American Planning Association Research Articles

Mitigating urban light pollution: A review of municipal regulations and implications for planners

ABSTRACT Propelled by more energy-efficient technologies such as light-emitting diodes, the growth of outdoor light at night is raising concerns about light pollution (LP). Given mounting evidence of LP’s risks to human wellbeing, nature and wildlife, and views of the dark sky, this paper examines the extent to which LP concerns are addressed in land use plans, policies, and regulations in nine U.S. cities, including Flagstaff, Arizona, a city known for its model lighting code. Through a review of zoning and other ordinances, area and sectoral plans and policies, media reports, and interviews with planners, this study documents that LP has yet to be taken seriously in municipal codes of most study cities. Drawing from the Flagstaff model, it offers recommendations for evidence-based, objective standards for three key dimensions of LP-mitigation: limiting total illumination or lumens per acre, shielding of lamps, and specifying luminaire characteristics. ABBREVIATIONS AMA: American Medical Association; APA: American Planning Association; CCT: Correlated Color Temperature; CRI: Color Rendition Index; ESCO: Energy Service Companies; f.c.: foot candle; HPS: High-Pressure Sodium; IDA: International Dark-Sky Association; LED: Light-Emitting Diode; LP: Light Pollution; LPS: Low-Pressure Sodium; LZ: Lighting Zone; NSA: Narrow-Spectrum Amber

Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis

"Collateral Damages: Landlords and the Urban Housing Crisis." Journal of the American Planning Association, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), p. 1

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next

"A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next." Journal of the American Planning Association, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), p. 1

Planning Strategies and Barriers to Achieving Local Drought Preparedness

Problem, research strategy, and findings Here we describe a critical link between drought risk management and planning at the local level, the traditional lack of overlap between these fields, and current and future opportunities for addressing drought within local drought planning. We used a national survey of American Planning Association members (n = 537) to examine local planners’ perceptions of drought planning strategies and barriers, as well as their jurisdictions’ current and future drought-addressing plans. Explanatory factors included planner experience, communication with water managers and hazard planners, and factors characterizing the drought threat and capacity of their jurisdictions. We found planners most amenable to collaboration with water conservation and hazard mitigation planning processes, somewhat amenable toward integrating drought into local land use plans and day-to-day policies, and less interested in undertaking standalone drought plans. Current and future drought planning endeavors were largely driven by the threat of drought and less so by the resources found within planners’ jurisdictions. State plans and mandates played a role by requiring plans and/or providing capacity for the process. Future planning efforts may be limited by the barriers planners perceive. Funding, in terms of local tax resources, does not appear to restrict where drought planning has taken place to date. Planners’ perceptions of leadership, political will, data, and coordination across jurisdictions as barriers are lessened through experience, communication with water managers and/or hazard planners, and state mitigation plans. Takeaway for practice Preparing for future drought impacts may require communities to adopt mitigation actions through local planning processes. Local planners may prefer to address drought through water and hazard plans, but land use plans and standalone plans may also be important tools for effective mitigation where drought poses a threat. Some of the barriers that planners face may be reduced through experience and communication with water and hazard planners, as well as their states’ engagement in statewide drought mitigation plans.

Adjusting New Ruralism: The ‘soul’ of Waddington, N.Y. and placemaking at the Water's edge

Despite significant contributions to the multidisciplinary literature in rural development, U.S. planning scholarship has tended to privilege an urban focus given challenges accompanying globalization, the migration of people from rural to urban areas, as well as cultural-practice perceptions of ‘rural’ within the profession. As a result, frameworks have prevailed that are designed to improve livability in cities, including two dominant conceptualizations -- New Urbanism (NU), and New Ruralism (NR), the latter consisting of approaches that preserve or enhance rural-urban edges for the benefits of urban areas. Often overlooked are deep rural areas and their unique development challenges enabled by geographic isolation and compounded by population decline. In this relative vacuum of attention, the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association (NNECAPA) drew on its experience to recommend a counterpoint to NR, calling for an adjusted New Ruralism ([a]NR) framework to better assess and guide planning and development in more remote rural areas to create places in which people can thrive. The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to introduce the framework as part of the scholarly literature; second, to suggest the placemaking activities evident in Waddington, N.Y, a small village near the Canadian border along the St. Lawrence River, not only contribute to the community's “soul,” but also makes the community an ideal case study among those NNECAPA is collecting to further define its [a]NR conceptual umbrella. Finally, in undertaking our documentation in this task, we answer the regional chapter's call to help improve its scaffolding. Through the nexus of practical placemaking and the broader rural studies knowledge front, we suggest three major adjustments, represented visually as a model of intersecting restructured mindsets and corresponding, more specified strategies for further deliberation.

