Integrating Urban and Regional Sustainability Planning

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Understand the stated and potential roles of regional/territorial planning in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and New Urban Agenda (NUA).
• Learn how different international and U.S. organizations, initiatives and methodologies address the role of regions/territories in sustainable urban planning.
• Find out how sustainable regional/territorial and urban planning are, or can be, integrated.

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Habitat III, in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador, introduced the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and was important to planners in the U.S. and internationally for presenting the New Urban Agenda (NUA) through SDG 11. SDG 11 in turn was influenced by APA and other planning organizations that provided their input to the NUA through their white paper "The City We Need." While planners have celebrated the well-deserved attention that cities and planning have gotten in the SDGs and NUA, it is noteworthy that more work was needed on how to integrate sustainable development planning at the urban and territorial levels. In particular, more attention needs to be paid to whether the role of territorial planning is mainly to support urban needs by providing environmental and other services or whether regional planning is the ideal scale for sustainability planning whereby river basins, airsheds, and biodiversity areas set the limits and guide the course of urban planning. The session describes and compares how different U.S. and international planning organizations and initiatives address the integration of sustainable territorial planning with sustainable urban planning, exploring if one level does or should set the agenda for the other and for what planning elements.
 

Session Speakers

Bruce S. Stiftel, FAICP
Speaker
Georgia Inst of Tech
Atlanta, GA

Scott T. Edmondson, AICP
Speaker
San Francisco Planning Department
San Francisco, CA

Sharon J. Rooney, AICP
Speaker
Cape Cod Commission
Centerville, MA

Timothy D. Van Epp, FAICP
Session Organizer and Moderator
Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group, APA International Division
Westfield, NJ

Vincent J. Riscica
Speaker
Arup
Dublin, Leinster