"'Planning Peeps' is just one person making original planning memes to introduce planning topics [to] anyone who is interested and provide comedic relief for urban planning professionals and students," the creator of the page tells Bored Panda.
The person behind the page says that they simply wanted to create a community for urban planning professionals and students and the general public alike. "The memes are intended to inform about urban planning topics and to simplify concepts through humor," the admin says. Well, they've been going strong since 2015, so don't hesitate to give them a follow if you like what you see here, Pandas!
I'll admit, I've played my fair share of SimCity. I honestly used to love it, but there was a common problem that I would run into. When my cities got big, I would just give up because it would become too hard to manage, and I'd go play some Rollercoaster Tycoon instead. I had to worry about the city budget and deal with the constant congestion of the streets and the unhappy Sims – it was just all too much.
Only now, when I Google 'How do I get better at SimCity,' I see that it might've been pretty simple. Starting small, planning ahead, and keeping the citizens happy are just some starting points for creating a decent city. Interestingly, the same principles apply to city planning in real life. After all, it's a simulation game, so isn't it supposed to reflect life?
So, let's go back to missing middle housing and how it’s related to making cities better. When looking through the content on 'Planning Peeps,' one might think that the biggest sin in urban planning is the suburbs and their single-family homes. The term 'missing middle housing' belongs to architect Daniel Parolek. He coined it in 2010, describing the types of houses built in 1940s America.
What types in particular? Row houses (also called terraced houses), two-flats that one can see in Chicago, triple-deckers in Boston, and California's bungalow courts. And why are they middle housing?
"Most people consider single-family homes as small-scale housing and apartment buildings as large scale. I'm saying that what's in between those two extremes is 'missing,'" Parolek explained. "It's missing because we haven't built a lot of them in the last 60 to 70 years, partly because of zoning barriers."
And why are these the superior types of houses? First, they make neighborhoods walkable and more sustainable. When people live and work in walkable communities, they're lifestyles are automatically more environmentally friendly. Small retail also can flourish in these types of cities. Big-box stores are usually clustered in retail parks, which is a characteristic of the American suburb.
"Missing middle housing should be part of a compact, walkable neighborhood that has commercial amenities such as restaurants and small businesses," Parolek explained further. "There are huge environmental benefits for this kind of housing, too. We're using less land and reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and we're getting people out of their cars."
The current auto-centric city planning in America also marks the loss of third places. 'Third places,' as the term's creator, sociologist Ray Oldenberg, explained, refer to places for social gathering aside from the two usual social environments: the home and the workplace. The simplest examples are bars, parks, cafes, bookshops, hair salons, and other places where the community comes to hang out.
But why are these third places important? Experts say that they're essential to our mental health and wellbeing. Researcher Dr. T. Panova claims that these places should be a matter of public health. "While work and home impose roles and responsibilities on us, like tasks we must do, relationships we need to manage, and stressors we have to handle, the third place is somewhere we can go to unwind without being expected to engage in any specific behavior."
