Embedded Planning Keynote at APA Iowa Conference 2022

Image by APA Iowa Chapter

Honored to deliver the Friday, Oct 14 keynote at the APA Iowa Chapter Conference

Building Community Partnerships Through Embedded Planning

Community engagement must evolve. We planners engage the public when we need feedback. People are consulted; input is gathered; and plans, for the most part, incorporate public input — then the relationship concludes, only to restart with the next project. Such transactional planning does little to build long-term stakeholder relationships.

In a time of increasing interrogation of planning and its legacies of inequity, planners today are seeking better ways to build and sustain meaningful partnerships. Urban planner Jonathan Pacheco Bell (@c1typlann3r) proposes Embedded Planning as a way to fundamentally restructure community engagement and practice. Embedded Planning means planning from the street, not from a desk. Embedded Planners work in the spaces and places of community members. Embedded Planners build bridges with marginalized communities harmed by past planning practices. Embedded Planning is a praxis that puts theory into action to better this world. Since Bell declared Embedded Planning exists in 2018, it has grown into an international movement embraced by emerging planners.

Through storytelling and personal reflection, Bell will illustrate how #EmbeddedPlanning is being used to build lasting community partnerships that center engagement as an ongoing process. Attendees will learn the benefits and challenges of Embedded Planning, including takeaways for implementation, and understand why this #praxis is the future of planning.