It’s a two way street. Property owners ask us questions, yet architects and planners have a few of our own.

Each week at Online Line Land Planning, we have our skype telecon to share leads and support each other in securing new work. Because of the unique nature of our internet business approach, we constantly have new property owners throughout the world with whom we have never met or worked with before - so pre-qualifying them quickly and efficiently is especially important.

We are excited about each potential opportunity, willing to put forth the time and effort to answer questions, provide advice and information to determine if there is a match between us. In many cases, we get offered the assignment which could be doomed from the start. Here’s why.

Disappointment for us begins when we realize that the property owner is not really prepared. We know this because we have casually mixed in four key questions throughout our casual, conversation that helps build the initial relationship, but in the end we must reveal our honest opinion.

To begin, we need an affirmative answer for all of the following. If one ‘yes’ is missing, it’s over.

1. Do you own the land now?

Answers such as, "We’re in escrow", "We have several candidate sites" and "Our partner is the government" all spell quick trouble.

2. Do you have the money to do the project?

"We are selling our non-strategic properties to fund this", "We have a line of credit with our bank", "It’s a joint venture between us and several other parties", "The money is coming from overseas investors" mean that this project has a limited chance of moving forward.

3. In general, do you have any idea for the property before contacting us?

This is about passion. Property owners may change their direction completely once we begin, but answers such as "That’s why I’m paying you" or "Let’s see some good ideas and I’ll tell you if I like them" show a lack of commitment.

4. Do you have a good team on your side to get this done?

We rely on good communication and feedback to get our work done expeditiously. If we hear, "My secretary will get you what you need", "I’m in town every other week so I’ll handle this myself," or "I’m hiring a project manager soon", you can bet frustration will set in quickly for everybody.

The best course of action may be to advise the property owner to wait until all four questions can be answered in the positive. It may hurt us a bit in the short term but we’ve found that property owners almost always respect us for being candid and generally will come back more prepared than before.

A fifth question is looming, especially in today’s tumultuous economy, which we feel still needs more research before it make the list. In the meantime, we ask silently on the property owner’s behalf, "Is the timing right?" On a few occasions, the four questions were answered to our satisfaction and yet the project stalled, wasn’t sold or took a longer than expected to get absorbed into the marketplace.

At Online Land Planning, we will continue to ask these four key questions at the earliest stages, so that we know if we can add value when necessary at the start or instead, advise property owners to be better prepared before we spend their money.


Rick Abelson
Director - Online Land Planning
www.onlinelandplanning.com

        

University of Washington Professor Richard Haag, the noted landscape architect and designer of Gas Works Park in Seattle, insists on seeing each site before starting any project, and often sleeps there overnight to understand its true dynamics. In full academic pursuit, I agree with him. But in twenty years of private practice, I have created significant master plans for many properties that I have never set foot upon. I’m not alone. Excuses are rationalized daily throughout the ranks of design firms worldwide:

- The fee is small and the owner doesn’t want to pay.
- We have enough base map information for now.
- The property is near the other site, no need to go again.
- This is exactly the same as the last project we did.
- The owners know what they want. We’re just drawing it up.
- The deadline is short, so we don’t have time to go.
- Let’s take a stab at it first and field check it later.
- We were there five years ago and remember it pretty well.
- The owner doesn’t speak English.
- There’s nothing really to see anyway.
- It’s not safe to travel there right now.
- The flight was cancelled.

Given all that, is it acceptable for professionals to bypass a site visit and prepare a salient master plan based on creativity, past experience, other resources and today’s incredible internet tools like Google Earth, flickr, blogs, local and regional websites and present a property owner with a viable concept vision for their land?

Frank Gehry refers to the critical second before a paint brush touches a pure white canvas. He calls this the artist’s ‘moment of truth’. It is a decisive time when the emotional and rational process coalesces to create a potential masterpiece. In most cases, the artist is not under contract and their work is sold later. Planners on the other hand are being paid from the start and often create their masterpieces in less dramatic fashion with simple road layouts and building patterns drawn to scale in an informed manner to invigorate a property owner and give them the sense of relief and confidence to begin a much anticipated dialogue about the initial results. So how off base are we without a site visit?

Our online land planning business actually discourages site visits. This is because many properties we study are in locations where planners never dwell. What would we learn that the property owner can’t tell us, especially if we ask the right questions? Context, as we normally understand it often does not exist. Test this out the next time you fly across the country. Look down and what do you see – mostly nothing for as far as the eye can see. Yet, these properties are subdivided and owned by thousands of private individuals that live outside the mainstream. They have no physical access to metropolitan planning firms and they are generally not familiar with traditional planning processes. There is usually no long term relationship to be forged. It’s usually a one time deal.

As professionals, should we turn our backs on this constituency and lift our noses or should we modify our approach and reach out to fulfill their needs? My answer is simple. Send your base maps and some photographs and let’s get on the phone. Site visits are overrated.

Rick Abelson,

Director
Online Land Planning, LLC
www.onlinelandplanning.com

        

City parks and recreation along with economic development departments need to challenge developers and encourage new variations of traditional forms of recreation to fit into our downtowns. Trends have shown that since the end of World War II, families initially left the central city to search for the "American Dream" in suburbia. Families wishing to escape the inconveniences and high costs of city life were able to find more spacious living, while the wage earners commuted to support the household. Some of the factors motivating the move from the city were the ease in which families could find opportunities for recreation and social life. The backyard, the school’s extracurricular activities, the neighborhood parks, golf and tennis clubs – all of these are the rewards for an extra few hours of travel.

Current trends are much different. Gasoline prices are forcing families closer to the wage earner’s livelihood. The mortgage crisis is causing people to lose their homes and find smaller apartments until they can straighten out their finances. The single parent family is prevalent and baby boomers, which comprise 77% of the US wealth and are aging at a rate of 10,000 a day for the next twenty years are downsizing. The traditional "American Dream" has been supplanted by transition and uncertainty.

So, cities are making resurgence. This time, developers have created a more sophisticated lifestyle and mixed of uses to choose from. Cultural centers, entertainment districts, public markets, waterfront developments, loft living, historic preservation and renovation, quick and convenient mass transportation are contributing factors to the return to city living. Denver, Portland, Los Angeles and Dallas are experiencing rapid economic downtown growth. Yet, something is being overlooked.

Is it possible to bring some of the better elements that comprised suburban living back to the city with these families? Can the best of both worlds be captured in an urban setting?

With this in mind, I feel that urban recreation will become increasingly pertinent, as our newly minted, ‘energy and green living’ urban areas are forced to seek their diversions closer to home and leisure time increases. At present, we spend more on leisure than on defense. According to Richard Miller, principal researcher for the 2008 Leisure Market Research Handbook, the annual U.S. leisure market is assessed at $2.4 trillion. Fueled predominantly by baby boomer spending, significant growth in the leisure marketplace is expected for the foreseeable future. One analyst forecasts that by the year 2015, a new age of leisure will dawn when more than half of the nation’s GNP will be generated from the entertainment and leisure industries.

So here’s the dilemma - there is a close relationship between leisure and recreation, whether indoor or outdoor. As leisure time increases, urban dwellers need new variations of outdoor recreation brought to their doorstep. They are already increasing the demands on existing facilities, such as the YMCA, private health facilities and club sports – so new types of many kinds will need to be accommodated and constructed.

For instance, let’s focus on one of the largest man made recreational landscapes - the golf course. Golf is extremely popular and people wait as long as 3 to 4 hours to tee off on weekends. Obviously, most cities feel that the land required for a golf course and the limited number of people that can enjoy the game at once, make this an activity that is not likely to be expanded within urban boundaries. But therein, lays the challenge.

The National Golf Foundation promotes the sport as "a game for a lifetime’ – meaning that all ages can enjoy it. The true slogan is really "a game for a lifetime if you live near large areas of available open land and you have time and money."

