The Latest News from PA Chapter of APA…
Nowadays, many people use alternative frameworks, such as health, equity, climate change, and sustainability, for considering standard planning issues, like transportation and land use. These are interesting ways of considering our planning work, and these frameworks often make us think about our work differently. This month, we discuss two of these frameworks – climate action and healthy communities planning. In addition, we have two items related to your professional development – AICP exam prep and dealing with stress. Enjoy!
Training Opportunity: Ways Municipalities Can Expand the Supply and Affordability of Housing
June 5 from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
The session will address ways that municipalities in PA. can assist in addressing the national housing crisis, by revising ordinances to promote an expanded supply and increased affordability of various types of housing. Topics include promoting the conversion of offices and old mill buildings into apartments, using apartments to revitalize older commercial areas, allowing individual manufactured homes and manufactured home parks, considering taller heights and higher densities, and options to address accessory apartments.
Deadline to register is Tuesday, August 6.
CM credit is pending approval. You must attend the webinar live to earn CM credit.
If you’re interested in sponsoring a Webinar Wednesday or have a session for Webinar Wednesday, please contact us. Send your request to info@planningpa.org
Training Opportunity: Northwest 2024 Free LTAP Classes
- August 8th (Oil City)
- August 9th (Hermitage)
School Transportation Management ( 8am – Noon) To register, contact Aaron Ritsig.
Training Opportunity: Mid-Atlantic Collaboration: Planning for Clean Water Webinar Series
The Mid-Atlantic Planning Collaboration is pleased to announce a webinar series exploring the vital connections and partnerships between planners and the health of our water resources and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
Each webinar will feature local planners who are engaged in initiatives that serve their community and further water quality and living resource goals. Each will also include resources available to planners that may be relevant or helpful. AICP certificate maintenance credits will be available. All webinars will be recorded and posted to the Mid-Atlantic Planning Collaboration’s YouTube page.
APA PA Conference
The Annual Conference, Investing in a Dynamic Culture of Planning, will be October 13-15, 2024 at the Erie Bayfront Convention Center in Erie, PA.
The Annual Conference provides a unique and effective opportunity to showcase your work and capabilities to planning professionals and policy makers from across the Commonwealth. It’s also one of the ways to support planning in Pennsylvania by providing valuable networking, education, and development for planners.
The sponsorship brochure will allow you to choose the marketing opportunity that best suits your needs.
Our conference committee are working diligently to plan a creative and innovative event, one that will pair both educational and provide networking opportunities. We look forward to including you in the continued success of the APA PA Annual Conference!
Planning Webcast Series
Earn over 50 CM credits each year online – at no cost to members of participating organizations that support the Planning Webcast Series. Webcasts take place live on Fridays from 1:00 – 2:30 PM ET and are worth 1.5 CM credits (for live viewing only) unless otherwise noted. More information online.
Communication and Membership Committee
We are always looking for volunteers to contribute articles for our monthly E-News and LinkedIn page. It’s a great way to share your work and local news with a statewide audience! Authors are credited with a by line and tagging on social media, if applicable. If you are interested or would like more information, please contact Amy Evans or Amy McKinney.
PMPEI
The Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute will be offering courses online and in person. Please check the website for the most up to date schedule.
Opportunities for Giving
Each year the Chapter offers a scholarship to support individuals seeking funds for academic degree programs, internships, and professional development activities. If anyone would like to contribute to the Chapter’s Scholarship fund, donations can be made here. We accept all major credit cards, or you can send a check. Please make your check payable to “PA Chapter of APA Scholarship Fund” and mail it to P.O. Box 4680, Harrisburg PA 17111.
Prepping for the Fall 2024 AICP Exam
By Christina Arlt, AICP
The American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) certification is the only nationwide, independent verification of planners’ qualifications. Certified planners pledge to uphold high standards of practice, ethics, and professional conduct while continually refreshing their skills through continuing education. Obtaining the credential pays off—according to APA, on average, AICP-certified planners earn $16,000 more annually than non-certified planners.
