Ready to venture into the future of urban planning? Join us as we discuss the 2023 Trend Report from the American Planning Association, spotlighting transformative trends that every planner should be aware of. From digitization and geoengineering to gender expansiveness and local priorities, we unpack the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Hear our thoughts on the booming manufacturing sector, the burgeoning creator class, and the intriguing potential of the metaverse in planning. We wrap up season two by pondering what the next 20 years might hold for the planning industry. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation as we forecast the future and reflect on our journey so far.
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Ready to venture into the future of urban planning? Join us as we discuss the 2023 Trend Report from the American Planning Association, spotlighting transformative trends that every planner should be aware of. From digitization and geoengineering to gender expansiveness and local priorities, we unpack the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Hear our thoughts on the booming manufacturing sector, the burgeoning creator class, and the intriguing potential of the metaverse in planning. We wrap up season two by pondering what the next 20 years might hold for the planning industry. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation as we forecast the future and reflect on our journey so far.
Show Notes:
Follow us on social media for more content related to each episode:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/booked-on-planning/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookedPlanning
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonplanning
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookedonplanning/
You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked On Planning. In this episode, jennifer and I are wrapping up the year with a look at the 2023 Trends Report published annually by the American Planning Association. Last year, we had Petra Hurtado from APA on the show to talk about the 2022 report, so we thought we'd continue the trend. Pun intended For those not familiar the trend report is a tool put together by the APA and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to organize future trends that have the potential to impact planning for communities. They're categorized as act now, prepare and learn, and watch.
Jennifer:Given that act now are trends that we need to be considering as we implement plans and policies today. That section is, of course, the longest. Then there is prepare, which that section is looking out a little further, and then finally the learn and watch, which is about four pages in total. Given the longer time horizon and the lower certainty level, the tool is intended as a reference when planning for the future of communities, and planners can use the trends list in this report as input for their long range and current planning processes, to practice strategic foresight during community visioning processes, for scenario planning or simply just to inform future decision making.
Stephanie:Beginning with trends that we should be acting on now. This includes climate planning, the digital era, federal funding, local priorities, gender expansiveness, health, housing, social media, equity and transportation, and younger generations. Many of these topics were already focusing on as we plan for our communities and happen for some time. There are also categories that showed up in last year's trend report as well. Climate policies, for example, focused in 2022 on the political emphasis of climate action in the US, which we've seen pan out through the Inflation Reduction Act. This includes investment in clean energy transition, reducing methane emissions, reducing the burden of climate change impacts on underserved communities, increasing electrification, carbon removal and geoengineering for climate change mitigation. This last one, geoengineering, is the most controversial of the climate change interventions, and the international panel on climate change doesn't actually take a position on it because the high level of uncertainty.
Jennifer:In the context of climate change. The report does a deep dive into mass extinction and a rewilding and discusses the crisis of biodiversity loss. It's actually very reminiscent of our October episode on Accidental Ecosystem, where we get talked with author Peter Allegonia on the consequences of a less diverse world. One trend to address the concern is rewilding, an ecological strategy that rebuilds the population of animals in addition to restoring the wildlife habitats. It's not actually a new trend. It's been around for more like 20, around 25 years. Instead, there are new innovations that are reviving the topics, such as using DNA technology to resurrect extinct animals or preserve species on the brink.
Stephanie:Resurrecting extinct animals through DNA makes me think of Jurassic Park and the scene where they use the mosquito trapped in the amber to extract the dinosaur blood.
Jennifer:But dino DNA. Jeff Goldblum's character's observation, though, about scientists being so preoccupied figuring out if they can, but they never stop to think about if they should, is always a prescient one in this situation.
Stephanie:Speaking of thinking about not whether you can, but whether you should. Our second category to discuss under the act now section is the world of digitization. While there are many benefits to smart cities, there are challenges and shortcomings that need to be addressed. In a world of high customer service expectations, governments are expected to respond in a similar fashion to private companies like Amazon, with fast and flexible services. We're seeing this especially with transit agencies that are taking on rideshare-like on-demand transit service to serve areas that don't meet density levels to run on a fixed route. We've also included this in our latest Transit Development Plan update and we're planning to explore a rollout in the coming years.
Stephanie:Other areas to keep on the forefront of decisions include the public distrust of all things digital. While we continue to digitize services like parking, street lights and other services, as COVID revealed, there's a great digital divide that the bipartisan infrastructure law is seeking to address. And last, tying back into the climate topic, we have massive amounts of information that we're producing that needs to be stored through data centers that are working against greenhouse gas reductions. Instead of building new data centers, abandoned office buildings can serve a new life as a data center without the carbon costs of building new.