Shouldn’t there be a way to extract the important elements of how golf is played, while eliminating other less important facets. Is it possible to maintain the same ambiance and dignity of the sport, but eliminate the walking and thereby reduce the land coverage? I’m not against walking, that’s not the point – it’s simply the need for so much valuable land and requisite maintenance that goes along with it. Without it, does this really detract from the essence of the game? I am not talking about a fenced driving range on electronic golf from some office building. Instead, can a new and meaningful version of the game of golf be played on 12 acres instead of 200, thereby creating a new urban recreational opportunity and reaching a greater segment of the population? For some recreational activities, this has already been accomplished. Indoor tennis centers, running tracks, swim stadiums, mega athletic clubs and even professional football and soccer practice facilities have become are common features in cities.

By bringing recreational opportunities like golf within urban boundaries, two important results occur. New urbanites will enjoy the some of the aspects they left from suburbia. More important, lower and fixed income families, the elderly, infirm, disabled and disadvantaged youth will have a chance to experience a new versions of suburban recreation that are currently out of reach.

 

Rick Abelson

Director
Online Land Planning, LLC
www.OnlineLandPlanning.com

        

It’s time to move on and create a green land plan that and has never seemed to emerge in total. Remember the first time you saw the master plan for Seaside, Florida? The street patterns drew you close to ask, "How does this community work?" Answers about front yard porches, a return to pedestrian scale, building setbacks and history began to tell an ‘authentic story’ of a slower and meaningful family lifestyle.

In the same spirit of ingenuity, we now have a chance to create land plans based on true green living. Like Seaside, it’s easier to start from scratch on raw land to get the full power of the concept. But unlike the principles set forth in new urbanism, the green land plan’s shapes and patterns will look unfamiliar based on locale. To make it ideal, land planners will need to string together a salient framework of green principles beyond the obvious solar orientation, water recycling, architecture and technology. Where is the creativity?

Mr. George King, a former Director of the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) and now the developer of the new windgen hybrid low impact wind turbine is an important scientific resource for planners trying to envision what a green land plan might look like. Mr. King is an expert on renewable energy and believes that we should look back at the Native American Indians to identify some of the ‘natural gadgets’ this culture offers that have little to do with modern technology, but rather the positioning of objects in the landscape.

One fascinating example is heat sink islands, which helped stem the amount of natural hot air that blows across the southwest landscape in a very predictable manner. According to Mr. King, the Native American Indians perfected the concept of planting very dense stands of trees in one acre patches in the path of the prevailing winds to collect the heat and transfer it upwards - away from their settlements. This process, repeated several times within the primary breezeway often caused a ‘natural ventilation system’ that could reduce the air temperature by as much as 20 degrees. By using this exact same green land planning principle today as the backbone for a new community, electricity costs in some of the hottest areas of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Southern California could be reduced significantly.

Will new community developers be brave enough to fully explore and dedicate property in a beneficial way to create a true green land plan? If so, a new paradigm will emerge that is both familiar and unusual - like the first time you saw New Urbanism.

Rick Abelson

Director
Online Land Planning, LLC
www.OnlineLandPlanning.com

        

Major Uses of Land in the United States in 2007

• According to the US Department of Agriculture, the United States’ land area totals nearly 2.3 billion acres.

           - 2% (56M acres) of US lands are in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

           - 60% (1.4B acres) of US lands is privately owned.

           - Only 12% (162M acres) of privately owned lands are in non-agricultural uses

           - There have been no major aggregate ownership changes from 1997-2007

• There remains is a tremendous opportunity to develop raw land in the United States to its highest and best use.

Relevant Statistics about Land Planning:

• According to the US Department of Labor, local government employed 68% of the 34,000 urban and regional planners in 2006. The majority of the other 10,800 are in large private practices near major employment areas.

The Dilemma

• With over twenty years of professional urban and land planning experience, I believe that there is a huge disconnect between where the vast majority of property owners live that need expert advice and where meaningful land planning actually takes place.
  
• The ‘marketing sphere of influence’ that planning firms target based on the geography of their office locale most certainly will leave most of the country out. Instead, only established land development companies that can pay consistent consulting fees are preferred clients and as a result, millions of acres of private land will never get planned beyond their municipal zoning classification.
  
