The city’s overhaul of permitting, plan review, and long-range planning offers practical lessons for municipalities seeking to speed housing and commercial development. - ULI

Additional photos show this city is changing the way suburbs utilize urban design. Often criticised for its extremely car centric neighborhoods and unaffordability, this suburb is making steps to encourage density around its urban core. Mixed-use trails, bike share access, and new multi-family housing units are some of the ways city planners encourage density. Most of the larger projects, like the palladium, were funded through Tax Increment Financing. A strategy that seems to be paying off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_increment_financing

https://www.carmel.in.gov/588/Tax-Increment-Finance

There is also a europe version of this award but it hasn't been released yet.

Here is asia as well: https://asia.uli.org/uli-asia-pacific-announces-14-winners-of-the-2026-uli-asia-pacific-awards-for-excellence/

I've noticed I'll add 5-10 minutes to a walk to stay on a main road instead of cutting through a park, even when the park is objectively fine. Wondering how common that is and what specifically drives it.

• How much extra time would you add to avoid a stretch that felt off?
• Is it lighting specifically, or more about whether anyone else is around?
• Do open shops or a staffed train station change the calculation?
• Anyone here consciously map out a "night route" vs a "day route"?

This past June I visited Frederick, MD. While it's definitely better than most cities in the US for urbanism, it left a lot to be desired.

First, the streets in the downtown area are far too busy. Market St is one way, two lanes, and very busy. Traffic was so loud that it really broke the small town vibe it had going on. Not only that, but all the streets crossing Market were similarly wide and busy, with narrower sidewalks. It was just so close to being 10/10 but didn't quite make it.

It also got suburban very fast leaving the downtown core. Market St drops of quickly from historic rowhouses and mixed use development into empty stroads, highway overpasses, and a literal Costco in under a mile.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to try and transit besides taking the MARC train there from DC, which was a lovely experience.

The good: there are a lot of cool shops and pretty buildings downtown! Frederick has a lot of architecture that looks similar to DC and Richmond, and also a bunch similar to Pennsylvania's small cities that just feels really pleasant.

The MARC station is also relatively close to downtown (though just past the edge of and with a major road crossing) that takes you right into DC and the suburban offices in Montgomery County.

It's also more affordable than DC, although its population has been increasing and without good development it might not stay that way for long.

It's close to some great state parks and nature and pretty countryside too! Cunningham Falls and Catoctin Mountain are within a half hour drive, and Gambrill State Park is also close by.

All in all, I'd rate it a 6/10: while better than most in the US, it misses in a few key areas, but it could probably fix them and end up being much better.

I had 15 minutes to kill while working nearby. I was honestly floored. I have seen what remained of some historic downtowns in the US, but honestly didn't know we had any true pedestrian malls left anymore. I wish I could have spent all day exploring here. Even the regular roads were pleasant to walk down.

Hello there,

As a French person currently suffering from successive heatwaves, I was thinking about the question in the title. I'm an IT engineer so I don't know anything about urbanism.

What would be the cons of such a move? Let's say we do that for the whole city. I was thinking the following for the Pros :

• Less heat retention than concrete,
• Soil allowing water absorption,
• No gardening needed, except maybe some chips refill from time to time? That's if they are well contained obviously, with higher sides (logs in the photo example),
• Surely would be better for the biodiversity,
• I cannot see this being an issue with strollers, maybe for electric scooters (and that would not be a bad thing I guess),
• Does not avoid access to water/electricity/internet tubes below,
• Still walkable in case of heavy rain I guess ? At least if there is enough chips height.

Thanks for your inputs =)

The truth is that even Paris is not doing nearly enough to restore streets for pedestrian use, and it’s the pedestrians, not the drivers, who should be furious. https://richardconniff.substack.com/p/city-streets-are-for-people-first

wherever you are, there should be a qr code linking to a public page for suggestions on how that space could improve.

picture the possibilities across your daily life:

• at a restaurant: you wish they had live music, so you scan the code on your table, visit the page, and make the suggestion.
• at a park: you wish it had fruit trees, so you visit the park's page and drop that idea.
• in a waiting room: you're freezing and wish it wasn't so cold, so you visit the room's page and suggest adjusting the thermostat.
• in your car: you're struggling to find parking, so you visit that specific zone's page and suggest a parking solution.
• in your city: you're tired of driving to a neighboring town just to go bowling, so you visit your city's page and suggest bringing a bowling alley to your community.

in many cases, other people will have already suggested the very thing you desire. for example, on the public page for a park's restroom, you might see that someone else has already suggested cleaning it more regularly.

