Justin Steinmann

Justin Steinmann, AICP, is Principal Planner for the City of Auburn, Alabama.

Member for
16 years 3 months

Contributed 2 posts

Full Bio

Justin Steinmann is Principal Planner for the City of Auburn, Alabama, where he also teaches in an adjunct capacity in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at Auburn University. Prior to moving to Auburn he worked for the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency in Chattanooga, TN, where he was project manager for the City’s wayfinding program and lead planner on various zoning studies and plans, including a new plan for Chattanooga’s downtown North Shore. He completed his Masters in Public Administration from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2008.

The Importance of Comprehensive Planning in a Down Economy

In many ways, the Great Recession has been a frightening time for planners. As development slowed, the flow of applications submitted for new development slowed from its torrent at the height of the housing boom to the trickle it is today. With the decline in applications came a decline in workload for public-sector planners working in current planning roles and a decline in revenue for the jurisdictions that employed them. The end result was hundreds of planners being laid off, and private-sector planning firms competing with one another for ever-decreasing shares of work from public- and private-sector clients.

Be Afraid of "Real Nice"

You have heard it, or seen it, before. A developer comes in for a presubmittal meeting, and he is excited. He has the best project your city has ever seen, and, when all is said and done, he insists that the city will never be the same. And he’s right.