Greetings friends and colleagues! Today, we’re introducing “Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know,” a new playlist on our Dover-Kohl YouTube channel. Please subscribe to the channel! Over a series of super-short videos, we’re going to take a journey into big ideas, about cities, that should matter to everyone, not just the professionals or experts. Watch these and you’ll be a ready citizen planner.
We’ll look at the root purposes of city planning, the importance of design, and designing in public—and, along the way, we’ll visit topics like architecture, street design, downtown revitalization, historic preservation, green building, lowering your neighborhood’s carbon footprint, the public health impacts of the built environment, and setting your town up for walking, biking, and transit— plus some other surprise topics!
One target audience is the time-stressed, easily-distracted local elected official! So the videos are very quick, bite-size intros to best practices and key breakthroughs. Tell your mayor or councilperson to take a look, even if it’s just for one or two minutes at a time.
We’ve mounted an at-the-office and at-home team effort to create the first season of episodes, with Kenneth García, Pablo Dueñas and my daughter Theresa Lee helping film, animate and edit sequences, and my son Thomas composing and performing original background music. So, welcome to Town Planning Stuff Everyone Needs to Know! Share the clips, and let me know what you think.
—Victor Dover