Jennifer:I know that we are certainly having the digital conversation as we consider improving our curb management in Lincoln's downtown. We'd actually like to switch to a more active management system that can respond to the different needs at different times. But the question of how we digitize is actually somewhat of a barrier and I really didn't think that that would be an issue when I first started the conversation. But we have to utilize most of the parking surveillance technology that's available currently. We either have to go fully app-based payments or use plate screening and then mailing out the billing to the person who owns the car. Well, it's not always the person who owns the car driving the car, so not everyone is technologically savvy, so full app-based might be a challenge for a decent portion of our community.
Stephanie:It also raises equity concerns. If you don't have a phone, then you're not able to access the city's parking system.
Jennifer:Yeah, exactly, it's a really. It's a complicated conversation. I never would have guessed. So we have mentioned a few of the recent federal funding bills which are historic investments in climate action and infrastructure with honestly massive potential for communities if they can align their local priorities With 1.2 trillion. With a T just from the bipartisan infrastructure law alone, many communities are able to address delayed maintenance on their infrastructure. A crazy statistic from the report was that the American Society of Civil Engineers found that in the US, every two minutes a water main breaks, wasting 6 billion with a B gallons of treated water every day. On top of that, 40% of public roadways are in poor condition, but if you ask residents I'm sure they would argue that percentage is higher, given their complaints. Many public work agencies field in a daily basis those daying stink and potholes with all the funding going into the infrastructure spending, much of which are actually going into roadway projects. The Justice 40 initiative was created to commit at least 40% of all federal funds to disadvantaged communities.
Stephanie:Moving on to health. That is an expansive topic which includes discussion on long COVID, the resulting advancements in medicine and health care accelerated by the pandemic, such as tele-doc and at-home testing, and increasing overdoses and gun violence. The section ends with the largest trend that we've known is coming for a while, and that's an aging population and the need to plan for an aging community. It goes beyond just planning for more walkable communities that allow individuals to age in place, but also to address cognitive disabilities brought on with age, impairments and other challenges to navigating the world. Assistive technology is emerging, with sensory aids and mobility aids, as well as 3D printed prosthetics.
Jennifer:I know, when I was coming out of our planning program about 10 years ago, I was like when the first conversations of the aging population were just starting, speaking of planning for an aging community.
Jennifer:The housing section of the report goes beyond addressing the future needs of an aging population to discuss new ways the housing crisis is being addressed. This includes co-living and multi-generational living, with 17% of adults between 25 and 34 living in a parent's home and another 8% living in another type of multi-generational living arrangement. The report also discusses private corporations as affordable housing, landlords, evictions and commercial to residential conversions. There's an interesting 99PI episode that gets into the details of the Office to Housing Conversion boom happening in many larger cities, which highlights the, as the report details, that it's not actually as straightforward as it might seem. Planters can make it easier by amending zoning ordinances, but there are issues with the building codes and existing floor plan layouts that can create hurdles to a housing reuse project. It's actually crazy to me. I first encountered this idea of switching commercial buildings over to housing at a conference almost seven years ago, but most of the newer office spaces that I am seeing that are being built, they aren't taking this type of conversion into consideration even in the design plan, seven years later.
Stephanie:That's interesting because I know that a lot of cities are requiring that new parking garages are built with flat floor plates, that way they can convert to other uses down the road when we're looking at trends like autonomous vehicles reducing the need for parking spaces. So it's interesting that, knowing that these offices might have some issues coming down the line, that they aren't also preparing for something similar, I agree. The next category, social media use and media literacy, is becoming more and more important for communities to stay on top of. The report states if planners ignore the ways that the social media environment operates, including both how it is detrimental to mental health and how it is increasing awareness of problems, then they're ignoring a major social aspect of the lives of the people they serve. It dives into social media influencers and their impact on communities some good, some bad. Social media toxicity and accountability culture and its advantages, such as a tool for data collection.
Stephanie:And then there's AI, one of the fastest growing markets within the tech sector. Ai is expected to be one of the biggest disruptors of the 21st century, with impacts affecting the economy, the built environment, society and most professions, including the planning profession. I teach a class on community in the future at our local university. In this fall was the first time that I saw a lot of resources and guidance being sent out to professors on how to deal with AI in the classroom and I swear one assignment had to open an AI generated assignment, but it's still so new and challenging to harness the value while mitigating the negative impacts.
Jennifer:There was actually just a report out I think it was today on NPR about a student who got kicked out of her program for using AI to like. She was accused of plagiarism, basically, and they ran the document through AI and AI said that it had written it. So then when she challenged it, they actually ran a professor's original work through an AI software to see if the AI would identify it as something that AI had written, and it did. So of course the student was like put back into her program and everything was kind of taken care of. But if we can't even identify original works from like highly respected academics, how are we supposed to be combating this with students?
Stephanie:It doesn't Makes it very challenging to be an educator these days.
