American Planning Association

Implementing Sustainable Cities in a Harsh Environment: Some Lessons Learned from Masdar

Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates is envisioned as the world's first carbon-neutral, zero waste, car-free city. However, the harsh, desert environment and the prevailing planning and construction practices in Abu Dhabi pose special challenges for an inherently ambitious goal.

Margaret Cederoth, AICP, will discuss the specific elements of sustainable cities incorporated into the plans for Masdar and the practical methods for implementing these ambitions in the first few buildings of the city. The presentation will highlight relevant master plan elements that are the foundation for sustainability and focus on the physical expression of those elements along with basic contractual and education activities necessary to realize the vision.

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.

Recycling in Chicago: Past, Present, and Future

As Chicago begins a new political era, much attention has been paid to the problems in Chicago's recycling program. Carl Zimring from Roosevelt University analyzed the public and private systems used to recycle post-consumer materials in Chicago over the past century, with discussion of how the current system evolved, problems with it, and ways in which future versions of recycling in Chicago might work based on historical precedents and programs in other cities.

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.

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.

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.

The Plight of Black Coastal Landowners in the Sunbelt South and Its Lessons for Post–Housing Bubble America

At the turn of the 20th century, African Americans owned vast swaths of property along America's shores. By the post–World War II era, African American beaches and resorts served as important places for working families to escape from the daily indignities of Jim Crow and for a separate, seasonal black leisure economy to take shape. The death of Jim Crow coincided with the emergence of a pro-growth, corporate-friendly Sunbelt economy, which led to massive resort and residential development in coastal areas, and the targeting of black coastal landowners as the path of least resistance.

From the 1960s to the present, African American property owners in areas targeted for leisure-based economic and real estate development have struggled to fend off various schemes deployed by developers and their allies in municipal, county, and state governments to expropriate and put to "best use" valuable property.

Andrew Kahrl from Marquette University examined the legal instruments of real estate development, black land loss, and the privatization of public space in coastal areas in modern America, its relation to broader changes in the coastal and global economies, and its social and environmental implications.

Re-Planning Crystal City As a 21st Century Urban Village

The 2006 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) action hit Arlington, Virginia, hard. The loss of 17,000 Department of Defense employees and 4.2 million square feet of leased space was the equivalent of losing five military bases, and most of the impact was in the Crystal City neighborhood. Developed largely in the 1960s and 1970s, Crystal City contained approximately 30 buildings aged 30 years or more, originally built to GSA specifications that not longer reflected the needs of the market. Arlington developed a plan to remove the older office buildings, add more than 30 new buildings, increase density by more than 60 percent, and substantially improve transportation and the entire urban environment.

This discussion will address the planning process, the economic and transportation analyses that served as the basis of the plan, and the innovative financing plan developed to pay for the necessary infrastructure to make the plan a reality.

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.