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Submit Your Session Proposal for APA WA 2024

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Proposal Due Date: May 31, 2024

Preparing your Proposal | Submittal CriteriaPresenter Registration | AICP CM Credit Requirements

Call for Session's Closed

                                 The deadline to submit your proposals is May, 31, 2024.

If selected, you will be contacted by a Program Committee member to complete a CM form. 

The Washington Chapter of the American Planning Association (APA WA) invites you to submit your session proposals for the 2024 Annual Planning Conference, to be held October 16-18, 2024, at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA.

The theme of the 2024 conference is Renewing the Plans: Embracing Innovation and ResiliencyMany communities across the state are currently updating their long-range plans to support legislative requirements balancing growth, housing needs, transportation, climate change, resource protection, and equity. Even in communities that are not yet due for plan updates, planners are responding every day with innovative solutions to create resilient communities. Come share your ideas and learn from fellow planners in this collaborative environment.

We encourage you to propose sessions and mobile workshops that address any planning-related aspect, however, the following descriptions provide guidance to focus your session:

Community Engagement, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

What tools, technologies, and techniques are essential to ensuring our plans, policies, programs, and project siting authentically represent full participation by the whole community, including the historically underrepresented? How do we know when we get it right and ensure all voices have been heard and represented, not just the loudest and most accessible? What steps is your community taking to address systemic racism in its policies, plans, and codes? How are recent policies like the HEAL Act being implemented across the state to help achieve these objectives?

Transportation and Infrastructure Trends

Communities are embracing changing transportation and infrastructure needs.  Transportation networks link communities and shape development. Sustainable transportation plans provide a range of multimodal choices while reducing greenhouse gases. Communities are adapting to electric vehicles (EVs) and must incorporate public infrastructure to support them. What can we learn from each other about updating and implementing multimodal mobility and transportation electrification plans, including on-the-ground project examples?

Sustainability, Climate Change, Resiliency, and Green Energy

Planners are focused on incorporating sustainability and climate change into their plans and programs. How can communities and systems remain resilient under the pressures of growth and change? What strategies are being implemented in both urban and rural settings and the spaces in between, and where are we seeing success stories? How are communities incorporating strategies for considerations such as sea level rise, decarbonization, and sustaining tree canopies?

The Regulatory Environment and Long-Range Plans

Cities and counties are in the process of conducting periodic reviews of their comprehensive plans under the Growth Management Act. How are you incorporating mandatory updates?  How is your jurisdiction seeking public input, including input from tribes and historically underrepresented interests?  How are these policies informing regulatory updates?  Do you have stories of what approaches have been successful, and which have not been successful?

Affordable Housing in the Built Environment

Communities are now required to plan for and accommodate housing that is affordable to all income levels.  How is your community considering middle housing as part of your Comprehensive Plan and development regulations?  What innovative solutions are being implemented in your neighborhoods to address housing choices, including ADUs, tiny homes and multifamily housing? How are racially disparate impacts, displacement and exclusion being addressed through updates to policies and regulations? 

The Planning Practice: Ethics, Succession Planning, Skill Building

In this time of change, what ethical challenges have you encountered and what can you share with your fellow planners about incorporating ethics into your practice? How is your organization identifying future leaders and preparing them to step into leadership positions? What new skills do planners need to navigate the changing landscape?  

Questions

Please contact the APA Washington Office at (206) 682-7436 or [email protected]


Your Session Proposal

How to Prepare Your Proposal:

TOPIC and PRESENTERS: The first thing is to decide on your topic and think through the story to be told and who are the best people to tell that story. You are welcome to invite non-planners to present if their comments add to the topic.

Your session description will need to describe how your session meets the following criteria:

  1. How will the event offer a professionally relevant learning experience for a planner (e.g. for a planner with at least four years of experience after earning a two-year master's degree)?
  2. How does this event meet a specific planning-related training objective?
  3. What are the specific training objectives and how does your event meet them?

Four categories of CMs (Ethics, Law, Equity, and Sustainability and Resilience) are mandatory for AICP planners to acquire during each 2-year reporting period, the Chapter will also want to be able to offer these CM-approved sessions whenever possible. If you or one of your co-speakers have a current AICP credential and are proposing a session that complies with one of the mandatory CM credits, please reference those CM requirements and address how your session also meets those criteria in your Session Description. (see Criteria for CM Mandatory Credits (planning.org).

The following information will be requested during the Session Proposal submission process. 

    • Session Title
    • Session Description, including the objectives of the session - 600 word limit
    • Short summary of Session - limit of 150 words (for conference marketing)
    • Session Format (Point/Counterpoint, Panel Discussions, Moderated Debate, Interactive Workshops, etc.)
    • Proposed Session Length (Between 45-75 minutes) and if you would be willing to adjust the time of your session, depending on program needs
    • Session Coordinator Contact information
    • Presenters - names, contact information and biographies.
    • Moderator (if appropriate for panel)  - names, contact information and biographies.
    • Audio Visual Requirements

Please provide as complete a proposal as possible to help us complete the CM forms. The selection committee will score complete proposals higher than incomplete proposals! If your proposal is selected, any missing information needed for CM forms will be due by July 28th, 2024.

Submittal Criteria

Complete the submission form by May 31, 2024.

The Program Committee will select conference sessions considering the following criteria:

• Proposal provides the information requested above.

• Sessions that are unique, engaging, and, while not mandatory, address aspects of the conference theme.

• Sessions that include APA members, although, sessions offering a panel with diverse perspectives (e.g., multi-disciplinary views, geographic diversity, etc.) are also desirable.

The Program Committee will select sessions that represent a breadth of topics, geographies, firms, agencies, and individual presenters.  Please keep this in mind as you propose sessions. Also, the Committee is responsible for overseeing the content of each session and, as the conference program develops, edits to proposals, suggestions for additions, or other changes may be requested to better balance each session.

Registration Information

• We do not pay honoraria or reimburse for travel or lodging expenses.

• Members of sessions selected will be notified once conference registration is live

AICP - CM Credits

Conference Sessions will offer AICP Certification Maintenance, so session organizers are asked to structure their proposals to be consistent with the CM learning objectives. Please fill out the session form below. Please reference CM learning criteria in structuring your session so you can ensure that the chapter can acquire CM credits for it (if the session lends itself to that.)

Call for Session's Closed

The deadline to submit your proposals is May 31, 2024.

If selected, you will be contacted by a Program Committee member to complete a CM form.