American Planning Association

Transit oriented development has become the holy grail of land use and transportation planners. The logic of concentrating both residential and commercial growth at transit stations — especially rail transit stations — is compelling and has ample empirical support. There is also evidence that transit accessibility increases property values near stations and that mixed use, high density development near stations increases transit ridership. But investments in transit are designed to move riders through a transit corridor, thus the success of transit investments should be measured at the corridor, not the station, level. In this presentation, Professor Gerrit Knaap, director of the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland, introduced the newly formed Purple Line Corridor Coalition. The goal of the coalition is to assure that investments in the purple line transit corridor achieve more than transit oriented development but serve as a stimulus for sustainable and equitable economic develop

June 25, 2013 As we emerge from the Great Recession, communities with a predictable development review and approval process have a powerful competitive advantage in attracting private investment and economic development. Now, more than ever, limited access to capital, weaker markets, and less ability (or willingness) to share financial incentives is steering good development toward "easier" environments. "Winning" communities are delivering a predictable entitlement process that advances the community's planning and development objectives and rewards good development with less stress and less delay. This concept is not about giving away the store, "padding" anybody's bottom line, or accepting undesirable development. The focus is on a balance between the assurance that communities must have from an approval and the predictability a developer seeks in navigating that process. Michael Blue, FAICP, from Teska Associates will draw on his experience managing municipal development departments and serving clients

Despite a storied planning history, Chicago is no longer a city that plans with confidence and vision. Chicago lacks a city department with the name "planning" in its title. Instead, this essential municipal function is now largely focused on immediate zoning matters with long range and strategic planning in a secondary role and largely replaced with piecemeal, ad hoc, and volunteer planning efforts – often funded and focused on disconnected Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts. The city had great success in the 1950s and 1960s in crafting strong central area plans and path-breaking comprehensive plans that laid the groundwork for a major commercial and residential revival. In the most recent decade however major planning initiatives have been largely unimplemented and replaced by deal-making, site-specific and one-off projects. Systematic, coordinated, long-range efforts have been difficult to initiate or sustain. Drawing on their new APA Planners Press book Planning Chicago, authors Jon B. DeVries, AI

The film It's a Wonderful Life grows more relevant every day as more American consumers lose the value in their homes and anonymous customer service calling centers become our primary contact with our banks. However, there are still more than 7,000 banks and 7,000 credit unions in the United States. Each of these still has the ability to convert your insured deposit into a loan to a local business and to step up as a community civic leader. Just under 100 of those banks are certified by the U.S. Treasury as "community development banks" and another 500 nonprofit community loan funds finance housing rehab, small businesses, and nonprofit facilities. Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton will discuss the role that ShoreBank played as the first and largest community development bank and the increasing importance of community development financial institutions as long term partners in community and economic development. They will touch on the new Global Alliance for Banking on Values as well as opportunities for plan

While sustainability and green urbanism have become buzzwords in urban policy circles, too little analysis has focused on who gets to decide what green looks like. Many visions of the green city seem to have room only for park space, waterfront cafes, and luxury LEED-certified buildings, prompting concern that there is no place in the "sustainable" city for industrial uses and the working class. While it is difficult to find anyone against "sustainability," the process through which urban environments are being remade under the rubric of sustainability are highly contested. A major concern is environmental gentrification, in which environmental improvements result in the displacement of working class residents. While social justice is supposed to be an explicit part of any definition of sustainability, the surge in environmental awareness in cities has not been matched with concern for social equity. Instead, the environmental dimension tends to obscure the social processes that created it. And yet, sustaina

Conservation has often been considered a non-use of land, what is left over when other human needs have been accommodated. More recently, the importance of conservation as an intentional land use has been recognized for its role in supporting a variety of human needs: cultural, recreational, and ecosystem services with significant socioeconomic benefits. However, conservation is different because the factors that make an area valuable for conservation are not nearly as flexible and transportable as other land uses that can use a variety of technologies to make sites suitable to accommodate nearly any type of development. NatureServe, an international conservation nonprofit organization, supports assessment and planning for conservation land use through a variety of products and services. The NatureServe Network of state natural heritage programs collect and provide data on the location of rare and imperiled species and ecosystems as well as expertise in the conservation of biodiversity. In this presentatio

In Chicago, 1.8 million trips are taken by transit per day, and more than half of these are by bus. However, because Chicago's congestion is the third worst in the country, buses are often caught in traffic, making them slower and less reliable than they should be. There have been many studies looking at new rail options, including a downtown circulator streetcar and the Circle Line L train, but all have stalled because of the time and money needed to plan and implement. For the last five years, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Chicago Department of Transportation have been planning Bus Rapid Transit in the city. The first new type of transit service since trolley bus service opened in 1930, the Jeffery Jump, is paving the way for Bus Rapid Transit in the Loop and along Western and Ashland Avenues. Christopher Ziemann, Chicago's BRT Project Manager, will discuss the unique approach that Chicago is using to advance BRT economically, politically, and technically.

Professor Thomas O’Rourke, Thomas R. Briggs Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, spoke in July 2012 at the Natural Hazards Workshop in Broomfield, Colorado, on the subject of “Infrastructure Too Big to Fail.” Jim Schwab, AICP, manager of the APA Hazards Planning Research Center, caught up with him later to explore that subject in the context of natural disasters. Their conversation is the focus of this podcast.

According to annual surveys by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the National League of Cities (NLC), cities have been eliminating jobs, decreasing infrastructure investments, and scaling back services for more than a decade. For many municipalities, the Great Recession has exacerbated these trends, endangering these communities ability to invest in future economic growth. Furthermore, the changing nature of municipal revenue structures affects land-use policy and the nature of future development projects. In April 2012 UIC and NLC received a $950,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to conduct a three-year study of municipal responses to the Great Recession. Michael Pagano from UIC shared some highlights of his research to date with a special emphasis on the immediate, and likely lasting, effects of the Great Recession on municipal revenue structures and decision making regarding the type, timing, and location of new development.

