American Planning Association

Tools for Great Lakes Planners in NOAA's Digital Coast July 19, 2011 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Digital Coast partnership provides data, tools, and training on topics such as land use, coastal conservation, hazards, marine spatial planning, and climate change. Recently, planners in the Great Lakes have participated in two needs assessments to help build new tools and improve datasets and training courses for climate change adaptation and conservation planning. Panelists from APA, NOAA, and the Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve presented the results of these assessments and shared how you can use some of the new tools and datasets in your community. Products featured included climate adaptation training for planners, easy-to-use land cover and elevation data, and a publicly available visualization tool.

Symposium on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery On February 10–11, 2011, the American Planning Association hosted a scoping symposium in its Chicago office to explore a number of essential issues in guiding the Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation project as it moves forward. Invited participants focused on helping APA to define the appropriate audiences and central issues for the project, delineate the guiding principles in planning for post-disaster recovery, refine the outline for the PAS Report, and identify criteria for best practices and potential case examples to study.

Implementing Sustainable Cities in a Harsh Environment: Some Lessons Learned from Masdar June 21, 2011 Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates is envisioned as the world's first carbon-neutral, zero waste, car-free city. However, the harsh, desert environment and the prevailing planning and construction practices in Abu Dhabi pose special challenges for an inherently ambitious goal. Margaret Cederoth, AICP, will discuss the specific elements of sustainable cities incorporated into the plans for Masdar and the practical methods for implementing these ambitions in the first few buildings of the city. The presentation will highlight relevant master plan elements that are the foundation for sustainability and focus on the physical expression of those elements along with basic contractual and education activities necessary to realize the vision.

Symposium on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery On February 10–11, 2011, the American Planning Association hosted a scoping symposium in its Chicago office to explore a number of essential issues in guiding the Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation project as it moves forward. Invited participants focused on helping APA to define the appropriate audiences and central issues for the project, delineate the guiding principles in planning for post-disaster recovery, refine the outline for the PAS Report, and identify criteria for best practices and potential case examples to study.

Recycling in Chicago: Past, Present, and Future May 17, 2011 As Chicago begins a new political era, much attention has been paid to the problems in Chicago's recycling program. Carl Zimring from Roosevelt University analyzed the public and private systems used to recycle post-consumer materials in Chicago over the past century, with discussion of how the current system evolved, problems with it, and ways in which future versions of recycling in Chicago might work based on historical precedents and programs in other cities.

Symposium on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery On February 10–11, 2011, the American Planning Association hosted a scoping symposium in its Chicago office to explore a number of essential issues in guiding the Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation project as it moves forward. Invited participants focused on helping APA to define the appropriate audiences and central issues for the project, delineate the guiding principles in planning for post-disaster recovery, refine the outline for the PAS Report, and identify criteria for best practices and potential case examples to study.

Symposium on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery On February 10–11, 2011, the American Planning Association hosted a scoping symposium in its Chicago office to explore a number of essential issues in guiding the Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation project as it moves forward. Invited participants focused on helping APA to define the appropriate audiences and central issues for the project, delineate the guiding principles in planning for post-disaster recovery, refine the outline for the PAS Report, and identify criteria for best practices and potential case examples to study.

In this podcast, Barry Checkoway and Ramona Mullahey discuss "The Future of Youth Engagement in Planning." Checkoway is a professor of social work and urban planning at the University of Michigan. He previously worked with the White House in launching AmeriCorps. Checkoway and Mullahey, along with Yve Susskind, are the authors of PAS Report 486, Youth Participation in Community Planning.

Symposium on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery On February 10–11, 2011, the American Planning Association hosted a scoping symposium in its Chicago office to explore a number of essential issues in guiding the Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation project as it moves forward. Invited participants focused on helping APA to define the appropriate audiences and central issues for the project, delineate the guiding principles in planning for post-disaster recovery, refine the outline for the PAS Report, and identify criteria for best practices and potential case examples to study.

