The interesting world of urban planning
According to the WHO, 54% of the world's population now lives in urban areas. Chances are that you are one of them. Many Wikipedians contribute to articles relating to where they live or have visited. But have you ever thought a little beyond that and written about concepts of the cities, the towns, the areas themselves? If not, don't worry! There's a project for that, and it is the subject of the WikiProject Report this week. WikiProject Urban studies and planning, founded in 2006, has only around 30 members, but is perfectly active, with a rather wide scope looking the things that are in front of our eyes every day, yet so often overlooked. Topics encompassed include architectural conservation, city plans, environmental planning, ghost towns, slums, urban historians, historic preservation, the history of urban planning, land use, metropolitan areas, urban decay, neighborhoods, public housing, redevelopment, streets, urban agriculture, urban design, and zoning. It has to be said, that is rather a lot. We got the inside story by interviewing Dan arndt, Daniel Case and Elekhh.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Urban Studies & Planning? Do you work in this sector, or just have a keen interest?
- Dan arndt: I am a qualified planner and have worked in the field for over twenty years.
- Daniel Case: Primarily because I found myself writing about a lot of downtown and other urban historic districts for WikiProject U.S. National Register of Historic Places. As a journalist I had also covered planning issues in cities in New York and Ohio, so I had some of that experience already. I have also read some books in the genre, from older classics like Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Joel Garreau's Edge City to newer ones like Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking and Charles Montgomery's Happy City. I guess you could say I'm an interested amateur.
- Elekhh: I studied and researched in this field and wanted to contribute to Wikipedia's coverage of these topics.
Can you explain precisely the scope of this project, and what things you do not cover?
- Dan arndt: The project is aiming to improve articles relating to urban and regional planning.
- Daniel Case: To use in-field terminology, I'd say it's about the built environment, the urban fabric. About what gets built, how, and why, and how it is used and how people interact with it.
- To give more specifics, I'd say its scope would include articles about:
- Not so much cities themselves (well, maybe extensively planned ones like Brasília would be exceptions) but ...
- well-established urban neighborhoods like Greenwich Village or St John's Wood,
- formal subdivisions of cities like not only the historic districts I have written about (such as the Central Troy Historic District (a GA of which I'm quite proud) here in upstate New York where I live) but the 16th arrondissement or the Dongcheng District of Beijing (an article which I expanded greatly after a visit there this past spring) and communities where planning and experimentation played a major role in their development like Chatham Village or Celebration;
- historic master plans for cities like the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 for Manhattan and the histories of cities themselves;
- books in the field like those I mentioned above (and others not strictly about urbanism but which have a lot to say about it, such as Robert Caro's The Power Broker); biographies of urbanists and planners like Baron Hausmann and, yes, Caro's subject Robert Moses;
- important historical movements in urban design such as the City Beautiful;
- government agencies with planning responsibilities and private organizations primarily focused on planning
- key laws such as the Urban Growth Boundary around Portland, Oregon, and court decisions such as Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. (which held zoning laws in the U.S. were constitutional).
- and terms and concepts within urban planning itself like green belt and zoning-ordinance terms like setback, pad site, variance—all words you may have had to learn when building, expanding or renovating a house or place of business—to the extent such terms can justify an encyclopedic article instead of a Wiktionary entry.
What would not be in the scope of this project? Articles about aspects of cities like mass transit systems, or particular buildings (except when, like Pruitt–Igoe or Unité d'Habitation, the building itself or its history has implications for the field as a whole), and articles about city government functions that, while planning may tie into it, are not generally planning-oriented, such as school districts or housing.
- To give more specifics, I'd say its scope would include articles about:
The project has 8 pieces of featured material and 26 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? Are you currently working on bringing an article up to FA or GA status?
- Dan arndt: No, I haven't contributed to this projects FA or GA articles. I'm not currently working on bring an article to FA or GA status.
- Daniel Case: I have, as I've said, developed Central Troy Historic District (basically most of downtown Troy, New York) to GA status. While it began under the auspices of the NRHP project, I consider the history section of that article to be exemplary of what this project can bring—it tracks the development of downtown Troy over the past couple of centuries, how it was influenced by human decisionmaking and, most importantly, changing economic, social, and natural factors. If I get more information on the more recent history, how urban renewal and historic preservation faced off against each other during the 1970s, I think it could be an FA.
How do you fare gaining images for use within the project? Are there particular people who take photographs, or create diagrams and maps?
- Dan arndt: I usually search Wikimedia Commons for images relating to articles I'm working on. I also take my own photographs and add them to Commons if I can't find a suitable image.
- Daniel Case: I generally take my own photographs, and sometimes supplement them with appropriately licensed images from Flickr. And sometimes there's pics on Commons that can be used.
- Elekhh: The difficulty with illustrating urban studies articles is that they would require maps, diagrams and good quality aerial photographs, all of which are difficult to obtain with a free license. Few years ago Fgrammen created some good illustrations, but the project needs much more of these.
Does the project collaborate with any other projects?
- Dan arndt: I'm not aware of other projects that this project collaborates.
- Daniel Case: Well, there aren't any deliberate collaborations. But look at how I came to be involved ... through WP:NRHP. There's also potential for a huge overlap from WikiProject Architecture and WikiProject Cities, of course.
- Elekhh: As Daniel mentioned above, the project is close in scope to WikiProject Architecture, as demonstrated by the fact that our German and French WikiProject counterparts cover both architecture and urban studies.
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
- Dan arndt: To attract editors that are interested in working on creating and improving articles covered by the project.
- Dan answered the first part of the question to the point that it needs no elaboration. As for the second ... well, look through the articles within the project scope, and if you see anywhere you think you could contribute and would enjoy doing so, start editing! Daniel Case (talk) 02:49, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
- Elekhh: Improving the quality of top and high importance articles is what I see the most pressing need. Currently none of them are FA and less than five reached GA-quality.
Next week, we'll have our 2014 update with WikiProject Military History. Until then, why not do some digging of your own in the archive?
Discuss this story