The Role of Planners in Space Exploration with Justin Hollander, FAICP

Joe DeAngelis [00:00]:  Hello, and welcome to the Trend Report podcast miniseries, a series of discussions with experts and planners on new and emerging trends, as well as their potential impacts on our communities and the practice of planning. My name is Joe DeAngelis, research manager at the American Planning Association and your host. Today I'm joined by American urban planning and design scholar Justin Hollander. Justin is a professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the author of 11 books, many of which are centered on issues of urban growth and decline. But he's also the author of the First City on Mars: An Urban Planner's Guide to Settling the Red Planet. And that book, I think, will be helpful in guiding our discussion today on what I think is an interesting but definitely underexplored topic for planners, the role of planning and planners in the potential settlement of space.

Justin, how are you doing today?

Justin Hollander [01:00]: Yes, I'm doing great. Thank you, Joe.

Joe DeAngelis [01:02]:  Great. So let's kick things off. Before we get into the weeds too deeply on things like planetary settlement, it'll probably be helpful to our listeners for you to set the stage a bit. Over the last 10, 15 years, we've seen an explosion of interest and investment in the commercial and private space industry, something of a private space race. Can you talk a little bit about what that industry maybe looks like today, some of the major players and what they seem to be focused on? 

Justin Hollander [01:31]: So, you know, first of all, you have the government agencies that we're all familiar with, NASA and the European Space Agency. But what's also interesting is that many other countries have really made big strides, in India and in Asia, in terms of really developing their own space programs and being active in developing technology to go into space.

In addition, there's been a real explosion of interest in the private sector. Virgin Galactic has actually started really doing space tourism, and that involves bringing people out into the low Earth orbit or close to it, so they can experience weightlessness. In addition, many people are probably familiar with the work that Elon Musk and his SpaceX company has done in starting to actually bring space tourists also out into outer space.

So this is a big area of growth and investment. And as the cost of these kinds of launches has gone down pretty quickly, I think we can continue to expect there'll be further investment and people will be spending more of their leisure time out in space.

Joe DeAngelis [03:01]: Right. So, given the relatively recent growth of the industry and maybe extrapolating that out a little bit, what do you see happening over the next couple of decades in the space sector? Especially in maybe some areas where you see some overlap with the concerns and interests of planners.

Justin Hollander [03:22]: Yeah, so I think we will expect to see very soon a permanent or a semi-permanent presence of humans on the moon. So, that is something that not only do you have interest from NASA, but as well you have very strong interest from the European Space Agency and from the Chinese space agencies. So this is something that I think before we know it, parts of the Moon will resemble Antarctica in the sense that Antarctica, a very remote part of Earth, an area which is very uninviting for human occupation and settlement, yet through a number of different missions and scientific enterprises, you have quite a lot of activity there. And I think that that's going to happen on the moon.

And here in the U.S., both NASA and SpaceX have been very explicit about their hope through something called Project Artemis to then on the moon build a launch facility that would then bring humans to Mars. And so that's something I think we can expect as well. And that I think we're going to see an attempt to colonize Mars, to build cities there.

And then the other thing that I think planners are going to be interested in is the pretty extraordinary opportunities to just live in space. You know, in many ways, humans have already colonized low Earth orbit, having had a presence in the International Space Station for over two decades. There will be new space stations. The Chinese are about to launch, about to open the one that they've been building, and NASA with other partners are building another one. So you're still going to start to see that. But I think you can also expect beyond lower Earth orbit to see other essentially cities in outer space that planners really should be part of figuring out what that's going to look like.

Joe DeAngelis [05:45]: So your book, First City on Mars, looks at the settlement of the red planet from the perspective of planners and planning. I'd say it's somewhat rare for a planner to actually be able to think about planning a city from the very beginning, and probably even rarer for that city to be somewhere other than Earth. What do you see as the role of a planner in helping to design and plan a city on another planet generally, or Mars specifically, if that's kind of what you're more familiar with.

Justin Hollander [06:14]: Yeah, well, I think it's important for folks to think about what is really happening in this space. And all the topics, all the stuff I've just been talking about, the technology is really being led by engineers and scientists. The planning for settlements, architects are consulted on occasion, but planners are really not part of this conversation. And that is really what my goal was for the book because I felt that as leaders are kind of thinking about how we can go into the future and expand our horizons, these people are not considering what planning brings to the table. And in fact planning brings a lot.

And so what I've done in the book is I've tried to take the most salient pieces of our knowledge base related to outer space planning. Take that history, take the knowledge, take the techniques and put it in one place so that those folks who are going to be leading these kinds of efforts off planet, that they'll have a resource to be able to kind of see, "Oh yes, now I see that planning can actually bring a lot." And then I hope that they will then bring planners into these projects and have them play a role in helping to shape these cities.

Joe DeAngelis [07:48]: I think it's interesting, sort of as a follow up to that, that there's probably a lot of lessons learned from planners' experience here today on Earth of planning that isn't necessarily led by planners. You know, planning that's led, you know, from an engineering perspective, from a builder perspective. And maybe that planners aren't super involved in those decisions or hadn't been involved in those decisions 100, 150 years ago when a lot of cities really started to expand and grow. So there's probably a lot that can be transferred over to that kind of scenario, if you are thinking about that long term, you know, settlement elsewhere.

