American Planning Association

Hazard Mitigation Planning Is your community prepared if disaster strikes? John Wilson from Lee County, Florida, and Julia Burrows from Roseville, California, discuss how their respective communities created hazard mitigation plans. Roseville and Lee County are two featured case studies in the new Planning Advisory Service report, Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning (PAS 56...

Penny Wise, Pound Fuelish: New Measures of Housing + Transportation Affordability July 20, 2010 Under the traditional definition of housing affordability, seven out of 10 U.S. communities are considered "affordable" to the typical household. But in almost all metro regions of the country, when the definition of affordability includes both housing and transportation costs, the number of communities...

More Smiles, Less Miles May 11, 2010 Transportation is a major consideration when planning a region, city, suburb, or even a town center. It has become increasingly common for plans to discuss greenhouse gas emissions in addition to traffic congestion. The good news is that every day, more people are riding clean, riding less, and riding together. This means that millions are spending less on gaso...

This podcast features Scott Shuford, AICP, Planning and Development Director of Onslow County, North Carolina, Suzanne Rynne, AICP, Manager of APA's Green Communities Research Center, and Jan Mueller, Senior Policy Associate with the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, the three coauthors of PAS report 558, Planning for a New Energy and Climate Future. Listen as they discuss the various regi...

Chicago's Central Area Action Plan April 20, 2010 Over the past decade, the central six square miles of Chicago have undergone a dramatic transformation with unprecedented growth in both the residential and educational sectors as well as the construction of new public facilities and museums (most notably the opening of Millennium Park and the modern wing of the Art Institute on the north side of G...

Clear As Mud Hear authors Rob Olshansky and Laurie Johnson discuss their new release Clear As Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans. Olshansky and Johnson discuss how Hurricane Katrina differed from other international disasters and their experience in tracking the rebuilding of New Orleans.

The Evolution of Our Suburbs March 16, 2010 For the last few decades the Chicago region has been suburbanizing with little regard to energy use, climate change, and urban form. The relentless pursuit of property tax revenue and a focus on single uses and single-site developments distracts many suburban communities from the task of planning for a sustainable and livable built environment. As planne...

Food and Planning in New Orleans Among the many things New Orleans is famous for is its food. Increasingly, that food is locally grown. Vanessa Ulmer, the Policy and Advocacy Coordinator with the Prevention Research Center at Tulane University, joined Broadcast APA to talk about local food, fighting obesity, and citywide polices that increase food access. She also gives listeners tips on where to...

Visiting Fellowship in New Zealand In 2008, Center Manager Jim Schwab, AICP, was invited by the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ), located at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, to serve as a Visiting Fellow, studying New Zealand hazards planning and offering consultation on national hazards policy. Schwab's trip lasted three weeks from July 25 to August 15, 2008, du...

Updates on government planning policy

New Book Sounds Death Knell for Suburbs Media Briefing Presentation CHICAGO — The suburbs are in a fragile state and it is only going to get worse. The recent foreclosure crisis has masked the true, underlying problems facing U.S. suburbs. These are basic structural problems that will not vanish with a global economic recovery. Foreclosing the Dream: How America's Housing Crisis Is Reshaping Our C...

Post-Katrina Demographics Estimating the population of New Orleans was a tricky business in the months — and years — after Hurricane Katrina. With the 2010 Census coming up, planner Rafe Rabalais talks about what the official decennial count means for the city, shifts in local demographics since the August 2005 storm, and the tool his company developed to track the resettlement of New Orleans.

Beyond Burnham February 23, 2010 Since the publication of Burnham and Bennett's Plan of Chicago in 1909, powerful institutions such as the Chicago Plan Commission and Regional Transportation Authority, among others, have emerged to promote metropolitan goals in the Chicago region. In their new illustrated book on the topic, Joseph Schwieterman and Alan Mammoser show how the human face of planning...

Data Mining on Federal Websites January 26, 2010 Since the late 1990s, planners have grown to rely on the rapid exchange of information and enhanced data analysis tools enabled by sophisticated computing power. With this proliferation of information and technology, planners need practical strategies for making sense of electronic information. John Shuler, from the University of Illinois at Chicago...

Green Community Energy (Part II) In this episode, listen to Green Community contributors Erica Heller, AICP, and Mark Heller, AICP.