APA Foresight
Learning With The Future
APA Foresight helps planners navigate change and prepare for an uncertain future. With foresight in mind, planners can guide change, create more sustainable and equitable outcomes, and establish themselves as critical to a thriving community.
2022 Trend Report for Planners
APA Foresight
The 2022 Trend Report for Planners, developed in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, features nearly 100 existing, emerging, and potential future trends that APA identified as relevant to planning. The trends are structured within three timeframes (Act Now, Prepare, Learn and Watch), which indicate the urgency of planners' action.
What is APA Foresight?
The accelerated pace of change we experience in areas such as technological innovation, societal shifts, and climate change makes for a mind-bending task to prepare for disruption.
That's where we come in. APA Foresight is about understanding drivers of change that are outside of our control, how we can prepare for them, and when it is time to act. APA Foresight identifies emerging trends and how scenarios stemming from each may impact the world, our communities, and the planning profession in years to come.
The path forward requires adjusting, adapting, and even reinventing planning processes, tools, and skills to meet the needs of a changing world. Through APA's foresight practice planners will find support, training, and new research for making sense of the ever-changing future. For more on how planners can use a foresight approach in their own work, visit APA's latest issue of PAS Quicknotes: Planning with Foresight.
Adding Depth and Insights: The Future of Planning
Five trend categories are at the foundation of APA's foresight research. Through these five categories, APA connects emerging trends and potential future trends to planning (sense-making) and creates guidance on how planners can get future-ready (meaning-making).
To understand what trends planners will need to learn about and prepare for, we rate and prioritize them based on the extent and severity of the expected impact and potential disruption, the estimated certainty of their occurrence, and how well planners are prepared for them.
What skills will planners need to navigate a rapidly changing world? What knowledge is required to ensure an equitable future?What role will planners play in their communities? How will emerging trends contribute to changes in the communities we serve, the built environment, nature, and society as a whole? How will these drivers of change impact planning processes and the tools planners use in their daily work?
These are the types of questions APA is asking as part of our foresight approach.
All Foresight Resources
Our Latest Work
Practical Guidance
Artificial Intelligence and Planning Practice
The term "artificial intelligence" (AI) conjures images of autonomous vehicles maneuvering through streets, smartphone assistants that answer your questions, or androids exploring final frontiers. This PAS Memo intends to equip planners with an understanding of AI concepts and their potential implications. Additionally, it discusses important considerations regarding AI applications and their roles in larger trends connected to digital governance and civic data in planning.
Digitalization and Implications for Planning
As once-analog processes continue to be supplemented, converted, or superseded by digital innovations, a process called digitalization, the resulting feedback can drive broader and larger-scale reorganization in society. This report identifies how this ongoing process of digitalization is driving change in the world and what this change means for planners and their communities. Created in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Smart Cities: Integrating Technology, Community, and Nature
Today, big data, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence are spurring a digital revolution, changing entire societies, economies, and built environments. The concept of "smart cities" is a development of this era. This PAS Report defines the smart city, offers a framework of three interconnected "ecosystems" to help planners better understand smart city systems, and describes the elements that must be integrated to make a city truly smart.
Planning with Foresight
This edition of PAS QuickNotes introduces the concept of foresight to help planners imagine and prepare their communities for the future.
Artificial Intelligence
This edition of PAS QuickNotes offers examples of how AI can be used to help local governments make better-informed decisions, communicate more effectively, and improve public safety; and shares important caveats about unintended consequences and responsible use of AI.
Smart City Digital Twins
This edition of PAS QuickNotes explains how this emerging tool can be used to support better decision making, more effective stakeholder engagement, and more robust scenario planning processes.
Using Drones in Planning Practice
This PAS Report makes the case for how drones can help planners do their work more safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
Zoning for a Post-COVID World
Learn about short-term zoning adjustments that can minimize economic damage and promote economic recovery from the pandemic in this edition of Zoning Practice. We analyze how COVID-19 may reinforce or disrupt long-term zoning trends related to housing diversity, flexible use permissions, built form, and the public realm.
Applying Algorithms to Land-Use Decision Making
This edition of Zoning Practice reviews simple methods for defining and applying a decision algorithm for land-use cases and briefly explores methods that improve the approach.
Big Data and Planning
Arizona State University researchers Kevin C. Desouza and Kendra L. Smith have teamed up on a practical guide to channeling the power of big data. Together they look at how planners around the world are turning big data into real answers for smart cities.
Artificial Intelligence and Planning KnowledgeBase Collection
From this page, you can search for resources that provide background or policy guidance on the effects of artificial intelligence on communities and the practice of planning.
Urban Air Mobility
This edition of PAS QuickNotes explores how local governments, planners, and policy makers can leverage the value of innovative vehicle technologies like UAM to prepare for the future and transform transportation systems for the public good.
Created in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Design Thinking
This edition of PAS QuickNotes suggests how planners can use this agile, five-step process to help improve systems, processes, and policies in their communities.