  
  Next Blog: How to Close the Gap

 

Rick Abelson,

Director
Online Land Planning, LLC
www.onlinelandplanning.com

        

The importance of land auctions can not be more important than they are right now to the real estate market in general and more specifically to the recovery of the US economy. Since investment banks and the federal government can’t determine the ‘true bottom’ of what land is worth, than significant, well orchestrated land auctions over the next several months can yield a benchmark indicator based on consistent sales results of true valuation. From there, economist can prepare their charts and can reasonably predict our climb out of the cellar and get going again. To do this, the auction process itself must become more credible and distinguished to earn the right as a benchmark indicator. Here’s why, followed by what needs to be done:

Typically, when the general public hears or sees anything about land auctions today, the word foreclosure is close behind. Television infomercials advertise bank owned properties available at low ball bids and portray previous owners as losers that left lenders holding the bag. Although often true, this perception of mistrust permeates throughout the industry and leaves the impression of a depressing atmosphere to buy and sell property.

The frightful image of an auction event set up in a mediocre hotel ballroom hosted by a cigar chopping auctioneer in suspenders, flanked by two fold up projection screens showing aerial photographs of one property after another must be supplanted with a dignified process that aspires to the highest level of what an auction can be.

Instead, auction houses should use property sales as an opportunity to celebrate. The notion that the seller somehow failed and that the auction house will manage the process of buyers expecting a feeding frenzy based on low bids must be dispelled. Simply portraying individual properties as "a once in a lifetime chance to buy" is not the answer either.

Get the results of the auction published in a national business magazine. Three or four portfolios of important properties owned by credible land development companies or owners make news versus a typical auction of many small individual properties that have been cobbled together.

Auction properties must be of high quality, significant scale and recognizable to the general public based on name and location. This is important in order to draw the attention of the purveyors of the US economy and make a meaningful statement of land value.

The auction event itself should be unique and adopt a new format. The process should be slowed down to a cozy, casual and comfortable pace, by eliminating pressure and allowing a chance to get a deeper understanding of the significance of the sale. Therefore, don’t rush it – savor it for as long as possible. Make the auction event business friendly and engage not only the bidders, but also invite curious real estate industry leaders to watch and even participate in the process with informed opinions and knowledge.

One example would be to change the graphic format altogether. Instead, allocate a portion of the auction marketing plan budget to engage land planners to draw simple site plans or sketches for each property to show a vision of what is reasonably and physically possible, supported by market conditions and may return the highest values. A picture paints a thousand words.

Another example would be to create an overall theme and brand for important auctions. Words like ‘Worldwide’ or ‘Florida’s Biggest’ miss the point. By engaging the services of graphic designers that specialize in branding and not relying on the auction house’s in house staff that is use to template, each auction becomes unique with properties sharing a common, positive identity. By adding a level of emotion and vision, it may be easier to attract other sellers and buyers to participate that share the same values.

Last, when auction houses use related professional services to change the marketing and event atmosphere two important results occur. First, the quality of the event itself will become relevant to the general public and allows the auction house focus on what they do best, which is the technical nuances of property disposition. Second, the circle of opportunity widens for the auction house in the future – more informed industry people become advocates of the auction process and talk about the success, more leads are generated and depending on the caliber of the professionals engaged, more investment banks and government regulators are interested in the results.

 

Rick Abelson,

Director
Online Land Planning, LLC
www.onlinelandplanning.com

        

By Wright, Tom

Publication: The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics

The way that land is used has a direct impact on public health. Legislators and other with responsibility for land use planning need to be aware of the public health connection and need to promote effective land use planning as a means of improving the public's health. This article discusses the public health/land use connection and the role that local, state, and national legislators can play in promoting land use planning that supports the public's health. It also provides an example of a collaborative local land use initiative aimed at addressing a public health problem in a city and at providing a model that other locations can use in making land use conform to sound public health policy. Finally, it provides an overview of initiatives to promote healthy land use in the New York metropolitan area by Regional Plan Association, a private non-profit planning organization.

The legislative branch at the local, state, and federal levels must get involved in rethinking land use planning's natural relationship to public health. After all, land use has a direct impact on public health through its influence on housing and the natural and social environments in which people live. In order to become involved, legislators must be informed regarding land use planning's impact on public health. Legislators at every level of government have influence on the way land is used. City councils, boards of aldermen, boards of selectmen, and other local bodies have perhaps the most direct influence on land use through land disposition agreements, zoning ordinances, and city plan approval.

At the state level, the legislature sets policy standards for housing developments, playgrounds, parks, school buildings, sidewalks, and other community properties. As an incentive to adhere to state land use policy, a state legislature may also fund many programs that meet standards. At the federal level, Congress allocates money for special programs related to land use. It also establishes spending programs covering such activities as HUD redevelopment, privatization of federal housing projects, establishment of greenways/trail projects, and similar initiatives.

Legislators at all levels have an ability to promote change in land use policy through use of the bully pulpit. They can bring influential people together to learn about the relationship between land use planning and public health and to begin to address the issue as it relates to various settings.

Intervention at New Haven, Connecticut: An Example of Local Action to Promote Effective Land Use Planning to Improve Public Health

A land use planning/public health intervention occurred in New Haven, Connecticut as an outcome of a collaboration that was suggested and technically supported by Milbank Memorial Fund. The collaboration utilized legislative relationships to bring influential people to the table to discuss New Haven's childhood obesity problem and the means by which land use planning could address this problem.

New Haven's children are more obese than those in the United States as a whole. Recent studies in the city have shown that up to 60% of adolescents are obese. Type 2 diabetes is diagnosed in children as young as 5 in the city, and 40 percent of newly diagnosed cases of diabetes in youth are type 2, a previously rare diagnosis for young people. These youth are at risk of other health problems associated with diabetes by the time they reach their mid-twenties.1

New Haven's committee of stakeholders to address the childhood obesity problem in a land use context included the city planner, the community services administrator, school officials, an alderman, a family resource center representative, a child day care commissioner, a pediatrician working with the Department of Health on school nutrition, and others. The committee decided upon a project to reduce childhood obesity in New Haven by proposing low-cost modifications of indoor and outdoor school space in order to encourage school children to increase their physical activity. Much of the work of the project is being carried out by the staff of Project for Public Spaces, an internationally known non-profit organization based in New York City that has worked on other projects involving the redesign of schools and adjacent space. Project for Public Spaces and the Milbank Memorial Fund, an endowed private foundation, agreed to finance the work on the project. The Fund will pay for an intern recruited to work on the project through the City of New Haven City Planning Department. The intern's responsibility will be to coordinate the redesign.

This project will enable New Haven to increase usage of space and physical activity within school grounds and buildings. The Project for Public Spaces will use participatory planning techniques to involve children, teachers, and other members of the community in the process. The following phases describe the planning and implementation steps.

Phase 1: A meeting/brain storming session with key decision-makers and their agents.

Phase 2: On-site user evaluations of three newly built schools grounds.

Phase 3: A pilot project evaluation in one school. Low cost modifications arising from Phase 2 will be tested in one school and their effectiveness evaluated.

Phase 4: A briefing session with users to evaluate Phase 2 and Phase 3.

Phase 5: Evaluation of plans for buildings currently in design.

A mixed group of users (drawn from the onsite evaluation) will become members of the School Construction Advisory Committee (SCAC), and design professionals will review the existing school plans in a one-day workshop. The workshop will start with a video presentation based on footage taken from the onsite evaluations and recommendations. It is hoped that children and other users involved in the evaluation will assume an ongoing role as advisors to SCAC.

Phase 6: Presentation of deliverables to decision-makers.

Key decision-makers and their agents will be presented with recommendations for schools that are newly built or in design, along with a design manual (both video and Web-based) and summary project findings (i.e., quotes and statistics). These will be submitted in draft form for comments.

BROADER DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS

In consultation with important decision-makers, Project for Public Spaces will aim to leverage the outcomes of the project into a nationwide program on school design and programming. Currently, no national programs in the United States are dedicated to design and management of school premises, and remarkably few regional initiatives exist. The New Haven program could result in the production of a video as a training tool, the production of regular training programs, and further development of the Web-tool kit to include a resource center of images and research. The timetable for production of such training material would be approximately two months. The entire New Haven project should be completed by the end of 2002.