The Plight of Black Coastal Landowners in the Sunbelt South and Its Lessons for Post–Housing Bubble America April 26, 2011 At the turn of the 20th century, African Americans owned vast swaths of property along America's shores. By the post–World War II era, African American beaches and resorts served as important places for working families to escape from the daily indignities of Jim Crow and for a separate, seasonal black leisure economy to take shape. The death of Jim Crow coincided with the emergence of a pro-growth, corporate-friendly Sunbelt economy, which led to massive resort and residential development in coastal areas, and the targeting of black coastal landowners as the path of least resistance. From the 1960s to the present, African American property owners in areas targeted for leisure-based economic and real estate development have struggled to fend off various schemes deployed by developers and their allies in municipal, county, and state governments to expropriate and put to "best use" valuab

Re-Planning Crystal City As a 21st Century Urban Village April 26, 2011 The 2006 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) action hit Arlington, Virginia, hard. The loss of 17,000 Department of Defense employees and 4.2 million square feet of leased space was the equivalent of losing five military bases, and most of the impact was in the Crystal City neighborhood. Developed largely in the 1960s and 1970s, Crystal City contained approximately 30 buildings aged 30 years or more, originally built to GSA specifications that not longer reflected the needs of the market. Arlington developed a plan to remove the older office buildings, add more than 30 new buildings, increase density by more than 60 percent, and substantially improve transportation and the entire urban environment. This discussion will address the planning process, the economic and transportation analyses that served as the basis of the plan, and the innovative financing plan developed to pay for the necessary infrastructure to make the plan a reality.

Symposium on Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery On February 10–11, 2011, the American Planning Association hosted a scoping symposium in its Chicago office to explore a number of essential issues in guiding the Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation project as it moves forward. Invited participants focused on helping APA to define the appropriate audiences and central issues for the project, delineate the guiding principles in planning for post-disaster recovery, refine the outline for the PAS Report, and identify criteria for best practices and potential case examples to study.

Sustaining Places March 22, 2011 In March 2010, APA President Bruce Knight, FAICP, introduced APA’s Sustaining Places Initiative at the United Nations Fifth World Forum. In his remarks, he explained, "Sustaining Places will examine both how places can be sustained and how places themselves sustain life and civilizations. Planning's comprehensive focus is not limited to a building or a site but encompasses all scales and all forms of organization of human settlements, from rural areas and small town to cities and metropolitan regions. Planners are uniquely qualified to be global leaders in integrating these two concepts of sustainability and places. Ours is the place-making profession and the places that we make must have lasting value for all." Knight's Tuesdays at APA presentation took a closer look at the Sustaining Places Initiative and its focus on positioning the comprehensive plan as the primary local sustainability policy tool.

Gary and Region Investment Project March 15, 2011 Gary and other urban areas in Northwest Indiana have weathered decades of disinvestment. Yet they possess significant — if underused — assets, including national parks, miles of Lake Michigan shoreline, transit hubs, historic landmarks, and a strong workforce. While it would make a natural poster child for what is often called "right-sizing," this region is often overshadowed by cities like Detroit, Flint, and Youngstown in this emerging national dialogue. Nevertheless, the Gary and Region Investment Project (GRIP) is an important sign of how Northwest Indiana is crafting a regional approach to forward key transformative projects with the aim of stabilizing and reinvesting in the urban core. Joanna Trotter from the Metropolitan Planning Council and Hubert Morgan from the Northwest Indiana Regional Planning commission gave an overview of GRIP and provided an update on progress to date.

Community Reinvestment and the Foreclosure Crisis February 22, 2011 According to the Woodstock Institute, lenders repossessed more than 25,000 homes in the Chicago area during the first three quarters of 2010. According to the same analysis, these lender-owned foreclosures will take an average of 16 months to be absorbed by the housing market. Vacant properties cause blight, which destabilizes neighborhoods and local real estate markets, and also weakens the ability of municipalities to maintain a comfortable quality of life by shrinking tax rolls and increasing maintenance costs. Geoff Smith from the Woodstock Institute took an in-depth look at recent trends in foreclosure activity in the Chicago region with a focus on the shifting patterns of regional foreclosures, the concentration of vacant properties tied to foreclosures, and implications for community development.

A Template for Redeveloping Chicago's Neighborhoods January 25, 2011 According to Bruce Frankel, a Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State, neighborhood reinvestment depends on distinct strategies based on neighborhood conditions, both assets and liabilities. In essence, a redeveloper must select the neighborhood for the strategy, and vice-versa. Frankel and his students explained this strategy/conditions matrix and explored how these strategic plans become financially underwritten and structured to be financially sustainable. To illustrate the model in action, Frankel and his students presented a strategy for the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago.