National Planning Achievement Awards — Gold

Best Practice

AWARDEE: WEDG: The Blue Movement to Design Better Waterfronts, Waterfront Alliance, New York

GOAL: Provide waterfront planning and design guidance following Hurricane Sandy.

IMPACT: Collaboration with planning, design, science, community development, engineering, and insurance experts resulted in a credit-based ratings system and downloadable design guidelines that adapt to local uses.

JURY COMMENTS: Program is applicable to every type of waterfront.

Environmental Planning

AWARDEE: Sustainable Chinatown, San Francisco

GOAL: Address challenges related to gentrification and climate change in Chinatown.

IMPACT: Sustainable Chinatown is a partnership between the Chinatown community development organization, the city's planning and environment departments, and philanthropic partners. It provides six core strategies to improve and increase affordable housing and sustainability efforts, resulting in a baseline assessment of the neighborhood, $1.5 million to install a solar photovoltaic system at a large housing development, and new open space and green stormwater infrastructure.

JURY COMMENTS: Visionary initiative for a community of Chinatown's size and complexity.

Grassroots Initiative

AWARDEE: Stoneham Transportation Advisory Committee, Stoneham, Massachusetts

GOAL: Provide transportation planning to a town with no local planner.

RESULT: Established the all-volunteer Stoneham Transportation Advisory Committee, which devised and completed multiple projects based on resident survey results, including extended bike routes, added stops, pedestrian safety audits, bike and vehicle parking maps and signage, and a complete streets design for the town center, prepared by a consultant pro bono.

JURY COMMENTS: Committee addressed residents' needs and completed an impressive number of projects in a short time.

Implementation

AWARDEE: The Van Aken District, Shaker Heights, Ohio

GOAL: Create the Cleveland suburb's first downtown area since incorporation in 1912.

IMPACT: After 15 years, five revitalization plans, and $119 million in public and private investment, the project transformed an underperforming strip mall and dangerous intersection into a downtown with 60,000 square feet of office space, 10,000 square feet of retail, 100 housing units, a pedestrian-friendly intersection, and plans for public art.

JURY COMMENTS: Planning team attracted thousands of enthusiastic residents to formal and informal planning events.

Public Outreach

AWARDEE: People's Planning Academy, Department of Metropolitan Development, Indianapolis

GOAL: Engage young people and other historically underrepresented groups in the Indy 2020 comprehensive planning process.

IMPACT: Educated 200 participants at two in-person training days on the language of planning and planning's role in making the city healthier, more inclusive, more competitive, and more resilient.

JURY COMMENTS: Extensive community outreach through the staff-developed workbook and public access TV broadcast.

Resilience

AWARDEE: Climate Ready Boston Report, Boston

GOAL: Begin the city's resiliency planning initiative to plan for the storms that the next generation will face.

IMPACT: Developed five core strategies and 39 initiatives (with 24 currently under way) alongside the city's first comprehensive plan in 100 years. Website hosts a "Progress Tool" and open-source spatial data on climate resilience measures, including flooding, heat, and social vulnerability.

JURY COMMENTS: This is a highly transferable approach with a focus on equity.

Transportation Planning

AWARDEE: Multimobility Planning on the Cellular Level, Stantec Consulting Services Inc./Tahoe Transportation District Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada

GOAL: Begin to reduce traffic congestion by shifting car trips to transit and active participation modes.

IMPACT: Map of regional travel patterns based on three months of anonymized cell phone data sets from wireless providers with hundreds of thousands of origin and destination trip pairs that informed creation of the Linking Tahoe: Lake Tahoe Basin Transit Master Plan in 2017.

JURY COMMENTS: Impressive use of huge, all-new data set and advanced modeling.

Urban Design

AWARDEE: Downtown Allentown Development and Urban Design Plan Allentown, Pennsylvania

GOAL: Create a downtown plan with a coordinated design and historic preservation strategy to encourage new construction and rehabilitation, improve public spaces, and take advantage of tax incentives available in the 128-acre Neighborhood Improvement Zone.

IMPACT: More than $675 million invested in 22 projects since 2013, resulting in 1,000 new housing units, 900,000 square feet of rehabbed office space, and restoration of the historic Americus Hotel.

JURY COMMENTS: The planning process was central to redevelopment, with a strong emphasis on the city's existing urban scale.