APA's Launches Enhanced Publications

This month APA expands the repositioning of our association's publications that began last year with Planning magazine. Zoning Practice (ZP) succeeds 20-year-old Zoning News, with more pages and a sharper focus on helping readers use zoning to accomplish smart development. Zoning Digest, first published in 1949, was rechristened Land Use Law & Zoning Digest in the 1980s. Now it is transformed again into Planning & Environmental Law (PEL) to encompass the issues that occupy today's planners and attorneys. Finally, we gave a handsome new look to the Journal of the American Planning Association, the journal of record in planning since 1935.

None of these publications was remade from scratch. We kept and refined what worked, eliminated what didn't, and added new features in response to what planners need and members and subscribers want. We chose engaging new layouts that reflect current publication design and production techniques. It makes sense to do this as we celebrate our 25th anniversary by appreciating past accomplishments and anticipating future achievements.

Our guiding principles are to make all of our publications more useful and reader-friendly, with attractive, contemporary designs that identify them as members of the APA family. Wherever possible, we want to add value by taking advantage of online resources. In the case of Planning, that meant moving APA business pages to the web to free more room for editorial content. As a result, you receive seven or eight articles per issue rather than four or five. The entire magazine is available online to members and links to related information appear at the end of each article. Now Zoning Practice subscribers will have online access to back issues and the source documents described in each month's articles. We will continue the popular online forum "Ask the Author." More web-based enhancements will evolve for all of our publications.

Planning & Environmental Law will concentrate on subjects that affect the natural and built environment, including growth management, wetlands, natural hazards, and other "green" issues that dominate 21st century planning. We made the format cleaner and easier for a diverse audience to navigate. The index is shorter. Succinct, informative article headers highlight crucial information. What hasn't changed? Continuing coverage of land use, zoning, and housing issues, and in-depth reporting of emerging issues such as RLUIPA. Thorough attention to crucial legislation and court decisions, and well-argued commentaries by the profession's foremost scholars and practitioners.

The venerable Journal of the American Planning Association got a facelift. JAPA 's striking new cover design is an attractive companion to our flagship magazine, Planning. As always, color unifies the four issues in a yearly volume, and the cover graphic illuminates the subject of the issue's lead article, the "Longer View."

More changes are in store for JAPA and other APA publications. I'll keep you apprised as they come along. If you subscribe to Zoning Practice, Planning & Environmental Law, and JAPA, look for these fresh new publications in your mailbox. If not, feel free to request a sample copy of one or all of them. Please tell us what you think.

W. Paul Farmer, AICP
Executive Director