As large populations in the United States are aging, our communities must adapt to this demographic shift. More people are living longer in varying locations from cities and towns to rural areas of the country. Planners are in a position to ensure that this growing population has access to services no matter what the context. Issues of mobility, food access, and healthy living are just some topics to be explored in this symposium. Panelists include: Sandy Markwood, CEO National Association of Area Agencies on Aging; Jana Lynott, AICP, Strategic Policy Advisor, AARP; David Ferleger, David Ferleger Law Office; and Elinor Ginzler, moderator, Senior Director, Cahnmann Center for Supportive Services, Jewish Council for the Aging.

Streets are very often a community's largest public asset, yet they have rarely been described as such. In an era of higher gas prices, increasing rates of chronic disease, and an increased call for fiscally responsible investments, people are demanding another look at our streets. They want safe streets that provide a choice of travel modes and access to destinations near and far. They want complete streets. An ideal complete streets policy is an inter-disciplinary vision and an actionable tool to create robust, safe transportation networks within and between our communities. But what are the real barriers to complete design? What do people really mean when they ask for complete streets? And why do so many projects result in incomplete streets? Stefanie Seskin from the Complete Streets Coalition and Paul Lippens, AICP, from the Active Transportation Alliance will describe the 10 elements of a complete streets policy, and how that written direction can prompt transportation decisions that are responsive to

Each year in the U.S., approximately 1.7 billion square feet of buildings are demolished and approximately 5 billion square feet of newly constructed buildings are added to the total building stock. Until recently, the environmental impacts of this cycle of demolition and new construction have been poorly understood, as were the opportunities to gain carbon savings through building retrofit and reuse. Earlier this year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation released "The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse," the most comprehensive analysis to date comparing the environmental impacts of new construction compared to retrofit and reuse of existing buildings. Commissioned by Preservation Green Lab, a project of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the study found that building reuse typically offers greater environmental savings than demolition and new construction and that building reuse and retrofits substantially reduce climate change impacts. Patrice Frey

Stretching 2.7 miles through four vibrant Chicago northwest side neighborhoods, the unused Bloomingdale elevated rail corridor is adjacent to numerous private properties and crosses over major arterials, a historic boulevard, bus and bicycle routes, and the CTA Blue Line. The conversion of this corridor into a trail and park will provide unprecedented connections to and among these communities. The recently released Bloomingdale Trail and Park Framework Plan represents a critical juncture in the development of the project. Balanced between the efforts of the past and the development of the future, it strives to capture and harness the momentum and history of the project while defining a vision for the Bloomingdale's initial development and long-term stewardship. Beth White from the Trust for Public Land and Kathleen Dickhut from the City of Chicago will provide an overview of the collaborative planning process and discuss the plan's guidelines to design, implement, and manage a local trail and park with glob

Obesity is the foremost public health crisis in Chicago and across the nation. More than half of Chicago adults and one-third of youth are overweight or obese, meaning they are at increased risk for serious, costly health problems such as heart disease and diabetes. A key focus in the city's obesity prevention effort is improving access to healthy food. To this end the City of Chicago is developing a new food plan through a partnership that includes the Departments of Housing and Economic Development, Public Health, Family and Support Services, the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC), and many stakeholders that include individuals and organizations representing health and food related issues. Bradley Roback from the City of Chicago will discuss the process of developing the plan and highlight strategies that seek to increase the production and distribution of healthy food, improve access to healthier food, build demand and increase consumption of healthy food, and capitalize on opportunit

Author Tony Hiss (Experience of Place), talks with Bob Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association about his new paperback edition of In Motion: The Experience of Travel. Hiss and Yaro discuss how planners can take on the role of stewards of Deep Travel.

Riverside, Illinois, and Mariemont, Ohio, are two acclaimed examples of early planned communities. Riverside's plan was created in 1869 by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York City's Central Park, and John Nolen developed the town plan for Mariemont in 1921 as a national exemplar. Both of these pioneer planners were landscape architects who understood that good planning is good business. In recognition of their uniqueness and significance, Riverside and Mariemont enjoy a special honor — designation as National Historic Landmarks. In addition, they possess such enviable but often elusive attributes as sense of place, strong community identity, and outstanding quality of life. After presenting an overview of Olmsted, Nolen, and the two communities, former Mariemont Preservation Foundation president Frank Raeon, AICP, explained why the design principles used in Riverside and Mariemont merit not only further consideration but potential incorporation into the development patterns and character of c

Tax increment financing (TIF) has always been a key tool in the municipal arsenal to make high-quality development projects possible. Since the recession and real estate crash, TIF and other innovative public/private financing mechanisms such as tax credits, loan guarantees, and gap loans, have been more critical than ever. Tony Smith, AICP, of S.B. Friedman Development Advisors will discuss the principles of "when and how to TIF," sharing case studies and approaches for getting the deal done. He will cover the new applications of public/private financing that have emerged since the recession and suggest lessons learned from these applications.

APA talks with Aaron Paley about the CicLAvia bicycle and pedestrian event in Los Angeles.

Timothy Mennel, editor of APA Planners Press, interviews editor David C. Sloane and contributors Todd Gish and Andrew Whittemore, on their newest book, Planning Los Angeles.

Jim Schwab, Manager of the kAPA Hazards Planning Research Center and editor of the Recovery News blog, interviews Shirley Laska, PhD. and Kristina Peterson, PhD., from the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response, and Technology at The University of New Orleans (UNO-CHART).