Urban Planning

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy will lead conversations on how to both plan and finance equitable and resilient communities at the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference in San Francisco April 13 to 16, 2019. Over the course of 11 sessions, experts will share insights on scenario planning, water sustainability, land value capture, and public finance, among many other topics.

The Lincoln Institute will feature its growing work and expertise in scenario planning, a practice by which cities and regions can make better decisions about the future by incorporating more stakeholder input and other data. On Monday, All About Scenario Planning will introduce planners to the concept of scenario planning and equip them with the tools to design a scenario planning process. Other related sessions include Quantitative Scenario Planning in Practice and Scenario Planning for Transportation Unknowns.

Several sessions will focus on sustainability. On Sunday Jim Holway, director of the Lincoln Institute’s Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, will share lessons learned from his experience integrating water and land-use planning in the Colorado River Basin in Growing Water Smart: Integrated Resilience Planning. Another session, Smart Policies for a Changing Climate, will identify key planning strategies for designing resilient communities and highlight the intersection between community development and natural systems.

Other sessions will highlight how communities can pay for these and other planning initiatives. On Saturday, participants will play the Land Development Game, a simulation that helps users understand land and housing markets as well as the market impact of policies such as inclusionary housing. On Monday, Land Value Capture for Community Benefits, part of a conference track focused on inclusiveness and social justice, will tell the story of how Denver integrated land value capture in its area plan in order to produce affordable housing.

On Tuesday, Lincoln Institute President & CEO George McCarthy will lead Public Finance and Fiscal Sustainability, emphasizing the importance of public finance to the work of urban planners and exploring the challenges and benefits of different financing approaches for municipal government projects.

Lincoln Institute staff will be present at our booth in the exhibition hall throughout the conference. Free publications, including our quarterly magazine Land Lines, Policy Focus Reports, and Policy Briefs, will be available. We will also sell books and accept preorders for Design with Nature Now, a definitive new book inspired by Ian McHarg’s seminal text on ecological design in urban planning, first published 50 years ago.

A complete list of the Lincoln Institute’s sessions at the conference follows:

SATURDAY, APRIL 13

1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. | Big City Planning Directors on Autonomous Vehicles

Andres Seutsuk, Cambridge, MA
David Dixon, Stantec’s Urban Places, Boston, MA
David Rouse, FAICP, American Planning Association, Washington, DC
Vincent Bertoni, City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Anita Larement, NYC Department of Planning, New York, NY
Armando Carbonell, FAICP, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA

Topics:

• Understand key planning issues cities face from autonomous vehicles and related technological trends, including ecommerce and the sharing economy.
• Understand how two of the nation’s largest cities are preparing for the arrival of autonomous vehicles.
• Consider how to integrate autonomous vehicles with other transportation modes.

2:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. | Land Development Game

Amy Cotter, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Daphne Kenyon, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Carlos Morales-Schechinger, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Institute for Housing and Urban Development

Topics:

• Understand how land and housing markets work.
• Consider the market impact of development regulations.
• Understand the impact of an inclusionary housing requirement

SUNDAY, APRIL 14

8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. | Building the Civic Capacity Muscle

George McCarthy, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Michael Ionna, AICP, City of Hamilton, Ohio, Hamilton, OH
John Collier, Greater Ohio Policy Center, Columbus, OH
Derek Santos, City of New Bedford, Massachusetts, New Bedford, MA

Topics:

• Understand the concept of civic capacity and why it is important to a community.
• Identify the changes they can make to increase their civic capacity to create change in their jurisdiction.
• Be equipped to take the first steps toward implementing policies that foster civic capacity.

8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. | Growing Water Smart: Integrated Resilience Planning

Andrew Spurgin, AICP, City of Westminster, Westminster, CO
Jeremy Stapleton, Sonoran Institute, Phoenix, AZ
Jim Holway, FACIP, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Phoenix, AZ

Topics:    

• Describe and define a framework for integrating water and land-use planning in communities.
• Describe the role of comprehensive plans in laying a foundation for integration of water and land planning.
• Cite best policies, practices and resources for better ensuring communities and watersheds are resilient to uncertainty, such as the forces of population growth and climate change.

