Four JAPA Award Winners Honored in Minneapolis

At the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning's annual conference in Minneapolis in October, the American Planning Association (APA) recognized two scholars and two papers that appeared in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA). The honorees from 2023 and 2024 represent research that spans immigrant food economies, drought preparedness, productive frictions, and long-term post-disaster relocation. Together, their work provides planners with scholarly research with real-world practice applications.

2023 Article of the Year

Local Drought Preparedness

"Planning Strategies and Barriers to Achieving Local Drought Preparedness" (Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 89, No. 3) received the 2023 JAPA Article of the Year Award. The paper explores the critical link between drought management and local planning efforts. In the study, which draws on a national survey of 537 APA members to understand local planners' perceptions of drought mitigation, the authors find that planners are open to collaborating with water conservation and hazard mitigation processes. However, "land use plans and standalone plans may also be important tools for effective mitigation." To reduce barriers, local planners should communicate effectively with water and drought planners as well as with planners and politicians at the state level.

Tonya Haigh, research assistant professor and the social science coordinator for the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, accepted the award on behalf of the author team, which includes Elliot Wickham, Samantha Hamlin, and Cody Knutson.

The JAPA awards committee was impressed not only with the paper's direct application for day-to-day challenges faced by planners but with its relevance to climate change, noting that it "points to the need for land use plans to incorporate responses to drought risk, and to the importance of state-level drought planning."

2023 Emerging Scholar Award

Maryam Khojasteh

Maryam Khojasteh, PhD, received the 2023 JAPA Emerging Scholar Award for her paper, "Unplanned Food Access: Contribution of Immigrant Food Entrepreneurs to Community Wellbeing in a Suburban Township" (Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 89, No. 2). The paper addresses the impact of immigrants on suburban food systems, focusing on the contribution of immigrant food entrepreneurs to the food supply and economy of a multiethnic, working-class suburb.

Focused on the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, the study was conducted through historical research, a survey, and additional fieldwork, and its findings call the attention of planners to equitable development, calling for them to create "economic inclusion pathways for immigrant populations as an important strategy to invest in equitable, multicultural, and healthy communities."

Khojasteh is a senior program officer for Research, Evaluation, and Learning at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and earned her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in food systems planning, public health, and community and economic development.

The JAPA awards committee unanimously agreed to honor her with the award, saying the paper "highlights the contribution of immigrant neighbors to community well-being at an important political moment." The jury also commented on her acknowledgment of the limits of the study, remarking that they could see her "grappling with the challenges of connecting smaller scales with generalizable conclusions" while simultaneously encouraging scholars to take on similar types of research projects.

2024 Article of the Year

Post-disaster Relocation and Adaptation

"Adaptability of Low-Income Communities in Postdisaster Relocation: A Long-Term Study Following Typhoon Haiyan" (Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 90, No. 1) received the 2024 JAPA Article of the Year Award. The paper focuses particularly on low-income community relocation after a natural disaster. Kanako Iuchi, PhD, associate professor at Tohoku University's International Research Institute of Disaster Science, authored the study and accepted the award.

Iuchi qualitatively followed six years of government-led relocation of communities in Tacloban City in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda and recommended a planning-centered model of how to conduct such efforts. She found that the economic and social networks of relocated residents gradually changed, and the status of the new development is key to how quickly and well residents adapt. The paper identifies five dimensions important to planners and policymakers: working with residents to reestablish daily lives, proactively strengthening residents throughout the process, applying some transitional strategy, providing positive information to residents, and using an "iterative, co-designing" planning process.

The JAPA awards committee highlighted Iuchi's "ethnographic methods, participatory research, and extended time and trust-building in the field" as central to the paper's strength. The jury noted the framing of her five findings as not merely immediate but essential to include "individuals and families in a long process of thinking, calculating, planning, and building futures," describing this insight as "crucial" for planners and policymakers.

2024 Emerging Scholar Award

HuE-TAM Jamme

Huệ-Tậm Jamme, PhD, received the 2024 JAPA Emerging Scholar Award for her paper, "Productive Frictions: A Theory of Mobility and Street Commerce Grounded in Vietnam's Motorbike-Centric Urbanism," (Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 90, No. 1). The paper defines productive frictions as "opportunities for social interactions produced by the contact of people on the move with the built environment they traverse."

Using Ho Chi Minh City as her place of study, Jamme identifies factors that make motorbikers particularly prone to productive frictions, including slow speeds and the high number of stimuli lining the streets, and she writes that productive frictions "support small businesses, which shape accessibility, economic vibrancy, and street life" and should be maintained by planners.

Jamme is an associate professor of urban planning at Arizona State University and earned her doctorate at the University of Southern California. She specializes in mobility, new technologies, and socio-spatial inequalities. The awards committee said that she adds new scholarship to the theory of productive frictions and noted that "urbanism is created dynamically by different mobility modes." Her theory of "motorbike-centric urbanism" should resonate with cities in the global south.

The jury members remarked that they hope she continues her research to understand whether similar dynamics exist in U.S. cities where two-wheeled shared mobility is growing in popularity.

Top image: At the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning conference in October 2025, Journal of the American Planning Association editor Yan Song (far right) recognized four planning scholars (from left): Kanako Iuchi, Huệ-Tậm Jamme, Tonya Haigh, and Maryam Khojasteh (not pictured). Photo courtesy of Meghan Stromberg.