Abstract
City planning is a future-oriented activity that shapes land use and the built environment by means of designs, regulations, and persuasion. The scope of city planning includes a range of interdependent decisions at the nexus of the private and public spheres: transportation and utility infrastructure investments, allowable land uses, and the locations and characteristics of housing, retail stores, offices, schools, hospitals, factories, and even energy-producing facilities. Although planners rarely focus explicitly on energy issues, planning decisions influence energy use and production in profound, long-lasting ways. City planning in rapidly growing regions such as Asia and Africa is a more technocratic activity than it is in slow-growing North America and Europe where procedural elements predominate, but many aspects of practice are common across the world. This article focuses mostly on the US case.