October is National Community Planning Month

 -- National Community Planning Month, American Planning Association

For a number of years during National Community Planning Month, the APA ran an awards program, Great Places in America, featuring great streets, neighborhoods, and other types of places across the country.  It's a great "case study" list of examples to think about in terms of urban design and placemaking in your own community.

Exhibits on local planning history. Gothamist reports that there's an exhibit on NYC's urban planning history at Grand Central Station ("New exhibit in Grand Central Terminal tells NYC's history through urban planning").  It's about the Regional Plan Association, a citizens stakeholder organization that has weighed in on regional planning issues since the 1920s.  

They are known for every so often--10-15 years or so--in producing a wide ranging regional plan vision. I frequently mention one of the volumes from the Second Regional Plan, Urban Design Manhattan, which has given me lots of insight in thinking about vertical and horizontal mobility in cities.  (I found it at an estate sale in NW DC,)

That seems like a great idea, and there ought to be a kind of permanent or at least traveling exhibit across the city, as a way to educate citizens about planning issues in the city at large and in their neighborhoods.

Many years ago I saw a great exhibit in NYC on Jane Jabobs and urban renewal at the Municipal Arts Society.  

And the Museum of the City of New York has a permanent exhibit on activism in the city, and some of the issues are planning related ("Local history museums and critical analysis opportunities for communities," 2014).  

And I remember a great exhibit years ago at the Brooklyn Historical Society on neighborhood renewal initiatives in the 1970s, with conflicting approaches.

Also a pop up history exhibit on Coney Island by an advocacy group there.

In DC, the Anacostia Community Museum had a great exhibit called "Right to the City," featuring six different neighborhoods.

In general, I like going to city history museums which generally cover planning related issues too. Museums in Richmond, Virginia, Pittsburgh, and Montreal are standouts.  Professor Schweiterman's exhibit Terminal Town, based on his book on the city's passenger terminals across all modes.  I saw part of it at Chicago's Union Station.

Including a section on local planning history in master/comprehensive plans.  When I first got involved in revitalization, I remember reading an update to the Baltimore Master Plan and there being a chapter on the city's planning history.  I thought it was "constrained" in that it was all positive, not particularly critical about the city's urban renewal phase, but I was still impressed by its inclusion, which is rare.