Smarter Urban Planning: Match Land Use with Citizen Needs and Financial Constraints

Urban Planning defines land distribution and regulates land use in cities, with the objective to foster economic development and ensure quality of life. Current planning practices often fail to consider citizen needs. They lack the objectivity that is needed to balance public and private interests. And public facilities' planning tends to work in isolation from public services programming, leading to unsatisfactory and inefficient service provision. In moments of economic downturn, public services are on the verge of a crisis. In response, we put forward a citizen-centric, systematic and analytical approach to urban planning. Using Catalonia in Spain as an example, we discuss the above issues and how the new approach is designed to address them.