Top 25 APA Award Winners (1982–2003)

Editor's note: APA's National Planning Awards program has evolved and undergone various changes during the past 25 years. Two years after APA's formation, several new categories were established. Presentations of awards for these new categories started in 1982, the year for which entries listed here begin. National planning awards were not presented in 1984.

1982
Oregon's comprehensive statewide planning program received the Outstanding Planning Award for its accomplishments since 1974, which included protecting more than 15 million acres of farmland, creating a model urban growth boundary in Portland, and integrating the state's coastal program into the statewide land-use program.

1983
Harvey Perloff received the Distinguished Professional Achievement award in recognition of his far-reaching influence and contributions as an educator; Kennedy Administration official; consultant to the United Nations, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Tennessee Valley Authority, and other agencies; and author of 17 books, 15 monographs and reports, and scores of published papers.

1985
APA's Outstanding Planning Award for a Comprehensive Program or Process was given to the 16-element comprehensive plan for Poway, California. The plan was honored for including measures to protect the community's rural character that were years ahead of the times: emphasizing infill development, avoiding hillside development, and using design guidelines.

1986
The APA Social Advocacy Award recipient was Cushing N. Dolbeare, a long-time advocate of low-income housing. After experience at the local and regional levels during the 1950s and 1960s, she realized that securing low-income housing in the U.S. would require a vocal constituency in Washington, D.C. She and others assembled just such a voice in 1974 when they formed the Ad Hoc Low-Income Housing Coalition, which was later renamed the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

1987
Virginia Certified Planning Commissioners' Program received APA's Outstanding Planning Program award. One juror characterized the 10-week course, which provides both technical knowledge and leadership skills, as a quantum leap in training citizen planners.

1988
The Natural Determinants Implementation Project in Bellevue, Washington, received the APA Current Topic Award (Planners and the Political Process: How Planners Make a Difference). Planners worked with residents and property owners for four years to produce policies and measures that guide development on steep slopes, wetlands, and other environmentally sensitive land. The planning effort was controversial, but eventually the guidelines were adopted and produced a more streamlined development review process.

1989
The Arlington, Texas, comprehensive plan received APA's award for Outstanding Planning Process. The city's previously unsuccessful attempts to adopt a comprehensive plans started to change in 1985. The award-winning process involved two important elements: including the public from the very start with an aggressive public information campaign and a community character survey; and combining the new comprehensive plan with strategic, action-oriented outcomes — a technique that can help other communities where comprehensive planning has not been widely accepted and used.

1990
Marsha Ritzdorf received the Diana Donald Award for service on behalf of women and the family. A former teacher, consultant, and leader of APA, she helped draft the organization's 1987 policy statement on child care. Ritzdorf, who died in 1998, carried her message about the need for planners to take into account the needs of women and children wherever she could. The new century's demographic changes and trends, such as the decline in the number of nuclear families and an increase in the number of women in the workforce, should be the bible planners follow.

1991
Grand Central Partnership, a coalition of local property owners, tenants, and city officials that came together in 1985 to revitalize a 53-block area around Grand Central Station in New York City, was honored with an Outstanding Planning Award for Implementation. The Partnership created what at the time was the nation's largest business improvement district in order not only to restore confidence in the businesses located there, but also to revitalize the entire area, which had been long in decline.

1992
The Current Topic Award went to New York City's Fair Share Process, the first program of its kind to be adopted by a U.S. city. The measure provides an equitable system for locating homeless shelters, drug treatment facilities, and other public facilities.

1993
The Oregon Transportation Planning Rule won the award for Planning Implementation/Large Jurisdiction. The rule provides a model for other states needing to reduce the amount of automobile travel in major metropolitan areas. Adopted by the state Land Conservation and Development Commission in 1991, the rule seeks to reduce vehicle miles traveled in the state's four largest metropolitan areas 20 percent by 2020.

1994
APA honored the Affordable Housing Protection District in Arlington, Virginia, with a Planning Implementation/Large Jurisdiction Award. The county developed an innovative and unique technique involving overlay zoning to ensure that affordable housing lost to gentrification and redevelopment was replaced in comparable locations.

1995
Then-Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros was recognized for Distinguished Leadership by a Professional Planner. Among the programs he championed were Moving to Opportunity, Empowerment Zones, and Enterprise Communities.

1996
The Stapleton Redevelopment Plan received a Special Citation. The country's largest airport reuse project provides a model for other areas seeking to create sustainable urban communities where there is a balance between open space and residential, commercial, and industrial development.

1997
The Livable Communities project, developed by the California-based Local Government Commission, received an APA Public Education Award. The project began in 1991 after 100 local officials met in Yosemite National Park and developed the "Ahwahnee Principles for More Livable Communities." Ahwahnee principles encourage the creation of communities where residents can find everything they need within walking distance of their homes.

1998
The Sierra Business Council received the Daniel Burnham Award for its guidebook, "Planning for Prosperity: Building Successful Communities in the Sierra Nevada." Outlining 16 planning principles for sustainable growth, the guidebook delivers a universal message that is applicable to communities across the country: Good community planning and economic prosperity go hand in hand.

1999
Hector MacPherson was honored with a Distinguished Leadership Award for a Citizen Planner. McPherson is considered the father of Oregon's famous statewide planning and land-use program. The law helped protect 16 million acres of farmland from development between 1973 and 1996.

1999
Landscapes, an updated comprehensive plan for Chester County, Pennsylvania, received an Outstanding Planning Award for a Project/Program/Tool. The plan demonstrates how the planning process can guide a diverse county with 73 independent-minded and locally controlled municipalities to work together, use growth boundaries, and revise their local plans and ordinances in order to manage an unprecedented level of urban growth and development.

2000
The Managed Growth Tier System developed by Palm Beach County, Florida, received a Current Topic Award (Growing Smart: Initiatives and Applications). Under the five-tier system, certain areas, such as the urban-suburban and exurban tiers, are designed to accommodate more of the county's future population growth and development than other areas designated the rural, agricultural, and Glades tiers. The plan's approach is innovative, yet applicable to other counties, given its emphasis on protecting the integrity of existing communities.

2001
The Biodiversity Recovery Plan for the Chicago Region received APA's Outstanding Planning Award for a Plan for demonstrating how metropolitan regions can address protection of natural heritage and biological diversity when planning for future growth and development. This plan, said the awards jury, "opens up a new area of planning for the natural and built environments."

2002
The Daniel Burnham Award went to Envision Utah, a 50-year growth strategy for the Greater Wasatch Front — a 100-mile urban corridor between Brigham City in the north and Provo and Nephi in the south. The plan demonstrates how a growing region can plan for a three-fold increase in its population during the next half century while containing future urban development to a 125-square-mile area in order to protect an even larger area of open space and natural resources.

2002
The Model Blocks Program in Fort Worth, Texas, was the recipient of the joint APA-Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary's Opportunity and Empowerment Award. The highly successful program enabled Fort Worth to revitalize 12 declining areas of a central city one neighborhood at a time. Transferable to other cities, Model Blocks emphasizes four key principles — comprehensive planning and implementation, citizen engagement, public-private partnerships, and leveraging of resources.

2003
Aziz Aslami received the Paul Davidoff Award for Advocacy Planning. A former planner in Newport Beach, California, Aslami returned to his native Afghanistan in 2002 to help residents in the strife-torn cities of Kohlm and Mazar-e-Sharif rebuild 600 houses, a hospital, a clinic, and middle and high schools.

2003
Paseo del Oro in San Marcos, California received a joint APA-HUD Secretary's Opportunity and Empowerment Award for its mixed uses, creative use of federal funding, focus on multiple community goals, and design considerations. The project is a model for other communities that want to revitalize older strip shopping centers without doing harm to current residents or businesses.

2004
Chicago Metropolis 2020 received the Daniel Burnham Award. This groundbreaking effort, according to the authors, is the first private plan in the country to address both land use and transportation issues in the same document. The plan provides a regional vision for the 1,300 units of government in the six counties making up the greater Chicago metropolitan area. "Planning across jurisdictional boundaries," said one APA juror, "is the only way to effect real change, and that is what Chicago Metropolis 2020 is doing."