American Planning Association AICP Dumps [2022] - How To Be Successful At AICP Exam

American Planning Association AICP Dumps [2022] - How To Be Successful At AICP Exam

American Planning Association AICP Dumps - Accurate AICP Exam Questions

American Planning Association AICP Dumps - Accurate AICP Exam Questions

The Precarious Absence of Disability Perspectives in Planning Research

One in five people in the world are said to have some type of disability. Disability is not merely individuals’ compromised capability in navigating the built environment, but rather the ‘misfit’ of capabilities with how a given living environment is organized. Planning, therefore, has a crucial role to play in responding to the needs of this significant population through changes to the built and social environment. However, discussion on planning theories and practices with a focus on persons with disability (PWD) has been limited to more specific realms of ‘design,’ and precariously absent in broader planning research. This systematic literature review aims to inform potential directions for planning scholarship by exploring the current and historic planning research investigating the needs of PWD. We compiled relevant papers from five prominent English language planning journals, some of which are long-standing (<em>Town Planning Review</em>, 1910–, <em>Journal of the American Planning Association</em>, 1935–). A very limited number of papers (n = 36) on topics related to PWD of any type have been published in the five journals throughout their existence, with even fewer focusing on the population. The subareas of planning these papers addressed include housing, transportation, land use, policy, and urban design. Many papers called for participation by PWD in the planning and decision-making processes, and some recent papers advocated for the production of evidence related to costs of creating accessible infrastructure. A critical look on some disciplinary divides and enhanced roles of planning research would be beneficial.

Curbing cost overruns in infrastructure investment

Infrastructure projects around the world have long been notorious for exceeding their budgets. To address persistent cost overruns, the American Planning Association urged planners to adopt reference class forecasting alongside traditional methods but the practice has not caught on in the U.S. Conversely, the U.K. adopted Kahneman’s Nobel Prize-winning theory to challenge biases in human judgment and mandated reference class forecasting for major projects in 2003. Has reference class forecasting, originally developed to rectify honest mistakes, brought the promised success in the public sector wherein political pressure is significant? Through before-and-after and with-and-without comparisons of 107 major projects, this empirical study examines the practical relevance of reference class forecasting for infrastructure investments. A before-and-after comparison reveals that the average cost overrun declined from 38% to 5% following the introduction of reference class forecasting. A with-and-without comparison also demonstrates that the U.K. surpassed its targeted probability of completing projects within budget by 12% using reference class forecasting, whereas the U.S. underperformed by 17%. Thus, reference class forecasting has engendered notable improvements in estimation in the U.K. This empirical study demonstrates the benefits of supplementing or replacing the current forecasting method. The findings can be used to reduce substantial financial risks for the government as well as social and economic welfare losses for society.

Tracking Our Footsteps

Problem, research strategy, and findings: We conduct a systematic reading of all articles published in the past 30 years in three U.S.-based general planning journals, Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER), and Journal of Planning Literature (JPL), using latent Dirichlet allocation, a text mining technique. We find that certain research themes remain important in the past 3 decades, such as planning process, planning methods, and land use/growth management, whereas others have lost their prominent status, such as planning theory and planning education. New fields such as food systems have emerged during the study period. Editorial regimes appear to be associated with theme dynamics.Takeaway for practice: In this study we demonstrate a text mining method to effectively summarize a large amount of text data and track planning researchers’ footsteps in the study of planning issues reflected from published research articles. We identify past and emerging research trends in the studied journals that can help scholars situate their work in the literature and practitioners find collaboration opportunities. It also helps professional associations such as the American Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) and the APA open up new conference tracks and/or specialization groups/divisions so they can reflect the ever-changing interests of their memberships in a timely manner.

