Planning Nerd Christmas Gift Guide

This Christmas season, planners everywhere will face the eternal question: what to buy for the planning nerd who has everything? Once that special planner in your life has all the PIA merchandise, their own copy of ShadowDraw, a scale ruler, and SimCity 4 (with Rush Hour expansion pack), what else is there? Well, we’re here to help.

Urban Planning Apparel

For too long, planners have languished without a true uniform: barristers have wigs and gowns, design professionals the black skivvy… but what of planners? Well, online retailer Cafe Press has a truly bewildering array of planning-themed clothing items. You can choose the elegant simplicity of an “I ♥ Urban Planning” sweater (or g-string), exude class in a T-Shirt reading “Urban Planners Know Where to Put It,” or celebrate the arrival of junior planners with urban planning themed baby items (pictured).

Availability: http://t-shirts.cafepress.com/urban-planning.

Rush Hour

One for those planners who don’t get enough exposure to traffic engineering in their day-to-day work, this surprisingly addictive puzzle requires you to free a car from an over-congested parking lot. At first glance many of the puzzles seem insoluble, but as any traffic engineer will remind you at VCAT: any traffic engineering problem can be solved with enough vehicle movements. Certainly it will leave you appreciative of those little turning areas engineers make you put at the end of aisles. A range of expansion packs (with extra puzzles) are available, and the game can be purchased in a deluxe edition or – for those shopping for Paul Mees – a version that replaces all the cars with trains.

Availability: Most games and puzzle shops, www.thinkfun.com.

“Town Plan” Lego Set

Lego has long introduced children to the simple pleasures of building whatever the imagination desires. This role in warping innocent minds into built environment nuts has been recognised by the choice of “Town Plan” as the theme for the company’s special commemorative 50th anniversary set. Ironically, its depiction of an idealised Back to the Future-esque 1950s townscape evokes memories of a simpler time before planners stuffed everything up. Apparently the set was to be called “Local Neighbourhood Activity Centre and Cinema Based Entertainment Facility,” but the marketing department stepped in. Killjoys.

Availability: Myer, www.shop.lego.com.

Planning DVDs

There are any number of great urban movies available on DVD. There’s Dziga Vertov’s documentation of the vibrant urban community of Stalin’s Russia in Man With A Movie Camera; Woody Allen’s exploration of the importance of Gershwin and black-and-white cinematography to inner urban place-making in Manhattan; depictions of the battles over Los Angeles’  water and public transport infrastructure in Chinatown and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (although, oddly, neither ever features the phrase “referral authority”); the not entirely sympathetic depiction of a New Urbanist community in The Truman Show; a tribute to the transformative role resident groups can play in community governance in Hot Fuzz; and a frank assessment of the typical body count that results from a delayed planning application in Rocknrolla (just out of cinemas, but on DVD soon). Perhaps the ultimate planning-themed movie, though, is Alex Proyas’ Dark City, in which a series of all-powerful, pasty-faced bureaucrats enslave humanity through their masterly manipulation of the built environment. That’s what we’re all after, really, isn’t it?

Availability: Wherever DVDs are sold!

Crap Towns

Let’s face it, many planners have a clearer idea of that they don’t want than what they do. Why not indulge that impulse with Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran’s ode to community malaise (and the arrogant snobbery of outsiders) with Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK? Although as one online reviewer put it, with admirable understatement: “If you are easily offended and patriotic about your home town perhaps it isn’t the book for you.” (The ominous question is: how many are planned communities?)

Availability: Bookstores or through Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/64nfjo .

Make Your Own Planning-Themed Items

If you really want to crank the planning nerd factor up to 11, why not just make your own planning-themed item? Digital printing services such as Snapfish can now put your special planners’ favourite design or zoning map* onto cups, T-shirts, jigsaw puzzles, mousepads, stubby holders, and countless other items. Pictured is an example of a planning zone mug: not only does it clearly let everyone know the recipient is a true planning nerd, but you know it isn’t going to get stolen from the tearoom.

Availability: www.snapfish.com.au.

* Because who doesn’t have a favourite zoning map?

Originally published in the “Clause 101” column of Planning News 35, no. 11 (December 2009): 29.