PAS Essential Info Packets

PAS Essential Info Packets offer valuable information on a variety of topics. The PAS researchers carefully develop each packet to ensure quality, relevance, and timeliness. Essential Info Packets represent the type of materials you receive when placing a research request through PAS.

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Packets are available to subscribers at no additional fee.

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If you are not a PAS Subscriber, or you are a library that subscribes, PAS Essential Info Packets are available for $30 each from APA's PlanningBooks.com. Click on the packet name in the list at top to view a brief description of the contents, then click on the title above the description to place an order.

Packets for Non Subscribers

Regulating Holiday Sales Lots (EIP-01)

Are your local regulations ready for the holiday season? From September to July, communities across the country are bustling with a variety of holiday festivities. Don't dampen the season with dated pumpkin, Christmas tree, and fireworks sales lot regulations. This updated PAS Essential Info Packet contains a colorful sampling of ordinances, information sheets, and applications, providing planners with many alternatives to consider for hours of operation, site design, and permitting requirements for these temporary uses. 

Adult Use Impact Studies and Regulations (EIP-02)

Adult uses remain controversial in America, but what impacts do they really have on their communities? And how should they be regulated? This comprehensive PAS Essential Info Packet offers answers to these questions through recent articles, reports, and local regulations as well as through a compendium of classic impact studies that analyze secondary effects of adult use establishments. These landmark studies have been cited nationwide as a basis for adult use regulations. Collectively, the materials in this recently updated packet highlight critical considerations for any community looking to draft or update an adult use ordinance.

Improving the Development Review Process (EIP-03)

Re-examining your development review process? This updated PAS Essential Info Packet is a must for planners who are either contemplating or in the process of changing their development review process. The packet contains many invaluable resources, starting with a classic APA guidebook on streamlining all stages of the review process. A development review toolkit provides recommendations for short- and long-term improvements as well as performance measures to track overall effectiveness and customer satisfaction. Audit reports from several municipalities evaluating their development review processes let you learn from other planning departments seeking to improve their performance. Finally, a collection of development guidebooks shows how to provide the public with the information they need to successfully navigate the development review process.

Controlling Non-Retail Uses in Retail Districts (EIP-04)

Having trouble with the proliferation of bank branches, beauty parlors, realtor and medical offices, travel agents, attorneys, and other non-retail uses in your downtown or retail district? This updated PAS Essential Info Packet is a must for planners who are concerned about declining sales tax revenue and a loss of vitality in pedestrian-friendly districts. The packet contains articles highlighting retail protection strategies, excerpts from local plans, staff reports discussing non-retail encroachment, and a broad array of local zoning regulations that restrict non-retail uses in retail districts.

Regulating Electronic and Moving-Image Signs (EIP-06)

Is your community grappling with the latest trend in outdoor signs: electronic moving-image signs with large, bright graphics or television-style screens? Be they LED or digital signs, electronic message centers, or video display signs, their characteristic flashing, fast-moving displays can have a serious impact on the built environment in your community. These signs have moved out of Times Square and Las Vegas and into neighborhood commercial districts, highway corridors, and suburbs. This updated PAS Essential Info Packet includes a selection of reports addressing the safety issues associated with this type of signage, and features a compilation of current ordinances from communities large and small, providing a wealth of sample language to help planners craft their own provisions. 

Inclusionary Housing (EIP-07)

Updated for 2009
How affordable is your community? Do you have enough affordable housing to meet present and future needs? Can the teachers, firefighters, retail employees, and other workers who serve your community afford to live there? Would inclusionary housing help? Learn more about this popular, but often controversial set of tools in this Essential PAS Info Packet. This updated collection features various background materials culled from APA publications — as well as successful inclusionary housing regulations throughout the United States. These ordinances represent a diverse range of cities and illustrate some best practices for providing housing that is affordable to all residents.

Temporary Portable Outdoor Storage Units (EIP-08)

Dealing with construction, moving, or spring cleaning? These activities often create a need for temporary portable storage containers, also known as PODS — containers about the size of a small garden shed that can be rented by the month and stored in front yards, driveways, and parking spaces. Are your zoning regulations ready for this type of temporary use? Don't let temporary portable storage containers overstay their welcome and become rusty eyesores in the front yards of your neighborhoods. This updated PAS Essential Info Packet contains sample ordinances and staff reports showcasing a variety of methods for regulating these uses, including standards for number of units, duration of stay, and siting restrictions.

