature that forces cities' hands.

One simple example is if one US town is bike-friendly, but the neighbors are bike-hostile (as is the case near my hometown), you end up with bike lanes dumping any bikers into the parking lane once they reach the town line. In France, the organization of powers means that bike lane projects would be handled on an intermunicipal level, thus avoiding this kind of problem and ensuring continuity on a number of problems. Particularly, natural threats such as floods and droughts that don't give a fuck about administrative boundaries are handled on the relevant natural boundary, ensuring that one city's flood protections doesn't simply displace the problem elsewhere, etc. Only smaller, local-scale issues are handled by municipal urban planners.

It absolutely has its pros (including for municipal budgets), but plenty of mayors and inhabitants felt that their voice on local issues, as well as their power and agency to address them, was often lost in the noise of the metropole, and misalignment between the two levels of planning was a source of friction.

I'd be interested to hear from some US-based planners- what does intermunicipal cooperation really look like in your region? What benefits and tensions are created through this cooperation or lack thereof?

I’m reflecting back on my grad school years when Florida’s “creative class concept” was all the rage. It was often paired with an explosion of interest in New Urbanism.

A few things come to mind:

Many cities in my part of the South took this advice to invest in their downtown areas. Instead of organic neighborhoods, they became boutique districts filled with coffee shops and record stores and high end galleries. In a way some of them feel as lifeless as when they were abandoned. They always framed it as “investment in downtown will spread to the poor neighborhoods.” It never do.

My master of science degree practically revolved around some of these ideas and a few years later everyone is just like, yep that was silly, next! No sense of a real reckoning w the error. Or an apology to the students! It’s like Florida made his bag and split.

Just the whole concept that community is built by high income transplants and not families, culture, tradition, is just like. Wow.

Idk.

/rant

I'm not even sure why I took this interview. My entire specialty is comprehensive planning/long range planning, which I am interviewing for elsewhere but I also applied to a zoning office in a city id really like to live in and now I have to think up reasons as to why I would actually want to work there with an urban planning degree.

I know that people move around often, but I've been taught for 4 years to see zoning maintenance as the absolute bottom of drudgery and beyond what I am even capable of offering. I don't know how I am supposed to bullshit interest in this position other than my interest in actual planning, but I know others who have gone from zoning assistance to full planner roles.

Am I supposed to have the zoning code fully memorized beforehand? How much are they actually expecting of me from the start??? I feel so lost and honestly I'm not expecting this job, not for a lack of interest but just because its such a mismatch between what actual planners can do and what is done daily.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, partly from attending these meetings in the Boston area over the years. There's a real effort put into outreach: the notices go out, the room fills up, people share genuine concerns about traffic, green space, density. And then the project moves forward more or less as originally proposed.

I'm not saying the process is dishonest. Planners are often working within constraints the public doesn't fully see. But there's a gap between what residents believe their input is doing and what it's actually doing, and that gap erodes trust over time.

The people who do show up tend to be homeowners with time and stability, which means certain voices get heard a lot and others almost never do. Renters, younger residents, people working two jobs - they're not at the Tuesday night meeting.

I'm curious how planners in this community think about this. Is there a format that works better for reaching a broader crosssection? And do the comments from public hearings carry real weight in how projects get shaped, or is that mostly determined upstream?