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Cities don’t emerge from blueprints. Instead, they emerge from people. Thinking Big by Thinking Small is my challenge to the status quo of planning and policy. I believe places get better not through grand schemes but through small, incremental steps, one brick, one block, one choice at a time.
I’m Jeffery Tompkins, an urban planner, illustrator, and development strategist. This blog is my place to test and share ideas: how cities grow, decline, and reinvent themselves, and how our zoning and land use can be reformed to let places happen.
Growing up in Hammond, Indiana, a post-industrial city shaped by steel mills, sprawl, and disinvestment, and moving to Indianapolis gave me an early lens into how places can decline and adapt. That perspective continues to drive my work today at Proformus and beyond: asking how land use can empower people and places when larger systems fall short.
What You Can Expect
This blog is for city-dwellers, planners, and anyone curious about how the smallest moves — a street corner redesign, a neighborhood decision — can ripple into lasting change. Here you’ll find fresh ways to see your city, practical insights you can use, and hopefully ideas that spark your own visions.
On Thinking Big by Thinking Small, I’ll be writing about:
🔹 Emergent cities, hyperlocal planning, and the future of urban design.
🔹 How land use decisions shape opportunity
🔹 How planning (and zoning) can create wealth and empowerment
🔹 Why incremental, small actions are easier and more effective than grand gestures
Along the way, I’ll explore why hyperlocal, incremental development often beats expensive megaprojects, how tiny zoning tweaks can open doors for housing and wealth, and what lessons other cities are testing that yours can borrow.
As an architectural illustrator, (award-winning some would say), I translate abstract ideas into simple, visual diagrams. Most urban planning conversations focus on sweeping visions or shiny megaprojects. I focus on the opposite: small moves, tested in real places, drawn from overlooked places, and illustrated in ways that make abstract concepts easy to see.
Outside of here, I’m frequent on LinkedIn, but you can also find me on X.
I’d love for you to join me. Two posts a week will always be free, and paid subscribers help me keep pushing these ideas forward.
Who I Am
I’ve spent over a decade in the built environment, working at the intersection of development strategy and reparative urbanism. I use my professional capacity to push back against hegemonic, one-size-fits-all development with place-based strategies rooted in local context and complexity — nothing is ever just in and of itself.
A big question I ask is “how can our patterns of land use create wealth and empowerment for people?”
I’ve led or been on the team of some fairly transformative district and anchor institution plans, including as a co-lead planner of the nationally significant Indy Health District1 - the largest of its kind in the U.S.
I founded Proformus, an urban planning and development consultancy, to help communities chart incremental, place-based strategies instead of one-size-fits-all fixes. Much of this blog will serve as a testing ground for my upcoming book, How to Make Places Go2.
When I’m not thinking about cities, you’ll find me on my e-bike in Indianapolis, reading widely, cheering on the Chicago Cubs, or being a very proud cat and dog dad.3
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As part of the Perkins & Will, METICULOUS, BrowningDay, and GangGang team.
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Their names are Jan (cat), Juniper (dog), and Roscoe (dog). Here is a picture of them plotting:
