As in previous years, the 2024 Trend Report features a list of over 100 existing, emerging, and potential future trends that the APA Foresight team, together with our Trend Scouting Foresight Community, identified as relevant to planning. The trends are structured within three timeframes (Act Now, Prepare, Learn and Watch), which indicate the urgency of planners’ action.

This webinar will explore key skills needed to integrate empathy and compassion in planning practice. It will focus on deepening planners' awareness of and practice of skills that support them in honoring their own identity (and stories) while also respecting and valuing the varied identities, stories, and experiences of the community, leading to relationships that can advance equitable and sustainable planning.

Equitable strategies don’t guarantee representative data, so it’s critical to know who you're reaching and who you’re not. Here's how one community adopted an approach that has resulted in 20,000+ residents engaging from all corners of the community.

Georgia Tech's urban design studio partners with 2 Presbyterian churches, a Baptist Church, and a Synagogue to conduct deep-dive explorations into opportunities, challenges, and realities that communities of faith face when they get involved in the City’s affordable housing scene.

Equity! Inclusion! Antiracism! These are the ingredients of progressive place-based efforts. Learn how three distinct organizations in DC, Maryland, and Virginia are developing their equity practice for place-based initiatives in one of the most diverse regions in the country.

During this unprecedented pandemic, forgotten urban neighborhoods suffered disproportionately – a stark reminder that cities aren’t fair. Can we continue planning for communities-of-color using pre-pandemic models? Trenton and Philadelphia in partnerships with respective medical institutions demonstrate a new way.

Five presentations on innovative equity- and social justice-oriented projects: gendered experiences in public spaces in Islamabad, collaborations to support international students, housing and cities so 'no one is left behind', map tools as community engagement, and green space in informal settlements.

Ethics Begins With Equity. Learn how equity and ethics are intertwined, particularly in the Code of Ethics Aspirational Principles, and how planners can practice equity and follow the Ethics Code in their everyday work.

Learn about current topics in planning ethics from members of the AICP Ethics Committee and the Ethics Officer. Understand how the new Code of Ethics was implemented in its first year. The updated Code of Ethics reemphasizes the commitment to equity and inclusion, to opposing harassment, and to preventing the misuse of the AICP credential.

The panel will answer your questions to help you understand and identify critical skills necessary for success in a new role with elevated responsibility. This discussion is designed to explore challenges, encourage personal growth, and instill confidence in planners looking to bridge the gap between getting the job and being comfortable in your new role.

Presented in partnership with The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, this course will introduce you to general aspects of how municipalities raise money, spend money, and develop budgets to meet the infrastructure and operations needs of the community.

How can cities foster more fiscal predictability into their community’s land use planning and development standards to take the financial debt pressure off the citizens of their community?

This course will draw out innovative approaches to teaching international planning and identify the key skills future planners will need to address the global challenges the world is currently facing.

Moving forward upskilling, reskilling, and digitalization, practicing planners will learn how to create a norm of using a neurodiversity inclusive framework at early planning stages.

Learn how to use of the latest cutting-edge web-based GIS tools and how a GeoDesign driven approach is changing the Community Planning Process.

Health equity isn't just for large, progressive, urban areas. Rural communities, car-centric suburbs, and mid-sized legacy cities have tremendous opportunities for and interest in improving health equity...if it is made accessible and directly connected to peoples' everyday experiences.

This course elevates the work the South Bronx community has been doing, led by South Bronx Unite (SBU), to dream, envision, and advocate to transform the former Lincoln Recovery Center into a thriving community hub: The Hearts Community Center.

Learn how the planning department at the Borough of State College, PA has deployed a digital twin to analyze the impacts of new developments, specifically denser residential development to meet their modern housing needs.

This session will outline lessons for land use recovery from severe weather, earthquakes, and climate change from New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and encourage planners to explore their role in the recovery process and to take action before a disaster strikes their community.

To avoid project shut-down, these planners learned to “surf” the waves of COVID-19 conditions, and pivot between in-person and online engagement. This case study highlights lessons learned and the “new normal” of crisis-ready outreach strategies.

Good transit access is a critical element of diverse, healthy centers. Have you ever tried to build a transit center? Too often zoning doesn't permit them. Learn how to facilitate transit center development to support mobility and enhance urban environments.

Explore Mesa, Arizona's use of VR/MR to create new engagement strategies, starting with youth and civic planning. These immersive technologies bring abstract concepts like TOD and climate-adaptation to life, allowing for experiential understanding and participatory decision-making across diverse groups.

This Case Study showcases how to transform local decision making by incorporating equity, health, and accountability into transportation policies. Illustrating how small-scope studies and demonstration projects can advance implementation of complete streets.

Learn how the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) is doing its part to advance the spirit of the Justice40 Initiative using data, planning, and tools to engage in practices that promote environmental justice and equity.

Planning can be tough! I’m not sure any of us realized we would be facing so many emotionally intense situations. Join fellow planners as we laugh and cry while learning how to manage and recover from those moments.

In the wake of the pandemic, emerging work culture focuses on the power of infusing leadership with empathy. Empathy leaves space for genuine emotion at work and humanizes the workforce.

Partnerships and Federal Funding Build an Oasis in a Food Desert. Tulsa Economic Development Corporation and partners leveraged federal grant dollars and made community and equity the core of a new grocery store.

Tulsa adopted its Neighborhood Infill Overlay in December 2021, after years of planning and community engagement in downtown-adjacent neighborhoods. The overlay removes barriers for new missing middle housing and brings historic missing middle building types into compliance with zoning.

The Mapping Segregation Project maps how racial restrictive covenants led to the inequitable development of Montgomery County, Maryland. The Planning Department has built a GIS mapping tool and data set that shows patterns of racial segregation at the neighborhood level.

Imagine having the ability to evaluate the fiscal impacts of development on your agency’s operating budget at your fingertips. Our Esri-based model generates visual and numerical fiscal impacts of new development, from single-lot redevelopment projects to multiple-use plan areas.