urbanist

[ur-buh-nist]

noun

1. a person who is a specialist in urban planning.

Word History and Origins

Origin of urbanist¹

First recorded in 1515–25; urban + -ist

Example Sentences

Frey had always been friendly to business interests, even as he championed affordable housing and measures popular with the urbanist left, such as building up bike lanes and reducing car traffic.

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Urbanist Jane Jacobs wrote that “eyes on the street” make communities safer.

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Wexler told of how he and his fellow idealists in city government had sat at the feet of the urbanist Maurice Rotival, who would toss off dazzling sketches of the highways and housing projects with which they would remake the Elm City.

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The film’s narrator quotes the late Mike Davis, a noted historian and urbanist, when he says that Hollywood “takes a special pleasure in destroying Los Angeles — a guilty pleasure shared by most of its audience.”

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In a sense, these activists are following a familiar urbanist playbook of the past two decades: Find the hidden rules, then rewrite them.

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