How to Use the Trend Report for Planners

The Trend Report for Planners is an annual publication that serves as a tool for planners, developed by the American Planning Association's (APA) foresight team in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. It documents the emerging trends and signals that are shaping the field of planning, or may do so in the future.

How the Trend Report Comes Together

Creating the report is a years-long process of horizon scanning, signals sensing, and trend research that begins with hundreds of inputs that are gradually narrowed down throughout the year.

This process is augmented by external diverse perspectives that are included through APA's Trend Scouting community. This is a group of subject matter experts from a variety of disciplines, age groups, and career stages that meet quarterly to provide their insights on topics they view as important to be aware of.

The goal and structure of this report are ultimately designed for it to be used as a tool for planners. With the release of the 2026 Trend Report for Planners, let's explore the report features and how to apply them in your work.

Using the Trend Report to Guide Your Work

To start applying the Trend Report to your work today, you can consider the trends identified in the report and place them in one of four quadrants of a two-by-two matrix (Figure 1). This helps to focus on the trends that are both highly certain to happen and will likely have a high impact on your work if they do.

The matrix that you can use to prioritize the trends most relevant to your communities.

Timeframes: Act Now, Prepare, or Learn and Watch

The Trend Report is divided into three timeframes: Act Now, Prepare, and Learn and Watch. These roughly approximate the short-, medium-, and long-term, and are intended to help guide you on the topics that should most urgently be addressed. These, of course, will vary amongst communities, and you can decide which ones are most relevant to the areas you work in.

• Act Now: Trends that are already affecting the world and likely require some sort of response from planners to either advance or mitigate these impacts.
• Prepare: Trends that are beginning to see outcomes, but it's not yet clear what measures should be taken to address these outcomes.
• Learn and Watch: These are signals, which are emerging patterns that may or may not become trends in the future, and thus likely do not require action to be taken at present.

As you collate and prioritize trends for your own work, you should consider the timeframe the trends likely fall within.

Understanding possible futures from a set of circumstances

Scenario planning is a process that aims to create possible futures out of a set of circumstances, which are then used to aid in planning for the most desirable outcomes.

Scenarios are created again using a two-by-two matrix, but this time one that opposes two trends with critical uncertainties. The extreme extents of one trend are plotted on one axis, while the extremes of the second trend are plotted on the other. The four quadrants then show what may occur under each set of conditions. A year should also be specified to denote how far into the future to frame these outcomes.

The Trend Report includes three scenario matrices from three different timeframes to encourage readers to see the possibilities and creativity that utilizing scenarios can induce. Scenarios can be useful in community engagement when conducting envisioning exercises with constituents, as well as for internal purposes when drafting or updating plans.

An example of a set of scenarios from the 2026 Trend Report for Planners. Illustrations by Borja Bonaque.

 Deep Dives and Trend Talks

There are two additional structural components in the Trend Report beyond scenarios: deep dives and Trend Talks.

Deep dives analyze the multiple trends that make up one topic, for instance, the potential uses and drawbacks of artificial intelligence (AI). Most of the deep dives tend to be subjects that have been prevalent in the past year, though not always.

Trend Talks are interviews conducted with people from a variety of backgrounds, whether it be a student, scientist, or even the APA president. The talks aim to offer fresh perspectives on planning topics, particularly those that are undergoing some change or development.

You can use these features to learn from professionals and gain a more comprehensive understanding of a set of trends that may stand to make significant impacts in the years to come.

Tracking Trend Changes

The 2026 edition is the fifth iteration of the Trend Report. This means that there are hundreds of trends that have been documented over the past five years, many of which are still relevant to planners today. These trends are collated online at APA's Trend Universe, a searchable database that describes and tags past trends. These are updated biannually, both with new developments to existing trends and the addition of new trends with each report. You can visit the Trend Verse to understand how trends have changed over time and check back regularly to see when new trends emerge.

Engaging with the Trend Report

The Trend Report is not only a document to be read, but it's also one to be engaged with. The report is not just for planners — it can be utilized by a variety of practitioners in planning fields to inform their own work, from helping guide strategic initiatives at nonprofits to use as a teaching tool in academia.

If anything, hopefully the Trend Report encourages more out-of-the-box approaches to thinking and problem-solving that will extend even beyond the workplace. If you'd like to learn more about how to apply the Trend Report in your work, visit APA's foresight page, where upcoming webinars and trainings are announced.