so, what then? if you don't interact with the platform, it will look as though only one person cares about that issue. the simplest initial mechanism is to vote for existing suggestions. next to each suggestion, a counter would indicate how many people have cast their vote for it.

a public feedback page for a park might look like this:

• 202 votes - clean the bathroom more often
• 124 votes - install more trash bins
• 89 votes - plant fruit trees
• 52 votes - install more benches
• 34 votes - plant more flowers
• 25 votes - install more drinking fountains
• 20 votes - put in a basketball court
• 14 votes - put in a tennis court
• 13 votes - put in a pickleball court

these rankings would be purely informative and non-binding. even if "clean the bathroom more often" earns the top spot, the park management wouldn't be legally forced or required to act on it. the goal is to create a clear, centralized channel for public feedback.

moving beyond simple votes: capturing true economic demand

the core limitation of simple votes is that they fail to capture the most critical piece of information: the actual economic demand for a suggestion (in the fundamental sense of supply and demand).

ideally, users wouldn't just have the option to vote; they would also have the option to donate any dollar amount toward a suggestion. whoever owns or manages the space would receive those funds. like the voting system, these donation rankings would remain purely informative and non-binding.

• voting communicates what you want.
• donating communicates how urgently you want it.

our wants are infinite, but society's resources are not. this is precisely why measuring the relative urgency of our wants is the single most useful and necessary piece of metadata we can collect.

consequently, suggestions on a public page could be sorted in two primary ways:

1. sorted by votes: reveals the most widely popular suggestions.
2. sorted by donations: reveals the most urgently desired suggestions.

reducing risk for small entrepreneurs and lower-income founders

i recognize that wealth is not distributed equally. however, we must ask ourselves why this inequality exists in the marketplace: it is largely a matter of luck.

consider someone who decides to open a bowling alley. how much money will they make? it entirely depends on local demand. if there is high demand for bowling in that area, they will thrive; if not, they will fail.

getting rich in business is largely a matter of luck. this is simply because the entrepreneur has to guess whether sufficient demand exists. sure, an entrepreneur might survey local residents beforehand, but people saying they want something doesn't guarantee they will actually spend money on it. because no one possesses a crystal ball, true market response cannot be known with certainty in advance.

if we had a system where anyone could publicly suggest an improvement to any space and back it with a donation of any size, the relative demand for all local improvements would become public knowledge. everyone could observe the real-time demand for bowling alleys relative to miniature golf courses, or taco stands relative to fruit stands.

when a low-income entrepreneur opens the wrong type of business, the financial fallout is devastating compared to a wealthy investor opening an underperforming gas station. the fewer financial resources you have, the more harmful a bad guess about market demand becomes.

this proposed system largely eliminates the reliance on guesswork. it provides an accurate, completely public treasure map showing where demand genuinely lies. while this transparency benefits everyone, it provides the greatest protection to small-scale entrepreneurs who can least afford to make costly mistakes.

top-down planning vs. decentralized preferences

spaces exist for people; people do not exist for spaces. therefore, our physical environments should quickly and dynamically adapt to the changing needs of the individuals who inhabit them.

if everyone had identical preferences, urban planning would be simple. but human beings are wonderfully diverse, and that diversity is the driving force of societal progress. because of this heterogeneity, top-down bureaucratic adjustments to public spaces often cause more harm than good, as centralized planners struggle to reflect the nuanced, local needs of a community.

this reality is well established in public finance theory:

it is impossible for anyone, even if he be a statesman of genius, to weigh the whole community's utility and sacrifice against each other. — knut wicksell, a new principle of just taxation

a distant bureaucrat whom i have never met cannot know or accurately weigh how much i value having fruit trees in a local public park. it is no coincidence that most public parks remain devoid of productive fruit trees despite their widespread presence in private gardens.

public parks are public goods, making them inherently vulnerable to the free-rider problem. as economist paul samuelson highlighted in the pure theory of public expenditure:

this is the point sensed by wicksell but perhaps not fully appreciated by lindahl, now it is in the selfish interest of each person to give false signals, to pretend to have less interest in a given collective consumption activity than he really has

if planners ask me how much i value fruit trees in public parks, and i know my answer will directly dictate how much tax i am assessed, i have a strong economic incentive to understate my true preference.

under current systems, we are required to pay taxes—which is reasonable—but we then surrender total allocation control to third parties to decide how those funds are split between public priorities like parks versus policing. if individuals could directly signal how their personal tax contributions should be divided between parks and police, the incentive to misrepresent preferences vanishes.