Regulating Temporary Summer Uses (EIP-09)

Are your regulations ready for summer sales and events such as garage sales, farmers markets, sidewalk cafes, and carnivals? While these uses are temporary, they can overstay their welcome in communities without adequate regulations for parking, hours of operation, signage, and other important factors. This updated packet contains sample regulations, guidebooks, and permit applications for many types of summer temporary uses — from flea markets to sidewalk vendors — to help planners assure that summer festivities don't turn into neighborhood nuisances.

Regulating Large-Scale Retail (EIP-10)

Updated for 2009
Can big box retailers co-exist in harmony with small, downtown merchants? Before answering that question, planners and public officials must first take a close look at the size, location, design, and economic and social impact of any new large-scale retail development. This PAS Essential Info Packet contains a comprehensive set of materials designed to assist you in addressing this issue. You'll find background resources discussing common regulatory approaches, sample impact studies, and examples of local plans, development standards, and design guidelines to help your community deal with the potential impacts of some of America's biggest retailers.

Planning and Zoning for Green Buildings (EIP-13)

Is your zoning ordinance environmentally friendly? Green building issues are not just reserved for building officials and architects anymore. Planners across the country have initiated green building incentives, density bonuses, performance standards, zoning requirements, and other programs. Don't let your community fall behind in the green building revolution. This updated PAS Info Packet showcases a variety of innovative techniques to help make development more sustainable in your community.

Planning, Public Health, and Physical Activity (EIP-14)

Updated for 2009
How can planning be used to encourage a physically active community? How can public health goals be incorporated into comprehensive plans? If you are looking for answers to these questions, this PAS Essential Info Packet is for you. The packet begins with a selection of articles and reports establishing the connection of urban design and the built environment to physical activity and health. It provides guidance on how to collaborate with local public health officials and involve them in community planning processes. Assessment checklists, action strategies, case studies, model ordinances, sample plan language, and online resources will give you the tools you need to ensure that your community is planned and built to promote good health and physical activity for all residents.

Low-Impact Development (EIP-15)

Updated for 2009
Is your community tuned in to the environmental and aesthetic value of Low Impact Development (LID)? The goal of this sustainable strategy is to manage rainfall and stormwater at its source, encouraging its infiltration across a project site to slow runoff, filter pollutants, and recharge groundwater supplies. LID uses innovative natural systems along with engineered structures in a flexible, cost-effective, ecologically sound system of onsite stormwater management. This PAS Essential Info Packet contains in-depth reports on LID with numerous case studies of its successful application in a variety of settings. Technical manuals provide details on Best Management Practices such as bioretention, permeable pavement, and cisterns, as well as site design goals and planning strategies. Finally, a collection of sample ordinances demonstrates how communities across the country are integrating LID into their development regulations.   

Food Systems Planning (EIP-16)

Food is a necessity of life. As planners take an increased interest in the interrelationships among food, land use, transportation, economic development, and public health, questions have emerged. How do planners ensure adequate and equitable access to healthy food? What role can urban agriculture play in food security? How does local food help the economy? What can planners do to help create more sustainable food systems? The answers to those and many other questions are included in this PAS Essential Info Packet. PAS has compiled a variety of articles, reports, and other resources to bring you up to date on planning for the food system. In addition, this packet includes innovative local policies and regulations from communities on the cutting edge of food systems planning.

Design Review (EIP-17)

Updated for 2009
Increasingly, communities are implementing design guidelines to promote a broad range of goals. Based in historic preservation, design review is now used to support the conservation of neighborhood character, the economic revitalization of downtown cores, the control of big-box retail and franchise architecture, and the implementation of "green" design. Whether you're preparing to implement an all-new design review process or just want to keep abreast of current practices, this PAS Essential Info Packet will provide you with a helpful set of resources. Included are background materials on the establishment of successful design review programs as well as samples of design guidelines tailored to a variety of goals, design review ordinances from communities across the country, and manuals to help guide applicants through the process.

