They’ve grown social media followings with their "infotainment"-style posts breaking down topics related to the built environment. "To me," one creator says, "that’s inherently lifestyle content."
Welcome to #TradesTok, an interview series where design-related content creators share what goes into building their online and IRL businesses.
"This shit is dope as fuck," Vignesh Swaminathan says to his front-facing camera from a nondescript office in his work attire (gray suit jacket, tie, suspenders) in a TikTok clip that amassed more than 171,000 likes. The "dope-as-fuck shit" he’s describing is the process of pipe relining, a trenchless method used to repair damaged pipes without excavation. "Next time you need to lay down the pipe," he says, "try to make sure you line up your pipe, so you don’t tear up that asphalt."
The 35-year-old, San Jose–based urban planner at engineering, planning, and design consulting firm Kimley-Horn has been posting irreverent TikToks like this under the handle @MrBarricade since 2020, explaining everything from the creation of bike-friendly on-street trails to how the Black Panthers advocated for more crosswalks in Oakland. His unconventional approach to demystifying urban planning topics has helped him gain 1.6 million followers (at the time of writing). He frequently weaves together platform staples like choreography (while showing off a new bike lane), viral music (connecting urban drainage to Swedish hip-hop group Drain Gang), and stitching alongside explainers about "straight fire" pedestrian efforts and critiques of harmful bike infrastructure. "No one was really talking about roadway infrastructure projects online when I started," Swaminathan says. "Now people are interested in it. The newer generation is very interested in their built environment and they want to be more involved."
Swaminathan is one of many content creators from a corner of social media (sometimes called CitiesTok or Urbanism TikTok) who post "infotainment"-style videos about topics related to housing, transportation, and city planning that help people better understand how the built environments around them work. Hashtags like #urbanism (1.3 million entries on Instagram) and #urbandesign (22,900 on TikTok) are populated with posts from urban planning professionals and enthusiasts alike. The domain is as diverse as cities themselves: Some creators like psychologist and urbanist @dr.tpanova and safe-streets advocate @pedestriandignity post informational clips connecting things like crosswalks and shaded spaces with safety and autonomy, while others like @traingirlsummer dedicate their feeds to fanning out over infrastructure (in her case, mass transit). The creators’ content varies but have overlapping themes ranging from walkability to the importance of third places.
Detroit-based transportation planner Brittany Simmons thinks that Urbanism TikTok’s expanding reach is fostering a digital YIMBYism that makes people want to learn more about the discipline. Simmons is known for her "day in the life of an urban planner" videos that let viewers peek into what a career in this domain actually looks like. She’s been posting under @signedbritt on TikTok since 2021, since expanding to Instagram and Substack. "I try to make urban planning not only accessible but also interesting, to help people see the connections between a very technical field to their everyday lives," says the 29-year-old, whose Instagram bio reads "a professional city girl (literally)." Her lifestyle-esque videos breaking down what she does as an urban planner are in good company in this niche of TikTok. "Largely it’s people’s curiosity of something that feels familiar, because everyone knows what it is, they just might not know that it’s called urban planning," she says.
This is part of Urbanism TikTok’s success. "If you explain ‘third place’ to someone who lives in Italy, they might be like, ‘Yes, I know it…it’s down the street,’" says 31-year-old landscape architect Paul Stout, known to his hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers as @TalkingCities. "For Americans, it’s a bit different. They’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t have that.’ That makes it a bit more sticky on social media." Ideally for many of these creators, their urban planning content will pique viewers’ interests enough to attend local city planning or engage in material change beyond the comments section. "I believe community and coalition-building wins," says Jon Jon Wesolowski, aka "The Happy Urbanist," a content creator and public speaker with almost half a million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and Substack. (The Chattanooga-based 37-year-old, who has no formal training in urban planning, describes himself as an armchair urbanist similar to Jane Jacobs or William Holly Whyte.)
We talked to Swaminathan, Simmons, Stout, and Wesolowski about how they became urban planning influencers and what keeps them going. Our conversations have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Brittany Simmons
@signedbritt, 82.9K followers on TikTok and 67.4K followers on Instagram
On starting her TikTok account
I was living in New York, I just moved there, and I got a TikTok. My For You Page was a bunch of people exploring their city, what they like to do, where they like to go…helping me become better acquainted with where I was living. When I started creating, I was like, Clearly this is what this platform is for: sharing your favorite restaurants and coffee shops. One day, I posted about my day which, naturally, was spent at work. That did significantly better than my [post about a] little coffee shop. People asked questions like, "What is this?" and "How did you end up in that?" and it just kind of snowballed from there.
On her profession as social media content
When I describe to people what urban planning is, I describe it as the relationship people have with their environment. To me, that’s inherently lifestyle content. I mostly am doing what I do for my job and my life: I go to work…I also come home and post about what I did at work, the things that I’m learning. I post about the public meetings I’m preparing for and I’ll talk about the analyses I’m working on. But it’s rarely ever, "Here’s the problem. Let me explain and define the problem. Here’s the solution I propose."
