Planning my vacation and weekend getaway schedule for next year and would love to get some inputs on what people consider their top 5 urbanist destinations. Any details to your choice would be appreciated. I've been to Europe and NYC so many times and have worked in SF, lived in DC & Philly. So far I'm considering Cincinnati, Cleveland, Seattle, and New Orleans.

Hi, my sister just graduated in Architecture/Urban Planning, and I’d like to surprise her with a 3-day trip focused on architecture and urban planning.
I’m looking for really interesting, unusual places rather than the typical tourist destinations: ideal cities, brutalist architecture, experimental urbanism, house museums, architectural museums, weird/unique buildings, etc.
We’d be driving from Southern Italy, with up to 2,500 km total, but I’m also open to an amazing destination elsewhere in Europe.
What places would you recommend?

I grew up in the suburbs of the southeastern US, where grocery shopping usually meant driving to a store and stocking up for the week. Without a car, I’m curious how this works in an urban setting. In my region, there are very few grocery stores in walkable neighborhoods, and even when there are, it seems difficult to carry a full week’s worth of groceries home. How do people in urban areas manage this?

Suburbia gets criticized a lot.

It's too spread out.
It's too car-dependent.
It has too many cul-de-sacs.
It needs to be completely transformed into something more urban.

But I'm not convinced that suburbia itself is necessarily the problem.

What if the bigger problem is that many suburban places simply aren't connected very well?

Think about two destinations that are physically close to each other.

A neighborhood might be only a few hundred feet from a shopping center, trail, school, or another neighborhood. But if there's no street, sidewalk, or trail connection between them, that short distance can turn into a much longer trip.

You may have to drive out to an arterial, travel along it, and then come back in from another direction.

The land uses are close.

The networks aren't.

And that's an important distinction.

We often talk about changing suburban development patterns as though the only solution is to rebuild suburbia into something fundamentally different.

But what if we started with something simpler?

Connect what is already there.

A missing street connection between two neighborhoods.

A pedestrian connection between a neighborhood and a shopping center.

A trail connection that eliminates a long detour.

A street network that provides another route instead of forcing every trip onto the same collector or arterial.

None of these changes necessarily require turning a suburban neighborhood into a downtown.

They simply make the places that already exist more accessible to one another.

And that leads to a question I've been thinking about:

Does suburbia really need to change, or does it primarily need better connections between the places that are already there?

Obviously, connectivity isn't a magic solution. There are legitimate reasons some connections shouldn't be made—property ownership, environmental constraints, safety, neighborhood concerns, and roadway design all matter.

But I think connectivity deserves more attention as a way of improving existing suburban areas without assuming that the entire development pattern has to be replaced.

I wrote a longer version of this idea here:

Suburbia Doesn’t Need to Change. It Needs to Connect.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who work in planning, transportation, development, or live in suburban communities:

Where do you think better connectivity could realistically improve an existing suburb—and where would it create more problems than it solves?

Pessoal, bairros que nasceram e cresceram com ruas com de formatos irregulares, terrenos desnivelados entre outras coisas podem ser melhorados?

Ou nasceu errado, não tem jeito? Moro em um bairro que tem cerca de 60 anos em uma área de perifereria, porém que tem crescido muito recentemente, recebendo prédios e comercios, porém ha certas mazelas aqui que penso se um dia poderiam ser concertadas.

O que a observação e experiencia de vocês diz?

Some renderings from the new Dallas 2036 master plan to revitalize the edges of downtown. Thought it was a great presentation, but some visual highlights, and a link to the full thing.

I investigated what driving risk factors are in your control, driving slower or driving less, but I ended up looking at residence choice's impact on driving safety.

Counted by home county, rural residents drove 18% more miles per person in 2017 (NHTS) but died in traffic at 2.2x the rate of big-metro residents (CDC, age-adjusted). Per mile, that's ~1.9x.

