Stop Wasting Time Writing New Urban Planning Documents!

Your planning problems are not unique!

Believe it or not, there are hundreds of towns, cities and areas grappling with the same problems you're facing.

Everyone's trying to get more people walking and cycling.

We all want Transit Oriented Development.

There are millions of areas needing 'renewal'.

High density housing design is not a unique issue to your municipality.

Good.is looks at the problem of re-inventing the wheel:

Cities around the world may all be struggling with the same problems, from building affordable housing to boosting internet access, but a lack of dialogue means that local governments rarely copy each other’s successful ideas.  The world’s “567,000 mayors are reinventing the wheel, every single one of them with everything” they do, says Sascha Haselmayer, general director of Living Labs Global, a Copenhagen-based non-profit that encourages collaboration among the world’s cities.

Part of the problem is political pressure to contract with local businesses only, which makes it hard for city governments to look to outsiders for advice and solutions. “The logic behind that is it helps local companies grow,” says Haselmayer, but it can cost up to fifty times as much to recreate a product or service instead of importing it from elsewhere

The way to fix it, it's suggested, is to spread the good ideas around. That's being attempted - through a competition that encourages you to steal good ideas.

Read on.