Hope everyone's doing well!

I (30M) am a current urban planning grad student specializing in transportation, and I'm thinking about attending TRB in D.C. this January. I can qualify for a $500 stipend from my school to cover the early-bird registration cost ($435).

I'm not too concerned about travel costs. I have enough hotel points to cover lodging for the week, and I need to use them, as they expire in March. I was also able to get a round-trip train ticket for about $100.

This is my first semester in the program, so admittedly, this would be a new experience for me. I wouldn't have much to offer in terms of insight or experience, but I figure this is the best time to go while I can keep the costs relatively low.

Any advice for networking, finding internship/career opportunities, or making the most of the conference would be greatly appreciated!

I've never even heard of them up until recently but there's a proposed development in my town and one of the objections the city engineer had to it was that it featured an "inefficient double cul-de-sac". Now from what I've been reading cul-de-sacs are usually considered an outdated design (if I understand correctly they're good for the people within the cul-de-sac but bad for the people living outside of it). So if a cul-de-sac is bad, would a double cul-de-sac be twice as bad?

Do you respond to direct questions during the public comment section of your meetings? I was taught to address it during miscellaneous business if I knew the answer.

I'm a city planner in a small city (pop ~20,000) and our department has been in the practice of allowing developers to enter into Public Improvements Agreements (PIAs) that establish timelines for building required public improvements after recording the final plat.

We don't have the most tenured team so we're a little fuzzy on the details of how this became standard practice in our city, but we've been told by those in the local developer community that this practice of recording the final plat first gives them better financial positioning to generate the necessary capital to build the improvements. However, this places a big administrative burden on staff to manage all of these various agreements, and we've learned that, in practice, we (the city) will realistically never pull the bond (or other financial guarantee) to build the improvements ourself due to the operational headache this would present, so it has potential for big issues to arise if developers hit snags along the way that prevent them from making good on the approved plans.

We're now considering changing our practice to require developers to build all required public improvements before recording the final subdivision plat. We've seen evidence that this is pretty standard in most places, and certainly makes logical sense from an order of operations perspective, but we expect that this would generate a lot of complaints from our local developer community.

So I was just curious if any folks here with more experience and familiarity with development financing mechanisms could shed any light on this? Do developers gain significant financial advantages by being allowed to defer construction of public improvements until after recording final plat? If so, do these developer-friendly benefits outweigh the administrative cost to staff and added difficulty/headaches? Should we just get on-board with how it seems to be done elsewhere and require improvements to be build prior to final plat approval/recording?

I was hired at a large city two years ago to do long range planning for a very contentious project. I do not have a master's in planning and previously held two years of long range planning at an adjacent suburb. My previous role was 3 years of environmental consulting (this is an environmentally focused role) after getting my bachelors.

I basically am struggling with soft skill work. This is a very technical project and I feel like I am constantly behind on understanding our code and methodology while still trying to learn how different city codes tie in. Then there's the state and federal requirements. I also got recently diagnosed with ADHD and have had a hard time explaining the project to the public. My boss is harsh at critiquing and has lashed out a few times at me.

It's gotten so bad that I feel my confidence is at zero, I'm having panic attacks and just want to sit and cry every time I see a comment from him on my work. I feel like an imposter. Were a small team and I can't help but feel like a failure. He also treats me like I'm a kid at times (20 year age gap).

I feel like after two years I'm still not anywhere near where I should be in terms of bettering my project knowledge and I'm just a burden on my small team and my boss. I feel like they should have hired someone else who would have done a better job. I want to quit but I'm stuck in a lease and just adopted a cat and I feel stuck just feeling miserable.

I’m talking about anything from the history behind why a city is laid out a certain way, why a particular building looks the way it does, how a street or public space came to be, or some random but fascinating fact about how our built environment works.

Maybe it’s a historical decision that shaped an entire city, an unexpected reason behind a design feature, or something you noticed that made you see an ordinary place differently.

It doesn’t have to be technical or related to your specific profession. I’m just looking for those interesting little stories and insights that make you look at the world around you differently.

What’s something you learned that made you think, “That’s actually so cool, I never knew that!”?

Suppose that some sprawly US city, say Atlanta, decides to allow mixed use development and denser housing all throughout city limits. How long would it take for development to actually happen and make the city more sustainable?

To me, it feels like it would take so long, since (as an oversimplification) many landowners on a given block, say, would have to agree to sell their land which is a very difficult lift. Most examples of new mixed-use/pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods I hear about are from massive plots of vacant/formerly industrial land being repurposed, not residential neighborhoods naturally improving.

Every time I hear about a progressive zoning reform, it feels like it'll take so long to only put a dent into the issue. Like sure it's great that Massachusetts legalizes ADUs by right but that's increased the housing supply by 2,000 over 1.5 years. Is that a lot? I don't know.

Are there good case studies for this? e.g. cities that were early to remove some zoning restrictions, and what that has actually resulted in? I guess I've seen the graph of Minneapolis housing vs other midwest cities, but there's still a ton of single-family detached neighborhoods close to the center of the city.

I say yay. Brand new cities of nothing but publicly-funded buildings. Maybe the rents could be based on cost of building maintenance rather than incomes in order to keep them financially solvent.

Thoughts?

New York has Albany, Buffalo and other cities that it could invest into where people can move to for jobs. I go to PA a lot and the state has a lot of potential as well. I am sure there is a reason why things are the way they are but I have been having this thought for awhile now.

Hi all,

London based planner here with just shy of a decades experience. I am eager to move abroad and want to know if others have successfully moved and worked as a planner (without having had experience in that country). I've worked in consultancy and as the government and the Greater London Authority but fancy a few years abroad. Eager to hear about others experience in getting work/ securing job offers before a move. Essentially I am open to anywhere but I want to work in this field so I would like to hear about others experience in securing roles.