In my nine-to-five, so much of it is about getting people interested in the problem enough to want to be a part of the solution. Historically, planning has gone wrong when it has cut the public off from decision-making processes. If I can get them to stay for this post for 10 seconds, I can probably get them to care. These are things people care about, like housing and transit. They impact our lives every day. If you make it a little interesting and put it in front of them, they’ll watch.
My clients are municipalities, like the City of Detroit. They’re not looking to hire someone based on social media presence. But a number of think tanks and nonprofits who dabble in the planning and community development space have reached out to me to make stuff for them.
On her content-creation process
Some videos I feel really excited about and will record myself talking, and 10 minutes later, there’s a video on the internet. That’s not the norm for me. There’s easy, which is what I described, and medium—which is most of my stuff: "Here’s a clip from my day and I’m going to talk to you about something related." And then there’s the other side, where it takes a lot of research and time and editing and scripting. Those are more neighborhood history–type videos. It depends on what I have the capacity for.
On her comments section
It’s such a mix of "My bus stop sucks. I didn’t know I could fix this," or "I’ve never heard of this. I didn’t know it was a career," or "I’m gonna transition from being a teacher to urban planning. How do I do that?" It’s a wide spectrum. Maybe they don’t want to do it for work but they want to volunteer—what can I do in my neighborhood that my neighbors will recognize and feel the differences of? It’s generally pretty positive.
On having an online following
I get recognized a lot. The people I’ve met in person appreciate my content, which is always nice. I’ve been recognized out of town too, in New Orleans, in L.A., in New York. In Detroit in general, there’s a lot of advocacy around public transit in particular. There’s a genuine interest around urban planning topics, inherently.
Jon Jon Wesolowski
@jonjon.jpeg, 299.4K followers on TikTok and 136K followers on Instagram
On starting his TikTok account
My neurodivergent, ADHD brain felt the TikTok algorithm right away: an aesthetic feed on Instagram wasn’t for me and the patience of longform video on YouTube wasn’t [either]. When I got introduced to TikTok, it didn’t take long before I started putting videos out there. At first, it was for the tech company I worked for. They didn’t want to do TikTok. I was like, "I’m going to show that content about your software could do well here." I gained a bit of a following, they decided to create their own TikTok. Since I wasn’t doing that anymore, I wanted to talk about cities.
Architecture and city planning are things that I’ve been obsessed with for most of my life. I thought I was going to be an architect in high school and in college I was introduced to the idea of urban design and city planning. Even though life didn’t go that way, I wanted to see if I could find other people who are interested in talking about this online.
On gaining a following
When I moved back to Tennessee [in 2020], I was looking at my city through fresh eyes and began to realize how much of the built environment is felt but not articulated. That’s my main goal: How can I explain things that I know people are feeling and see if they can relate to them? Now, a few years later, I have more than 298,000 followers on TikTok. I had no idea that would happen. I want the F-250-driving soccer mom to join the conversation and understand the value of bike lanes, even if she would never use [one]. That’s the approach I’m taking. I chose the branding "The Happy Urbanist" to keep myself from getting too negative. I still talk about negative aspects, but the overarching feeling I wanted to give is one of optimism and positivity about what the built environment can do.
On his most viral video
My most viral post is [of me] walking to a community pool in my neighborhood. It’s a walkable distance but we rarely walk there. I thought, I’m going to walk there, record all the things I encounter, and see how it goes. I filmed it as I went and posted it and it got 10 million views. It was picked up by BuzzFeed. It was the most affirming thing. I’ve had a couple of videos get one or two million views. I got one with five million views on Instagram, but this was by far the largest and a reminder that people are feeling these feelings even if they can’t put words to them.
On his content being inherently political
One hundred percent, it’s political. I live in a deeply red state and the complexities of my city are a little maroon, a little bit purple, but the language of left coast progressives isn’t going to move the needle here. When I talk about housing, I don’t use a lot of YIMBY language: I use a lot more property rights language. I think the built environment is the hardware of culture: if community is a software, you can’t get an update unless you have the right hardware. If you get this right…resistance, mutual aid, all of that is facilitated by what is happening in the built world.
On the next breakout idea in urban planning
Incremental development, the idea that we should empower people to develop on the smallest possible scale in communities. The obstacles to incremental development go across party lines. If you wanted to turn your house into a duplex, there’s this liberty, property rights argument, and then there’s this progressive, affordable housing right that can also be argued. Incremental developers exist right now as the pirates of the world of architecture: they’re building things that skirt the lines of legality, not in a safety way, but in the arbitrary, "You’re not allowed to have this (even though there’s a historical example across the street from you)" kind of way. All my favorite people are getting in a little bit of trouble and breaking stereotypes. I hope it catches on.
