2001 National Planning Awards Video

Encouraging quality in the planning of our nation's communities has been the goal of the American Planning Association since its inception. Each year, APA and its professional institute, the American Institute of Certified Planners, honor the work not only of outstanding planners, but also of those who are educating the public at large about their role in shaping the places where they live and work.

The 2001 National Planning Awards were presented at APA's National Planning Conference in New Orleans, March 10-14, 2001. The 30-minute awards video features on-location interviews and footage for projects that received major national awards. It also highlights winners in other categories, such as journalism awards, student projects, and APA Chapter and Division accomplishments.
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To purchase a copy of the awards video, send a check for $20 made payable to:

• Public Information — 2001 Awards Video
  American Planning Association
  1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 400
  Washington, DC 20036
  phone 202-872-0611

Portland, Oregon: The Hollywood and Sandy Plan

Winner of APA's 2001 Current Topic Award:
Making the Transportation & Land Use Connection

In 1998, business people and area residents began working together to improve Sandy Boulevard and the entire Hollywood District located in central northeast Portland. The project identified goals and created a plan of action to encourage more mixed-use development along the boulevard and to make the neighborhood more pedestrian friendly and transit-supportive.

City of Portland staff, with a great deal of community participation, developed the Hollywood and Sandy Plan. The new land-use pattern increases development potential for residential, commercial, and mixed uses to enhance the livability of the Hollywood and Sandy area. Transportation improvements focus on improving pedestrian safety, especially along Sandy Boulevard, a four-lane arterial, and along the primary walkways in Hollywood. The plan also seeks to maximize the public's investment in light rail and bus services, improve auto circulation, and provide adequate parking. Included in the plan are innovative tools to achieve thriving urban mixed-use areas.

Memphis, Tennessee: Memphis Area Transit Authority

Winner of APA's 2001 Outstanding Planning Award for a Project

In the early 1990s, the Memphis Area Transit Authority developed plans for a multimodal transit center that would support community revitalization, retain the integrity of a historic district, and provide transportation links to private land development projects. Today, Memphis is celebrating the realization of those goals, as Central Station, the transportation center and anchor building for the South Main and South Bluffs Historic Districts, is open for business.

Dating back to the early days of rail transit, the refurbished landmark building is now home to The City of New Orleans, a luxury Amtrak train that runs from New Orleans to Chicago, and makes two daily stops in Memphis. Central Station has also become a catalyst for local redevelopment and historic preservation, in addition to serving as an attractive meeting place and residential location. The project provides an exemplary model of good land-use planning.

Anchorage, Alaska: Department of Community Planning & Development

Winner of APA's 2001 Public Education Award

Local land-use planners who wanted to get residents of Anchorage, Alaska, interested in the future of their city faced a challenge. How could they encourage communitywide participation in a discussion that involved land use, economic and demographic data, population changes, social issues, and other information most citizens have little time to read, let alone understand? The answer was to launch a comprehensive outreach and communications campaign designed to incorporate residents' values and ideas into plans for the future.

Local planners enlisted hundreds of citizens, published numerous clip-and-send surveys in local tabloids, designed colorful inserts for newspapers, held well-publicized focus groups and workshops, organized task forces, and held countless community meetings. Ultimately, their efforts resulted in Anchorage 2020: Anchorage Bowl Comprehensive Plan. The plan outlines future goals for Anchorage shaped by the desires of its residents, who were able to make educated decisions and select preferences from clearly illustrated scenarios.

Santa Barbara, California: Milagro de Ladera

Winner of APA's 2001 Paul Davidoff Social Advocacy Award

Santa Barbara has become one of the nation's most expensive places to live. With the median price of a single-family home at nearly $600,000 and a vacancy rate of less than 1 percent, many lower-income residents are being priced out of housing. In the Lower Westside area of the city, 75 percent of households earn less than 80 percent of the area median income, and typically pay 50-80 percent of that towards housing.

Many Westside residents live in dangerous, overcrowded, substandard housing owned by disinterested absentee landlords. The most notorious offender was 322 Ladera Street, an older 58-unit apartment development.

The tenants of 322 Ladera grew weary of rat and roach infestations, bullet holes in their windows, corrupt property managers, lack of heat or hot water, and other substandard conditions. Tenants and neighborhood residents joined forces with the city and the nonprofit People's Self-Help Housing Group (PSHHG) to reclaim their community from these conditions.

Through this partnership and their own hard efforts, the residents have transformed the apartments and public spaces at 322 Ladera. Believing that a miracle occurred, they have renamed the property "Milagro de Ladera." Crime is almost nonexistent, private investment has increased, corrupt managers have been ousted, and the tenants are now proud to call the Milagro their home.

Chicago Area Biodiversity Plan

Winner of APA's 2001 Outstanding Planning Award for a Plan

According to a study by the state of Illinois, only 0.07 percent of land in the state remains in a healthy, natural condition. Fully one-quarter of that land is located in Cook County and five additional counties surrounding Chicago. Yet during the past 20 years, these six counties have experienced an unprecedented 35 percent increase in the area of developed land — while the population increased by only 4 percent. These findings spurred the creation of the nation's first biodiversity recovery plan to be adopted by a major metropolitan planning agency

Today, roughly 200,000 acres of land in these six counties are formally protected as the Chicago Wilderness Region, which encompasses some of the largest and best surviving woodlands, wetlands, and prairies in the Midwest. Protection goals and measures are set out in the Biodiversity Recovery Plan. The plan is the result of three years of careful assessment by representatives of the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council, a coalition of more than 90 public and private land use, conservation, natural resource management, and planning groups. The Northeastern Illinois Regional Planning Commission and the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission, which adopted the plan, are charged with monitoring its provisions and ensuring its implementation.

Making Use of the 2001 National Planning Awards Video

• Contact the APA chapter in your area
  There are 46 state and regional APA chapters. Each chapter has been sent a copy of the 2001 National Planning Awards Video. To inquire about borrowing it or for recommendations of APA members in your immediate area, contact the chapter office or one of the chapter officers.
• Screen the video for targeted audiences
  The videotape highlights exemplary work ranging from the scale of specific development projects, to that of commercial districts and neighborhoods, to that of entire regions. It also features awards given to "landmark" projects in the history of American planning, as well as for distinguished service by students in planning schools, professionals in practice, citizens serving on planning commissions, and elected officials.
  Because of that range, the video can help a variety of audiences — public officials, civic groups, elementary and secondary students — gain insight into the scope of planning and the many partners with whom planners work. It is also possible to cue the tape to a particular award-winning project to focus audience attention on the contributions planning can make to one particular aspect of community life, such as affordable housing.
• Offer the video to your public access cable channel
  Contact your public access channel and offer to screen the video for them. Offer to work with the access channel to develop a special program on local planning issues, using excerpts from the awards video to spark discussion about the benefits of planning and to focus attention on the potential for improvements in housing, transportation, the environment, or other aspects of your community and region.
• Share your success stories!
  Send information on your use of the 2001 National Planning Awards Video.