WELCOME!
Earn over 50 AICP CM credits each year online - at no cost to members of participating organizations that support the Planning Webcast Series. Check back often as we frequently add additional offerings.
- Webcasts take place live on Fridays from 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET and are worth 1.5 AICP CM credits (for live viewing only) unless otherwise noted
- On-demand webcasts are available for your convenience in the 'On-Demand Webcasts' tab above
- Webcast recordings and slide decks are available in the 'Past Webcasts' tab below
- Please contact us for transcription assistance.
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Upcoming Webcasts
Planning, Preservation, & Change: Preservation - An Effective Planning Tool
May 19, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9268675Guest Host: APA Urban Design and Preservation Division
Planners shape and manage community change. Preservationists connect important stories, memories, and places to our communities. The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Planning Association Urban Design and Preservation Division have joined together to explore planning and preservation issues and opportunities presented by future change at two webcasts this Spring. Join preservation professionals from across the country to hear why preservation should matter to the urban planning community. These innovative leaders will share how preserving historic assets, adaptive reuse, and incorporating public engagement are effective planning tools for more holistic work. Hear how creative application of preservation policies and programs can address issues such as climate change, affordable housing and density, and equity of under-represented and underserved communities.
This webinar is the second part of a two-part webinar series brought to you through a partnership between the APA Urban Design & Preservation Division and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The first part of the webinar series “How Planning and Preservation Can Work Together to Create Great Places” is on April 26th. Registration is available here through the National Trust for Historic Preservation: https://tinyurl.com/3uycdde6
CM | 1.5
Regional Collaboration of Utilities and Communities Toward Sustainability and Resilience Goals
June 9, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9269685Guest Host: APA Sustainable Communities Division
How can energy providers work collaboratively with local communities to provide resources and coordinate on planning to accelerate progress in clean energy, equity and resilience? This webinar will feature two initiatives from different regions of the U.S. that involve innovative collaboration between energy providers, local government and community stakeholders to achieve enhanced sustainability and resilience-related outcomes. Panelists will include Tami Gunderzik and Sofia Troutman of Xcel Energy’s Partners in Energy (PIE) initiative, as well as Georgia Caruthers and Nicole Wobus of the Tennessee Valley Authorities’ Connected Communities initiative. Xcel Energy’s PIE works with communities in Xcel Energy’s service areas in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Colorado. TVA’s Connected Communities initiative supports communities in TVA’s service area that includes all of Tennessee and parts of 6 surrounding states, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand two different models of collaboration between regional utility providers and local communities, and their histories
- See how social equity has been incorporated programmatically in each example
- Gain knowledge of a variety of tools and resources available to planners
CM 1.5
SR 1.0
2023 Past Webcasts
Planning for Sustainable Energy Production: A Nature-Based Approach to Large-Scale Solar
January 20, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9262544Guest Host: APA Sustainable Communities Division
Ecosystem services and… solar energy? It’s not exactly chocolate and peanut butter. This webinar will present the ground-breaking results of the PV-SMaRT project and the “community co-benefits” approach to solar development. This U.S. DOE funded project developed new tools for planners to assess water quality risks and opportunities associated with solar energy. The webinar will also introduce a new project, launching in 2023, on nature-based solutions for solar development that can provide communities with more tools for ensuring local benefits from large-scale solar development.
Large-scale solar is a rapidly growing land use that is critically important to solving the climate crisis, but also poses unique risks and opportunities to local ecosystem functions, including water quality, soil health, habitat, and cultural/visual functions. Indeed, some solar projects have resulted in spectacular water quality failures or ecosystem damage. But the opportunity for creating “co-benefits” in local ecosystems is also remarkable. Planning professionals strive to protect community natural systems in the development process. If we restore watershed functions, create new habitat and build soil health… is it a solar farm, or is it green infrastructure?
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
Planning for Equity: Supporting At-Risk Communities in Regions That Flood
January 27, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9262811Guest Host: APA Sustainable Communities Division
At-risk communities are disproportionately impacted both by increased flooding and the policy and market responses to flooding conditions. In this context, what is “social equity” and how is it related to climate resilience for all? How can planners ensure an equitable response to flooding?
Panelists Shannon Van Zandt and Jaimie Hicks Masterson of Texas A&M University and Dr. Tisha Holmes of Florida State University will talk to planners about working in partnership with communities of color and other socio-economically disadvantaged communities to increase resilience to flood risk and its associated impacts. Drawing on urban and rural examples across the United States, this program will illustrate the proactive role for planning in addressing equity issues in flooding-impacted regions. These issues include infrastructure planning and provision for at-risk communities, market pressures leading to displacement, planned retreat, emergency management, and community capacity building, to name a few.
