Land-use planning, zoning regulations, and local development decisions have long shaped how communities grow, defining where people live, work, learn, and connect. Our land-use systems have complex terms and complicated processes that can be difficult for residents to understand and navigate. Land-use decisions often are fraught with conflict, involve multiple parties with competing interests, and are affected by the legacies of exclusionary practices and policies. Given these dynamics, it’s easy for local decisionmakers to ignore community voices and fail to fully advance community priorities and benefits.
Looking forward, it will be difficult for cities and towns to address pressing land-use issues, such as housing affordability, rapid expansion of data centers, and climate resilience, without empowering current residents and cultivating the next generation of community planners. As dozens of cities and states reimagine their land-use plans and reform their zoning codes, more communities are testing new ways to meaningfully engage all residents by expanding their land-use knowledge through regular community planning academies (CPAs).
Urban’s Community Planning Academy project supports local governments, community leaders, and their nonprofit and philanthropic partners in the design, development, launch, and assessment of community land-use education initiatives. By integrating Urban’s land-use, engagement, and capacity-building expertise, our team can support curriculum development, governance, and fundraising and provide instructional guidance. We believe that by facilitating cross-sector collaboration, leveraging community-based knowledge, and serving as local forums to advance more just and inclusive land-use decisions and land-development systems, CPAs have the power to build more resilient and healthy communities.
What We Do
With initial support from the Kresge Foundation, Urban’s CPA team, led by Senior Policy Associate Joe Schilling, provides
- research and evaluation that documents the state of CPA practice;
- technical assistance and capacity building that recalibrates existing CPAs and imagines new ones; and
- a forum for a national community of practice across local government and the community development and planning fields, laying the foundation for a national CPA community of practice.
For more information, contact Joe Schilling at [email protected].
