Planning is pretty much one of the worst failures of the past century.

It's hard to think of a single place where planning has created an amazing city. Maybe, Vancouver, maybe, but that's mostly a success because it enables a small number of towers in the downtown core.

Despite the huge amount of construction over the past century, the best parts were made when there was the least of contemporary planning methods.

I think a lot of it comes down to the planning for required cars. But the entire field is a complete failure, once you look into how it practices itself in the US.

And if you talk to planners and call them out of the failure of the field as a whole, and for the particular projects they are in, they will say "it's not up to us it's up to the politicians." Which is rather revealing. "Planning" isn't planning but instead a thin veneer over politicians following the whims of NIMBYs.

We'd be better off without the entire field. Let's start from scratch.

Planning (specifically urban planning around cars over the last century) is a giant failure. Hopefully you can understand why people like myself would be skeptical.

Tried that. Didn't work.

We need building. We've done enough planning for 10 lifetimes, and all it got us was a crushing housing crisis.

The interesting thing about planning is that NIMBYs will insist that a years long planning process is required, right up until the point one is completed saying how a bunch more housing can be added. Then all of a sudden they insist that the plan was flawed and the whole process needs to go back to the drawing board

Exactly! We have a small amount of carbon budget left before we exceed 2C. Using it needs planning. If anything, global warming is a sign that we have basically failed at planning as a species. We glorify our past ability to build but we fail to see that we have overbuilt to the detriment of our future.