On ‘#PlanningTok,’ TikTokers are changing how we think about urban design
During his first semester of grad school, Brad Biehl noticed a problem.
He’d studied entrepreneurship as an undergrad, but a life-changing internship set him on a totally new path. His real calling, it turned out, was city planning — a career which, just a few years earlier, he hardly knew existed.
“I basically came to the realization that planning, design and urbanism were kind of at the crossroads of everything that I was interested in,” Biehl told In The Know.
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Biehl soon entered a master’s program for urban planning. But as classes began, he found his professors all complaining about the same issue — what Biehl calls an “existential communication problem.”
Urban planners have the power to make sweeping decisions about how and where we live. They design green spaces, design new neighborhoods and revitalize declining areas. They work with governments, massive construction firms, local residents and more to bring education, transportation, sustainability and access to our cities.
And despite all that power, hardly anyone knows what they do.
“There are folks designing things, folks with ideas, working together, but they don’t do a good job of engaging people proactively or retroactively,” Biehl said.
Biehl’s professors described an industry with a major disconnect between the planners and the people — those making decisions and those who are affected by them.
So, Biehl figured, why not bring city planning straight to the people? As it turned out, there were other urbanists with the same idea.
Biehl is now part of “PlanningTok” (also known as “CitiesTok”), a blossoming group of city planners, architects and civil engineers using TikTok to change how we talk about the places we live.
While the topics may sound like something out of a college class, the appeal is much, much broader. Biehl, who posts as @citiesforpeople, has over 11,000 followers. Many of his clips draw hundreds of thousands of views.
‘Most people … are seeing it for the first time’
Some users, like Paul Stout, can capture millions of viewers at a time. Stout, who works for the urban development firm Culdesac, started posting on TikTok in the spring of 2021.
When Stout started his page, @talkingcities, he was one of the first urbanists using the platform to explain how cities can become more walkable, more equitable and more sustainable. His videos often look at the successes of well-designed cities around the world.
Like Biehl, Stout became obsessed with urbanism near the end of college. And soon, he realized TikTok was the best forum to talk about it. As he told In The Know, he was struck by the platform’s “low barrier to creation.”
It was easy to make his videos, which often use little more than a graph or some simple photos of cities. And the payoff, Stout realized, was enormous. Through these easy-to-process examples, he could get viewers thinking about the possibilities for their own cities.
“That’s one of the places where social media can really help,” he said. “Because people can look at things and say, ‘Huh, this is phenomenal. I want one of these in my state.’”
In many ways, TikTok users represent the next generation of urban dwellers. Despite its ubiquity, the app’s audience still skews exceedingly young, with 62% of active users being 29 or younger.
A typical PlanningTok viewer may be leaving away from their parents’ house for the first time — for college, a new job or a myriad of other reasons. And it’s likely they’re doing so in a city.
American cities have been getting younger in recent years. As of 2016, the mean age of people living in urban areas was 36, versus an average age of 43 for rural areas.
Stout sees this as a major opportunity. His videos aren’t meant to be all-encompassing, but they can serve as an intro, especially to those who are just starting to think critically about life in a city.
“Most people who see this content are seeing it for the first time,” Stout said.
An ‘entryway’ to urbanism
That doesn’t mean PlanningTok is the be-all and end-all. In fact, Biehl sees his content as an “entryway,” through which he can use urbanism to open up wider conversations — about the environment, the economy, health, diversity and more.
Stout has a similar conception. His content isn’t comprehensive, but it is a starting point.
“Zoning policy is very complicated,” he said. “And it’s like, if you want to do a quick, 30-second introduction to zoning, you’ve got a lot of points to hit. And there’s a lot that’s gonna be left out. But at least people can get somewhat acquainted with the topic, and perhaps research it on their own.”
Brittany Simmons, a New York-based urban planner who posts as @signedbritt, believes these starting points can transform into real change. Her goal, as she puts it, is to show that “city planning doesn’t just happen” — that there are real, actual people behind the forces that shape our cities.
“These are things that happen that most of us assume we have no say in,” she said. “But you actually can be engaged and involved in the processes.”
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There are countless ways people can participate in their city’s planning decisions — from attending lectures and city council meetings to joining local community groups and organizing with neighbors.
Simmons, who went to grad school for urban planning, originally got on TikTok with no intention of posting about her job. But when she posted a video asking her followers if they knew what urban planning was, the results were overwhelming.
“People were really excited, which I was definitely surprised by, mostly because it’s a field that no one knows,” Simmons said.
Soon, she was inundated with questions from users — many of them in middle school or high school — asking for more details about her job.
‘I just didn’t know it existed’
For urbanists, this is another massive benefit of PlanningTok. Because creators aren’t just expanding minds about how cities function — they’re also bringing transparency to a largely unknown career path.
Simmons said this transparency is now an explicit goal of her account. She sees TikTok as a chance to excite young people about her industry. Some of them, she hopes, might even become planners themselves someday.
“Historically, there was a lot of mystification around the field, and it has historically been really exclusive,” Simmons added.
The most recent statistics show that, despite advances, almost 76% of urban and regional planners are white. The average worker is in their early to mid 40s.
It’s possible that PlanningTok could help correct that disparity. Simmons, Stout and Biehl all said they’ve received messages from younger people who say they’re interested in the field.
“I didn’t really know about [these jobs] until I was late into college,” Biehl said. “Part of the motivation in making these videos is that, had I seen them when I was 17, my trajectory would have been different.”
Simmons added that her own career was also shaped by this knowledge gap.
“I can’t say like, ‘Oh, I wanted to be a planner ever since I was a kid,'” she told In The Know. “Truthfully, like most people, I just didn’t know it existed.”
Like most of PlanningTok’s leading creators, Simmons, Biehl and Stout are on the younger side. They’re early in their careers, just a few years removed from the eye-opening experiences that brought them to the field.
Simmons said she sees her age as a major strength, as her young viewers can still relate to what she’s going through. Her hope is to show that “cities don’t pop up one day,” and if people want to make a difference, they can — either through their jobs or as members of their communities.
“If cities or development or the things happening in your community are something that you care about, that’s something you can be engaged in professionally,” Simmons said. “But if you don’t want to get into it professionally, you can just be someone who’s more involved in the processes that happen locally.”
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