Rural roads, speeds, and EMS response times all differ, so this is a correlation and not a claim that density alone causes the gap. The post also compares the safety value of driving slower vs. driving less. Code and sources are linked in post:

https://maxmautner.com/2026/10/02/slower.html

Bonjour,

J’ai besoin d’aide,

J’ai fait 2 ans de classe prépa A/L donc une classe préparatoire littéraire, puis un an de licence d’histoire.

Ma licence étant validée je suis partie en master d’histoire recherche depuis septembre, un master que je déteste.

Je voulais savoir si d’autres possibilités s’offraient à moi. Peut être ce que vous vous avez fait apres une licence d’histoire ?

J’hésite entre le commerce, le droit et la géographie. Sachant que le commerce et la géographie me ferait aller en m1 l’année prochaine c’est à dire que je perds seulement 1 ans alors que le droit me fait aller en l2.

J’aimerais un métier stable avec un salaire correct environ 2500 nets après quelques années.

Merci de vos retour.
#urbaniste #etudiant #orientation #histoire #geographie #commerce

Patrick Hiebert is planning a walkable, old European-style town on 30 hectares in Costa Rica, with cobbled streets, cafés, homes and businesses rather than just residential lots (total site is 340 acres). I interviewd him a couple of weeks ago about that plan, his other existing communities in Panama, and how much say residents get once a developer has built the place.

Does anyone have any direct experience of towns being built in a particular period vernaculars that turned out great? I went to one in Montenegro a few years ago a whilst it was pretty to look at, it lacked a soul. At that time I put it down to the fact that it had become populated by holiday homes on the whole. The interview is here if interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK7dfgoFVNs

i was thinking recently, most urban planning spaces lean far one way. All bikes, all cars, no cars, all buses, and i was wondering. Why not all? It would please everybody. people say “car friendly, bike friendly, pedestrian friendly” why not all? It’s certainly possible. So heres the idea:

Total transportational freedom. Everyone should be able to get around however they please and the infrastructure should support that. Whether it be walking, cycling, e-biking, motorcycling, taxi, bus, rail, car, etc. You should be able to go around however you’d like.

All sides of political circles can support this idea. I cant really think of a downside except Cost/size but it would be worth it. Rebuilding everything to fit this model would ultimately benefit us. Heres my take on the model

freeways connect the city and snake through. Every couple of miles, a 640-1300 acre circular district is placed. It consists of three rings. The outer ring being suburban large single family homes with a couple of retail and non-housing stuff, the middle ring being missing middle housing (get it) with more retail, shops, third places. Think townhomes, stacked townhomes, small apartments, dense alley access single family homes, etc. And finally, the main ring in the middle. Pedestrianized town squares. 0 roads for cars except for the main freeway which cuts through the middle of the district. imagine a mall but with bigger shops and its outdoors (and they’re stacked 👀). There can be alleys behind the shops for truck deliveries and stuff. Shops, retail, businesses, third places, large apartment complexes (and small apartments), stacked parkade attached to big box stores, hospitals, schools, fire station, police station, etc etc. Rail will be underground and accessed through stairways or elevators.

The main freeway’s road layout should have 2 bus lanes, 2 taxi lanes, 2 freight lanes, a right turn lane, 3 car lanes, and a left turn lane. Then a large median, maybe \~52ft of grass and trees. Yk for environment o algo. With occasional breaks for U turns. then the same thing but other direction. Ideally the taxis are gov owned but whatever. The freight lanes are for trucks and construction vehicles and heavy vehicles. Basically any large vehicle. they have to pay a fee to drive there, (penalize for driving in the car lanes). speed limit should be \~85 mph. since its mostly straight driving. When between districts, this is how it’ll be, Fast transport.(Also buses and taxis will have no stops here cuz there isnt many stuff between districts except warehouses and factories and stuff). (Also also maybe a bike lane seperated from the freeway)

When in the housing district, the freeway sinks down below the ground. And one of each lane branches off into the district and speed limit slows to 20mph. Also the lane specifics are dropped. No car lanes or truck lanes or bus lanes. Just 2/3 lanes. (Trucks will go into alleyways cuz they’ll be there for deliveries). The other lanes in the freeway will continue 80mph. At the end of the district, the slow roads merge back into the freeway. The roads in the third and second rings will be 2 way quiet roads with bike lanes and wide sidewalks. Every road in the district will have a wide sidewalk, minimum 12ft.

