In the words of the American Planning Association, their members provide "a vision for the community today - and what we want our community to be in the future." The job includes conceiving the forthcoming growth and changes of an area and how the various communal components: structures, transportation corridors, open areas and the rest, best fit that conception to ultimately "create communities of lasting value."

As land planners currently forecast the future, what forward-looking concepts are being incorporated?

Striving for Sustainability
As evidence of the growth of sustainable development, which the U.N. World Commission defined as meeting "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs," the U.S. Green Building Council is bestowing LEED certification on more than 2 million square feet of new space every day, adding up to more than 92,000 certified projects so far.

And the USGBC is certainly not the only one doing this - for instance BREEAM, or Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, has conferred its seal of approval on more than 562,000 projects around the world. This program has certification standards for a number of categories including community master planning.

Dodge Data and Analytics' recent survey on worldwide trends for green buildings found that 47% of participants, an increase of 20 points, expect that by 2021, more than 60% of their projects will be "green." The study concludes that the demand is poised to even double in some regions. As the number of green buildings grows, so should green development in general.

"The trends uncovered in this report reflect what we're seeing in our business," says Chris Nelson, president, commercial HVAC for Carrier, premier sponsor of the study. "Building green is good for the public health, the environment, and the bottom line."

Also just released, the 2018 International Green Construction Code by the USGBC, International Code Council, ASHRAE and the Illuminating Engineering Society has sustainable approaches that can be incorporated into building codes everywhere to improve communities' standards of living.

Besides being specified in the plans, technology continues to play a bigger role in the actual land planning function.

"We now find ourselves in the early stages of a digital industrial revolution," Alastair Parvin, a strategic designer and the co-founder of WikiHouse Foundation remarks. "The way we plan and regulate our built environment will be reinvented in the next two decades."

According to him, increased digitization could allow citizens to participate more directly in decision-making, and will bring more data into the planning process so decisions can be made " on the basis of their evidenced likely impact on the world, rather than in isolation based on hunch or short-term political guesswork."

Case Study: Downtown Las Vegas
Dubbed VisionLV, the city is developing a community-based renovation for its downtown area with a planning horizon of 2035. Central to the effort is creating "unique and identifiable districts."

The master plan, which is still a work in progress, incorporates a multi-modal transportation system that applies smart mobility technology; a "layered street network" where various streets are designated to have an emphasis on one travel mode: be it auto, transit, bicycle or pedestrian; net-zero energy usage; linear green infrastructure; a wayfinding system with signage, lighting and public art that visually brands and strengthens the identity of downtown and its districts.

Higher density (mid-rise residential and vertical mixed-use) development around transit hubs is designed to increase housing stock.

The transportation system plans to be high capacity and have higher efficiency at a lower economic and environmental cost; enhancing pedestrian linkages, promoting car share and bike share, and increasing the bike network by 685% and urban trails by 300%.

A proposed green network of parks, plazas and tree-lined streets will create multi-functional spaces for social interaction, and increase park area by 200% and the tree canopy by 1600%.
The plan also calls for innovative centers of employment, commerce and education, urban infill development and historic preservation.

To be fair, the land planning process, which ultimately determines the shape of the communities that we call home, does have its detractors. WikiHouse Foundation's Parvin, says, "When it comes to the issue of housing and development, (hating the process) may be the only thing that everyone does agree on."

But with the dedication of industry specialists equipped with innovative tools and an ever-expanding trove of data, the end results can positively reflect the values and aspirations of the community.