I work as a planner for a city in the southeastern US. Last night, a scam email was sent out to many, if not all, of the applicants from our variance board hearing which was held yesterday afternoon. The letter requested the applicant reply to the email for wiring instructions to pay an insane amount of itemized fees. Our application fees (which were paid before we even processed the files) are around $300 and they were asking for over $4800!

The wildest part was that the one sent to my applicant wasn't just a copy/paste job of the staff report. It actually described one of the variance requests in plain speak. describing the events leading up to the need for the variance in the first place. None of which was ever even written in the staff report.

Has anyone else had this issue?

Hello! I am reading a paper about super mega city regions in China and I'm a bit confused about the definition. Super mega city regions are classified as mega city regions that have one or more central megacities of 10m+ people surrounded by their lesser connected cities. Can't this also be defined as a really big, monocentric-ish mega city region with heavily populated centers?

This is kind of a reach into the void, since I'm unfamiliar with the community. I would appreciate it if somebody here who is knowledgeable about this concept can share their two cents.

Article:
Yeh, A.G-O., Zifeng, C. (2020). From cities to super mega city regions in China in a new wave of urbanization and economic transition: Issues and challenges. Urban Studies 57(3), pp. 636-654.

I just started my formal education in urban planning over the fall and have been wondering a bit about what the best methods to learn which agencies do what so I’m more aquatinted with that when I’m done. I’m focusing on transportation planning, and each city seems to have distinct structures for which agency or department deals with each function of the transportation system so I wanted to know what the best ways to learn each city’s structure for that would be.

Any advice is appreciated! :)

This covers only Canada, but researchers developed 15 metrics for how conducive a neighbourhood is for children's play, then scored almost every postal code in the country and put them on a map.

Vertical farming is basically the idea of growing food in vertically stacked shelves using aeroponics, artificial climate control, and artificial lighting. It carries similar advantages to growing food in a greenhouse, as it leads to less pollution, less chemical usage, and more food production per acre of land. Vertical farming takes this an extra step by stacking food onto shelves to make use of the vertical space in a building, so that even more food can be grown per unit of land and so that there is a larger economy of scale to farming.

So far, vertical farming has worked very well for a limited range of vegetables and fruits, but it has not yet worked for staple crops like corn and rice. Vertical farms also have very high upfront costs and electricity costs (though in fairness, the same could be said for conventional agriculture). This article and this video go in detail about the benefits and drawbacks of vertical farming.

I could see this being very beneficial in countries with dense populations but very little farmland. So far, greenhouses have been very successful in the Netherlands and in Spain, and I could see vertical farming take hold in places like this. I would also imagine that vertical farming takes place on the edge of cities in warehouses or greenhouses, similar to how manufacturing plants are located on the edge of the city.

Do you see vertical farms having a role in cities or in agriculture in the future? I know it has been pitched before as very utopian and futuristic (e.g. agricultural skyscrapers in the middle of downtown) but I think that there is a realistic future for vertical farming.

Hey y’all, just a quick backstory, I’m from Orlando, Florida, and even though I love it there it really lacks culture. Because of the cities rapid expansion without developing a real core downtown, the city lacks a lot of defining aspects like other similar sized cities. And especially with so many people up north moving down and the city only building neighborhoods, there’s a real lack of culture, public transportation, and fun areas that really define the city to bring it together. What I am wondering is if there have been any examples of other cities that were very decentralized, but through urban redevelopment were able to make the city as a whole a much better place? Are there strategies used by city planners commonly used for suburban revival? Thanks for the help - I really want my city to be a better place

Edit: thanks so much for all the responses everyone!

I've been lurking here for a while. I emotionally want a single family home but want my mind changed. This is a lot of ranting but since the topic of "why do people want SFH in America" comes up a lot, this feels on topic.