Jennifer:Indeed, the transportation section seemed to focus more on environmental responsibility than equity. For more on equity in transportation, check out our two episodes on inclusive transportation and mobility justice released this year, with topics on phasing out combustion engine cars, the end of the gas station Wow, what a thought. Though, like the end of the gas station, still have to have something there for your chips. Right, we still have to have road snacks.
Jennifer:Yeah, you'll have to charge your EV somewhere, Somewhere exactly Vehicle to grid technology, EV charging, e-bikes, cargo bikes, decentralized public transit and free transit. For all this year especially, we're seeing the massive changes happening in public transit world, with many major systems struggling to record post-pandemic and others transitioning to new operational models.
Stephanie:I was definitely disappointed to see that our transit system went back to charging a fare rather than to continue to offer fair, free transit once the recovery dollars dried up from COVID funding and there was a long conversation and lots of analysis done to see whether the benefits of increased ridership outweighed covering the gap in fares. And the last of the act now section focused on younger generations and social challenges. There's an increasing trend in youth disengagement with economic, political and social structures, as well as climate anxiety. The report also addresses politicization of education, school safety and security, and teacher shortages.
Jennifer:Transitioning to the reports prepare section, which focuses on new concepts that have the potential to disrupt our work and our communities. These trends are very technologically focused and include blockchain, cryptocurrency, the metaverse and hybrid lifestyles. The report also focuses on uncertain future of retail and economic development.
Stephanie:Although we're still in the early stages of understanding how we can use the blockchain, planners should prepare for its potential applications in many different planning arenas. Transportation is probably where blockchain has the most potential, because the blockchain can be used across multiple smart devices securely. Supposedly, it could allow a user to purchase passes across multiple devices more easily. Another area where blockchain might be useful is in tracking and managing financing across a wide range of areas, including environmental support funds and means tested government spending. Blockchain is also good at tracking data and can be utilized by planners to maintain large databases. Some of the drawbacks to the blockchain that planners should keep in mind are the economic viability of the blockchain, the high energy consumption needed, whether the blockchain can actually be scaled to community needs, and concerns regarding the blockchain's security and incorruptibility.
Jennifer:Cryptocurrency and NFTs which is a non-fungible token for those of you who are like me and have attempted to avoid this entire particular topic of conversation are also mentioned as something planners should prepare for. Crypto mining creates a massive amount of energy consumption and needs near constant cooling. So, because of this, crypto mines are normally located in areas with cheap electricity and access to water, and this, in turn, of course, drives up the cost of energy and water for local residents. So the report discusses how the lack of broad regulation creates a whack-a-mole situation. If one community attempts to pass and enforce regulations, the crypto mining operation can easily move to another location. So planners should start working with their communities to think about locations and control of these operations more holistically or regionally.
Jennifer:In the future, nfts could be used to manage public records, which, to be honest, sort of terrifies me. The report does mention that this technology is in its worst crypto winter ever and discusses the fall of FTX. So now, given that this report was released at the beginning of 2023, I wonder how likely it is that crypto and the NFTs will actually show up on next year's trends reports Now that Sam Bingman-Freed has actually been convicted of perpetuating a multi-billion with a B dollar fraud and faces decades in prison.
Stephanie:It's really interesting to think how quickly a trend can change just in the span of a year. Right. The report also dives into the upside down economy. As we already know, covid-19 has been quite the economy disruptor. Over the last year, the tech sector faced major layoffs. This pullback was one of the most significant in history. Although it seems like things in the tech industry have at least stabilized, there is concern about whether the industry will fully recover.
Stephanie:Another area of economic concern is on the rise of white collar automation through AI disruption. Artificial intelligence software such as Dali and ChatGPT have the potential to disrupt employment rates in white collar industries, which could have a major impact on housing and transportation. All of this points to the continuing decline of downtown and central business districts. On the flip side, manufacturing in the US is experiencing a major boom. The pandemic highlighted the importance of having control over the supply chain, and recent major infrastructure bills, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act, have infused the manufacturing market with much needed capital, especially in green industries. Entrepreneurship and the creator class is also on the rise. Most likely, these will not bring major employment centers back to the downtown area, but planners should keep these businesses in mind when looking at future needs.
Jennifer:I look forward to the day where we just have like Instagram posts here all over our downtown. I mean, we've already got the art, which I do appreciate. Another trend that the report looked at was the metaverse. When the metaverse was originally discussed, I thought that it sounded so dumb. Can you guys figure out already that I'm a Luddite and just absolutely hate technology? But as I was reading the trend report, I have to have made a change my mind and now I actually think that it's the most interesting thing that planners should start preparing for. Overall, I'm a skeptic of virtual reality and of course, there are plenty of things to be wary of, but I do see the potential of the metaverse in planning.