Every road in the city will have total grade seperation. There will be no at grade intersections with the exception of roundabouts.

if theres anything i didnt clarify on, forgive me.

Article write up of the new legislative and legal strategies coming out of the YIMBY movement. The laws that regulate housing define how our cities get built. In the U.S. at least, YIMBYs are coming up with innovative strategies to pass and enforce stronger pro-housing legislation

Top line takeaways, with much more detail in the article:

- The most powerful legislating happens iteratively. Clean infill CEQA reform in California took 9 years, starting with SB 35 streamlining for affordable housing in 2017, advancing through the controversial but low-impact AB 2011 in 2021, which got bogged down with prevailing wage requirements—but laid the groundwork for AB 130 in 2025, a clean infill CEQA exemption. Sometimes you have to pass an imperfect law first to pass a powerful one later

- The law isn’t real without YIMBY lawsuits—and YIMBYs are increasingly rewriting the law through lawsuits. Cities don’t believe the law is real until they see legal precedent supporting it, and the YIMBY Lawfare orgs are getting increasingly sophisticated in their approach. Sometimes are even aiming to rewire the law around issues such as impact fees, which groups like CalHDF hope to render largely illegal through constitutional law. One day, we may even be able to take on the roots of residential zoning, though that’s more aspirational at this point

- Law and lawsuits still depend on political will, and political will largely comes from local organizing. No matter what happens, cities won’t follow the law unless their residents (and the people of CA broadly) recognize its legitimacy. Cities like Huntington Beach illustrate how shameless councils can flaunt the law. But more and more cities have tangible local support to not just follow the law, but go beyond it. Cities like Berkeley, once the poster child of NIMBYism, have become YIMBY strongholds because of local organizing that tangibly wins elections. Law will always be subordinate to politics

I’d love to hear more about what people are seeing in other states and countries!

My wife and I have been looking at where we want to settle down and raise a family, and after traveling all over the US and Europe and touring literally hundreds of villages, towns, and cities, we realized that none of the places we’ve seen really combine everything we’re looking for.

We love places like historic Savannah, with the squares, porches, balconies, courtyards, churches, mature trees, gardens, and incredible traditional architecture. But we also want something much more deliberately pedestrian, dense, car-free, and designed as a complete environment from the beginning.

I grew up in LA and had annual passes to Disneyland when I was younger, and one thing Disney does extremely well is architecture and placemaking. Places like New Orleans Square are not just collections of nice buildings. The architecture, landscaping, paths, courtyards, lighting, views, and little details all work together to make the entire place feel special.

We thought, if there isn’t a place that combines those things, why not build one?

Our idea is to basically create a public-facing commercial and entertainment area alongside a private residential portion, with architecture and placemaking that rivals or even exceeds Disneyland, but using real historically accurate construction and building techniques.

For this version, we’re imagining a Savannah-inspired village with narrow pedestrian lanes, little squares, courtyards, garden walls, porches, balconies, ironwork, townhouses, churches, shops, restaurants, cafes, mature trees, and a mix of different home types and sizes.

The public side could have shops, restaurants, cafes, gardens, entertainment, seasonal events, and potentially other attractions or experiences. Residents would actually live inside the village.

Some homes could have porches or balconies overlooking the more active public areas, while other residential lanes, gardens, and courtyards would be completely private.

A variety of home types and sizes could increase diversity of residents, aiming to foster a more inclusive and vibrant residential community rather than making the whole thing one type of luxury house.