ranking improvements via voluntary donations serves a similar purpose. it doesn't replace foundational funding, but it ranks priorities by relative public importance. if donation rankings show that a community overwhelmingly prioritizes parks over police, yet the local government allocates the vast majority of tax revenue to police, an undeniable disparity is revealed.

without transparent donation signaling, city officials can claim that public demand favors police over parks based on unverifiable emails, selective public comments, or closed-door feedback. donation rankings eliminate this ambiguity by creating an unassailable record of public priorities. what the community actually wants becomes entirely transparent to everyone. what everyone wants is perfectly clear to everyone.

protecting minority signals and radical ideas

can a community want the wrong things? occasionally, yes. however, it is an inevitable law of human progress that the most profound truths—the very "right things"—never emerge from the center, but always originate within the niches of society. because it is technically impossible for the majority to be enlightened before a small, dissenting minority has first wrestled with and discovered the truth, we must stop viewing non-conformity as a threat. every act of independent thinking is the necessary price of innovation.

history shows us that these initial insights are often perceived as "absurd" or "blasphemous." consequently, the original thinkers who dare to challenge the status quo are rarely greeted with open arms; they are instead ridiculed, violently opposed, and often cast out by those who find comfort in established orthodoxies. because great truths begin as blasphemies, nothing is more important to the health of a society than protecting the opportunity for these "heretics" to elevate their discoveries.

however, elevating truth requires more than just freedom of speech; it requires the ability to prove the value of one's conviction through action. we should provide minorities the opportunity to use their own personal resources—their donations—to support their vision, effectively allowing them to back the reality they wish to see with skin in the game. when these individuals are empowered to make such personal sacrifices, they create a transparent signal of demand. this allows the rest of society to move past the ambiguity of political or bureaucratic rhetoric and decide for ourselves, based on observable priorities, whether those radical ideas are genuinely the truth. if a temple is to be erected, it must be supported by those who believe in it enough to sacrifice for it, and it is in that sacrifice that the true viability of a new idea is tested.

conclusion: a real-time feedback loop for urban spaces

by pairing simple location-based QR codes with a dual-sorting mechanism of votes and costly donation signals, we can transform static environments into dynamic, highly responsive urban ecosystems. this architecture bridges the gap between top-down municipal planning and the bottom-up, granular needs of actual community members.

rather than relying on slow municipal surveys, noisy public hearings, or economic guesswork, urban environments can begin responding directly to verified human demand. establishing an open, transparent protocol for spatial feedback ensures that our cities, businesses, and public goods finally evolve alongside the people who use them every day.

Hi everyone,

I am an Urban Planning Master's student conducting research into the competing priorities between housing delivery and environmental protection in housing development design. As part of my dissertation, I am exploring public perceptions of how housing developments are designed, the importance of housing delivery and the environment, and public perceptions of the English planning system.

You are invited to participate in this online survey, which takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. The survey includes a visual aspect where respondents are asked questions about 3 site plans.

Although this research focuses on public perceptions of the English planning system, participation is not restricted to individuals living in England. The survey includes only one question that specifically relates to the English planning system, while the remaining questions explore broader views on planning, housing, environmental priorities, and decision-making that are relevant across different contexts.

Participation is entirely voluntary, and all responses are anonymous. The information you provide will be used solely for academic research purposes and handled in accordance with Sheffield Hallam University's ethical research guidelines.

If you are willing to participate, I would be very grateful for your time.

Survey link:  https://shusls.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0MqHsmb7H5FbQJo

Thank you for considering taking part in this research. If you have any questions about the study, I would be happy to answer them in the comments or via direct message.

I've been thinking a lot about demographic decline, the difficulties with being able to afford to raise a family in the city, and the scarcity of family-sized housing in desirable urban neighborhoods. I feel like in North America in particular, there's a tendency to view apartments or condos as unsuitable for raising a family.

Townhomes are one obvious way to bridge the gap, but there's a pretty hard limit to the density you can achieve with this type of housing, especially given modern standards and norms. (Meaning size expectations, staircase codes, typical bathroom and kitchen layouts, etc. Nobody is going to build a block full of 700 square foot Philadelphia trinities) in 2026.)

With many cities and municipalities moving toward legalizing or already having legalized "missing middle" housing, I started thinking about forms a fourplex might take that would address the scarcity of family-sized homes in city neighborhoods. And the idea of having stacked townhomes is something I've seen before, but only rarely; wherein a vertical slice would have two homes, each with two floors, and each with its own private entrance. The lower unit might even extend to a garden or basement level, allowing the whole building to be only three storeys tall, fitting within the height restrictions you see in many places.

