Blogs

May 5, 2021

Somerville Greenway a Key Part of Metro Boston's Rich Mobility Network

Boston's Somerville Community Path and the Alewife Linear Park provide multiple mobility options year-round.

April 12, 2021

Exploring the Critical Intersection of Health and Housing

Baltimore's GIS-based CoDeMap application connects the importance of housing and health, allowing for place-based intervention approaches.

October 15, 2020

Changing Spaces Won’t Change Your Weight

Uncovering JAPA: Can making spaces more compact reduce obesity among young adults? It's not that simple.

August 27, 2020

Life Satisfaction and Your Neighborhood Built Environment

Uncovering JAPA: Do walkability, transit, and parks improve life satisfaction? It depends.

June 17, 2020

Remembering Chris Kochtitzky: A Conversation on COVID-19

APA's Sagar Shah creates a final conversation with his late friend Chris Kochtitzky, who was a senior advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until his death in early May.

August 29, 2019

Planners as Partners in Building Healthy Communities

Uncovering JAPA: What does it look like for planners to not simply involve communities but ensure they have agency and can lead?

August 8, 2019

Are Bed Bugs a Planning Issue?

Uncovering JAPA: If cities want to attract new residents and planners want those residents to thrive, a coordinated response to bed bugs is necessary.

April 22, 2019

Street Air on Earth Day

Members of the Street Air Project have studied the air pollution problem in Bay View, California, with the goal of quantifying the issues and seeking scientific and planning-related solutions.

April 6, 2018

Green Schoolyards for Healthy Communities

What if every schoolyard was a green schoolyard? Multifunctional schoolyards can ensure kids' healthy mental, physical, cognitive, and social development.

December 18, 2017

Growing Older — and Designing Smarter

First in a series from the Healthy Aging Working Group: The Healthy Communities in PA task force encourages healthy community design in Pennsylvania by combining expertise from the planning and health fields.

August 31, 2016

Parks Add Tremendous Value to Life in Tampa

Mayor Bob Buckhorn of Tampa, Florida, explains why parks are so important to his growing city.

August 24, 2016

Not Happy? Call a Planner!

The Summer 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association features two articles that encourage planners to work to improve happiness.

August 16, 2016

The 4 Ways Urban Parks Bring Value to City Life

Vibrant, well-maintained parks bring public health, environmental, economic, and community benefits to cities. Catherine Nagel, executive director of the City Parks Alliance, highlights the value of parks and the need for greater investment.

July 26, 2016

Beacon Hill’s Enchanted Food Forest

Sandy Pernitz, the Seattle city staff person who works directly with the Beacon Food Forest, tells the tale of how the community rallied around an innovative project in food systems planning.

July 26, 2016

The Evolution of Food Systems Planning in Kansas

How Douglas County, Kansas became a nationally recognized leader in food systems planning.

July 20, 2016

Turning Blight to Beets at the Roosevelt Row Growhouse

The Growhouse in Phoenix's Roosevelt Row, named a Great Neighborhood in 2015, turned a dry, vacant lot into a productive urban farm.

July 12, 2016

New Resources for Local Food Systems Planning

As a part of the Growing Food Connection partnership, APA recently unveiled a series of policy briefs for planners and decision makers that help tackle local issues in food systems planning.