Planetizen

Planetizen is a planning-related news website owned by Urban Insight of Los Angeles, California. It features user-submitted and 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 portmanteau of Internet and citizen. The website self-reports that it is visited by 1.5 million unique visitors each year.

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. Their 2007 book "Planetizen's Contemporary Debates in Urban Planning", [1] a collection of brief essays published by Island Press, received positive reviews.

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.

The major problem in developed economies is surely 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.

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