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Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 Contributions  





2 Innovations and debates  



2.1  Suburban sprawl  





2.2  Informal settlements  





2.3  Skyscrapers/tall buildings  







3 Planning Graduate Program Rankings  





4 Criticism  





5 Timeline  





6 Editors  





7 Planetizen Press  





8 References  





9 External links  














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Planetizen

Type of site

News website
Available inEnglish
URLwww.planetizen.com
CommercialYes
LaunchedFebruary 2000; 24 years ago (2000-02)

Planetizen is a planning-related news website and e-learning platform based in Los Angeles, California. It features user-submitted news, editor-evaluated news and weekly user-contributed op-eds about urban planning and several related fields. The website also publishes an annual list of the top 10 books in the field published during the current year, and a directory and ranking of graduate-level education in the field of urban planning.

The name of the website is a concatenation of Plan, as in the word, planning, and Netizen, a portmanteauofInternet and citizen.[1] The website self-reports that it is visited by 1.5 million unique visitors each year.[2]

In 2006, the website also started publishing books, including the first urban planning book for children, Where Things Are, From Near to Far, published in 2008 by Planetizen Press. This book was reviewed by The New York Times.[3] Their 2007 book Planetizen's Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning, a collection of brief essays published by Island Press, received positive reviews.[4]

Contributions

[edit]

Planetizen introduced a much-needed broader perspective on city planning in the US, which very often extends into international practice as well. Coming out of the very formal car-oriented planning philosophy and practice following the Second World War, American urbanism risked becoming a dinosaur as it missed all the exciting New Urbanist practices being implemented. The great value of Planetizen was to juxtapose ALL planning practice and let readers judge the effectiveness of each idea. Coming as it did in the internet age, it provided, and continues to provide, an extremely useful central location for urbanists and planners to follow what is happening around the world. More than any other site, Planetizen is a clearing house of planning ideas, and its inclusivity without any ideological prejudice is both refreshing and invaluable.

Innovations and debates

[edit]

Suburban sprawl

[edit]

The major problem in developed economies is urban sprawl and its energy-devouring urban morphology. Planetizen has broadly championed the New Urbanist solutions while juxtaposing a variety of alternatives and criticisms. This interplay lays the groundwork for facing a difficult problem. Debate on Planetizen juxtaposes practical concerns of developers and government entities with the need for more sustainable urban fabric. Developers who build Sprawl are being educated towards new strategies for a more livable suburbia.

Informal settlements

[edit]

In the Developing World, the major problem facing both economies and governments lies in owner-built settlements, favelas, villas miserias, gecekondu, or slums by any other name. Here the debate is more difficult to access, because for a long time, the problems and solutions found in informal settlements have been either ignored or misinterpreted by mainstream planners. Solutions to this exponentially growing problem are not obvious. Planetizen has commendably brought attention to this other side of urbanism, so often ignored by the urban planning schools. For example, it sponsored a discussion on the Bombay slum Dharavi, which brought the topic of slum clearance versus upgrading to worldwide attention.[5]

Skyscrapers/tall buildings

[edit]

World economies and major construction companies are driven in part by building megaprojects, the most prominent component of which is one or more skyscrapers. Planetizen has opened up the debate on skyscrapers more than once. A city has to balance the drive to build high, using high-tech, with the theoretical objections that skyscrapers drain the resources and energy from the region in which they are implanted. New skyscrapers are claimed to be eco-sustainable, but those claims have as many critics as they have proponents. Again, there is a need for a broad debate, and Planetizen contains many different and dissenting viewpoints on the question of skyscrapers as a viable building typology.

Planning Graduate Program Rankings

[edit]

Planetizen has ranked planning graduate programs in the United States through six editions of its Guide to Urban Planning Graduate Programs, and has published the top 10 ranks on its website.