The project, named Healthier School Buildings and Grounds for New Haven, is just one example of how legislative collaboration with a private sector foundation, with city planners, with community leaders, and with government officials brought land use planning and public health together. Participants in the project believe that this project will make a positive difference in the health of New Haven's children and in the health of the children in those communities that choose to replicate this project.

Initiatives of the Regional Plan Association

The Regional Plan Association (RPA) works with communities in the New York metropolitan area to initiate and implement land use projects that promote a healthier environment. The RPA does so through its Healthy Communities for the New York Metropolis (Healthy Communities) project. To date, the RPA has undertaken numerous initiatives.

NEW WAYS TO WORK AND PLAY: USING THE MILL RIVER CORRIDOR TO CONNECT STAMFORD'S COMMUNITIES

The City of Stamford, Connecticut is making a major public investment in the Mill River corridor with the creation of a new park system in the downtown and with the commitment, in the new Master Plan, to a larger greenway network extending from the Merritt Parkway to the South End waterfront. This Healthy Communities project will leverage the benefits of these investments in several ways:

A. Promote increased activity levels in the disadvantaged and largely minority neighborhoods on the west side of the new Mill River Park, both through recreational opportunities in the park itself and through increased connectivity between the neighborhoods and the new downtown Mill River Park. The project will explore ways of increasing activity levels by promoting pedestrian and bicycle connections to the park, to the downtown beyond, and to the larger greenway network.

B. Provide opportunities for biking, jogging and walking for the employees in the large corporate campuses along Long Ridge Road as well as the residents of the elder care facilities along this corridor.

C. Promote bicycle and pedestrian activity throughout Stamford by linking open space resources and providing alternative modes for journey-to-work.

GREEN LINKAGES FOR WESTCHESTER COMMUNITIES

Westchester County, New York continues to explore ways of balancing intense suburban development with the need for greenways and other alternative ways of connecting cities, towns, and villages. Several greenway opportunities, many based on the historic parkway systems, are playing an increasingly important role. This project will identify strategic connections between the various greenway initiatives and several different kinds of communities in Westchester. The greenway projects will be used to educate local partners on healthy community design and will provide valuable design input for the greenways themselves.

CHANGING LANDSCAPES IN NEW JERSEY: HEALTHY COMMUNITIES AND ALTERNATIVES TO SPRAWL

New Jersey has just adopted its State Development and Redevelopment Plan, which seeks to promote growth in compact, mixed use centers and protect open space and farmland in the most densely populated state in the nation. While there are currently many progressive ideas relating to concentrated mixed-use development and transit-friendly design strategies, these ideas have yet to be linked explicitly to a healthy communities agenda. This project will explore several ways of leveraging the health agenda to design and implement new alternatives to sprawl development patterns. The project will exploit the fact that New Jersey is a laboratory for virtually every form of urban, suburban, and rural settlement and that a policy framework already exists in the form of the State Plan, which does recognize the linkage between land use and public health.

THE NEW JERSEY MAYORS' INSTITUTE ON CITY DESIGN

The New Jersey Mayors' Institute on City Design (MICD) provides a two-day retreat for eight mayors to come together with a panel of national experts on community design, public health, and the development process. The mayors present case studies of urban design problems and receive advice from the panel on how to make their communities more livable, walkable, and successful places. Between those discussions, the panelists make presentations on topics such as urban and landscape design, the development process, state resources, and the connection between public health and community design.

The MICD was established by RPA to promote smart growth through better design of communities in New Jersey, empowering mayors with knowledge and a vision to implement high-- quality, sustainable community plans to promote more active lifestyles. The goal of the MICD is to educate local officials about state-of-the-art design theory and techniques and to provide mayors with the opportunity to bring a case study to national and state experts for ideas and suggestions. A secondary goal is to create a "fraternity" of mayors with strong design knowledge who can serve as experts to other communities.