Climate change will continue to disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. This session will highlight why social equity needs to be front and center regarding all climate action and will highlight how equity has been integrated in the tools and resources overviewed.
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
The Climate Data Power Hour
February 3, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9262596Guest Host: APA Technology, Sustainable Communities and Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Divisions
As climate conditions change, understanding what data and tools are available to inform planning decisions is critical. This webinar features a climate data & technology vendor panel to introduce urban planners to data and tools to help communities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and respond to climate impacts. During this session, each climate data and technology provider will speak for (5-7 minutes). These presentations will be followed by a facilitated discussion with all providers.
This webinar is sponsored jointly by The APA Technology Division, APA Sustainable Communities Division, and APA's Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division and is based on a similar event organized by Alta Planning + Design.
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
The Promise of Urban Agriculture, and Why Planners Should Care
February 10, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9264808Guest Host: APA Food Systems Division
The 2019 report The Promise of Urban Agriculture: a National Study of Commercial Farming in Urban Areas found that planners play a pivotal role in the success or struggle for thriving urban and peri-urban farms, but planners have a mixed understanding of the needs and potential for urban agriculture. As a follow-up to that study, the presenters have paired up with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to educate planners on how urban agriculture can be integrated into their other concerns. This webinar will present an overview of the 2019 report and present the first of six modules in a forthcoming professional development course for planners about urban agriculture.
CM | 1.5
Main Street After COVID: Lessons Learned on Design and Land Use
March 3, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM ##9265868Guest Host: APA Northern New England Chapter
Assuming we are past the worst of the COVID-19, what happens to our downtowns? Before the pandemic, people were rediscovering the traditional New England town center. You can stop in a few different shops, maybe pick something up for dinner at a local fish market or bakery, and enjoy the building and people. Once COVID hit, people were reluctant to leave their houses, let along go downtown. Some experts, citing research that suggests people like working remotely and don’t want to return to work in an office, suggest that downtowns may be dead. Other suggest that the natural open air character of downtowns means they are well-positioned to adjust to a post-COVID world. This webinar will present the findings of a multi-year research project on this topic. Working with funding from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning, we set out to see what these small downtowns would need in the future to grow and thrive. We found that, with the right planning and bold and consistent actions, small city downtowns continue to have great potential. We based on research on six communities in New England and the Upper Midwest, including Nashua, NH; Haverhill, MA; and Portland ME. After completing an initial report, we have created two additional reports to date. One is on redesigning downtown Main Streets in response to best practices learned during COVID, and the second is on the challenges of creating upper story housing downtown.
CM | 1.5
Advancing Large-Scale Climate Resilient Projects through Planning and Financing: HUD-DOT perspectives
March 17, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9266007Guest Host: APA Sustainable Communities Division
This webinar aims to link the importance of the planning process with the financing options needed for implementation. The webinar will provide an overview of planning processes by two Federal Agencies (HUD and DOT) with examples of creative financing tools offered by government to help communities develop large-scale, front-end investments in climate resilient infrastructure. Representatives from the federal agencies (HUD, DOT) will provide an overview of an example of financing resources that enable large-scale climate resilient infrastructure projects.
CM | 1.5
SR| 1.0
The Climate Planner: Strategies for Engaging on Climate When It’s Challenging
March 24, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9266008Guest Host: APA Sustainable Communities Division
The world’s changing climate is a global problem that must be solved at the local level and yet many urban planners are averse to getting in the middle of another political hot-button topic; especially because they don’t know how effective they can be. At the local level, there is neither consensus that the climate is changing nor an agreed-upon approach to mitigate or to adapt to change. Jason King’s The Climate Planner: Overcoming Pushback Against Local Mitigation and Adaptation Plans (Routledge, 2021) demonstrates how urban planners can make a visible and important difference through local community actions that address the global climate problem. The book has stories from 16 years of climate planning in every kind of place: from progressive coastal cities facing sea level rise to conservative rural municipalities contending with an increasingly arid landscape. This webinar is about overcoming the objections to climate change mitigation and adaption that planners face everyday. Two climate planners will describe how to draft climate plans that encounter less resistance because they involve the public, stakeholders, and decisionmakers in a way that builds trust, educates, creates consensus, and leads to implementation.
How can the Equity Planner be the Climate Planner? Equity planning is an ethic in which urban planners use their skills to mobilize underrepresented constituencies and implement policies and programs that redistribute resources to people who are poor or have low- and moderate-incomes. How do we fund potentially expensive adaptation solutions in places with only modest means? What is our responsibility as planners to engage in climate planning even when our clients or the public is resistant? How can we act equitably when it is clear that mitigation or adaptation will disproportionally affect the most vulnerable in our communities? How do we avoid or mitigate the displacement of the poor? Learn how our panel is climate planning and how they think the climate planner’s role must expand in the future to act more equitably.