Spatial determinants of urban wet market vendor profit in Nanjing, China

Wet markets play an important role in urban food security in many Asian countries. Although the American Planning Association (APA) proposed in 2007 that food planning should focus on the business status and potential of food retailing, existing research pays more attention to the food accessibility of urban residents and limited research has been conducted on the profit of wet market vendors and factors determining its spatial variations. Therefore, a three-agent analytical framework for determinants of urban wet market vendor profit was developed. Based on the survey data of 1,119 small food enterprises in Nanjing, this study employs the spatial analytical method Geodetector to explore the spatial differentiation of the vendor's profits and its determinants. The study shows obvious spatial differentiation in the profits of wet market vendors across the city and draws several conclusions. Profitability is mainly related to the demographic features of vendors, their business expenses, and payment schemes. It is also related to broader socioeconomic factors at the district level, including local GDP, average income, urban infrastructure, and number of residential neighborhoods. The characteristics of vendors and their businesses have a more significant relationship with business profit than district socio-economic factors. There is also a strong mutual enhancement effect among these factors. Almost all identified determinants of profitability are stronger in peri-urban than urban areas. Therefore, there is greater potential for increasing peri-urban vendors' profits by changing these variables.

Exploring spatio-temporal hot spots of land price change with housing transaction data in Seoul

Abstract. Evaluating residential property prices or land values is quite important for urban planning and government taxation as well. But it is generally difficult to predict land values accurately due to the dynamics of land prices, particularly in urban areas. Urban land values are mostly affected by natural environmental changes and various social and economic factors (Colwell & Munneke, 1997). Also, such socio economic factors are influencing both temporal and spatial aspects of land value, and therefore spatio-temporal clusters of land price changes will show local variations of land values very well. Specifically, the spatio-temporal hot spots might indicate highly increasing demand of lands in the urban area. In those areas, regulation against real estate speculation must be needed from the public perspective because such areas might impact on other area land prices and ultimately national economic status. Therefore, analyzing spatio-temporal aspects of the land price is essential for efficient urban planning and policy making. In this study, we attempt to detect spatio-temporal hot spots which are constantly increasing the value of residential property among real estate. Although there are many types of differently designated lands including such as commercial, agricultural, and lands for other usage, we focus on the residential lands to estimate land values in this research. The reason for this is because residential house price is substantially increasing and becoming one of sensitive issues of Seoul house market. Therefore, poor people or younger generation cannot afford such high housing expenses in Seoul. Also, house transaction data is much larger than other land usage data, and therefore it can be utilized for estimating land values more precisely. From 2011 to 2016, over 1.8 million housing transactions of lease and sale happened in Seoul. This big data on housing lease and sale transactions indicates the value of each location where the transaction occurred. Specifically, we utilize spatial interpolation method including Kriging and differential local Moran’s I approach based on housing transaction data in Seoul. Housing transaction data includes every transaction for sales and leases of the house for the particular period. By applying these methodologies, we can visualize spatio-temporal clusters of highly increasing land prices and interpret significant clusters in terms of social factors. In fact, land price distribution has been widely discussed associated with smart growth and urban development (American Planning Association, 2002; Kaiser et al., 1995). However, most studies have focused on urban development and expansion, rather than the changes in the land price. Moreover, many studies have applied remote sensing approach to analyze urban land expansion (Xiao et al., 2006; Magigi & Drescher, 2010). Notably, Hu et al., (2013) applied IDW to interpolate and estimating land prices with land samples. However, IDW has a shortcoming to interpolate the value which is distant from the sample points. In addition, even studies focusing on the land price have dealt with only one temporal period. From this research gap, we use the ordinary Kriging and differential local Moran’s I to detect and forecast local hot spots of land price changes. This research has conducted the following steps. At the first step, several transactions for the residential area are consolidated into a single land value indicator. Suppose that the residential rent consists of three factors that are housing price (P), deposit (D), and monthly rent (R). Each factor can be transformed into the value index (V) by the transformation formula below. After calculating the land value index from the transformation, the global trend of the value index is overlaid on each period. Figure 1. Shows the mean value index increased from 2011 to 2016. Then, square cells regularly spaced by 100 meters are generated over study area to perform the ordinary Kriging. After the ordinary Kriging, the land value index is assigned to each grid cell. Finally, differential local Moran’s I index is calculated based on the difference that value index change between each year. V = 0.75 * 0.005 * P + 0.005 * D + R As a result, the global trend of land value changes from 2011 to 2016 in Seoul is shown in Figure. 1. The mean value index is increasing constantly. The spatio-temporal hot spots of land price change are found where the value index increment exceeds the average value index increasing over Seoul. As a result, seven clusters are detected (Figure. 2).