The program is modeled on the successful nationwide program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. However, the MICD is unique in closely involving state government and focusing on the special role that design has in public health issues. Panelists and speakers at past institutes have included national experts on urban design and public health issues, including Mayor John Norquist of Milwaukee, Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, and Thomas Schmid from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

RPA organized the first MICD in 2001 with the assistance of the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (Office of State Planning), the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, and Princeton University's School of Architecture. A number of design and planning experts provided technical assistance, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Contacts are being made with the New Jersey chapter of the American Planning Association and other planning-related entities, a number of other higher education institutions such as Rutgers University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and environmental organizations to encourage other partnerships and expand the technical resources available to communities.

THE NORTHEAST STATE PLANNING DIRECTORS RETREAT

Created in 1999, the Northeast State Planning Directors Leadership Retreat (NESP) has provided an annual forum for state planning officials from the Northeast States-Maryland to Maine-to come together for a two-day workshop to learn from each other about new initiatives and opportunities in state land use policy. Co-sponsored by RPA and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, these annual workshops have evolved into a critical forum for these policymakers to learn the state of the art and share their own successes and failures with their peers. Guest speakers and presenters are brought in for each session, and roundtable discussions provide participants with the opportunity to explore the possibilities for using new techniques and information to better manage land use patterns and control sprawl in their home states.

Beginning in 2002, RPA introduced the healthy communities agenda to this important constituency. The outcomes and process objectives of this initiative are to integrate land use and public health policies at the state government level by educating state officials about the connections between land use and public health and by demonstrating ways that land and environmental policies can promote healthier communities.

The first NESP forum to incorporate these issues was held on April 11 and 12, 2002, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to RPA and Lincoln Institute staff, participants included commissioners and directors of state planning and growth management from Vermont, Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York State, Maine, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

At this forum, a roundtable discussion titled "Planning and Designing the Physically Active Community" was moderated by RPA President Robert Yaro. Panelists included Marla Hollander, a program officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Reid Ewing, a researcher on public health and land use from Rutgers University; and Marya Morris, a senior research associate at the American Planning Association and the program director for the APA's initiative to promote understanding of healthy communities in the planning profession.

Conclusion

Federal, state, and local governments, together with concerned citizens, can play a strong part in promoting land use policies that address public health directly. Through collaborative efforts with private organizations and others, it is possible to conduct land use planning that promotes healthy habits as a way of both preventing and addressing diseases whose development is partly aided by poor land use policies. The project now nearing completion in New Haven, Connecticut is an example of the way in which communities can improve public health through effective land use planning. The initiatives of the Regional Planning Association in the New York metropolitan area furnish yet another example of the numerous ways that government leaders and governmental activities can bring focus to the issue of creating healthy land use policies.

REFERENCES

1. Grey M, Berry D, Davidson M, et al. Preventing type 2 diabetes in high risk youth. Diabetes. 2002; Supp. 1. A: 16-18.

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION
Richard Jackson, Toni Harp, Tom Wright

Toni Harp is a member of the Connecticut State House, Hartford, Connecticut.

Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, is Director, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.

Tom Wright is Executive Vice President, Regional Plan Association, New York, New York.

        

Online Land Planning, or OLP is an internet based online land planning service at an affordable cost- right to your home. Delivering land planning concepts that you would normally expect from a big firm, at a fraction of the price. Click here to learn more About the Process and What We Deliver.

 
Our Brand Strategy is quite simple:

Land. Whether you own land for business or pleasure, we know it’s an important and strategic part of the dream for your future. We share you passion for lying back now and then and thinking about what could be. About having that once in a lifetime chance to change and improve your corner of the world, while creating value and profit. To make others believe what you can imagine now.

Plan. Our professional and affordable planning booklets unlock your land’s physical possibilities and create an authentic identity that can help you stimulate market activity, provide credibility and offer value added potential.

Test. If you’re a seasoned land buyer or seller, you’ll know what to do next. If you’re not sure, let our experience and creativity lead the way. We know the drill. When used to its full potential, our planning booklets help distinguish your land from countless other properties on the market that rely only on zoning maps, aerial photography and an arbitrary price per acre.

Fit. We both want the best results for your property. If you have questions about what to do, call us for a free consultation anytime. Who knows, sometimes leaving things the way they are may work out for the best. But, if you find yourself dreaming again – we’re here to help