Compiled while sitting through a three-hour public hearing and rethinking life choices.
Are you a citizen trying to understand urban planning? A newly minted planner who keeps accidentally saying “zoning entitlement” in casual conversation? A mayor who treats public hearings as open-eyed nap practice?
You’ve come to the right glossary. Only planners can magically turn a small park into a placemaking activation node. This glossary features definitions that tell the real story. Look for the one not-real-term-but-should-be.
Active Transportation – Walking, biking, scooting, and other low-carbon ways to arrive at a meeting to discuss why it’s too hard to walk or bike anywhere.
Affordable Housing – Technically, housing that costs no more than 30 percent of your income. Practically, a rhetorical device used in PowerPoints to mean everything and nothing. (NOTE: See “Sustainability”).
Area Plan – A document designed to organize land uses, dreams, and disappointment within a five-block radius.
Community Engagement – A process by which planners and public officials hear from the public and then email each other privately about how they have already made a decision.
Complete Streets – A street for everyone: pedestrians, drivers, cyclists, people with strollers, delivery robots, Cybertrucks, and that one guy who always walks in the bike lane while texting.
Cul-de-Sac – Latin for “your kids can skateboard here, but good luck getting a bus.”
Density – A word that makes planners swoon and neighbors write angry letters to the editor.
Developer – A person with money and vision. Sometimes, too much of the first and not enough of the second.
Environmental Review – A sacred ritual to determine whether a proposed project will harm the planet, the squirrels, or—realistically—someone’s ability to watch said squirrels.
Fluff Corridor – A line of bike lanes, planters, and public art created solely for press photos.
Heat Island Effect – The confluence of concrete and paving that makes you feel as if you’re wearing an all-black all-wool suit on a sweltering summer day.
Missing Middle Housing – Housing that exists only in diagrams, wistful blog posts, and the books and reports buried in your planner friend’s tote bag.
Mixed-Use – A building that contains both coffee and sadness.
NIMBY – Stands for “Not in My Backyard.” From the Old English nimm bæc yarde, meaning “no change shall occur within sightline of my bird feeder.”
Placemaking – Hanging string lights, taking photos, and calling it a success.
Public Realm – A liminal zone between private interests and pizza slices. Includes sidewalks, benches, and that one fountain nobody wants to fix.
Sustainability – Technically, meeting present needs without compromising future generations. Practically, a rhetorical device used in PowerPoints to mean everything and nothing. (NOTE: See “Affordable Housing.”)
TOD (Transit-Oriented Development) – Housing located near high-quality transit service, which is rumored to exist in several North American cities.
Traffic Calming – A strategy to convince cars that they are not the main character in their own biopic.
Urbanist – Someone who considers sidewalk width to be a moral issue, and they may or may not have written a thesis paper about it.
View Corridor – A magical pathway through buildings, designed to ensure your Instagram sunsets stay uninterrupted by pesky housing units.
Zoning – A highly rational system for separating land uses, emotions, and lawsuits.
This glossary is incomplete, evolving, and entirely dependent on public comment. Please leave your suggestions in the form of a Post-it note on a foam board in the community center lobby between 2:15 and 3 p.m. on a Tuesday.