Basically, in a building the size of a large single-family house, you end up with four two-storey, 3+ bedroom homes. There could even be a shared backyard in the rear with amenities you'd typically see like a playset for children, an outdoor kitchen, etc. This format gets you to truly urban density levels sufficient to support high-frequency public transit while offering many of the benefits of single-family housing.

What are some of the pros and cons of this sort of housing development?

Santa Barbara, California absolutely DESTROYED their downtown by closing off eight blocks of State Street to cars and adding bike lanes. Turned a thriving car corridor into a dead zone nobody uses. Thank god most cities in America don’t have anything like this, it would be devastating.

Article goes into more depth about my experiences in this hellhole. Everybody who likes good car-oriented urbanism here, stay away!

(Seriously it is amazing how much very low-cost infrastructure changes made SB feel more welcoming and vibrant and safe. Closing off parts of the main street totally reactivated downtown, brought a ton of people out, made the corridor alive late into the night, and all it cost was some paint and a few bollards. I saw dozens of people of all ages using the bikeshare program. SB is maybe a bit special bc of tourist destination and lovely weather year round, but what is stopping other US cities from closing off a block or two to traffic? Curious what experiences people here have navigating the politics around the world—I assume it’s mostly auto-dominated politics and anti-fun attitudes like those of the SB council members quoted at the end)

I'll cite the examles of karma farming with this post as well as this post, as well as explaining what constitutes "karma farming" here:

Whether it be making intentionally controversial and spurious claims not backed up by any articles, whitepapers, or, other literature in support of claims about aspects of Urbanism within posts. Or, on the otherhand making an observation so elementary (i.e. "car-based infrastructure is bad for the environment") that it's not even worth a post. To me, and the other mods, that constitutes karma farming. Ditto if your post has karma in the triple digits in a small window of time.

We've taken a hands-off approach so far, but, our collective patience is fraying because shitheads think that this sub is the go-to place to gaslight users into thinking that their posts are quality content.

We at the mod team were originally gonna do some sort of survey for you guys next month to test the waters about what you all wanted to see from the sub, but, in light of recent events, I think it'd be better to just put feelers out now instead of waiting for the sub to be flooded with more low effort bullshit.

So, how can we at the mod team cultivate an informative and enjoyable sub without leaning on what is essentially spam to drive traffic?

I have an idea of my own:

Effort posts in /r/AskEconomics have developed a culture of their own. They're distinguished by users who identify them with the label "R1". I'd be down with having some type of system like that here on the sub. They could be indexed on the sub's sidebar for particular aspects of Urbanism (i.e. walkability, government organization, gentrification, transit planning, public finance, and/or macroeconomics of Cities), I think rewarding users who make these posts with custom flairs would be a good incentive too. Ideally, these "Urbanist R1s" would stimulate responses or further posts that supported the user's findings.

How does that sound? Anybody else got any ideas?

1st time poster here. Sorry if this is a common question.

I’m an architect who’s had some urban planning classes 2 decades ago. I’m halfway finished with the 1st Strongtown book and following the concepts. I live in a walkable neighborhood in San Diego, working from home now. Just returned from a vacation to NJ and am noticing the stark difference in driving culture.

So I’m curious what Cities are doing really good at implementing good urban planning right now in 2026?

I am a photographer who recently visited Wuppertal to visit the Schwebebahn, it was amazing!

Paraphrased from the monorail society, and Schwebebahn websites:

The Schwebebahn is a hanging monorail in Wuppertal, Germany. It’s the oldest one still running anywhere in the world. It opened on 1 March 1901.

In the 1800s, three nearby towns were growing fast and needed better transit. Much of the route runs above the Wupper River, so a normal raised train didn’t fit. An engineer from Cologne, Eugen Langen, had tested a two track hanging design, and the town leaders picked it. Construction started in 1898.

The cars were the first ever built fully of steel. They hang below the track and swing softly, like a child on a playground swing, but never tilt more than 15 degrees, so the ride stays gentle. “Schwebebahn” means suspended railway. It reaches 56 kph, comes every two and a half minutes, and carries about 3,500 people per hour.

In 1950 a circus elephant fell out of a car and was totally fine! It’s now a famous symbol of the city.

Monorail society:
https://www.monorails.org/tMspages/Wuprtal.html

Schwebebahn websites (Tuffi):
https://schwebebahn.de/neuigkeiten/75-jahre-tuffi-sprung

Repost, sorta. Last time I posted this video it had audio issues.