On how he finds ideas for content
My videos come from shower arguments, when you lose an argument and go in the shower and continue the argument until you win. Those are my posts. I’m essentially getting an idea that someone misunderstood online or in a conversation that didn’t go well and I’m working it out in my head until it goes well. I’m always looking for the perfect analogy and, once it hits me, it’s almost like giving birth to an idea. When we talk about the actual video itself, I like to have a concept I can either bring everyone on board with or that everyone understands, which I then connect to a new idea or a new way of seeing the world.
Vignesh Swaminathan
@MrBarricade, 1.6M followers on TikTok and 30.2K on Instagram
On starting his TikTok
I never really used social media before. I downloaded TikTok out of interest in what was on the app. I was experimenting with how the algorithm worked, using different sounds and following trends. About three months in, in maybe February 2021, I grew a following a little bit, which I didn’t really realize was real. I thought, Let me start posting about my work and what I’m doing. I was running a business, doing roadway projects that I felt were important for people to learn about. A lot of my work is teaching the community. I host community outreach meetings. We get a very small turnout compared to the amount of people who were viewing my videos online. I felt that I could combine both and share what I’m doing as a great way to access people where they’re at.
On his handle
It was a name given to me at my first engineer job out of school. I was hired by the City of San Jose to manage downtown street events and festivals. If there’s a big concert at the convention center, how do we shut down the streets to get more left turns in or out? If there’s a marathon, how do we shut down the streets? I worked a lot of traffic control and grew that position to where I ran that whole operation. People started calling me Mr. Barricade because, not only do I have a kind of a complicated name, but I was the guy that you needed for a block party or when the president came to town. I was the person who did that coordination. When I got into social media, it kind of made sense. It was a name that stuck.
On balancing content creation and his full-time work
I work for a large company now, so my approach is a little different. When I was on my own, I could talk maybe a bit more ill about a certain city’s projects or another consultant’s projects, that that’s not the way I would do it and I would do it this way. I’d have council members and city staff reach out to me and say, "You made a video about this thing. How can we get you to take it down and work with us to make a better project?" I was able to get a lot of traction and make a lot of change. Now, I have to be a bit more cautious. At a larger firm, I focus on larger projects that I can talk about and want to put out there…about toll roads and how congestion pricing works. I want to talk about transit in the Bay Area. I think there’s a lot more I can talk about, but it’s definitely going to be a little more focused on transportation and the roadway.
On reactions to his content
One time I spoke on a panel and this lady called me out for using profanity. It was a bit of a shock, but the way I answered was that I’m reaching out to a larger audience who don’t typically come to these meetings. The people that typically come are retired or are able to take time to come. We’re trying to reach a younger, different type of audience, bringing these people into this conversation. I’ve interviewed rappers about their neighborhoods where they have lyrics about how horrible their road is and how it’s flooded. These are perspectives that you wouldn’t hear if you have the regular community outreach we typically do. I see a lot of value in how I communicate things and I think that’s where we’re headed as a society: Going to people where they’re at versus saying, "Hey, the meeting was over there. You didn’t see it."
Paul Stout
@TalkingCities on TikTok and @paulwillstout on Instagram (322.5K and 174K followers respectively)
On starting his TikTok
It was the pandemic. I had just finished my undergrad and I was applying to grad school for a master's degree in urban planning. When you apply to programs like that, they have a whole list of books you need to read at first. I was basically locked in my room, reading books all day, and I thought, "This is just the most fascinating stuff I’ve ever read." I decided to try to put some online and it basically spiraled from there.
Learning a lot of this stuff gave words to things I had experienced. My undergrad degree was actually in history, but I got super interested in urban planning when I did a study abroad program in Salzburg, Austria. It was my first time living in a city where I could bike and walk everywhere. Growing up in Los Angeles, I was in a relatively walkable part, but you’re still functionally driving. The ability to ride my bike places, to go see friends, I was just enthralled. Reading those books put language to the experience I’d had. I figured this was an experience many other people have probably had as well.
On gaining a following
I have two followings: One began from a critique of suburbanization in 2021. Then I think I gained 80,000 [followers] in the past three weeks because I started making content again after a hiatus while I was in grad school. I also made an Instagram page which went from zero to 93,000 in 10 days. It speaks to the desire for this information.
On his most viral post
In my early era, I had one about Lancaster Boulevard and a revitalization project in California where they took what people in the industry would call a "stroad"—a mash-up between a street and a road—and turned it into something almost rambla-style. It’s actually spectacular. It speaks to the thing that there are a lot of young people out there broadly dissatisfied with the status quo of American cities and seeing transformations is super refreshing. Recently, the biggest one was [about the] prospect-refuge theory, which I didn’t expect to blow up how it did.
On balancing content creation with his landscape architecture work
It’s difficult to balance the two. Content creators who can pump it out are doing it full-time, like the urbanist creator Not Just Bikes on YouTube. It’s why my older TikTok content has low production value. Fortunately, right now, I’m job hunting so I have a lot of time to make content, which works as a portfolio in and of itself. I can manage one quality video a week with full-time work, but that’s about it.
Top images courtesy of subjects
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