PAS ReportsTransportation Infrastructure: The Challenges of Rebuilding America
This report, edited by Marlon G. Boarnet, was compiled with an eye to the urgency and severity of the challenges that we now face. Some of the leading researchers, scholars, and practitioners in transportation planning here put forth fresh best practices and visionary ideas. Contributors include Robert Cervero, Ellen Greenberg, Robert Puentes, Daniel Sperling, and Petra Todorovich. Also here is the discussion among three big-city planning directors — William Anderson (San Diego), Barbara Sporlein (Minneapolis), and Harriet Tregoning (Washington, D.C.) — that took place at the 2009 National Planning Conference in Minneapolis. PAS subscribers received this report this summer. Historic ReportsCelebrating 60 Years of Research and the Planning Advisory Service
The Special District: A New Zoning Development This month's historic PAS Report provides a look at a cutting-edge zoning development of the early 1950s: the special district. These special subcategories of conventional zoning districts began to break down the "airtight" tripartite divisions of residential, commercial, and industrial use. This report outlines such "unconventional" districts as civic center or park and recreation zones; the new trend of "transitional use" districts allowing parking lots or professional offices in a thin zone between different use districts; and the evolution of zoning philosophy shown by the "hybrid" district, which combines disparate yet compatible uses such as office buildings and apartment houses. Reports: 1949-presentPAS Reports provide authoritative guidance on current issues and innovative practices. Subscribers receive new reports and may borrow past reports or buy them at a 50 percent discount from APAPlanningBooks.com. Selected Reports OnlineSubscribers have digital access to some of the most popular reports. Jobs-Housing BalancePAS Report 516
Community IndicatorsPAS Report 517
A Planners DictionaryPAS Report 521/522
Parking StandardsPAS Report 510/511
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Transportation infrastructure is one of the most pressing issues for planners and communities today. In the short term, stimulus funding is being used to create jobs and fix critical systems; in the long run, communities are struggling to determine how best to restructure transport networks to encourage better land use and to foster reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. 
Information Report No. 34, January 1952
This report examines a controversial concept — jobs-housing balance. Some have argued that the market is the mechanism that will achieve such balance. Jerry Weitz, in his research of four types of jobs-housing imbalance, concludes that the market has failed to achieve balance in three of the four scenarios he lays out. He provides case studies to support his findings, including one from King County, Washington, showing that increases in housing costs are more gradual in areas with a jobs-housing balance. This report counters the skeptics and points to those actions planners can take to help bring appropriate housing, jobs, and workforces together, resulting in overall community improvements.
Community indicators help planners evaluate and monitor the full range of factors — social, environmental, economic, and more — that affect the well-being of a community or region. This report reviews the use of indicators in planning practice and explores their relationship to citizen participation, quality of life, and sustainability. It summarizes the types and scale of indicators and describes how to identify, select, and develop indicators that are appropriate for a particular community. Rural and urban examples show how planners have used indicators in their practice. Includes an annotated list of resources and web links.
This dictionary, a revised and updated edition of the Planning Advisory Service's best selling Glossary of Zoning, Development, and Planning Terms, contains more than 4,200 terms used by planners around the nation. This new edition contains an introduction by Harvey Moscowitz, FAICP, chief editor of The Illustrated Book of Development Definitions, and Carl Lindbloom, AICP. Contributors include many APA Research Department staff, who culled through hundreds of ordinances, plans, and planning documents to offer readers choices of definitions and commentaries that add depth and value to the dictionary.
This report, an expanded and updated version of a previous best seller, contains an exhaustive set of parking standards and an exploration of the complexities of creating practical standards. There is general agreement that when the supply of parking greatly exceeds typical demand, the results are detrimental to a range of stakeholders. Benefits may come from minimizing off-street parking, but downsizing requirements can be tricky because many communities fear the impact on overall community development. This report addresses that quandary and explores techniques such as shared parking, maximum parking standards, downtown parking standards, and more.