Jennifer:Many communities are already thinking about how to use the liminal spaces, transforming real world spaces into virtually interactive spaces by blending the physical and the virtual. Mostly this is done right now with like art exhibits, and I've seen some pretty cool ones. But another opportunity that I'm actually really excited to see develop is cities utilizing a digital twin as an opportunity to do mock up potential projects and get feedback from the community instantaneously. It's not always easy, as we all know, and for the public to envision the long term changes or like impacts that a change will have. So planners could use their city's digital twin to show 3D models of what a project would look like, and then community members could then virtually visit their city with a new addition and provide comments on the project. They'd really get to experience it sort of in real time and I think it could be a great tool to help planners create the best possible projects for their communities.
Stephanie:Yeah, I've started to see some of these VR rooms set up at different conferences for attendees to look at how this technology could be used in their own communities by setting up these little VR streetscapes for you to look at, and it's definitely going to be a lot better than what we're using today, which is just different renderings to show what a community could look like after the changes are made. It's really cool that you've got to see this in action?
Jennifer:I haven't yet.
Stephanie:Yeah, I just watched other people do it. I wish I would have done it myself, though. Moving on to e-commerce, this is not new by any means. We planners have been watching the rise of e-commerce and digitally native retail businesses like Sheehan, which are causing declines in our physical retail centers, for over a decade, and as always, the report discusses the need to convert or vitalize vacant shopping malls. Interestingly, this year, though, the report discusses the trend toward complete demolition of shopping malls and the creation of full redevelopment plans instead of office conversions or something similar. Omaha is doing this with the former Crossroads Mall. They level the building and are creating a mixed-use development on the 40-acre parcel.
Jennifer:Sometimes I think that we in Lincoln forget how lucky we are that our two malls are actually still relatively healthy retail markets. Finally, no trend report would be complete in 2023 without discussing the volatility of the workplace. Much of what the trend report predicted has come to pass this year. Flexibility in the workplace is still the most important factor to come out of the pandemic in regards to working situations, and employers are still figuring out exactly how that will look in the future. Unionization and collective bargaining is still going strong this year, with UAW just citing one of the largest collective bargaining agreements ever.
Jennifer:People are still concerned about quiet quitting, although I find that concept and the discussion around it a bit ridiculous personally. More reliance on upskilling and less reliance on degrees is also continuing, which is probably a good thing. One disheartening trend that is still holding strong, though, is the public sector's general inability to adjust to the changing workplace. I am incredibly grateful that both Stephanie and I's departments have embraced a flexible work schedule, but that does not seem to be the case overall. I was disappointed to see the Nebraska governor's proclamation that state employees will be expected to be back full-time in the office starting in January, because it's already difficult to attract top talent to the public sector, and so this inability or unwillingness to embrace a flexible work schedule will just continue to push those top candidates into the private market, which is a shame.
Stephanie:Yeah, it was interesting. After that proclamation came out, there was a local newspaper article from a bunch of employees that are very concerned and upset as they should be that they're being forced back full-time into the workplace after being remote or semi-remote for so long.
Stephanie:Yeah, I mean, nobody was less productive by working from home, so it's just going to be interesting, yeah if you were not a productive employee at home, you definitely weren't a productive employee when you were in the workplace. You just masked it better, exactly. So, bringing the episode to a close, we'll briefly touch on the final section, which is learn and watch. The first of the impacts is volatile geopolitical dynamics on climate change. There's also energy demands, migration, oil reserves, the supply chain and food supply shortages.
Stephanie:Green signals are also seeing an uptick, especially in other countries. These include single-use plastic bands and lab-grown meat. We're also seeing a renewed interest in space exploration and the potential for outer space tourism, sports and entertainment, space-based solar power and space-based agriculture. We're also seeing an increase in extreme politicization and political shifts in Americans' perceptions of public safety, which will impact how people interact in public and private spaces in the future. And, as always, there is plenty of potential game-changing technology to keep our eyes on, including fusion power, 4d printing, which uses smart materials inspired by nature that can change shape over time, and quantum computing.
Stephanie:Those are some pretty fascinating things to keep an eye on the horizon with huh yeah, and this last section is 20 years out, so plenty of time to plan for this.
Jennifer:So we will be in our mid-50s in 20 years. I will be very excited to see what 4D printing has to give us at that point.
Stephanie:If we're still doing the show in 20 years, we'll have to look back at the first trend report to see what's changed.
Jennifer:I bet we are still doing this. So we hope you enjoyed this conversation on the 2023 trend report wrapping up season two of Booked on Planning. You can read the full report by searching trendreport at planningorg and we will have it linked in the show notes. We are so thankful you have been a listener of the show and are looking forward to another great season in 2024. If you were looking to provide Stephanie or I a Christmas gift, we would hope that you could take just a minute to rate the show and if you have a little more time, leave a comment, as it helps boost our viability on podcast platforms. Thank you so much and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning.