How Would You Plan a City for Flying Cars? Intro to Urban Planning Frameworks

Since I've been switching industry, I need to learn a lot. There is a distinction between the "framework", "lens", and "methods" in my previous industry that I learned versus the new one I am learning. So, today we'll cover some of the toolbox as an urban design planner or in planology and how it differs from my previous field.

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In the past, during my time in English literature, we always learn to examine written texts. More often than not, it is always an isolated case. We review the persuasiveness and make a case out of it. The framework is that we're taught to think critically and be comfortable in ambiguity. This is something that differs from urban design/planology framework.

Urban design and planology deals a lot with spatial environment, meaning the space that we occupy. So, the main framework of it includes the spatial analysis as in how land/spaces are used, organized and linked across geographical spaces.

There are about 5 different framework that can be used to examine a case. Picture this, in the future, we probably have commercial flying cars. So, how would the traffic route be organized? who are going to benefit from it? will there be designated parking lot? landing spots? What about the charging station, toll roads? and so on.

As a planner, you can either think it through its spatial paradigm, system and ecological paradigm, through humanistic framework, political economy and the governance.

From those keyword alone, you can probably can guess what are the meaning. So let's choose the governance for instance in the case of flying cars as a public transportation.

The governance and procedural paradigm would talk about how planning agencies would function and the regulation concerning the flying cars as a public transportation. It will include regulation or policies. So, think of it like, the cars must not fly above certain height. It must not pick up passengers from undesignated stop, etc.

While the method that is used to examine the case can be done through multiple ways. This is something different too because in urban design and planology, we use GIS and spatial analysis, remote sensing and even AHP matrices and Delphi. If we use economic framework to examine the problem, we can use CBA (cost-benefit analysis) to examine it.

In the case of flying cars, we have to map out an entire city and then use spatial analysis whether a flying car can pass through the city or not. Imagine if your city has dense and tall trees, it would be quite a chore for the car to pass through. Even when it can, we have to think about placing the stop and building the station that accommodate such environment. There's also cost effectiveness to think about and whether it would be helpful for the entire population there to have a stop for the flying cars.

That being said, urban design combines a little bit of everything. While transitioning is quite challenging for me, but at least in this new field, I can retain the analytical thinking skills. The output that is expected is a lot different too. In the past, I learned to critique and argue, this time I am learning how to design, plan and create policies, how cool is that?

One of the thing that I finally understand when you learn something new is that, learn the framework, method, and the lens of a field you're entering. That is the fastest approach to learn something new. Once you understand those three, it will be a lot easier to understand everything else.