One of the most well-developed online resources used by anyone in the urban planning field is Planetizen, a website dedicated to all things related to planning, design, and development. It functions as a “one-stop source for urban planning news, commentary, interviews, event coverage, book reviews, announcements, jobs, consultant listings, training, and more.” I subscribe to Planetizen Newswire, their twice-weekly newsletter, and every time they do a great job of collecting and distributing a wide assortment of articles concerning a large variety of issues from a diversity of sources all over the globe.

Planetizen is considered to be “the world's most popular urban planning website.” As a self-described site of “public-interest information exchange,” you can find almost anything you need to know about planning, design, and development through their website. What’s unique about Planetizen is that it mostly points you in the right direction to millions of other websites, resources, opportunities, and guides rather than writing information on their own. They do have an Op-Ed and a Blog section of their website dedicated to articles and websites which may contain biased information, but it is clear that they keep the straightforward news information separate from the opinion pieces. It is all about organizing and distributing useful, practical information in one place with them.
Because of their role as an information exchange center, Planetizen was developed to be a very objective source. If there is a pertinent article that can be found relating to urban planning, Planetizen will distribute it, despite where it comes from or what “side” it takes. They update the site daily, and have the most current articles and links available. The site is simply formatted, and very easy to navigate and utilize, especially considering the amount of information it supplies to the public. Aesthetically Planetizen has a very basic layout with a solid blue border and a few advertisements for planning books, schools, and programs, but this plainness speaks to the fact that Planetizen’s main focus is on the information it provides.

The website is followed by “a diverse array of people interested in the built and natural environments, and their interaction…[including] professional urban planners, developers, architects, policy makers, educators, economists, civic enthusiasts and others from across the United States and around the world.” While a lot of professionals involved with urban planning utilize Planetizen as a resource for accessing news and other information, anyone can benefit from using the website as a resource for extremely relevant, compelling information about what is going on in cities across the world today.

Self-Reliance: Could It Be An Answer?

Throughout the history of urban planning, in American cities as well as in cities across the globe, governments have had to deal with "slums" and all the issues that accompany them. Slums have always had a negative connotation as they imply the presence of poverty and informal housing. Many traditional planning policies have offered solutions to these problems which require residents of the said slums to move into "better" housing and "better" areas. However, despite the change in environment for these people, it has been difficult to prove that housing projects which provide better living conditions actually foster a change in the culture and/or way of life for the poor and minority groups that have been living in slums.

One of the most infamous examples of failed housing projects was the Pruit Igoe development in St. Louis, Missouri. This project was a failed attempt to provide a more livable environment for the poor than the typical unsafe, informal slums. Unfortuantely, such housing projects were not able to prevent the types of people that lived there from continuing their bad habits such as drug use and gang violence. If anything, it fostered such crime as these types of projects have brought large amounts of people with similar backgrounds together, enabling them to continue in criminal activities on a more dense scale. Because of the extreme scale of crime, vandalism, and disrepair, the Pruit Igoe housing project was eventually demolished, and nothing became of the attempt to revitalize an impoverished, blighted urban area.

A more effective way to approach revitalization and urban slums and poverty seems to be in reshaping the individuals who reside in such areas. While the World Bank, United Nations, and other governmental and non-governmental agencies are working hard to built and develop better cities and provide better housing for the urban poor living in slums, such projects will do little to change the way the people live. The culture of poverty and of crime that exists in the slums will not simply go away with a simple change in the physical environment; there needs to be a change in the individuals' mentality as well. As modern day thinker
and prominent Christian world leader, Ezra Taft Benson, said:

"The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mild men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature."


If you ignore the religious aspects of this quote and reflect on the concepts of self-reliance that it teaches, it really is a novel way to think about change. By attempting to change human nature, by affecting change in peoples' mentalities rather than in their environments, it becomes easier for them to recognize what they need to do to fix their circumstances on their own. If people can change men to become more self-reliant, to be able to better recognize and act upon what their needs are, the negative issues (i.e. crime, vandalism, graffiti, etc.) surrounding slums would not exist to the extent that they do today.

Jane Jacobs and the Birth of Modern Redevelopment

Journalist and activist Jane Jacobs (1916 -2006) is one of the most well-known and respected figures in the history of modern day urban planning. Her efforts to battle the “urban renewal” policies of the 1950s in New York City were monumental and forever changed urban redevelopment policy. As a strong critic of government redevelopment policies, she has personally influenced the way cities and communities throughout America and Canada have been shaped over time.

In the 1950s, local governments had taken an extreme approach to attack the blight and crime that existed in major urban areas like New York City; they were simply demolishing blighted neighborhoods full of poor and minority populations in favor of projects like downtown expressways and, most infamously, Robert Moses’ Brooklyn Battery Bridge. In destroying these communities, Jacobs knew they were also destroying the rich histories and culture of the people who lived there; her efforts to stop such destructive tactics, particularly coming from city planners like Moses, has become one of the most celebrated events in the shift toward modern redevelopment.

Jacobs’ response to such policies were summed up in her treatise entitled "The Life and Death of Great American Cities", which is widely considered to be the most influential book on urban planning. Even President Obama is familiar with her work and its importance in understanding way cities function. It is amazing to see the massive impact a single person can have on the way we build, cherish, and understand our cities we live, work and play in. What really amazes me is that she had no formal background in urban planning, nor did she receive any sort of formal education beyond high school. By simply standing up for what she believed to be right and meaningful, Jacobs was able to influence a major aspect of public policy. Not many people outside the field of urban planning are familiar with her work, and yet her work has remained a staple in the study of the dynamics and functions of cities in our world.

I am very interested in community development and the way culture and social interactions play into the way urban design and a sense of place are shaped in cities, towns, and communities; Jane Jacobs was the one to make this type of analysis a priority in government taking a “place-based” and “community-centered” approach toward cities and planning. She has effected change in so many different aspects of modern day planning. One of her most notable influences has been toward the development of the New Urbanism movement which advocates infill development and denser, more walkable communities. She has always been concerned about the history and culture of places, and as she turned the public eye toward such significant and personal issues, she has paved the way for development to focus on the needs of the people making more friendly, comfortable, and practical neighborhoods.