Planning Trends for 2025: Creative Housing Solutions, Ongoing Transit Woes, and the Ever-Creeping Tentacles of AI

Less than three months into the new year and the new administration, the planning world is feeling the impacts of new federal policy as it continues to adjust to post-pandemic realities reshaping cities and regions. In 2025, we at Planetizen will keep a close eye on federal policies and their impacts on everything from housing to transportation to infrastructure, the growing movement for zoning reform and other tools for solving the housing crisis, the continuing fiscal challenges facing public transit agencies and the ongoing traffic deaths epidemic, the attack on public lands, and the nation’s halting progress on climate resilience — complicated in part by the growth of AI and the massive amounts of energy it requires.

On the housing front, zoning reform is creating opportunities for more diverse and affordable housing types, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods, and transit-oriented development that reduces car dependency. In some cases prompted by state-mandated housing reforms, cities around the country are liberalizing zoning codes to allow accessory dwelling units, middle housing, and the adaptive reuse of offices and other commercial buildings as homes. However, the changes aren’t coming fast enough as housing costs become unaffordable for more families and homelessness rates soar.

The quest for road safety and the contentious debate around autonomous vehicles will likely dominate the transportation discourse in the coming year, while some public transit agencies will likely reach a critical tipping point without additional funding. Major rail projects, which made headway last year, could see reductions in funding. Some, like Southern California’s Brightline West, are well on their way to completion, while the long-awaited and controversial California High-Speed Rail Project faces a more unclear future.

Advocates of public lands in the United States say recent executive orders and staffing cuts at agencies including the National Park Service and National Forest Service amount to an assault on public lands and could lead to dire consequences as agencies are forced to fire key workers including engineers and firefighters. In 2018, a government shutdown led to vandalism and damage in national parks. The new federal administration is also quickly moving to open up more federal lands to extraction and roll back protections for national monuments.

The climate crisis is impacting more places, even those known as ‘climate havens,’ leaving cities and states to grapple with the human and economic toll of disasters and the cost of rebuilding. Deadly hurricanes, wildfires, and sea level rise are prompting existential questions about how and where to rebuild or relocate communities and infrastructure. In the West, longer droughts are crippling the Colorado River and local groundwater supplies, highlighting the urgent need for improved water conservation and reclamation in desert cities and agricultural centers. Extreme heat waves pose a growing danger to residents, particularly vulnerable populations such as unhoused people and the elderly.

While artificial intelligence and planning may not, at first glance, go hand in hand, the technology has major implications for cities, impacting everything from electric grids to the housing market. The rapidly growing demand for energy for data centers has slowed states’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is expected to continue rising at an exponential pace.

Federal policy and local reactions

Advocates for affordable housing, public transit and sustainable transportation, renewable energy, and public lands, among other things, will be closely monitoring changes in federal policy that are upending Biden-era policies and shifting funding priorities, in some cases decimating federal agencies. The flurry of executive orders, firings, and changes at federal agencies threw programs across the country into question, affecting everything from prescribed burns to housing assistance programs to search and rescue operations in national parks. As federal agencies slash budgets and programs, state and local governments and NGOs are scrambling to fill the voids and create revenue sources that rely less on federal funding. In some cases, this means immediate stopgap measures to ensure the survival of programs that offer key services.

New and old solutions for the housing crisis

Housing costs remain an urgent concern for a growing number of Americans who are hard-pressed to afford rising rent and mortgage payments, making more households vulnerable to eviction and homelessness. While rent costs have been slowly declining, they grew again between December and January, indicating a continued lack of sufficient supply. Housing costs remain above pre-pandemic levels, while more U.S. households are spending over 30 percent of their income on rent, indicating a federally defined “cost burden.”

A Supreme Court decision handed down last summer, Grants Pass v. Johnson, opened the door to the criminalization of homelessness, making it legal for cities to cite or arrest unhoused people for sleeping in public spaces even if there are no shelter beds available. Since the decision, dozens of cities have enacted or strengthened punitive measures against homeless residents, despite a severe lack of shelter and supportive housing in most cities.

To increase their housing supply and make housing more accessible and affordable for more people, cities are turning to creative new solutions and, in some cases, doubling down on older ideas. Zoning reform remains at the heart of the housing debate, with some cities loosening density regulations and parking requirements to lower the cost of construction and encourage more development. From eliminating single-family zoning requirements to reducing minimum lot sizes and allowing churches to build housing on their land, small changes to zoning codes can, over time and in aggregate, increase the housing supply and provide more flexible and affordable housing options.

Small-scale interventions like accessory dwelling units are helping to ‘gently’ increase density and offer smaller, more affordable housing options while preserving the character of neighborhoods and reducing strain on infrastructure. Advocates of modular housing are working to lower the regulatory barriers to using this type of manufacturing, which uses pre-built pieces assembled on-site to cut costs and save time.

On a larger scale, office buildings left vacant as the shift to remote work cements itself in the culture of many industries are being converted to residential units, bringing thousands of new units to the market that could provide much-needed housing and revitalize the economies of central business districts hollowed out by the loss of office workers.