Planetizen Guide's Top Graduate Planning Programs by Edition
Rank 7th Edition (2023)[6] 6th Edition (2019)[7] 5th Edition (2017)[8] 4th Edition (2015)[9] 3rd Edition (2012)[10] 2nd Edition (2009)[11] 1st Edition (2007)[12]
1 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) MIT MIT MIT MIT MIT MIT
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Berkeley Berkeley Berkeley Cornell Berkeley Berkeley
3 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Rutgers) Rutgers UNC-Chapel Hill Urbana-Champaign Rutgers UNC-Chapel Hill UNC-Chapel Hill
4 University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley) UCLA UCLA UCLA Berkeley Rutgers Harvard
5 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) UNC-Chapel Hill Rutgers Georgia Tech Urbana-Champaign Urbana-Champaign UPenn
6 Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Harvard Harvard Rutgers UNC-Chapel Hill Cornell UCLA
7 Harvard University (Harvard) University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) Georgia Tech Cornell USC Harvard Cornell
8 University of Southern California (USC) USC University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Urbana-Champaign) UNC-Chapel Hill Georgia Tech UCLA Rutgers
9 University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) University of Michigan USC USC UCLA USC USC
10 Tufts University (Tufts) Georgia Tech Cornell University (Cornell) Harvard UPenn UPenn Urbana-Champaign

Criticism

[edit]

Planetizen is often criticized for running news stories or user-contributed op-eds that are critical of current urban planning practices. Planetizen is also criticized by some urban planning educators in higher education for ranking graduate-level urban planning programs in the Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Education.[13]

Timeline

[edit]

Editors

[edit]

The site was created in February 2000 by co-editors in chief Abhijeet Chavan and Chris Steins. In 2005 David Gest was appointed the first managing editor. Subsequent managing editors have included Christian Peralta Madera (2006), Timothy Halbur (2008), Jonathan Nettler, AICP (2012) and James Brasuell (2014).[23]

Planetizen Press

[edit]

Planetizen Press is the publishing arm of Planetizen, and has published several print books.

References

[edit]
  • ^ Planetizen Advertising page.
  • ^ My First Book of Urban Planning, published by The New York Times on February 20, 2009.
  • ^ Book review by Patrick S. McGovern in Canadian Journal of Urban Research
  • ^ Dharavi: India's Model Slum
  • ^ "The Top Schools For Urban Planners". www.planetizen.com. Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  • ^ "The Top Schools for Urban Planners - Features | Planetizen". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  • ^ "The Top Schools for Urban Planners - Features | Planetizen". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 20 June 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  • ^ "The Top Schools for Urban Planners | Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  • ^ "The Top Schools for Urban Planners | Planetizen". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 16 April 2013. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  • ^ "The Top Schools for Urban Planners | Planetizen". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 27 February 2011. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  • ^ "The Top Schools for Urban Planners | Planetizen". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 24 December 2007. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  • ^ UCLA Professor Randall Crane explains problems with the Planetizen ranking of graduate urban planning programs on his blog, in a post, Ranking Urban Planning Programs.
  • ^ First user-contributed op-ed on Planetizen: California Housing Policies Create Slums, by Anthony Downs
  • ^ http://www.planetizen.com/node/27 =
  • ^ Migrating to Drupal, by Abhijeet Chavan and Michael Jelks. Published September 30, 2005 in Linux Journal
  • ^ "Top 100 Urban Thinkers | Planetizen". www.planetizen.com. Archived from the original on 2009-09-22.
  • ^ "Leading Thinkers in Urban Planning & Technology".
  • ^ a b c "The Top Schools for Urban Planners".
  • ^ https://courses.planetizen.com
  • ^ "The 100 Most Influential Urbanists".
  • ^ "Urban Design for Planners: Tools, Techniques, and Strategies".
  • ^ Planetizen staff page.
  • [edit]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Planetizen&oldid=1226456725"

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    This page was last edited on 30 May 2024, at 19:20 (UTC).

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