Green Communities
Research Priorities
The Green Communities program advances practices that improve environmental quality, address climate change, and reduce development impacts on natural resources. Research efforts focus on projects and policies that prioritize green/blue infrastructure, green energy, and green transportation.
Climate change, water resources, and infrastructure needs are just a few of the issues facing communities today as we plan for the 21st century and beyond. Planners balance short-term and long-term interests to enhance the viability of their communities.
Through citizen engagement, plan making, capital improvements, development review, and other planning actions, planners promote fiscally sound investments and decisions that protect and restore the natural environment, conserve resources, and build more sustainable communities.
Water and Planning
APA is actively engaging members to identify the needs and priorities of and provide resources to planners who are focused on water issues in their communities.
Getting Ready for Autonomous Vehicles
APA and its partners, along with 85 of the nation's top thinkers on AV, have developed a playbook for cities and regions to maximize the benefits and minimize the potential negative consequences associated with the deployment of autonomous vehicles.
Featured Project
Urban Conservation: Thinking Megaregionally
Major metropolitan areas present direct threats to the conservation future of the South Atlantic, such as loss of habitat and open space, and indirect threats, such as barriers to connectivity. As a result, urban growth poses a challenge to traditional approaches to green infrastructure and conservation. APA worked with the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative to consider how to tackle this challenge and identify areas of shared conservation interest across the rural-urban continuum.
Ongoing Projects
Regional Green Infrastructure and the Wildland-Urban Interface
An APA and U.S. Forest Service collaboration on regional green infrastructure planning at the landscape scale and the associated needs and opportunities.
Multimodal Planning at the Megaregional Scale
This project will develop and disseminate clear guidance (policies, strategies, and implementation tools) for local governments and regional agencies to address megaregional issues in long-range comprehensive planning.
Sustaining Places
APA is leading an initiative to establish standards and a potential designation program for integrating sustainability into comprehensive plans. This work aims to improve plan quality while asserting the planning profession's role as a leader in the sustainability arena.