October Is National Community Planning Month

Click here for more.

on Tuesday at 9 a.m., the American Planning Association will be holding a press conference at Eastern Market, where they will be launching their "Great Places in America" initiative which highlights 10 streets and 10 neighborhoods across the country (in 16 states), to draw attention to outstanding communities where planning has helped create a strong sense of place.

Later in the month, they will be holding a symposium at the National Building Museum, The Art of Making Great Places Green Places.

Few cities in the world have as distinguished a planning history as Washington, DC, where planning the city started with Washington, Jefferson, and Pierre L'Enfant. Washington has 5 competitive advantages, four of which are related to the principles laid out by L'Enfant more than 200 years ago:

1. historic architecture (well it's related, attached housing, relatively dense in the core of city, different housing types)
2. an urban design that supports compact development--mixed use, walkable places

(this point has to do with the design principles typical during the Walking City era, from the 1790s to 1890)

These two points yield a third:

3. history, authenticity and identity;

And the urban design in turn supports a fourth:

4. a transit infrastructure that allows for mobility not requiring an automobile.

In turn these four advantages help maintain DC as a locus for employment for the federal government, which is the city's fifth competitive advantage.

Thank you L'Enfant.