The Latest News from PA Chapter of APA…
October is here, which means it’s National Community Planning Month acknowledging the great work that volunteer and professional planners do. The Chapter, of course, will be celebrating the month in its own way with its annual conference in Erie. Registration is open until October 4. We hope to see you there to learn about the best and brightest in PA planning, but, if you can’t attend, there’s excellent information in this newsletter about upcoming events, community planning month, upskilling, and smart growth. Enjoy!
APA PA Conference
Reminder 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. Conference registration closes October 4, there in no onsite registration. More information online.
Mpact Mobility Conference
The annual Mpact Transit + Community conference (formerly Rail~Volution) focuses on the interplay of transit, connected mobility options, land use, and development in building great places to live – for everyone. Join practitioners, leaders and advocates from communities across the United States and Canada. Share best practices, real-world solutions and innovative approaches to the challenges that face cities and regions of every size. More information online.
Philadelphia, PA
October 20-23, 2024
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.
National Community Planning Month
By Kate McMahon, AICP
October is recognized as National Community Planning Month each year as a way to highlight planners and the important role they play in our communities. While planning happens all year, October is an opportunity to celebrate the ways that planning improves the way we live. Here are some ideas of ways to recognize National Community Planning Month:
- Create a social media post highlighting your planning staff
- Conduct a tour of a recent planning project
- Review a recent plan and consider how it has been implemented
- Engage the public at a local festival or event
- Attend the APA PA Annual Conference in Erie!
Upskilling: Networking in a New Light
By Amy Evans, AICP
For over a decade in my planning career, I have supported collaborative teams working across criminal legal, human services, and health systems. For most of those years, I’ve thought of the work as simply staffing or participating in steering committees, coalitions, and project teams – each with members from different agencies nested in a committee/board structure – to tackle a specific problem. Successes usually felt like the result of intense detail management and lots of communication, all doused in serendipity. More recently, I’ve begun to see that the victories – especially the most impactful ones – often emerged from the relationships that grew between people within and across systems.
A 2021 book by David Ehrlichman called Impact Networks has helped bring this new view into focus. Ehrlichman notes that people have organized themselves into creative, adaptable social networks for pretty much all of human history. And while networks have many benefits, a downside is that they’re rarely able to work organically toward a common goal. Ehrlichman’s premise is that “While networks are not inherently strategic, they can be designed to be strategic.” Most of the rest of Impact Networks, his term for a strategic network, breaks down how to recognize and cultivate networks, what leadership looks like in a network setting, and any number of tips, tools, and tricks that people can use to convene and lead from any position.
In reading this book, I’ve come to realize that I often sit in the role of what Ehrlichman calls a network weaver, someone who directly connects with network participants and links them with one another, fostering relationships across the network. June Holley, in the Network Weaver Handbook, goes further and defines a weaver’s purpose as “helping people identify their interests and challenges, connecting people strategically where there’s potential for mutual benefit, and serving as a catalyst.”
It’s a safe bet that Holley’s network weaver role feels familiar to most planners. What seemed like serendipity to me, in hindsight, is simply what happens when disconnected people come together around a common pain point and a network begins to self-organize. At the same time, planners may feel lost or ineffective in the decentralized nature of a network, particularly planners who lead within their own organization and/or those experienced in highly structured planning processes. If that description fits you, take comfort. Networks can be led from any point, regardless of someone’s position in their own organization or within the network’s infrastructure. This network characteristic also makes the activity of network weaving especially impactful in communities that tend to collect adjectives like underserved and disadvantaged. In this context, an impact network can be deeply empowering as well as sustainable, as weavers intentionally knit together relationships that facilitate community members in growing and revealing their own opportunities together.
More information, including many tools highlighted in the book, are available at no charge. This article is a follow-up to Leading Change Through Systems Thinking in APA PA’s May newsletter.
Smart Growth, What is it Exactly?
By Brian O’Leary, AICP
Planners often use slightly-vague terms that aren’t easily conveyed to the general public or elected officials, and smart growth is one of these. What exactly is smart growth? And, for that matter, what is dumb growth? I suppose dumb growth is sprawling growth that does not take into account existing conditions and needs or conservation goals. Smart growth is the opposite of that, trying to balance walkable mixed-use development with preserved open space.
Here are a couple of national definitions of smart growth:
- The Smart Growth Alliance defines smart growth as:
Smart growth looks different from place to place—it’s an overall approach to development that encourages a mix of building types and uses, diverse housing and transportation options, development within existing neighborhoods, and robust community engagement.
- The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency defines smart growth as:
Smart growth is an overall approach of development and conservation strategies that can help protect our health and natural environment and make our communities more attractive, economically stronger, socially diverse, and resilient to climate change.
The EPA goes on to list ten principles to guide smart growth, which are:
- Mix land uses.
- Take advantage of compact building design.
- Create a range of housing opportunities and choices.
- Create walkable neighborhoods.
- Foster distinctive, attractive communities with a strong sense of place.
- Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas.
- Strengthen and direct development towards existing communities.
- Provide a variety of transportation choices.
- Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective.
- Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration in development decisions.
I think all planners can agree with these principles, and we’ve seen many regional and county planning agencies focus on smart growth in their comprehensive plans, such as Lancaster and Chester Counties. Local municipalities have also folded smart growth into their comprehensive plans, and smart growth, despite its apparent vagueness, has become a bedrock principle of community planning.
Congratulations Again to the 2024 Great Places in PA!
By Pam Shellenberger, AICP
The Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Planning Association is proud to announce the 2024 Great Places in PA. Great Places are unique, memorable places that display a wealth of best practices in community planning, serve as a community focal point, and strengthen the local economy. They also demonstrate the rewarding results that occur through planning, partnerships, and community engagement.
For 2024, the categories were Great Public Spaces and Great Transformations. Two Great Places were designated in each category. There are now 59 designated “Great Places in PA” located in 32 of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties.
- Great Public Space: Bryn Coed Preserve
- Great Public Space: Schwenksville Borough Hall & Community Complex
- Great Transformation: New Kensington’s Fifth Avenue
- Great Transformation: The Navy Yard