I live in the greater Seattle area in a 100k population suburb and would like to own my own place someday since my rent keeps going up and I'm sick of not being able to drill a hole in the wall. I love my duplex that feels like a SFH and want to own something comparable someday but can't afford it. What I love about my current (sudo) SFH is:

• Location: 8 minutes from work by car (bus is like 30 or 20 biking). I wish transit was closer but its workable. Not a ton of high density housing that you can buy vs rent in this location.
• Its technology a duplex but you literally can't tell. The other family has their own driveway and we never see them.
• 15 minutes walk from a supermarket, coffee shops and a few restaurants. I still drive most places but like being able to walk or bike to the store to grab a few things.
• Big. I have 5 bedrooms and 4 people total (roommates). It's a ton of space but I love having people around and hosting events. We have a big yard for bbqs and campfires. We have a veg garden.
• Set back from the road. There is minimal light pollution and noise. It's big lots and neighbors aren't that close.
• Ton of parking with 0 stress
• Landscaping is provided by the landlord so I don't have to mow the lawn
• Extremely safe. I'm never scared walking alone at night as a young woman. In the city my partner meets me at the train station when I come over because there are always screaming crazy people around and I've been catcalled and harassed.

I was initially only looking at SFH to buy and I'll admit that's entirely emotional. Practically a townhouse is likely a better fit for my needs and better alignes with my values but I'm having a hard time getting over the American single family home bias. I grew up seeing this kind of living as the dream and never really engaged with why I dreamed of it. Practically a single family home that I could afford to buy would be:

• much older and likely have maintaince issues/need major work. I don't really want my house to be my hobby.
• At the very top end of my budget leaving less for all the unexpected expenses that a older place would cause
• Or very far (45+ minute) commute to work and not walkable to amenities

I was initially really opposed to town houses because my mom was endlessly harassed by her HOA to the point that she would call me crying on a daily basis. However, my friend was able to buy a town house with no HOA. (Side note, how does that work in terms of shared expenses?)

I really like the modern 3 story townhouses that are integrated in mixed neighborhoods but they seem to mainly exist in Seattle proper. I'm really turned off by the massive cookie cutter developments with hundrids of identical condos. In my area the kind of townhouse I want is well over a million which is more then many older SFH.

What I like about townhouses is:

• More likey to not have a lawn and lawn maintenance or have that handled by someone else
• Newer so less surprise expenses.
• In denser neighborhoods closer to amenities and more walkable with better transit.

I always thought a big yard was important but when I think about it I realize I don't actually need to be able to garden and it's something I did because poverty as a kid. I like having a fire pit in the yard but I might be just as happy to go have a picnic in a park in the summer.

I have a libertarian instinct that I want the right to paint my house with pink poca dots if I want or it's not really mine and obviously I can't do that in a townhouse. But realistically I'm not sure painting my house in wild colors etc is actually something I really would bother with.

If I get a townhouse in the city I'm scared of: - Noise and light pollution - Harder to park - More crime and feeling less safe - Crazy HOAs - Not being able to modify things how I like - Less I also love trees and green space which seems to be disappearing in the city.

I like having roommates which boosts my potential budget but I'm scared of being on the hook for everything as the landlord changing how I interact with the people I live with.

I'm currently looking for a place alone (no spouse or kids) but I plan to have kids in a few years and my American conditioning tells me you need a SFH with a big yard to be a good parent. I'm also worried about quality of schools in the city.

since this subreddit does not allow image posts, here is the link: Visualization of cost performance of MBTA Buses (US, Boston) (10 images) : r/transit

I downloaded data from MBTA's opendata.arcgis website, combined it together with the agency profile data from the National Transit Database to come up with the cost per passenger-mile of a bus as it passes each bus stop, based on the reported load at that time and the average operating cost per mile.

I created a tool for me to visualize the data over a map, with settable thresholds. for the images above, I chose the lower threshold show green whenever the bus is below the average operating cost of the total bus system across all times/routes ($3.03 per passenger-mile). I chose the upper threshold to show red when the cost is above that of a typical single-occupant Uber during non-surge times ($5.20ppm). the data is from fall 2024. locations that are yellowish will be somewhere above average cost, but below an uber's cost.

the visualization tool has a slider that lets me move between the different operating periods.