Public transit in peril, road safety, and the rise of the robots

Upheavals at transit agencies, encouraging ridership growth, and acknowledgment of the need for pedestrian-focused safety efforts at the highest levels signal positive change. However, cuts to federal funding and programs already threaten to derail projects small and large, and a looming fiscal cliff threatens a majority of U.S. transit agencies as stopgap funding runs out. The future of New York City’s congestion pricing program, finally implemented in January after months of back-and-forth, now hangs in the balance after the new Department of Transportation revoked its federal approval. The fate of New York’s program, the first in the nation, will likely impact the future of similar congestion pricing proposals in other U.S. cities.

After their precipitous rise during and after the pandemic, pedestrian deaths dipped slightly in 2024 but remain well above 2019 levels despite Vision Zero promises from city leaders. While more cities are adopting tools such as automated traffic cameras, traffic calming, and protected bikeways to reduce road deaths and enhance mobility, the growth — literally — of large trucks and SUVs and the proliferation of autonomous vehicles are raising new safety concerns. Although decades of advocacy — and far too many deaths — resulted in an uptick in protected bike lanes, a discouraging trend of resistance to bike infrastructure could derail safety efforts.

Meanwhile, efforts at the federal level to include pedestrian safety in vehicle testing and road design guidelines could run up against recent executive orders that targeted transportation resources — including removing the Complete Streets webpage from the USDOT website. Safe Streets for All programs could similarly face the axe as part of anti-equity cuts, and staffing cuts at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will significantly impact the agency’s ability to assess and regulate autonomous vehicle safety.

A year ago, robotaxis seemed poised to take over city streets. Now, questions about safety and the high cost of development are prompting automakers to rethink their investments and scale back their ambitious plans for their self-driving fleets. After Waymo and other operators gained state approval to operate in California, concerns about the safety of the vehicles and their impact on overall road safety, pedestrians, and the use of public space have led to public backlash and federal scrutiny. The immediate future of autonomous ride-hailing services is less certain, but the technology will undoubtedly continue to progress, and it’s unlikely that cities and states will roll back their permits, prompting questions about the long-term implications of autonomous vehicle travel.

Threats to public lands

The new federal administration is already taking steps to gut federal agencies that protect public lands and open up protected areas to mining, gas and oil extraction, and other uses. The administration has made it clear it wants to allow more oil and gas drilling on public lands and roll back protections for recently designated sites such as Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. An order to terminate thousands of National Park Service employees ahead of the busy spring and summer seasons could, similar to the government shutdown during the first Trump administration, lead to park visitors experiencing longer lines, less maintenance for park facilities like restrooms and trails, a lack of search and rescue teams to respond to incidents, and less security for sensitive natural and cultural sites. The cuts could also drastically reduce summer revenues for local communities dependent on tourism near national parks and monuments and are already resulting in shuttered visitor centers, cancelled ranger-led events, closed campgrounds, and reductions in other park services.

Climate resilience grows more urgent

Climate-driven disasters like wildfires, extreme heat waves, and sea level rise are becoming more destructive, powerful, and unpredictable. Protecting communities and people requires action at all levels of government, including federal support from agencies like FEMA and federal wildland firefighting forces, as well as the sharing of information. With wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters becoming more frequent and damaging, cities and states will have to make key decisions about what areas to protect, which communities to relocate, and how to bolster their defenses through more resilient infrastructure.

Planners and urban designers have a key role to play in reshaping cities and public spaces to protect residents from the brunt of extreme weather and make cities more livable, sustainable, and healthy. In the case of destructive events like the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, policymakers are tasked with guiding a rebuilding effort that acknowledges future risks and creates a more resilient community. Even places once thought to be relatively immune to climate disasters are now under threat, signaling a need for preparedness plans in all communities.

Cities and states, particularly in the fast-growing Sunbelt, are also contending with dwindling water supplies. Despite ongoing talks, western states have to date failed to reach an agreement on how to manage the Colorado River's reservoirs, which in recent years hit historic low water lines, threatening water supplies and the ability of dams to produce hydroelectricity. Without an agreement in place by summer, the states will be subject to federal regulation of the river's supplies. Extreme heat is also making these cities less livable, driving up cooling costs, and making homelessness deadly. Low-income neighborhoods, which have less tree canopy, fewer parks, and more hardscape, often bear the brunt of extreme weather, while vulnerable populations including homeless people and elderly residents face increased risk of heat-related illness and death. Extreme heat also affects infrastructure, threatening power grids and debilitating transit systems.

Artificial intelligence and its thirst for energy

The growing popularity of artificial intelligence in a variety of uses — and the attendant expansion of energy-guzzling data centers — is provoking questions about how AI will impact power grids, and how it will mesh with goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on fossil fuels. While data centers promise jobs and economic growth for the areas where they are built, they often fail to deliver on these promises while putting massive strain on local power supplies. Some cities are taking steps to limit rent setting AI programs, which tenant groups argue let landlords artificially raise housing prices. However, experimental AI tools in areas such as road safety and traffic management, public transit operations, housing, and climate have the potential to make positive changes, if wielded ethically and with caution.