The Promise and Significance of Planning Month

The holidays came early this year for planners, who spent the month of October celebrating National Community Planning Month.

The American Planning Association (APA) kicked off the month-long series of events and outreach on October 3 by announcing the "2016 Great Places in America" list. That announcement is one of the most anticipated of the year for professional planners, offering a chance to reward the hard work of planners and communities around the country.

The 2016 list recognizes 15 streets, neighborhoods, and public spaces, each selected in a competitive process to "celebrate stories of exemplary planning that have resulted in stronger, healthier, and more just communities."

The Great Places is awarded in three categories. The winners of this year's Great Places distinction are listed below, each in their respective categories, with a link to an APA page commemorating the award.

2016 GREAT NEIGHBORHOODS

Santa Ana, California, Downtown Santa Ana

Atlanta, Georgia, Midtown Atlanta

Louisville, Kentucky, Old Louisville

Albuquerque, New Mexico, Nob Hill

Warren, Rhode Island, Downtown Warren

2016 GREAT STREETS

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Sherman Avenue

Ketchum, Idaho, Main Street

Omaha, Nebraska, South 24th Street

Bronx, New York, Arthur Avenue

Davidson, North Carolina, Main Street

2016 GREAT PUBLIC SPACES

Fairbanks, Alaska, Golden Heart Plaza

Valparaiso, Indiana, Central Park Plaza

Cincinnati, Ohio, Findlay Market

Tulsa, Oklahoma, Guthrie Green

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Fairmount Park

Every year, the APA makes a wise choice in highlighting the public realm for the bulk of the honorees on the Great Places list. The public realm is a wise choice for its conspicuous public relations value (planners are just as likely to be employed for the process of master planning corporate campuses or exclusive residential neighborhoods, after all), but far more importantly, the public realm is often a gateway to a deeper understanding of the characteristics of unique and beloved communities. The High Line in New York is perhaps the most famous recent example of a project that opened the eyes of the public to the spaces outside their homes and offices, but the same goes for the Atlanta BeltLine, CicLAvia in Los Angeles, or Octavia Boulevard in San Francisco. The public realm is a community's most empowering classroom, and some lessons about community can only be learned in great public places.

The public realm is also a shared concern of communities of all shapes, sizes, and geographic location. Some communities may neglect the public realm or lease it to private interests, but all communities deal with the consequences of those decisions. With countless examples of polarization bursting into the public consciousness on a daily basis, the public realm offers a common language as well as a touchstone with which to celebrate the unique qualities of communities. The success of this list should be considered with reference to the potential of the public realm to be an asset that both distinguishes and unites people and places.

When the Great Places list introduces aspects of the private realm, in the Great Neighborhood category, it begins to lose the plot. It's true that neighborhoods can be a shared, community-enabling asset, made successful by how well public spaces like streets and parks interweave with the private property of residential spaces. At the very least, the potential of the Great Neighborhoods category to counter Putnam-esque arguments that community and partnerships are impossible in suburban communities makes this award worth the trouble.

But neighborhoods are also inextricably governed by self-interest, and eventually the concerns of residents always come down to property values and the price of rent. The Great Neighborhoods category of the Great Places list came under scrutiny for related reasons in a 2015 study, which identified a $108k disparity between the median housing price found in Great Neighborhoods and the immediately adjacent neighborhoods. Emily Talen, one of the study's authors, explains the finding of the study: "unfortunately, yes—APA's Great Neighborhoods represent a somewhat classic conception of the historic, gentrifying urban neighborhood: walkable, gridded, and losing social diversity."

The authors of that study included a reminder of a long-standing ethical principle of American city planning: "that neighborhoods should be both well-designed and socially inclusive." Has this year's list overcome those criticisms by selecting neighborhoods that offer all the benefits of a cohesive and vibrant neighborhood, without the drawbacks of exclusion and inequality?

The Great Places awards were only one aspect of National Community Planning Month worth reflecting on, however. There's the choice of words in the title of the event, for instance. The APA makes the right choice by choosing the modifier "community" to describe the process of planning. The APA makes that choice despite all the hipsters and urbanism websites in the country preferring the term "urban planning." The APA must represent the significant portion of its membership who live and work in communities that could never be appropriately described as urban, so perhaps its decision is more pragmatic than idealistic. But conflating the practice of planning to urban environments is a danger to both planning and urbanism. The National Community Planning Month offers an opportunity to resist that temptation, and celebrate communities of all shapes and sizes.

The APA gathered a collection of statistics to prove the reach of the National Community Planning Month effort, including website hits to Great Places pages (28,000), media mentions (this one might bump the total to 100), and APA divisions honoring National Community Planning Month (28). The discussion on the #PlanningMonth hashtag was a constant sight on Twitter all month long, including photos of planners posing with signs that read "brought to you by planners" or "imagined by planners."

It will be unfortunate when #PlanningMonth is over, in part because such a well-used hashtag is so valuable to the trade. Normally, the too-ambiguous #cplan hashtag consolidates the Twitter discussion surrounding planning, but that c could mean anything (it probably means community, as it turns out). #PlanningMonth, however, offers a broadly accessible and contemporary forum to discuss the importance of planning. Such a forum is desperately needed by a profession constantly under threat from municipal budget cuts, council discretion, and Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists.

The APA clearly recognizes the need to focus its community engagement efforts, selecting community engagement as the theme of this year's National Community Planning Month. APA President Carol Rhea, FAICP, told Planetizen by email that the APA selected civic engagement good planning happens in partnership with communities and people. "Good planning comes from engaging the public, business leaders and elected officials – those who have a vested interest in the community. It also serves to remind community members that their participation in the planning process is essential to creating communities of lasting value that are equitable and inclusive for all," explains Rhea in the email. Once again, the APA is served well by the public orientation of the field it represents.

The public orientation of both community engagement and "Great Places" illustrate important conceptual differences between planning and similar, related professional practices. The American Institute of Architects, for example, also holds a month of celebrations surrounding the field of architecture. It's called Architecture Month—no need for a modifier. For more evidence of the differences in intention behind planning and architecture, consider the difference in content between #PlanningMonth and #ArchitectureMonth. #ArchitectureMonth, for instance, doesn't often mention community engagement, nor even include many pictures of people.

Despite this comparison, National Community Planning Month month could have done a more complete job of highlighting community engagement. The APA blog includes a series of stories on kids engaging with planning, however, and links to the APA's Community Planning Assistance Teams and Plan4Health programs, but those latter two examples are a stretch. Rhea reports that the APA was particularly focused on outreach to elected officials, who are obviously powerful players in the planning process, during the #PlanningMonth festivities.

But it's understandable if there might still be some work to do in lengthening the duration and broadening the focus of the whole event beyond the PR-ready package presented by the Great Places list. That we should constantly re-evaluate assumptions, seek out new and improved ways to deliver value, and to evaluate the results of previous efforts is very much in keeping with the highest ideals of the profession of planning. For these reasons, and many others, maybe every month should be #PlanningMonth and every #PlanningMonth should focus on the public. Until such a world exists, Rhea reminds planners to keep an eye on the APA website for announcements about next year's event.