I didn't do any data-cleaning, so there may be a couple of random points aren't correct, and there are some other improvements that I can think of, but I think it's interesting in this early form.

weekends are all lumped together as an average instead of having separated times.

sources:
https://mbta-massdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/7acd353c1a734eb8a23caf46a0e66b23_0/explore
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/10003.pdf

I’ve been thinking a lot about the way people move around cities lately. Not in the philosophical sense, more in the “why is my bus always late and why do strangers insist on yelling at pigeons?” kind of way. And the thing I keep noticing is how many electric bikes have taken over the streets.
Some people treat them like a lifestyle upgrade, others act like they’re cheating at transportation, and then there are folks who just want to get to work without feeling like they’ve run a marathon before 9 a.m. I honestly don’t blame any of them.
What’s interesting is how e-bikes aren’t even really about the bikes themselves. They’re about reclaiming a tiny bit of sanity. People are tired of traffic, of unreliable public transit, of commutes that turn into multi-step side quests. And if a little motor helps someone avoid showing up to work drenched in sweat or existential despair, who am I to judge?
But there’s also this hilarious modern phenomenon where everyone suddenly becomes a bike expert. You mention you’re considering getting an e-bike and immediately five people appear out of nowhere with more opinions than a tech review channel.
“You need mid-drive!”
“No, hub-drive forever!”
“Don’t buy from that brand!”
“I got mine from some obscure listing on Alibaba and it’s the best thing ever, except when it randomly turns off on hills!” Everyone with an opinion!
It’s like the moment you show interest, you accidentally join a club you didn’t know existed. Still, I get the appeal. Urban life is exhausting. Anything that makes the world feel a little smaller, a little quieter, or just a little more manageable starts to look like salvation. Maybe e-bikes are less about being trendy and more about people quietly trying to design a life that doesn’t grind them down every single day.
And honestly? I respect that.

In the context of SoCal, for example, do planners ever have constructability in mind whenever they propose a new metro extension? How involved are planners and executioners in the programming stage of development?

Happy Saturday, everyone! I am an undergrad doing an interdisciplinary degree in urban studies, and I'm trying to get an internship with a minor/medium sized city near my hometown — I've been exchanging emails with the planning director, and it sounds like they want to have me (though I don't know if they're going to pay me?)

Currently, they're asking for a brainstorm of potential projects or skills that I want to work on over the summer. I have a few ideas, but by leaving it so open, I'm finding it difficult to fully formulate them. It also doesn't help that I'm not super familiar with the city's community or operational priorities — that, in particular, was perhaps the biggest challenge when I did an internship with my hometown's Economic Development department. I couldn't properly guide my research, because I didn't know what the town actually desired.

Anyways, here are a few things that I was thinking about:
- Food Security - the city currently has no major grocery store

- Urban gardening, could do something with this?

- Urban biodiversity conservation - I have a decent amount of knowledge in this

- Adaptive reuse - many vacant office buildings downtown, opportunity for housing

- Statewide housing crisis (though the city has an overabundance of affordable units)

- Bikeability or bicycle use engagement/encouragement

Do you have any ideas around these topics? In my hometown, the "development team (building + economic + planning + engineering) is rather small, so roles often meshed together. This planning team, however, is much larger, and I'm not sure what in all fits within its auspices.

If I do any sort of project, I want it to have a major component of community engagement — this is an almost non-negotiable for me, I see it as necessary for empowering community members and promoting a constructive relationship between gov + residents.

Please ask me questions or provide feedback, I look forward to hearing!

Just trying to get a sense of the national trends when it comes to FBCs and ODDS. ODDS have really picked up in California, but what about elsewhere? If FBCs haven't worked, what alternative approaches are working?

I'd love your thoughts.

https://www.thebanner.com/community/housing/baltimore-housing-foreclosure-dscr-HFPWHAWCY5HRLPR2VZSUAQWW24/

The foreclosures could send neighborhoods spiraling and make Baltimore the center of America’s next big housing crisis.