Montgomery County Planning Department blog

The Montgomery County division of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission has created a blog, The Home Stretch, devoted to "the Housing Policy Element of the General [land use] Plan" for the County.

The site includes downloads of past "Excellence in Planning" sessions sponsored by the Planning Department. It happens that the sessions, always with great speakers, seem to be scheduled so that I can never make them.

Check out:

-- Carrying Coals to Newcastle: How USA's Best Housing Policies Might Get Better
-- With or Without Design Review
-- Housing Policy Element of the General Plan.

Arlington County, as we know, also does a great job with the web on its transportation side. Check out the CommuterPage and the Commuter Page blog.

I wish that DC Government would get away from the idea of one master website design and tight control over the interface and specific way that information is communicated within the web.

First, agencies have different audiences. As I write ad infinitum, Lauffer wrote that nonprofits have three publics:

-- the input public provides resources;
-- the throughput public does the work (staff, advocates, fellow travelers);
-- the output public is to whom the agency's work is directed.

Different publics have different needs. You can't fit all those needs into one specific and regimented system of information architecture and display. DCG proves it.

Compare the DC DDOT website to the San Francicso Municipal Transportation Agency or to Transport for London. Granted, the other agencies have both transit delivery and broader transportation functions. But they provide information by transportation mode for both the output, input, and throughput publics. But the focus is on the end user (transit rider, pedestrian, bicyclist) interested in getting around. It's the rare person (like me) who wants to find all the reports and publications and news releases...