Planning Education, Uncertainty, and the Rapid Evolution of AI with Tom Sanchez, AICP

Welcome to the 2026 Trend Talk podcast, a multipart miniseries from the American Planning Association in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. This series focuses on new and emerging trends and their potential impacts on our communities and the practice of planning. My name is Joe DeAngelis, research manager at the American Planning Association, and your host. Today, I'm joined by Tom Sanchez, who is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. Tom earned his PhD in city planning from Georgia Tech. His research and teaching focuses on planning methods, technology, and transportation. His most recent book was AI for Urban Planning, which was published by Routledge in September 2025. Tom serves as the American Planning Association Education Committee Chair and as a member of APA's Artificial Intelligence Foresight Community, and is also an APA Trend Scout.

Tom, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great, Joe. Good to be here.

All right. We're super happy to have you. Here at APA, we've been publishing trend reports, as you know, every year since 2022. That was our first report. Even then, we had a lot to say about AI. We've covered this topic and the trends related to it every year since then, but we've never really looked in-depth at the role of artificial intelligence in planning education. We think that this is likely to be a huge story in the development of the next generation of planners, and so we're here to talk about that a bit today.

But to do that, we probably need to set a little bit of a baseline for people, to talk a little about the role of AI tools, especially generative AI, I would say, in planning education now. There is a picture from our perspective as we work on this, as we've released this Trend Report, and as we've written about it and researched it, that's a little bit like the wild west out there, where universities and administrators, faculty and students, they're all trying to figure out the proper role for these kinds of tools. Can you give me your sense, as a planning educator, of the ways in which AI is being used by educators and students today?

Yeah, this is brand new to most of us. And especially when we're thinking about how to incorporate it in the classroom, how to use it within our research, how to combine those, it's a bit of a challenge right now, and especially with it rapidly evolving. And so, trying to, as planners, always trying to anticipate what's going to happen next, it's a challenge for us. And I'll mention just real briefly in the PAS Report that I did for APA on artificial intelligence for planners was in 2022, and the report was due by the end of 2022. And then OpenAI released ChatGPT in November of 2022. And here I was, 98 percent done with the report. And so I had to look at what ChatGPT was quickly and then realized almost immediately what a huge impact it was and what a huge difference it was in terms of AI methods and tools. So I guess part of that, too, is in the back of our minds, and thinking about this for education, are we going to see another, something like this, a revolutionary change that we need to try to anticipate along the way to teach?

And so I think at this point, our focus is really on what are the fundamental aspects of AI? So things like natural language processing, machine learning, even computer vision and things like that, and really trying to emphasize the terminology and examples and the basics to students now so that any new methods that come along or any changes, they've got a sense for what that means, how that can be used. They're fluent, or they're literate, in what AI technologies are.

But I will say within some of our programs, our degree programs, we're wondering about, okay, should this be used in the classroom or not? Are we having students rely on traditional methods of reading and trying to memorize and retain knowledge that way? Or are we going to allow some of these tools that are a different kind of recall associated with that? And same with the writing, which is such an important part of what we teach in planning as far as communications. How much of these tools, especially the generative AI, are we going to allow or teach related to planning tasks? It's evolving, as you know.

For sure. I'm glad you mentioned, too, about having to go back and rapidly revise stuff because of ChatGPT's release back in November of, what, '22, I think you said. In our 2022 Trend Report that I mentioned earlier, we talk about artificial intelligence. I did a search through. We never mentioned ChatGPT or the words generative AI or anything like that in there. And the next year we did, because it came out in November that year. We were in production, so we had to make sure that we got some of the stuff into the 2023 report as we were coming out with it. But it was definitely a learning experience. It definitely highlights some of these rapid changes in technology; even as we were studying it at the time, was super interesting.

Let me use that as some fodder for our turn toward the future with this. There are some maybe growing concerns about an AI bubble. There are a few, though, even with this bubble in mind, potentially, who really are expecting the broader-scale disruptions of AI to suddenly end and to stop. Even if there's some potential industry or contraction happening, there's still an expectation that these tools will grow in sophistication or ubiquity or spread or whatever it is. Now that we have the present set, looking ahead, how do you maybe anticipate or see the increasing use of AI tools being used in a planning context and a planning education-type context in the future for both educators on your end and for students?