The AICP Exam is offered twice a year: one in the spring and one in the fall. For fall 2024, the registration window opens on October 1, 2024 at 9:00 AM CST and closes October 31, 2024 at 3:00 PM CST. There is a $305 registration fee to take the test. Many employers will cover the cost of the exam fee. The exam will be offered at Prometric testing centers nationwide between November 4 and 30th, 2024. The AICP exam covers the following topics:
- Research and Assessment Methods (11%)
- Fundamental Planning Knowledge (15%)
- Communication and Interaction (13%)
- Plan and Policy Development (15%)
- Plan Implementation (12%)
- Administration and Management (6%)
- Leadership (6%)
- Areas of Practice (12%)
- AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (10%)*
After you pass the 170-question multiple choice exam and have earned the required amount of professional planning experience, you will need to submit your education and employment verification to APA. The window to submit this year will be December 2 to December 31st, 2024 at 3:00 PM CST. There will be another window to submit between June 2 and June 30, 2025. There is an additional $305 fee for submitting your Planning Experience. Check APA’s Are You Eligible? page to determine whether you meet the criteria. APA National will be offering two virtual Q&A sessions prior to the exam this fall:
- Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at noon CT: Register
- Thursday, September 12, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. CT: Register
Looking for resources to help you study? You’ve come to the right place! APA Pennsylvania has several resources to help you. View the PowerPoint from the 2023 Prep Session, see the Professional Development Committee’s Study Notes, and view study materials from other chapters. These resources can be found online. APA National also has exam prep resources available online.
Still have questions or want to join a study group with other people in your area? Reach out to Alexis Williams, AICP, PP, who is the Professional Development Officer (PDO) and Chair of the Professional Development Committee (PDC). Good luck!
Building Personal & Professional Resiliency in Interesting Times
By Amy Evans, AICP
Planners tend to hold nuanced and even conflicting points of view, but one thing we all seem to agree on wholeheartedly is that the profession – and life in general – is more demanding than ever. On one hand, it’s no surprise. As Neuroscience News reported in November 2023, “the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has instigated a silent surge in stress and mental health issues among Americans.” Post-pandemic, it often feels like financial strain, political and social conflict, and endless electronic stimuli have come together to shorten everyone’s fuses.
Is this you? Image by Bellinon from Pixabay
On the other hand, there’s a case to be made that planners, especially those who view what they do as serving the public good, are likely to ignore their own stress in order to better serve their communities. While well-intentioned, this mindset can chip away at our physical health and contribute to burnout and compassion fatigue. A more effective approach involves actively acknowledging stress and learning tools to manage (at least some of) the anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated, uncomfortable, tense, and unhappy feelings it can leave us with.
The good news is that there are many easy things you can do, regardless of your age, experience, or daily routine, to boost your ability to cope with stress. The “bad” news is that these tools work better when they rest on a foundation of sleeping enough, eating well, and exercising regularly. Even so, the best time to start upping your coping ability is now; a lifestyle overhaul is not required before you can begin to boost your ability to cope.
Most people develop and use coping skills from a young age without necessarily thinking of them as such, so a good first step is to think about how your day-to-day behaviors may be related to stress. You’ll likely catalog healthy ones like getting in a bike ride, listening to music, or treating yourself to something you enjoy. You may find that you resort to less effective tools, too, like drinking or smoking to excess, falling back on inappropriate humor or anger, arguing with loved ones, and/or detaching emotionally from friends and family. If you’d like a structured approach, many free coping skills trackers are available online.
Image by Franz Bachinger from Pixabay
As you develop a sense of what sparks stress for you and how you’re already coping, you can also explore adding more healthy coping skills to your toolbox. Pay attention to the situations that spark significant stress for you and begin to cluster coping strategies around them. For example, if you tend to feel overwhelmed or angry when clients or members of the public express displeasure, you can bulk up on conflict resolution strategies that facilitate setting boundaries while maintaining a professional demeanor. Another strategy might be having fidget toys readily available to help release nervous energy immediately after a negative encounter. A third might be making a point to connect with a friend who has a sympathetic ear later that evening.
When looking to augment your coping skills, mindfulness techniques are worth their weight in gold. Mindfulness is an important skill to cultivate because it allows us to separate who we are from the thoughts we have and the emotions we feel, an activity that can help restore focus and deescalate intense emotions. Mindfulness techniques run the gamut from very simple visualizations and breathwork you can do discreetly in any location to guided meditations and other practices intended to build skill over time; the most important advice is to try a variety. Not every technique will resonate with every person, so you will likely want to try different ones over time to see what works well for you.
Ultimately our ability to cope boosts our resiliency to adversity, which in turn supports our ability to perform in our jobs and careers without an undue cost to overall health and wellness. If resiliency still seems too big to get a handle on, start with this, right now: Grab a sheet of paper or open up your phone’s notes app and jot down three positive things you can do to take care of yourself after a rough day. Refer to them occasionally, grow the list, and, most importantly, do them when you need to.