I am working towards chartership at present!

When I travel, I always look at how other places handle city traffic.

Some countries just have much better urban planning and road laws than your home city.

I want to know what good ideas you have seen abroad. What traffic solutions do you wish you had at home?

For example, in Germany, the "zipper merge" is a real traffic law. When a lane closes on the highway, cars must use both lanes all the way to the end. Then, they take turns merging one by one. This may seem obvious to some people but I have seen places where people get mad if you drive to the end and they also wont let you switch lanes on time. Drivers merge too early, block the empty lane, and then completely refuse to let you enter the open lane. It causes huge traffic jams and a lot of honking.

Have you seen a smart intersection, a better traffic law, or a good infrastructure idea in another country?

Tell me the country and the idea below. Let us talk about what actually works.

Im trying to learn a bit about UP, I’m really interested in economics and land-use. I’ve been wondering about a couple of proposals I’ve been hearing, for example;

- Modular housing, probably one of my favorite concepts especially at larger-scale or if you use union labor, for cheaper and faster assembly without needing to worry as much about building cycles.

- Solar grids and decentralized energy; I hate so many of our utility companies.

- A manufacturing boom of some sort, because I really don’t think we can do without anymore.

- Lots and lots of light rail.

What do you think is most important to making urban centers or other areas more affordable and accessible, and why? Any ideas or thoughts? Would love to hear more :)

I was a little frustrated by the lack of recent resources or information regarding the AICP exam during my studies, so I figured I would contribute something in an attempt to improve the situation. I had a similar experience with the PE exam, where they significantly changed the format prior to my taking it, and there weren't a ton of online resources.

I am a licensed Professional Engineer focused on transportation/traffic, where I do a good amount of "planning" work, such as corridor plans, neighborhood safety studies, traffic studies, etc. My work is a bit more engineering-focused, but there's some overlap there. I have my undergrad in Civil Engineering, and graduated from a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning program in May 2026 while working full-time as an engineer.

I began studying in late May after scheduling a late September exam, so about four months of study time. I tend to prefer a longer, less intensive study period compared to a shorter, more intensive one, so I took some vacations and weeks off over the study period. But I probably averaged between 5 and 10 hours of studying each week.

Given the recent changes to the exam format, I found a lot of the resources to be pretty outdated, with a lot of recall/trivia-based questions and not as many scenario-based questions. Of the free resources available, I found AICP.city to be the most valuable, with podcast-style lessons and full-length practice exams. I was scoring a bit high on those full-length practice exams (85–90%), so I think they were probably a little easier than the real exam.

I did not complete any of the reading material recommended by APA, and personally did not find the APA videos to be that helpful. I thought they did a lot of outlining the sections of the exam, rather than going over the material that actually made up that section.

I did eventually purchase the Planetizen course, which I thought made a pretty big difference in getting me across the finish line. At that point, I was struggling most with the "fundamental planning knowledge" items, primarily legal cases. Having a more robust environment to work in seemed to help me a lot. I took all of the practice exams, which I thought were a bit harder than the real thing, but were pretty reflective of the content of the actual exam questions. By the end of studying, I was scoring between 75 and 80% on the Planetizen practice exams. Overall, I thought the purchase of the base course was a good investment, and would probably recommend it, especially if they continue to tinker with the exam/question format.

I took the exam this morning and passed with a 63. I found the majority of the exam questions to be more critical-thinking-style than recall or trivia, but sometimes I found that line to be a little difficult to distinguish. For example, while a question might require recall of a specific legal case, applying it to the scenario involves some critical thinking skills.

But regardless, I just wanted to share my experience in hopes that others might stumble upon it as they complete their study process. Best of luck!

I recently watched a short documentary about water tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Nile dams.

I found it quite ironic since Egypt is building enormous new satellite cities in the desert. These cities are usually very spread out and depend on vast amounts of new transport infrastructure and energy.

So I wondered if Ethiopia was doing something similar in its trajectory.

What I found out was quite interesting.

Car ownership is still low, while walking and public transit make up most trips. The country has banned the import of new combustion engine cars. (first in the world apparently) The capital Addis Ababa also seems to invest quite heavily in pedestrian, cycling and BRT infra.

Of course, not all is positive. Addis has still relatively low living standards, LRT has had problems, some of the new developments were controversial human rights wise. Also, high walking shares partly reflect low incomes.

But that makes the next few decades more interesting.

Could Addis actually become a much more prosperous megacity without first becoming car dependent? Or will rising incomes and perhaps cheap EVs lead to the same congestion and sprawl long term?

Curious how people here see Addis’s trajectory.

Sources: OECD on Egypt’s new urban communities; ITDP on Addis modal share and cycling plans; AFD on BRT/LRT; Bloomberg on Ethiopia’s ICE-car import ban; Amnesty International on redevelopment concerns.

I also posted this as a Substack Note with the Addis photo here: https://substack.com/@michaelhillaert1/note/c-347817407?r=6vawcp&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

Cary, NC, owns two wooded parcels near downtown and a greenway that it bought for about $1 million.

After considering a possible sale, council unanimously moved toward permanent preservation.

One interesting detail from the meeting: council deliberately changed the wording from ‘open space’ to ‘natural open space’ because members did not want that to mean merely undeveloped lawn or a future playing field.

I covered the decision here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article317347214.html?giftCode=969a59da2dc33b6cfc56b8c140cecc744b93170c577415a1d499a803f1d1d092

I’m currently getting my bachelor’s in urban planning and hope to work in Seattle once I graduate, and I figured that maybe getting educated on Seattle’s urban history would nice in preparation. Plus I just love Seattle. Both just history or specifically about urban planning, if many books like that exist.

Portland too maybe if anyone knows some