I think that's an interesting... I've heard lots mentioned about this AI bubble concept, and I think that's, from my understanding of it, mainly from an investment perspective, and how much, how many billions are going into building up the capacity for AI. And will we reach a certain threshold where there's a question about what the return is going to be? Now, the expectation is high. It's new. There's a lot of anticipation. There's a lot of speculation about what's happening. And so it's hard for me to imagine that we are going to reach a certain level of what it's capable of doing and then flatten out somehow. Certainly, that's possible. And the computer scientists and the technologists know a lot more about this than I do. But this type of technology, it seems like it's going to keep building on itself and increasing in terms of just its overall capabilities.

Before, a lot of the tools that we were using were for quantitative analysis, prediction, estimation, pattern detection, and things like that, where we didn't have this mode of use that was like a conversational interface with it, being able to talk with it. Before you had to program, you had to know what the statistical tools were and how to use those. Now, anybody can use these and do very sophisticated things. And so I think about my abilities in coding over the years. And over the last couple of years, I've seen ChatGPT write me code that is very sophisticated with just a handful of prompts, maybe some corrections involved, for sure. But going from something that was very technical, very sophisticated, taking a lot of training and a lot of time, to be able to do actually within minutes now.

And so it's hard for me to imagine, and maybe that's just because of the things right now, that we're going to be in this bubble situation. Things are going to flatten out, and we're going to say, "Okay, well, we're there. What now?" It just seems like there's going to be more and more possible in terms of really what we're trying to accomplish. And I think that that's getting to this artificial general intelligence or super intelligence or whatever level you want to talk about.

And so it may be, for right now, a situation where it's like a day at a time. We're going to work with what we have right now. And then for us as planners and for our practicing planners, and the academics as well, is just trying to keep up with what we have and trying to recognize which of these tools are actually going to benefit us in doing planning and having positive impacts on the communities that we're planning for? I think that's probably going to be a big challenge of it. How much of this is going to be time spent, like, gee, this is a lot of fun, playing with some of these tools, versus really tackling the tasks that we need to be working on in planning?

I think that's a really important point. In some of the research that we've done on this as part of our Trend Report development and such over the years, these tools are interesting at first because they're unique, and they're fun to use, and they're new. But as we look into the future on this, there is going to be this very rough period, I would imagine, of actually testing these things out and trying and failing and seeing what use cases they actually do have in an educational setting, what use cases they actually do have in a practice setting. And that's not really going to settle itself out early on in this discussion. If this is going to be a consumer-level technology that's going to be with us for a really long time, I do imagine this gaming out and playing out over that long period of time, in which some of these use cases are going to have to develop organically on their own. It's a really interesting point that you make there, for sure.

And it makes me think about, too, is I experienced when microcomputers got rolled out and started being on planners' desks, at the very beginning stages of that. And there was a lot of concern about, oh, these computers, what are they going to do? They're going to take people's jobs. A lot of things that we're hearing about today. But somebody needed to turn on those computers, somebody actually needed to use those computers and figure out what applications were appropriate for them. And then GIS came along, and it was like, okay, well, let's map everything and look at what we can do with this that we couldn't before, looking at the spatial analysis and visualization, and even simulation.

But my question is, in looking back, is what really, and there's no way of knowing this, I don't think, what really has been the net benefit of computerization on planning? What has the net benefit of GIS and that understanding of the data in places, how has that benefited planning? Is there any tangible way that we can say that, hey, we're doing a better job today than we were before? I'm not sure we really know. But I'm thinking that this might be a little bit different. But I don't know. That was said back then, too.

For sure. Turning back towards the academia-type focus here, there's been a lot written about some emerging concerns. In our Trend Report, we touch on some of the misinformation and disinformation challenges of artificial intelligence. For example, some of these tools they'll create very convincing-sounding answers that aren't necessarily false so much as they are hallucinations, as they're increasingly called in the media. I've seen them discussed in that regard. Papers maybe that have made-up titles and made-up authors that might sound real but don't actually exist in the real world.

Within an academic setting where you have a lot of experience, and given the ways that these models collect and process and maybe reinforce bad or wrong information, can you talk a little bit about this from your own perspective? And do you see it as a growing concern within planning academia and education?

That's an interesting question. Because so much of our communication is done, written or spoken language in those sorts, and like you're saying, really getting some convincing output from these models, we might be tempted to trust them and then come to find out there have been these made-up outputs, the misinformation, the disinformation, whatever form that it takes. But I don't think this is really any different than how we should be handling information generation for the purposes of planning, where we're always reviewing and verifying and confirming what we're putting into our reports or our plans. And we want to maintain that rigor.