CM | 1.5
SR| 1.0
Monuments of the Future: Planning for a more Equitable Public Space
April 21, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9268668Guest Host: APA Urban Design and Preservation Division + Arts and Planning Division
What will monuments of the future look like? What stories belong in public spaces? What is the role of planners, designers, historians, and artists in this conversation? The Urban Design & Preservation Division and the Arts & Planning Division are partnering to have a conversation about what planners can do beyond monument removal. Thought leader and Co-Director of the Monument Lab, Paul Farber, will present findings of the nation-wide Monument Audit. The National Monument Audit allows us to better understand the dynamics and trends that have shaped our monument landscape, to pose questions about common knowledge about monuments, and to debunk falsehoods and misperceptions within public memory. Paul Farber will also share the Monument Lab's Re:Generation project which explores the question "Which stories belong in public?". Re:Generation is a nationwide participatory public art and history project organized by Monument Lab. The project elevates people shaping the next generation of monuments reckoning with and reimagining public memory. By sharing examples of underrepresented stories in public spaces, planners will see the possibilities for how we imagine monuments of the future.
Learning Objectives:
- To explain the multiple benefits of NBS solutions as a type of data-driven, integrated design and planning, and describe their applicability to planning projects around the country
- To address how NBS investments can be implemented in partnership with communities, funding entities, and the professionals who maintain the new infrastructure over time
- To suggest possible monitoring measures for evaluating the performance of NBS investments over time
- Providing attendees with tips and tools to help integrate NBS in your own work
CM | 1.5
Eq| 1.0
What are they teaching those planning students? The State of Accreditation of Planning Programs
April 28, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9268672Guest Host: APA Kansas
Get an overview of what is being taught in today’s planning schools. Accredited planning schools must meet certain standards. In general, accreditation recognizes educational institutions and professional programs for performance, integrity and quality. For planning programs, the accrediting body is the Planning Accreditation Board. PAB recently updated their requirements to keep pace with the profession and push it forward. PAB accredits 78 master's and 16 bachelor's programs at 80 North American universities. This session will cover what PAB requires and how they ensure quality through: Stewardship, Collaboration, Communication, Integrity, and Leadership. In addition to covering curriculum requirements, we will also give an overview of how accredited schools are doing in regard to diversity, faculty quality, and student engagement with the profession.
CM | 1.5
Nature-Based Solutions: Cutting Edge Planning for Sustainability
May 5, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9268673Guest Host: APA Sustainable Communities Division
Planners today are asked to respond to a complex set of community challenges, including the mitigation of extreme weather effects, provision of equitable open space access, beautification of public spaces, and collaboration with a diverse array of actors who build, maintain and regulate the built environment. “Nature-Based Solutions” or “NBS” is a term which refers to a broad set of practices that work with the natural environment to create healthier, better functioning, and risk-prepared urban places. In this session, you will hear from three professionals employing innovative NBS solutions in regions such as New England, the Mid- Atlantic, and Western plains states.
Learning Objectives:
- To explain the multiple benefits of NBS solutions as a type of data-driven, integrated design and planning, and describe their applicability to planning projects around the country
- To address how NBS investments can be implemented in partnership with communities, funding entities, and the professionals who maintain the new infrastructure over time
- To suggest possible monitoring measures for evaluating the performance of NBS investments over time
- Providing attendees with tips and tools to help integrate NBS in your own work
CM | 1.5
SR| 1.0
Let's Level Up our Community Engagement Game
May 12, 2023 | 1:00 - 2:30 PM ET
CM #9268674Guest Host: APA Ohio + Women and Planning Division + Urban Design & Preservation Division
Public engagement is a vital component of any planning project or planning process. This session will review innovative best practices and considerations when engaging with the public.
Della Rucker will offer a framework for deciding how to conduct public engagement and know what you are (and are not) promising the public. She'll also review ways to ensure an equitable participation process.
Staff from the Cincinnati Simcinnati Department of City Planning and Engagement will discuss how they have “gamified” engagement during their ongoing Connected Communities public outreach events.They’ll share the ideas behind the innovative activities, lessons learned, initial findings, and next steps.
Finally, Corrin Wendell and Lauren Trice will deep dive into connecting with youth in our communities. They will share general principles for engaging youth, including how to frame planning in a way that is appropriate for each age group, how to ask the right questions, tips for partnering with school districts, how to leverage youth engagement to energize a process, and general lessons learned about what works and doesn’t work.
CM | 1.5