Reddit reviews Urban Development: The Logic Of Making Plans

In short, no. To be clear, what is presented in the article is nifty and already on course to happen (though maybe not in a single integrated package sold by one vendor). Lots of sensors exist in our urban environment to help with all kinds of tasks (ITS already gives preemption to emergency vehicles; buildings already phone fire events into the the fire department).

This may become a tool that planners (or perhaps more likely civil engineers) use, but it's not urban planning. Planning is both lucky and unlucky in that nobody understands what we do. It's very possible to get a masters degree in planning and still not be able to articulate what urban planning is.

In short, planning exists in the realm of informing hard decisions. Lewis Hopkins considers that planning helps best where decisions are:

1. interdependent - the decision cannot be made in isolation from other decisions
   
2. indivisible - the decision cannot be made in increments (for example, you can't generally build 10% of a bridge and get 10% of people across)
   
3. irreversible - you can't simply try different solutions until one works
   
4. facing imperfect foresight - if we know exactly what is going to happen, then you hire an engineer not a planner.
   
   By contrast, Urban OS appears to address a pretty limited set of decisions based on empirical data. That's all well and good, and I generally like models to help inform decisions, but it's still only a small part of planning.