And so now it's taking it to another level, where before, if maybe there was something that was incorrect within a report or something that was misstated, it might have been fairly easy to spot. And now it might be a little more challenging, because it's been stated with what looks to be a reference or some background source, but then, like you said, come to find out, that's not even real. So it takes a different level of drilling down into it to confirm it. So I think that maybe that better uses our skills or our intelligence in being able to confirm what we're writing, or maybe this is good for us, that now we're going to pay closer attention to the facts or information, I should say, that are included, as well as any sources or references or any of the other information that's being being used, just being able to confirm that.

And I think a big element of that, too, is the openness and the transparency. Where did this come from? Whose idea was this? How was it generated? Which, before, we never really questioned. We put a report together, and we just assumed, oh, well, the planner in our department wrote that. And so they drew upon whatever sources were available: a colleague, or a peer at another organization, or maybe something that was documented in another report or online somewhere. But now it might take a little more work to do that, but maybe that's good for us.

Sure. One of the primary functions, as we understand, of planning education now is essentially to prepare students for the actual world of professional practice, to get out there, and to be planners. You go to planning school, and then you want to become a planner after that. You've written a book on this, in that the world of professional practice might be undergoing quite a bit of change these days. Local governments and planning departments are increasingly developing policies related to the use of artificial intelligence for things like data collection, interpretation. Generative AI tools are being used for reports and plans themselves, things that you just mentioned before.

Looking ahead a little bit, how do you see planning schools, planning educators, trying to adapt to a field of practice that is a lot more willing to use these tools? How might the experience, the topics, the content, or even the format of education change to actually adapt to this world in which actual planning departments are actively using artificial intelligence tools?

Right. Now, I think in terms of education or planning education, I'm mostly seeing these AI tools and methods being discussed in methods classes. And so at this point, really, it's laying them out there, showing what's on the menu, talking about the different sorts of tools, capabilities, limitations, and where they can be applied, and then just providing that literacy that I talked about before, on what can these tools do? What can't they? What data is needed? What are the different kinds of challenges that we face using some of these? So if it's things around data bias or methods that we're using that may not be entirely clear to us, things like neural networks are mentioned a lot. What is that? What's it doing? What's the input? What's the output for those?

So I think it's really trying to teach about, or exposing students to, what the different elements of the technology are. And then hopefully for those that have potentially some positive impact or are appropriate and being applied, those will be the ones that they will take to their new job, take to their new career, and start to use those.

And I think back to something like GIS, when we were teaching GIS. And there may have been a lot of planning organizations that weren't using GIS. And so our students were bringing some of these new methods with them in creating some of that change. There were some planning organizations that were very forward-looking and were out front of planning education at the same time, too. So I think it's syncing up where the planning education is at, related to these methods and what we need in practice.

But that in itself brings up an interesting question: should we be teaching our students about tools that are available today and processes that we're using today? Or should we be teaching them about the newer, maybe more innovative methods for doing some of these things? So bringing that with them. And I've seen that a bit in conversations between practicing planners and academics, it's like, oh, some of these students are coming out, and they don't know what today's methods, methods or tools, or processes are because you've been teaching them about something new or different. And I think we'll probably always be in that, what would you call that? It's not tension. We're trying to be forward-looking in terms of the educational part of it, but also recognizing that we want students to be able to step in and be able to get right to work today. And so it's a bit of a challenge.

But I think the important thing there is the conversation between the academics and the practitioners, things like the relationship between ACSP [American Institute of Certified Planners] and APA. And we've got a ACSP task force now that's on artificial intelligence and planning. And that's one of the things that we're looking at, is making sure that we're thinking about practice all along the way and making sure that we're strengthening that connection, as well as making sure that we're focusing on research that's going to make its way, hopefully, into better practice and into better planmaking. That task force, too, and this educational side of it as well, we're collaborating with AESOP, the Association of European Schools of Planning, as well, and we're doing some peer exchange with them as well. And we'll be having a conference next summer, the World Planning Congress.

But anyhow, we're collaborating and bringing together these planning academics and practitioners from different countries to have this conversation about where's this AI thing going? And I think that that'll be a great opportunity to learn from each other and hopefully map out the directions that we'll be taking and how this can ultimately impact practice.

I think that's a good segue for what I think is maybe a growing concern as well at the entry-level place of planning. So increasingly, there are some concerns that artificial intelligence is maybe seen as a potential replacement for early-career professionals in entry-level positions, regardless of what that field is. Of course, this has the potential to actually cut off or cut back on a pipeline of those new planning professionals who maybe go on to become mid-career planners and then planning directors later on in life. Do you see this as a potential future challenge for planning educators and universities to start to confront or to try to deal with at this time now?

