What Is Urban Planning?
The art of shaping cities, and letting them shape us in return.
“A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.”
― Patrick Geddes
In 2007, the world’s urban population surpassed its rural counterpart. This occurrence marked a major turning point in the history of human civilization. More than half of the entire human species — that’s approximately 4 billion people — now lives in urban areas.
Cities are now, officially, the most human place on earth.
This knowledge then poses a crucial question: What should we do with our cities? The flow of urbanization shows no sign of halting. Cities will continue to grow, and that unceasing growth can work for or against us. It doesn’t take a lively imagination to understand that the future of humanity, and perhaps that of planet earth, depends on how we shape our cities.
Shaping cities to accommodate human life — this is by no means an easy task. Fortunately, we have just the toolkit to address it.
It’s called urban planning.
About Urban Planning
Urban planning, sometimes also “city planning” or “town planning,” is an interdisciplinary field…