Planning and Zoning for Renewable Energy (EIP-18)

Do your community's plans and ordinances address renewable energy sources? Not since the 1970s have energy issues consumed as much national attention as today. Climate change and global warming, rising energy costs, and worldwide political instability are problems stemming from our society's overdependence on fossil fuels. Yet clean, abundant sources of energy exist, and interest in solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources is growing daily. Planners have a role to play in encouraging their communities to implement efficient and clean energy strategies. This Essential Info Packet provides an overview of the current state of renewable energy planning, as well as plans, policies, and ordinances from a wide range of communities focusing on wind and solar energy systems in urban and suburban environments.

Transit-Oriented Development (EIP-19)

Is your community considering light rail or bus rapid transit? Do you want to know how to encourage pedestrian-oriented development in transit station areas? Land-use patterns and site development practices have significant effects on the efficiency, convenience, and cost-effectiveness of multi-modal transportation systems. Transit-oriented development (TOD) seeks to create an appropriate mix of uses to maximize transit access and use. This Essential Info Packet provides an overview of how communities around the country are planning for TOD, as well as a wide variety of local plans, policies, and regulations highlighting the cutting-edge in TOD practice.

Teardowns and Mansionization (EIP-20)

Is your community experiencing an epidemic of residential teardowns and McMansions? Demolishing older houses and replacing them with super-sized homes can affect community character, historic preservation, and housing affordability. Learn more about the teardown phenomenon and what communities are doing to address it in this PAS Essential Info Packet. APA resources and municipal reports provide background information on this trend, and a collection of sample ordinances demonstrates regulatory techniques for combating this issue in your community.

Housing an Aging Population (EIP-21)

The demographics of America's communities are rapidly changing. As the nation's population grows older, the demand for adequate services and resources for aging in place is quickly increasing. Is your community ready to create livable communities with affordable, appropriate housing and supportive community features for your aging residents? Learn more about the implications of this demographic shift and how communities are planning and zoning to house and support the elderly. This Essential Info Packet provides APA resources, reports, plans, and sample ordinances for a range of senior housing options to help you address this issue in your community.

Planning and Zoning for Rural Character (EIP-22)

NEW
Is your community struggling to preserve its rural character? Recent planning movements have enshrined the characteristics of the traditional village: compact, mixed use, pedestrian-friendly settlements built at a human scale. Yet while these principles have been applied to urban redevelopment and greenfield construction, rural villages themselves are being threatened by sprawling development from nearby metropolitan regions. This Essential Info Packet provides APA publications, reports, and sample ordinances from across the country that can help planners protect existing communities from uncontrolled development while preserving the surrounding open landscape. Topics covered include zoning for village and rural activity centers, transfer of development rights programs, conservation subdivision design, and ridgeline and scenic corridor protection regulations.

A RLUIPA Primer (EIP-23)

NEW
RLUIPA is one acronym all planners should be familiar with. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) of 2000 places strict limits on local governments’ power to regulate religious land uses. While places of worship have traditionally been welcome by right in most communities, the changing shape of religious practice sometimes creates conflicts. Local governments often struggle to balance legitimate land use concerns with First Amendment rights to free assembly and RLUIPA's provisions. This Essential Info Packet provides a primer on RLUIPA through articles from Planning & Environmental Law and other APA publications. It also provides examples of ordinances that have been crafted in response to this legislation.

Parking Solutions (EIP-24)

NEW
Does your community struggle with parking? Excessive parking requirements increase impervious surface coverage, consume valuable real estate, drive up the cost of housing and redevelopment projects, and subsidize automobile use to the detriment of other transportation modes. Concern is growing among planners and the public alike over these negative impacts. Luckily, a number of tools and strategies can provide alternatives to traditional one-size-fits-all minimum parking requirements. This PAS Essential Info Packet provides articles and reports on the background, importance, and range of parking strategies available to planners. Staff reports and sample ordinances address shared parking, parking in lieu of fees, parking requirement exceptions and reductions, special parking requirements for downtown districts, "green" parking design, permeable pavement, and bicycle parking.