Mitigating environmental harm in urban planning: an ecological perspective

Environmental sustainability is a major focal point of urban planning, yet scholarly discourse often fails to grapple with the environmental contradictions inherent in the reliance on economic growth found within the prevailing sustainable development paradigm. This paper develops an ecological-sociological framework for analyzing sustainable planning best practices, which shape local sustainable planning implementation. A key argument of ecological-sociological scholarship is that sustainable development is an expression of ecological modernization, which erroneously tries to solve environmental problems through economic growth-based strategies. The authors use content analysis to examine the American Planning Association’s 2015 Sustaining Places: Best Practices for Comprehensive Plans and find that its principles and environmental harm mitigation strategies incorporate an ecological modernizationist approach to sustainable planning. The authors argue that embrace of economic growth and underspecification of ecological standards hinder the field of sustainable planning from promoting best practices that mitigate environmental harm in the long term.

Overcoming Barriers to Livability for All Ages: Inclusivity Is the Key

The rapid pace of population aging in cities around the world demands that planners design communities that are livable for people of all ages and abilities. In 2017, to assess progress toward this end, AARP and the International Division of the American Planning Association conducted a global survey of planners on their efforts to incorporate a livable-communityfor-all-ages approach into their work. The survey of 559 planners measured motivators, barriers, strategies for engagement and practices facilitating planners’ work on livable communities for all ages (LCA). Using the international survey, we analyze factors driving local governments’ actions to advance LCA, and factors driving outcomes incorporating a livablecommunity-for-all-ages approach in planning practices. We show how these differ between the US and non-US respondents, including how US suburbs and rural areas lag in actions toward LCA. Regression results show that local motivations such as awareness of substantial growth in older populations is a primary factor motivating local governments to take more actions. While physical design is a critical part of the solution, we find that facilitating practices and community engagement in the process are key to advancing planning for age-friendly communities. Additionally, communities that practice more traditional approaches to planning and have limited resources actually exhibit a higher level of LCA outcomes. This suggests that focusing on community engagement and facilitating practices could be a promising approach to incorporating an all age lens in planning practices.

Racial Equity Tool: Cleveland Climate Action Plan

Sustainability: The Journal of RecordVol. 11, No. 6 ToolkitRacial Equity Tool: Cleveland Climate Action PlanErika MeschkatErika MeschkatAddress correspondence to: Erika Meschkat, Sustainability Manager, Mayor's Office of Sustainability, Sustainable Cleveland Center, 230 West Huron Road, Cleveland, OH 44113 E-mail Address: emeschkat@city.cleveland.oh.usSustainability Manager, Mayor's Office of Sustainability, City of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:11 Dec 2018https://doi.org/10.1089/sus.2018.29149.toolkitAboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byTransitioning From Urban Climate Action to Climate Equity19 April 2022 | Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 88, No. 4 Volume 11Issue 6Dec 2018 InformationCopyright 2018, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishersTo cite this article:Erika Meschkat.Racial Equity Tool: Cleveland Climate Action Plan.Sustainability.Dec 2018.280-283.http://doi.org/10.1089/sus.2018.29149.toolkitPublished in Volume: 11 Issue 6: December 11, 2018PDF download

Is Planning ‘Secular’? Rethinking Religion, Secularism, and Planning

ABSTRACTResponding to the call for a deeper understanding of the religious phenomenon in planning – advanced, among others, by Leonie Sandercock and June Thomas in this journal – this paper argues that understanding religion in planning entails understanding religion’s constitutive other: secularism. This position draws on the burgeoning field of secular studies as well as examples of entanglement of religion, secularism, and planning in the United States and France. It problematizes a long-held assumption that good planning is based upon the notion of ‘religious indifference,’ for the assumption is conceptually anachronistic and practically untenable. This paper offers a set of methodological considerations as to how planners can radically rethink this assumption while effectively attending to the religious subjectivities of their constituencies and actively working through the structures of the modern state. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this analysis for planning practice against the backdrop of recent improvements fostered by the American Planning Association as well as the relevance of this analysis across international contexts.

