APA President Bruce Knight, FAICP, formally announced the association's Sustaining Places Initiative on Monday, March 22, 2010, during the first day of the United Nations Fifth World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Knight chaired the WUF session on "Planning Sustainable Urbanization and the Right to the City" that was put together by the Global Planners Network of 35 nation-based planning organizations. APA, a founding member of the GPN, also actively participated in previous World Urban Forums in Vancouver and Nanjing.
Planning is essential to creating sustainable communities
The Sustaining Places Initiative is a multi-year, multi-faceted program to define the role of planning in addressing all human settlement issues relating to sustainability.
In his announcement, Knight noted that, "The planning movement and its professional planners are uniquely qualified to provide leadership in defining, analyzing, and debating these issues and in integrating place-based strategies in the broader discussion of sustainability. Thus, Sustaining Places will examine both how places can be sustained and how places themselves sustain life and civilizations. Planning's comprehensive focus is not limited to a building or a site but encompasses all scales and all forms of organization of human settlements, from rural areas and small town to cities and metropolitan regions. The challenges of sustainability and possible solutions require planners' values, skills, and leadership.
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