Why I Am a Delusional Optimist—About Urban Planning
It’s a tough time to be a planner.
Every week brings a fresh headline about housing crises, climate emergencies, biodiversity loss, failing infrastructure, or public cynicism. The work can feel heavy—sometimes impossibly so. Yet the very things that make this moment daunting are also what make it meaningful. When the stakes are this high, planners don’t just have a role to play—we have to lead change.
That’s why I call myself a delusional optimist. Not because I’m detached from reality, but because believing in better cities sometimes requires a level of stubborn, slightly irrational hope.
Planning Is an Act of Hope
City planning has always attracted a certain kind of person: dreamers, crackpots, utopians, socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, activists—people with an inconvenient belief that the future can be shaped. Planning is, at its core, an exercise in hopefulness. Even the most technical policy analysis is ultimately about deciding what kind of human community we want to build, protect, or repair.
To plan is to imagine that despite all evidence to the contrary—polarization, austerity, inertia—our collective choices still matter.
And yet, even the most hopeful planner can become jaded. I have colleagues who refuse to watch Parks and Recreation because it’s “too real.” The political satire hits a little too close to home: the endless meetings, the public blowback, the trench warfare over dog parks and bike lanes. But when I saw the very first episode, with a simple scene in a suburban park, I knew the show was offering a kind of therapy. It wasn’t mocking planners—it was documenting our reality with affection.
The Roots of a Delusional Optimist
My own optimistic streak started young. I spent my childhood in a suburb that taught me—through absence of cultural touchstones—what good planning was supposed to look like.
There were no sidewalks on the residential streets. Buses came every 20 or 30 minutes on the arterials, if they came at all. The arterials also served as barren heat islands, with traffic lights built for trucks, not people. No street trees. No street life. The wind sliced through in the winter; the asphalt baked in the summer. I was lucky enough to live near the local library and pool, but as a teenager I was cut off from the kinds of places where I might have found a sense of belonging.
I loved the quiet of the countryside and the vibrancy of the few downtowns I’d visited. What I couldn’t understand was why the place I grew up offered neither.
That mix of disillusionment + imagination + stubbornness is probably the beginning of what I now call my “delusional optimism.” I simply refused to accept that this was the best we could do.
The Antidote to Cynicism
Here’s the thing: optimism doesn’t mean being naïve about challenges. I’m very aware that planners today are facing some of the most complex, interlocking crises in human history. But I’m still optimistic—precisely because planners have the tools to respond.
What keeps me from slipping into cynicism is not blind positivity—it’s tenacity. The belief that progress is slow but still possible. That a single park, policy, or zoning change can ripple outward for decades. That every new co-op, bus lane, wetland restoration, or 15-minute neighbourhood is proof of concept.
That, and a sense of humour. Hope is easier to hold onto when you remember that every city is shaped by the same two forces: well-researched policy and wildly unpredictable public comment.
My Recipe for Delusional Optimism
After a few decades in this field, I’ve decided there's a chemistry to staying hopeful. It looks something like this:
2 parts hope – because you have to believe things can change
1 part tenacity – because change will take longer than you think
2 parts passion – because caring is not optional
1 part naïveté – because sometimes you need to ignore how hard it will be
1 part humour – because laughter is a renewable resource
Mix well. Stir regularly. Serve in council chambers, community centres, and classrooms as needed.
A Good Time to Be a Planner
Yes, it’s a tough time. But it’s also a transformational time. The world is finally asking questions planners have been asking for decades: How do we house people affordably? How do we build cities that heal the climate instead of harming it? How do we design places that nurture community, not isolation?
This is not the era for incremental thinkers. It’s the era for delusional optimists—people willing to imagine the future at its best, not its most likely.
If that sounds like you, welcome. Pull up a seat. We have cities to build.
