Before Posting Elsewhere
A Short Field Guide
After my recent commentary on the “learn from elsewhere” social-media practice—here on Substack and later through Planetizen earlier this week—I worked with ChatGPT 5.5 to compress the larger argument into the graphic above.
I circulated the commentary, and later the graphic, across several platforms. The responses have been revealing.
Many people—including Planetizen staff—immediately recognized the familiar pattern: conference photos, study-tour snapshots, “best city” lists, and major-media urban imagery from Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona, Vienna, Mexico City, and the other usual suspects.
The images are often presented, implicitly or explicitly, as self-evident examples of what another place should become — usually the generic American city or suburb arguably in need of correction.
What interests me is not so much the imagery itself, but how common this mode of interpretation has become within planning, urbanist, and design circles. We have become highly skilled at touting compelling urban imagery, yet often far less rigorous about discussing context, transferability, governance, tradeoffs, history, and the unseen conditions sitting just outside a frame border or crop.
That tension matters to me because I have spent years encouraging comparative observation through books, photography, and place-reading tools intended to help people learn from elsewhere more carefully and thoughtfully.
Careful and thoughtful learning from elsewhere is not the same thing as extracting conclusions from elsewhere based on selective visual examples accompanied by limited commentary
In that spirit, I wanted to see whether a longer argument could be compressed into a simple field guide without losing too much nuance — including for myself.
I hope you find it useful!