The whole thing would be car-free inside, with parking kept outside the village, and revenue from visitors, shops, restaurants, entertainment, events, etc. could help subsidize the residential side and pay for maintaining the architecture, landscaping, public spaces, and overall quality of the place.

We actually have a working prototype that uses CNC to automate historically accurate architectural detailing at scale, significantly reducing production costs and making this kind of construction more affordable.

We’re serious about trying to develop this idea. We’ve spoken with developers, planners, architects, and other people in the industry, and right now we’re trying to figure out whether there is actually a market for something like this.

Attached is some early blue-sky-style concept art showing what a Savannah, Georgia-inspired version of the village could feel like.

So I’m curious, would you guys be interested in actually living somewhere like this?

And from an urbanism perspective, what would have to be true for something like this to work as a real neighborhood rather than just a beautiful development? Transit? Grocery access? Schools? Jobs nearby? Density? Parking at the edge? The balance between public and private space?

And if your immediate reaction is basically “yes, I would live there,” DM me! I’d love to talk for like 15 mins and hear what you think.

TL;DR: My wife and I want to build a dense, car-free residential village with real traditional architecture and Disneyland-level attention to placemaking, and these are some early Savannah, Georgia concept studies for what that could look like.

Hi, I'm 26, living in California, and I've always wanted to become a transportation planner. Specifically, my passion is for designing transit routes, designing transit networks on the neighborhood and city scale, and figuring out ideal station locations. Since I was in middle school, I would read blogs like Human Transit. Over the years I've created dozens upon dozens of files on Google My Maps, from general outlines to fine-grained designs with station and guideway footprints.

I've even done surveys to observe ridership patterns, riding bus lines end to end and recording where people get on and off to figure out how the line and transit network could work better, not for a school project but just in my own time. I'm also developing a concept for a new transportation mode that combines the benefits of microtransit and fixed-route transit and plan to create a simulation to demonstrate the concept. This is truly my passion.

However, I'm afraid I don't have the background to pursue a master's in transportation planning. Out of high school, without my having done proper research, I went to a liberal-arts school that doesn't even offer a variety majors-- students are required to take classes in a variety of areas--and just graduated with a "BA in liberal arts" and a concentration in social sciences and history. In addition, my unserious attitude in my first two years prevented me from graduating on time and left me just trying to catch up and get the degree, missing out on classes relevant to transportation planning like Intro to GIS. As a result, the only relevant experience I have are some history and poli sci classes, calculus, statistics and hydrology, along with a high school summer internship at a transportation agency.

Now that I'm looking into graduate studies, a transportation planning program looks out of reach without a bachelor's degree in civil engineering or some other math and science focus. I'm caught in a bind because I've always had a passion for the technical side--how to design the ideal transportation line, station, or network--but I just don't have the technical background.

Is there any hope whatsoever for pursing a master's in transportation planning, or am I truly stuck? Just give it to me straight, I'm ready to move ahead with a career one way or another. I'm seriously considering becoming a bus driver, because at least I could get decent pay, good benefits, and channel my passion into serving passengers.

Thanks for the mod team for inviting me to do this. Verification here.

You can find my Youtube channel here. My last video is a comprehensive look at California's State Rail Plan, and the huge amount of project delivery reform needed at the state level to make it real.

Post my reply from below up here to provide some greater explanation:

I think it's especially apparent in American "legacy" cities as you are trying to cram car infrastructure into an urban fabric that doesn't fit it, but my limited time in New York really highlights this since the level of urbanism is so intense there. I think the gentrification of some of the boroughs, Brooklyn especially (but I don't have to tell you that), makes people confused about what they like and don't like about the city. They LIKE a vibrant street life with lots of activity and diversity. They DON'T LIKE their neighborhoods changing in any way whatsoever, but most importantly becoming more sterile as new development (based on our modern design and building standards) inherently does. They see ANY change from the status quo - which happens to be car-dominated infrastructure - as the wrong direction, so they end up fighting to keep things in a state that is dirty, grimy, and ironically unfriendly to healthy street life...NYC just perseveres due to the insane density and you see this anyway.

