Survey: What Mobile Apps Are Most Useful for Planning in 2021?

Planetizen is requesting your input in creating the definitive list of mobile apps for professional, student, academic, or citizen planners—updated for a planning profession forever altered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

2 minute read

October 18, 2021, 5:00 AM PDT

By Planetizen

@planetizen


GIS Mobile App

iGIS Screengrab / On the App Store

After a pandemic-length hiatus, Planetizen is relaunching its traditional documentation of the cutting-edge and tried-and-true mobile apps used by planners (urban, regional, city, or community). Just like the last time we conducted this survey in 2019, we are relying on input from the community of professional, student, academic, and citizen planners that make up the Planetizen audience. 

Obviously a lot has changed since we last published a "Top Planning Apps" list in July 2019. The Internet has proven indispensable since the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic—as evidenced by the multitude of online dashboards, mapping tools, and numerous other online tools used by planners and the public to make sense of the new world as it evolved and mutated along with the once-novel coronavirus over the past 18-months-plus. The 2021 version of the survey adds a question about any apps that proved specifically, particularly helpful for planning during the pandemic.  

Otherwise, this is the same survey Planetizen has been deploying since 2012, first written by Jennifer Evans Cowley, FAICP, former Planetizen contributor and current provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of North Texas. 

The survey will still only take a couple minutes to complete. Please feel free to share the survey with colleagues to help Planetizen gather as much feedback as possible.

Planetizen will use the data collected in this survey to produce a list of contemporary planning apps later this year. For an example of the kind of information we hope to generate, and then share, see Planetizen's Best Planning Apps post from 2019.

Take the Best Planning Apps survey for 2021.

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