The Planning Desk is written by John Osborne, AICP — a licensed urban planner with thirty years of experience across every role in Florida's land use system. John has been the staff planner presenting cases to boards, the transportation planning manager reviewing traffic studies, the planning director over current and long-range planning and development review, the deputy county administrator responsible for utilities, parks, public safety, property management, developer agreements, and an annual capital budget. In the private sector, a consultant managing entitlements for developers and working for local governments on a variety of related consulting activities.
The critical path in his career growth was going from current land use planning (e.g., site plan review, zoning, etc.) to long range planning (e.g., comprehensive plan updates, updating background data and trends, GIS work, population projections for utilities), to transportation planning (e.g., working on multi-modal transportation plans, MPO technical advisor to long range transportation plan updates, traffic study review), to providing support on fee updates (e.g., utility rates, impact fees, etc.), to supporting updates to master plans for infrastructure and services (e.g., fire-ems, parks, utilities, stormwater, etc.).
A milestone moment in his career was when the county administrator and CFO (both classically trained accountant and budget persons with decades of experience) sat him down when he became the planning director. There he was shown the math on how the type of growth the land use plans and market preferred were the most expensive to serve. The county was on a multi-decade high-growth trajectory. He was tasked to fix it.
He led How Will We Grow? — a landmark Manatee County growth study that reframed land use planning through the lens of infrastructure return on investment, asking not just whether development was consistent with the plan, but whether it could pay for itself.
That full-stack perspective — what land use decisions actually cost, who bears them, and what the downstream consequences are for every department in a local government — is what The Planning Desk teaches. Looking at land use, infrastructure, and services through the eyes of an accountant. An accountant that can translate numbers into good urban design.
That’s what The Planning Desk is attempting to share - the overlaps. For planning professionals and adjacent disciplines: the connections between land use and the systems most professionals never get to see. For students and early-career professionals: what thirty years of practice adds to what your training and professional eduction has taught.For developers and their consulting teams: the view from the other side of the table and how you can change what you are proposing for a bigger community benefit. For citizens and HOA boards: the background knowledge to participate more effectively, not just show up.
One topic. Every week. Florida focused but universally applicable.