10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. | Smart Policies for a Changing Climate

Ying-Yu Hung, SWA Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Vaugh B. Rinner, Vaughn Rinner Landscape Architect, Seattle, WA
Nancy Somerville, American Society of Landscape Architects, Washington, DC
Armando Carbonell, FAICP, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA

Topics:

• Identify the most critical design and planning strategies for building healthy and resilient communities, along with policies and implementation strategies to put these resilient approaches into practice.
• Understand the interconnection between natural systems and community planning and development, and see how policies can drive resilience and climate-smart adaptation to benefit humans and ecosystems. .
• Explore the environmental justice concerns related to climate change and be able to identify the special needs of vulnerable communities.

MONDAY, APRIL 15

8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. | All About Scenario Planning

Amy Cotter, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Brett Fusco, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Philadelphia, PA
William Gilchrist, City of Oakland, Oakland, CA
Benjamin Zellers, AICP, City of Madison, Madison, WI

Topics:

• Learn more about scenario planning and its uses.
• Consider how scenario planning would fit into your planning processes.
• Understand different scenario planning applications in different contexts.

8:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. | Directors’ Perspective on the Region

Albert C. Savay, City of San Carlos, CA
Dina Tasini, City Dixon, CA
Andrea J. Ouse, City of Concord, CA
Paul A. Jensen,City of San Rafael, CA
Hillary Gitelman, Environmental Science Associates, Oakland,
William A. Gilchrist, Oakland, CA
Peter Pollock, Planning from the Porch, Boulder, CO, Moderator
John S. Rahaim, City and County of San Francisco, CA
Rosalynn T. Hughey, City of San Jose, CA

Topics:

• Understand more about the significant planning issues and opportunities in and around San Francisco from city planning directors in the region.
• Learn about the planning techniques and innovations being employed to tackle some of the toughest planning challenges in the region, like gentrification, affordable housing, homelessness, transportation, aging infrastructure, and placemaking that could be applicable in their own communities.
• Learn about ways in which individual communities are, or could, cooperate more at the regional level to solve planning problems.

1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. | Land Value Capture for Community Benefits

Armando Carbonell, FAICP, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Xinrui Shi, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Abram Barge, AICP, City of Denver, Denver, CO

Topics:

• Understand the strategies for land value capture and their legal status.
• Anticipate the practical aspects of adding these strategies to your planning program.
• Learn from a case study in which land value capture is integrated into the implementation of an area plan in Denver to generate affordable housing.

1:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. | Quantitative Scenario Planning in Practice

Elizabeth Schuh, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Chicago, IL
Janae Futrell, AICP, Civic Sphere, Atlanta, GA
Timothy Reardon, Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Boston, MA

Topics:

• Understand the basics of quantitative scenario planning.
• Process how two regional agencies have applied quantitative scenario planning.
• Identify planning challenges for which quantitative scenario planning is helpful.

2:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | Managing Risk of Sea Level Rise

Jens Thalheim, FM Global, Norwood, MA
Amy Cotter, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Gina Bartlett, Consensus Building Institute, Cambridge, MA
Kristina Dahl, San Francisco, CA

Topics: 

• Review specific and comprehensive risks to property, municipal revenue, and economies from sea level rise.
• Learn about data, models, and information to help manage the risk of sea level rise.
• Learn ways to make the case for climate change adaptation actions as a component of risk management.

4:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. | Scenario Planning for Managing Transportation Unknowns

Jeremy Raw, Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC
Brett Fusco, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Philadelphia, PA
Janae Futrell, AICP, Civic Sphere, Atlanta, GA

Topics:

• Understand the role of scenario planning in supporting confident transportation planning decisions.
• Apply scenario planning to better prepare for the opportunities, challenges, and uncertainty that may arise with automated vehicles and other transportation innovations.
• Identify other transportation planning challenges to which a scenario planning approach may apply.

TUESDAY, APRIL 16

10:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. | Public Finance and Fiscal Sustainability

Armando Carbonell, FAICP, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
George McCarthy, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA
Michael Belsky, Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, Chicago, IL

Topics:   

• Identify and understand prevailing methods for financing municipal government projects such as housing and infrastructure.
• Understand the challenges and benefits of different financing approaches to make better-informed planning decisions.
• Gain an understanding of the importance of public finance to the work of urban planners.

The Lincoln Institute has been a longstanding partner with the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference, which is in its 111th year.

Photograph: Getty Images Plus/Ultima_Gaina