Justin Hollander [08:21]: Yeah, I totally agree. And so that's kind of part of what I was trying to do in this research to try to understand what, you know, sure, maybe the planners are not going to be part of the design team for the rocket, that's fine. But those rocket designers, they shouldn't be the ones laying out the street grid and thinking about managing the infrastructure. That the planners can really be better, are better suited to be able to help with that piece.

Joe DeAngelis [08:52]: Interesting. So in your research on the topic of settling and planning a city on Mars, is there anything that maybe from a planning perspective, again, anything that surprised you or that you maybe hadn't originally considered to be an issue that did come up during your research?

Justin Hollander [09:13]: Well, I think that science fiction has taught me that the cities on Mars will be under these kind of futuristic-looking domes. And there's a certain kind of aesthetic that I think many of us are familiar with. But I didn't really understand how important building underground really is. When you're thinking about a place like Mars, the fact is that radiation is a serious problem for sustaining human populations. And so being underground can offer some real protection from that. In addition, it's really cold on Mars, especially in the winter, especially on the poles. To think about what we've learned on Earth in terms of using the benefits of being underground or even partially underground. You know, humans have been building underground sunken courtyards and cliff dwellings, you know, using those kinds of spaces for thousands of years. And so we know that there's benefits from, you can minimize temperature variation, there's the passive cooling benefits of being underground. So, for all those reasons, you know, I think we can expect at least in early settlement of Mars to be below grade.

Joe DeAngelis [10:45]: Planners today, right here on Earth, we're often dealing with challenging ethical questions that we are fairly familiar with, in some ways. I'd imagine that those questions change a bit on Mars or elsewhere. There has to be a host of interesting ethical issues, even in what people see as, you know, a barren empty land. Are there any ethical considerations you think planners of the future might need to account for when designing or planning a new settlement in an alien environment?

Justin Hollander [11:16]: Yes, I do think so. And I mean, I think I'm going to start by saying that there are ethical questions about building in a place that is just so dangerous to humans. This is a place that, if it's even possible to colonize and to have people live for long periods, and that's not even certain. If it is possible, it's certainly not going to be a healthy place. So I think we need to be aware of those risks and those hazards. I literally have a student of mine and I told him about this project and the book and he's like, "Well, I wanna go." And I was like, "Well, you know how dangerous it is." He's like, "I don't care if I die there, I don't care. I just wanna be there." So I think that that's something to consider.

The other kind of dimension that I covered a little bit in the book is just thinking about what are we going to do to this place. There's a famous trilogy of books on Mars by an author, Kim Stanley Robinson, where he really does such a great job of grappling with this question of what he calls planetary preservation. So we're used to kind of like historic preservation or environmental preservation. So in order for humans to actually have a long term presence on Mars, humans would have to manipulate the climate and the atmosphere. There's no question that that would have to happen. And so there's a real destructive component to doing such a thing. And so the ethical questions are around how much should we just leave Mars alone for the beauty of being so toxic and so unwelcoming? Or do we have some sort of a manifest destiny to conquer it and make it suitable for human life? And so I think that's the ethical question that I'm not prepared to weigh in on this at this point.

Joe DeAngelis [13:30]: There's a lot of analogs and connections that can be made in how people spread out and settle different places on Earth and how they have over time and history here that I'm sure can be learned, if you're considering settling Mars. So there's some interesting connections there for that as well.

As we look 20, 30 years into the future, maybe longer, it can sometimes be a little bit difficult to clearly connect the uncertain technological or social or whatever kinds of developments over time to the actual practice of planning, especially here, here and now. I'd imagine this is even more difficult when the topic is planning a settlement in space or somewhere else. Are there any lessons you think can be drawn from studying this topic that are actually useful for planners today here on Earth?

Justin Hollander [14:28]: Yeah, I mean, I think that if I was hired to actually work with a team and go there and develop a master plan and lay it out and build a small city, I think I could probably write like a best practices after that. At this point, the biggest lesson for planners today that I could offer is, you know, after a few hundred pages of writing this book, I mean, I cannot tell you how terrified I am of the idea of me personally living on Mars. I mean, it's such an awful place in terms of there's no water to drink, there's no air to breathe, there's no food. I mean, certainly, you know, with effort we can make food.

So, all I'm trying to say is that we are so, so lucky that we have Earth. And you know, I think if we can kind of take a step back and maybe appreciate what we have a little bit more, I mean, I think that's a lesson, that's a lesson from kind of outer space planning can bring back. You know, we have something really good right here under our feet. And you know, it shouldn't in any way kind of get in the way of us continuing to explore what outer space planning might look like and prepare for what would probably happen. But let's be grateful for what we have and to continue to love and cherish this planet.

Joe DeAngelis [16:06]: Yeah, I think for a challenging topic like this, that's a really good hopeful note for us to wrap up on today, then. Thank you, Justin, for joining us for this fun and interesting and hopefully enlightening conversation. We really appreciate it.

Justin Hollander [16:19]: Thank you. You're welcome.

Joe DeAngelis [16:23]: For more on this topic, an adapted version of this discussion, and many other collected trends and signals, you can check out APA's 2025 Trend Report, which is available at planning.org/foresight. To hear previous episodes, visit us at planning.org/podcasts. You can also subscribe at Apple podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.