Debunking fake news in a post-truth era: The plausible untruths of cost underestimation in transport infrastructure projects

The methodology, analysis, and the unfounded conclusions presented in the paper “Underestimating costs in public works projects: error or lie?” by Flyvbjerg, Holm, and Buhl (2002), published in the Journal of the American Planning Association are critically questioned. Flyvbjerg, Holm, and Buhl attribute the cause of cost underestimation in transport infrastructure projects to delusion (optimism bias) and deception (strategic misrepresentation). The bifurcation of the cost underestimation problem into error or lie presents a false dichotomy – an either/or choice that is invalid when juxtaposed with the real-world nature of procuring large infrastructure assets. Put simply, the conclusions presented by Flyvbjerg, Holm, and Buhl are akin to being fake news. Unfortunately, the persistent reverberation of these convenient narratives and factoids in both academia and media has led to these explanations becoming an accepted norm. In this paper, the claims made by Flyvbjerg, Holm, and Buhl are debunked. A call is made for policy-makers to embrace and utilize evidence-based research so that informed decisions about capital cost estimates and potential risks can be better ascertained at the front-end of major transport infrastructure projects.

Cross-Sector Partnerships Will Shape the Future of Public Health.

The article discusses the author's views about cross-sector partnerships in U.S. public health, and it mentions the in All Policies theme for the American Public Health Association's annual meeting, as well as the need for public health workers to help improve the health outcomes of U.S. communities. The American Planning Association's Plan4Health cross-sector initiative is examined, along with physical activity and efforts to increase access to healthy foods and beverages.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REFERENCE CLASS FORECASTING METHOD FOR PROJECTS IMPLEMENTED IN A CHEMICAL INDUSTRY COMPANY

The purpose of this article is to present an industrial application of the Reference Class Forecasting Method (RCFM) developed by Kahneman and Tversky for planning and decision-making under uncertainty. Project plans are usually prepared on the basis of detailed calculations and arrangements according to selected project management methodology. Undertakings that are planned in this manner often fail and do not achieve their goals. However, the American Planning Association recommends using the RCFM as an additional method. The article presents four groups of projects implemented by a chemical industry company over four years. A few of the projects were accomplished according to the plan in terms of triple constraint i.e. time, cost, and scope. The cost aspect was taken into account in the paper. During the study, the planned and implemented costs of 222 projects were analysed. On the basis of the distribution of cost overruns, according to RCFM, new patterns of planned costs were prepared. The Reference Class Forecasting Method, which was effective for large homogeneous projects turned out to be completely useless for various projects implemented by the chemical company.

Do Practicing Planners Value Plan Quality? Insights From a Survey of Planning Professionals in Ontario, Canada

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Researchers have developed conceptualconsensus on core plan characteristics that contribute to plan quality, but rarely assess how practitioners view plan quality. I explore how Canadian planners view the characteristics thought to create quality plans. I asked planners in 290 municipalities across southern Ontario (Canada) their view of the importance of plan quality and asked that they identify additional plan quality characteristics, rate the infl uence of various plan characteristics, and explain why they omitted certain characteristics in their offi cial plans. I find that practitioners valued quality plans because they facilitate implementation and help inspire the community while adding credibility and legitimacy to planning processes and the planning profession. Planners did not value all plan elements equally; they felt that clear and enforceable polices were crucial, but that it was less important to report participation in plan preparation or discuss monitoring or interorganizational cooperation in the offi cial plan. Planners did not always include important plan quality elements in their offi cial plans because they lacked suffi cient resources to prepare comprehensive plans and rarely signifi – cantly updated older plans. These case study findings may not be generalizable to other jurisdictions in Canada or internationally, but still offer useful insights.Takeaway for practice: Scholars should ensure that planning practitioners have a key role in shaping understanding of plan quality. Academics and practitioners should work together to create refl ective practitioners who use plan quality characteristics to guide them as they create or update plans. The profession needs to better train current and future planners on how to prepare and evaluate quality plans through improvements in planning curricula and professional development courses offered by the American Planning Association and the Canadian Institute of Planners.