Planning for Autonomous Mobility
A world with AVs will require retrofitting, reimagining, and repurposing transportation infrastructure and the built environment. This PAS Report previews these coming changes and advises planners on how to prepare for and manage these transitions to ensure their communities reap the benefits — and avoid the pitfalls — of AV technology.
How to Design Your Scenario Planning Process
This edition of PAS Memo offers a step-by-step primer on designing a scenario planning process, guiding planners through direction setting, approach development, and roadmap creation.
Autonomous Vehicles KnowledgeBase Collection
This collection gathers resources that provide background on autonomous vehicles and examples of how their widespread adoption will impact the transportation network and the built environment, as well as recommendations for policies that communities should consider to prepare themselves.
Scenario Planning KnowledgeBase Collection
Scenario planning enables professionals, and the public, to respond dynamically to an unknown future. On this page, you can search for resources for your community.
Smart Cities KnowledgeBase Collection
From this page you can search for resources that provide background and policy guidance on smart cities, as well as examples of local plans, policies, and programs that illustrate how cities and counties are applying ICT to improve local government and enhance livability, sustainability, or resilience.
Articles and viewpoints
AI in Planning: Why Now Is the Time
Artificial intelligence is headed to a planning organization near you. In this article, Tom Sanchez, chair of APA's Education Committee and a member of APA's AI Foresight Community, explores recent survey results on the potential role of AI in planning, and what AI might mean for the future of the profession.
Demystifying Artificial Intelligence in Planning
Could urban planners use AI technologies to benefit the communities they serve? How do planners ensure the use of AI will lead to more equitable outcomes? Hannah Shumway and Trey Gordner explore these questions and more in this blog post about the growing ubiquity of AI in our society, and the potential this uncertain frontier may hold for planners and cities today and into the future.
Smart Cities — Integrating Technology, Community, and Nature
The digital era has arrived, and with it the digital transformation of cities and communities. In this blog post, APA Research Director Petra Hurtado, PhD, outlines the planner's role in fostering innovation, collaboration, and participatory co-creation in ensuring that smart cities are equitable, resilient, and sustainable places for all.
Coming Soon(ish): 6 Planning Trends on APA's Watchlist
From 3D printing to noise-canceling buildings, emerging trends point to a future of rapid change. In this article, Petra Hurtado, PhD, APA's Research Director, and APA Research Associate Alexsandra Gomez explore six of these trends and what they might mean for the future of our communities.
Artificial Intelligence and Urban Planning: What Planners Need to Know Now
AI is already affecting people and their communities in countless ways. In this podcast, APA Research Director Petra Hurtado, PhD, leads a discussion with AI experts Neda Madi and Tom Sanchez on why planners need to understand the short- and long-term ramifications of artificial intelligence on our cities and the profession.
Created in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
7 Trends Knocking at the Planning Office Door
In today's complex world, balancing everyday activities, near-term plans, and visioning for the future is more challenging than ever. In this article, Petra Hurtado, PhD, APA's Research Director, and APA Research Associate Alexsandra Gomez explore the seven most pressing trends for the profession today, and what these trends mean for the future of planning.
Digitalization and Implications for Planning
One of the most notable impacts on planning from the COVID-19 pandemic is the rapid shift away from the use of physical spaces and toward digital and virtual spaces. The groundwork for these shifts however, have been developing for decades. In this blog post, APA research managers Joe DeAngelis and Sagar Shah identify some of the broader societal trends in "digitalization," and explore their potential implications for planning.
The Future of Planning Is Agile, People-centric, and Technologically Advanced
For planners to be well-equipped for an unknowable future, we must focus on the areas with both the potential for high impact on the profession and low preparedness in the planning community. In this article, Petra Hurtado, PhD, APA's Research Director, explores the patterns revealed and the agility and technological innovation planners need.
Created in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Why Planners Need to Prepare for Urban Air Mobility
By 2028, urban air mobility is likely to be a commercially viable market for air metro services in the U.S. In this podcast episode, APA talks with Heather Sauceda Hannon, AICP, of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Ric Stephens of NV5 about why it is so important for planners to prepare for this emerging transportation system.
Created in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
COVID-19, Communities, and the Planning Profession
APA research director Petra Hurtado, PhD, examines how we at APA are approaching the questions of what the impacts on cities and communities are and how this pandemic affects the planning profession.
Flying Taxis Are Coming and Communities Need to Prepare
Tech companies say they could launch advanced air mobility vehicles within this decade, but urban and rural policy is lagging behind.
What Planners and Public Sector Agencies Need to Know About Cybersecurity
With millions across the country now working remotely to curb the spread of COVID-19, cybersecurity and data protection issues are top of mind for just about everyone. In this podcast episode, APA researcher, Jo Pena talks with Nupur Gunjan, a public sector analyst at Cisco about what should planners do to make sure their agency's data and communications are safe.
APA's foresight research is made possible in part through our partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.