American Planning Association

Christine Butterfield is the director of community development for the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was hit by a record-breaking flood in June 2008. She speaks here about the extensive planning effort to rebuild a city in which more than 10,000 people were evacuated from areas along the Cedar River, historic neighborhoods were inundated, and thousands of residents lost their homes or saw them badly damaged.

At the APA National Planning Conference in Boston in April 2011, she and her staff saw the city’s heroic efforts recognized with an APA National Planning Excellence Award for Best Practices in Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Planning, shared with Sasaki Associates, Inc., for the city’s new River Corridor Development Plan.

Planning and Zoning for Natural Resource Protection

In recent decades, planners have continued to be involved in natural resource protection as a core area of both interest and expertise. However, in many places, mitigation takes precedence over more meaningful efforts to avoid or minimize environmental damage. When wetlands are disturbed or mature trees replaced with seedlings, it may take decades for the natural system to return to its prior value, and in terms of net carbon emissions, the debt may never be repaid.

Now that planners are taking a renewed interest in sustainability, the time is right to rediscover planning and zoning principles to protect natural resources.

Lane Kendig, founder of Kendig Keast Collaborative, discussed how planners can use performance zoning for resource protection.

The Role of Planning in Stabilizing Distressed Properties

Many communities have a glut of entitled but unfinished development projects. Depending on the context and scale of the problem, traditional stabilization tools such as code enforcement may prove inadequate or ineffective. In some cases, the best solution for the community may involve relaxing certain regulatory requirements or renegotiating the terms of development agreements.

Daniel Shapiro from Robbins, Salomon & Patt and Jessica Schramm from Thompson Coburn discussed a wide range of strategies planners can use to stabilize and reposition distressed properties. Specific strategies covered will include reviewing agreements recorded against property, negotiating development fees, and re-entitling property. They also addressed how planners can assist when development deals turn sour.

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.

Arlington County's "Community Energy Plan"

Arlington County's "Community Energy Plan" is a strategic planning effort to ensure economic competitiveness and energy supply security while reinforcing the county's environmental commitment. Through this process Arlington will transform the way it generates, distributes, stores, and uses energy.

A nationally recognized leader in climate action, Arlington County is working to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from government operations through the Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE) program. The county has broadened that effort into the community to chart a course toward a healthy, viable, sustainable Arlington for generations to come.

The plan aims to sharply reduce energy use in Arlington, including an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70 percent by 2050.

Tools for Great Lakes Planners in NOAA's Digital Coast

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.