Modern urban planning issues have had a good recent stretch in TV comedy. Below, check out clips of both Saturday Night Live and Parks and Rec talking about how cities and our attitudes about them have changed.

In the above skit from this week’s SNL, host Kevin Hart and cast members Kenan Thompson and Jay Pharoah portray residents of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Their characters embrace both the old and new stereotypes on display in many changing urban neighborhoods.

It’s a smart skit that talks about how gentrification is a nuanced two-way street. All residents benefit from a neighborhood’s positives whether they’re old or new, and the same goes for a neighborhood’s challenges.

Parks and Rec

On Tuesday, Parks and Recreation a show whose plotline has always included urban planning, pitted two of its characters on opposite sides of a debate over development.

Leslie and Ron used to be friends and colleagues in the Parks Department but have since fallen out; they’ve moved on to new jobs as well. In a flashback, viewers learn that a root of the ongoing conflict between the two is a decision Ron made to build a mixed-use apartment building next to a park that Leslie helped establish.

Leslie doesn’t like the idea of an apartment building because it would both replace low-density housing (including a home that was personally important to her) and obstruct views. She calls the building a “monstrosity” and mocks its name, calling it pretentious. Ron counters that there is demand for more housing in that area and that more people living near the park will mean more people using it.

In Ron’s office, we see renderings of a building that wouldn’t look out of place in many DC area neighborhoods. That’s a reminder that we have seen this basic argument, where some think that there is too much development going on and others think there isn’t enough, play out all over the DC region, including in the comments of GGW posts.

Since the scene is a flashback, we don’t actually find out if the apartment building went up or not. Down the road, perhaps we’ll read about the ongoing debate on Greater Greater Pawnee.

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Tagged: demographics, development, gentrification, planning

Canaan Merchant was born and raised in Powhatan, Virginia and attended George Mason University where he studied English. He became interested in urban design and transportation issues when listening to a presentation by Jeff Speck while attending GMU. He lives in Reston.