Understanding the Healthy Communities in PA Committee
By Rebecca Wetzler and Sam Pearson
The Healthy Communities in PA (HCiPA) Committee has a title that is fairly self-explanatory and somewhat all-encompassing. The issues and concerns that fall under the heading of healthy communities range from food access to safe housing to clean air to accessibility. We really cover the full range, looking at how communities that explicitly focus on directly meeting people’s basic needs are also the ones on the most secure path to economic vitality, cultural vibrancy and committed community engagement. We are an interdisciplinary group with explicit outreach to planners, health professionals, and allied practitioners. The primary focus is on keeping the Social and Physical Determinants of Health, i.e. the upstream conditions that hold so much sway over individual health outcomes, in mind and looking for ways to engage with planning in health beyond the silos that often confine us to just looking at land use policy or individual health behaviors in isolation. The silos have long determined not just our spheres of influence but also the horizon of our thinking. Multi-disciplinary collaborations like HCiPA help to find opportunities for meaningful action to bring health to bear in planning and vice versa.
At the October 2023 APA PA Conference, the committee co-chairs, Rebecca Wetzler and Samantha Pearson, polled the audience about what aspects of healthy communities were most relevant to folks’ professional work. There were 268 mentimeter responses in a room with low cell reception; yet when we asked “to what extent are you able to address health in your work?” the majority of respondents said “occasionally” or “rarely” (77 out of 105 respondents). Health and planning are each such complex fields and together hold so much potential.
The trees you plant today could impact the health of generations from now. How do you measure that when deciding to use trees as bollards to keep pedestrians safe from cars? What cost benefit analysis will justify using structural soil that has a higher upfront cost but keeps your sidewalks flatter and the extends the tree lifespan? This space- looking at the access to health and healthy spaces – has so many ties to equity, to housing, to policy decisions around who is included and what is measured. We are grateful to be part of a small but mighty group of researchers and engaged professionals who regularly ask “What are the best practices here? What data are available? How can we find out more?”
Reflection from Rebecca
Recently, as I walked along a street with my son, pedaling his tricycle, heading towards daycare, I looked at the tree-lined street with sidewalks on both sides connecting us to a key everyday destination and I thought about how many professionals helped make that trip possible. The zoning officers, traffic counters, sidewalk ordinance drafters, shade tree commissioners, and so many others each made decisions and took action to enable our little happy, healthy ramble. To all the folks who incorporate health in their planning work, thank you for the work you do, on behalf of myself, my son, and generations ahead!
HCiPA meets the first Tuesday of every month, from 2-3pm Eastern, online. As a mix of planners, people in healthcare, and other related professionals, we share announcements across our fields, grant opportunities, and coalesce around a 5-10 minute “geek out” where we hear a brief presentation on a relevant topic and then discuss. Recent presenters have shared topics including: Traffic Gardens, Behavioral Economics, and Intergenerational Community Planning and Placemaking. We send members links to the meeting notes and recordings, so sign up and please feel free to join us for future meetings!
Climate Action Plans are Hot!
By Brian O’Leary, AICP
People are rightly concerned about climate change and global warming. With more frequent extreme weather events, new federal and state policies on clean energy, and public interest in climate change, many communities have started preparing climate action plans, looking to their planners to help lead them through the process.
For many of us, this is a new area of planning that often involves expertise beyond our normal toolbox and also involves issues, such as air pollution, that have not typically been at the forefront of local planning.
Fortunately, there are a lot of resources available on climate action plans and many local examples of effective plans. The best place to start when considering a climate action plan is the state. The PA DEP has a lot of helpful information about climate action planning on their website, including the state climate action plan, which provides a good foundational start for a local plan.
Five years ago, the PA DEP started its Local Climate Action Plan Program, which provides grants and assistance for the creation of local plans and now uses Penn State to help facilitate the program. This program matches municipalities with students who assist with the plan. In the first four years of the program, 64 plans were completed, and links to these are available online.
The City of Bethlehem has an excellent climate action plan that is progressive, serious, and implementable, with an emphasis on resiliency and inclusivity. This plan won a chapter award in 2021.
Often, climate action is built into local sustainability plans. Delaware County has recently taken sustainability very seriously, creating a user-friendly and action-oriented plan, which can be found online.
In addition to specific climate action and sustainability plans, climate-related recommendations can be built into any regular comprehensive plans we do, as well as a wide variety of our other planning work. Climate action and sustainability planning now seem to be a regular part of a planner’s duties.