Urban Planning

Featured

Urban, city, and town planning seek to inform land use, development, and transportation infrastructure to accommodate the needs of the community, often with the explicit goal of maximizing both economic vitality and overall quality of life. RAND helps to inform policymakers who plan long-term urban services and neighborhood design, from determining the public health implications of proximity to parklands or inner city waste abatement to the role of urban planning in nation-building efforts.

  • A tent on the sidewalk next to newly constructed apartment buildings in downtown Los Angeles, California, January 22, 2020, photo by Mike Blake/Reuters

    Commentary

    How Can Commercial Buildings Become Needed Housing?

    Adaptive reuse has tremendous promise for making a dent in Southern California's housing shortage, but realizing its full potential will require thoughtful and timely policymaking.

    Jun 6, 2022

  • Aerial map image by Google Earth

    Essay

    Environmental Racism: How Historic Redlining Continues to Affect Communities

    Starting in the 1930s, neighborhoods across America were redlined—marked on government maps as too hazardous, as in, too Black or too immigrant, for federal home loans. When zoning officials needed somewhere to put a new factory or freeway, those redlined neighborhoods were like a bullseye that they hit again and again.

    Jun 27, 2022

Explore Urban Planning

Research conducted by