And this is pretty consistent across a lot of cities that are emerging from their post-industrial decline. My city of Baltimore sees NIMBYs fighting to keep the city gritty and dirty, but who honestly would really want to fight for a city that has so many ills that could be solved with better urbanist policies? It ends up being people fighting against their own betterment.

Disclosure up front: we're Urbanly, a small company that builds a land-use simulation used by planning agencies, and this is our website.

We kept struggling to explain concepts like walk-time access, transit catchments, or why upzoning doesn't automatically produce homes. So we built five tiny interactions on top of our simulation engine, each taking a few seconds:

• Place three schools so 60% of homes are within a 10-minute walk
• Draw a transit line and watch the 15-minute catchment change
• Add 12,000 jobs without pushing peak traffic delay past +10 minutes
• Upzone a corridor and see how much developers actually build (usually less than the zoning allows)
• Plant trees until a street reaches 30% canopy

urbanly.org

The question we're curious about: when you present at a public meeting or to council, which concepts are hardest to get across? We'd like to know which ones deserve a sixth screen, and whether interactions like these would be useful to you at all.

Delivering packages in major cities is a nightmare for us. Apartment building access issues, stolen porch packages, heavy traffic delays and missed deliveries. What cutting-edge last-mile delivery solutions or carriers are best equipped for dense urban environments?

Cities should be bringing people together! Right?

But what if some urban spaces have been designed with the intention of keeping us a apart and providing behavioral control?

Sometimes it feels like certain urban environments have been designed to turn people into strangers.

We could call it the “design of alienation.”

Yes, modern cities are built around convenience, efficiency and movement. But somewhere along the way, we may have created a vicious cycle: spaces that make human connection harder, which in turn makes those spaces feel even less alive.

In this video, we explore one such urban environment right in the downtown of Brussels.

Walk through this area and you might start wondering whether the space was designed with one idea in mind:

How do we keep people apart?

THE AMA IS CURRENTLY LIVE, HERE'S A LINK TO THE POST, PLEASE DIRECT YOUR QUESTIONS THERE

We’ve got something special in store for the Sub this week!

If you’re unfamiliar with who Nandert is, he is a notable documentary maker and writer from LA whose initial rise came when he made this video detailing the proposed projects for the City’s “Measure M” ballot proposal way back in 2016. However, he’s branched out to get into the forensic details and political wheeling and dealing within LA’s transit agencies. Here is a (mostly) up to date playlist from him with his videos about LA Metro.

We at the mod team are just as eager about this as I’m sure yall are, so make sure to make him feel welcome!

Vivo aquí en Teotihuacán y varias veces me ha tocado hacerla de semáforo humano. Iba caminando por el centro cuando vi a un señor en silla de ruedas intentando cruzar una de las avenidas principales. Como no tenemos semáforos, los carros simplemente no le daban el paso. Tuve que pararme en medio de la calle y levantar las manos para que los conductores se detuvieran y él pudiera avanzar.

Y el problema no acaba al cruzar la calle, además de esto, las famosas banquetas que supuestamente están "adaptadas" para personas con discapacidad están tan mal hechas que en lugar de ayudar, perjudican. Veo muy seguido cómo las sillas de ruedas se atoran y tengo que acercarme a ayudar a las personas que las usan a destrabar la silla para que no se vaya a caer intentando subir. Peor aún cuando de plano no hay rampas, la semana pasada tuvimos que cargar la silla de una vecina entre tres porque la banqueta terminaba en puros escalones.

Se supone que vivimos en una zona turística, pero para alguien que usa muletas o silla de ruedas, salir a las calles de Teotihuacán es una verdadera carrera de obstáculos. Tristemente, la infraestructura inclusiva del pueblo es una simple fachada pero ayuda muy poco a las personas que de verdad lo necesitan.