Climate & Environment
Urban Planning
The design and regulation of urban land use, infrastructure and development — the profession that decides what cities become.
Definition
Urban planning is the technical and political process of designing and regulating the use of land and the arrangement of cities: zoning and land use plans, transport and infrastructure networks, housing supply, public space, and development control. Its twentieth-century history runs from modernist zoning (which produced sprawl and segregation) to contemporary paradigms — compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented, participatory and nature-positive planning — codified in frameworks like the New Urban Agenda.
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