Yeah, and I think this will involve a rethinking of our processes. Back in the completely analog days, we had interns or new planners that were, what, redrawing maps or rewriting reports or typing them in or whatever it might have been. And then computers came along, or we digitized these things, and then there wasn't the same work or labor involved. So we shifted those around. We didn't have interns typing or coloring maps or whatever it might have been. And so those tasks changed. And so I think we'll see a resorting of the tasks, and what we need to accomplish, and what is that lower level... what would we call that? That background.

That early-level experiential type planning, where you're learning a lot of intricate things on the job. Some of that I could easily see as being standardized in some ways or changed in some ways.

But examples of that, when we've got the intern coming in, what is that? They're doing a lot of learning in that process, but they're also doing a lot of just that lower-level work that needs to be done, that's being fed into, or that's fed up, into these planning processes. So I guess that is going to be, we're going to see some resorting of that. And what does that look like when some of these tasks now can be combined or automated or even change their whole form in terms of how we do these things? And so we'll need to adapt.

And again, I think this is important for this conversation and communication between planning academy and planning practice, making sure that we know what's happening in the field, what's happening in practice, and making sure that we're providing or teaching about the right tools, and talking about what does that reshuffling of these processes and tasks look like. And so it's going to be an evolution of how we do it. And so we've been through this a few times with the technology. I'm only imagining that it will continue. And so, again, making sure that we're collaborating and we're working together between planning educators and planning practitioners.

Let's close, maybe, with your hopes for the future in this area. You're somebody who has your foot in both camps here. You've got the AI world, and you've got the planning education world. What do you see as some really interesting potential advancements in artificial intelligence that you're looking forward to and that you think could have some major future impacts on the planning education world within academia, and also that might benefit the world of practice and communities themselves?

One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is what we're seeing with AI as a knowledge management tool. And now, when we're thinking about things like large language models, a lot of that text-based, even though we have generative models that are imagery or video or sound or these different formats. But now we really have the capability to capture knowledge over time. So it's that history and the development of places.

We can also be capturing community sentiment. And so we have community involvement, community input, now that can be part of that model. The planning intelligence, where it used to be you had a planner in a planning organization, and they retired, and they took their experience and their knowledge with them. Yeah, they probably left some things behind in terms of reports they worked on, or projects they were involved with that got documented, but whatever wisdom or knowledge that they had walked out the door. And maybe we've got an opportunity now to capture as much of that as we can to use that in the planning process. And not only just at the local scale or for a particular organization, but we can draw across organizations, across expertise, across the country, and a broad range of planning perspectives in building that knowledge. Yeah, there are things that are truly local and unique to the places that we're planning. But I think that this knowledge management, or being able to capture as much of this intelligence as possible, can help us answer our local, specific, unique questions with this accumulation and good management of that information, and whether that's planning expertise, public input, research that's happening, and even what we're hearing on the governance or the political side on making these decisions.

So that's what I find really fascinating, is like a planning brain, planning intelligence. How can we... because this is also encyclopedic knowledge that we're able to build with some of these models now, which I think hopefully will benefit us if we're capturing the right information along the way, and then we're able to access it efficiently.

I think it's always good for us to close on that hopeful, forward-looking note, especially on a topic like this, where there's just so much up in the air looking into the future. Somebody a couple of years ago wouldn't really have been able to truly predict where we'd be at today. We probably can't do the same, but we can look at some of these general trends. We can learn from the past on what is going to be interesting about how this technology might develop in the future, and hopefully try to draw some inferences in that area as well, for sure.

I want to add, it's like my main thought about this is, yes, we need to be careful. We're planners. We're always careful. But let's not be afraid. I think ignoring these changes and the new things that we're seeing and the uncertainties... well, if we are truly building some intelligence, let's use that intelligence to inform how we confront or how we adapt or how we innovate. And keep an open mind and work together.

With that, I think that we can wrap it up for today. Thank you, Tom, for joining us for this fantastic conversation on what feels like, every year, this is just a topic that's constantly growing in importance. We really appreciate your time today.

Thank you, Joe. And so what are we going to be talking about next year? [laughs]

We'll see where we're at next year on this with an update. For more on this topic, a summary of this discussion, and many other collected trends and signals, please check out APA's 2026 Trend Report, which is available at planning.org/foresight.