Agenda

The host of this year’s virtual conference, the Wasatch Front Regional Council has helped actively shape the practice of scenario planning in the state of Utah and nationally. Council members from state, regional, and local offices as well as Envision Utah staff will lead this presentation on how scenario planning enabled broad buy-in on the successful and widely recognized Envision Utah regional plan. The organization’s use of scenario planning as a public engagement tool has helped grow the national field of scenario planning and has since become a model adopted by practitioners, academics, tool developers, and communities across the country.  

Presenters will detail their current work following the success of Envision Utah, which seeks to integrate Utah’s land use and transportation planning with regional planning and environmental processes. The team will further discuss how lessons learned led to their creation of performance measures, target setting, and other exploratory scenario planning work. (CM 2.0) 

Speakers: 

Ari Bruening, President and CEO, Envision Utah  

Robert Grow, Founding Chair Emeritus and Former CEO, Envision Utah  

Ted Knowlton, Deputy Director, Wasatch Front Regional Council  

Teri Newell, Deputy Director of Planning and Investment, Utah Department of Transportation 

Join other conference attendees in showing up for good! For each person who attends this networking event $1 will be donated to the Utah Food Bank. This networking hour will take place in Remo, an interactive networking space with tables and couches (yes, virtual couches!) where you can catch up with fellow conference attendees.

To break the ice, we'll start with a scenario planning themed trivia challenge, so keep your wits about you, take a seat at a table of fellow experts and have fun while getting to know some of the many impressive professionals attending this year's conference. If you wish to attend, but skip the trivia, not to worry - just step away from the tables and head to the couches at the side of the room to continue your conversations.

Hear from four of the Consortium for Scenario Planning’s RFP winners about how their projects take unique approaches to operationalizing and prioritizing equity considerations in scenario planning processes. (CM 0.75)

See RFP project descriptions under the Resources section for additional information.    

Speakers and Projects: 

Sachi Arakawa, Principal, Cascadia Partners, “Bridging the Digital Divide: Equitable Techniques for Scenario Planning” 

Nancy Beaulieu, Northern Minnesota Organizer, Minnesota 350, “Just Transition Scenario Planning: Bemidji, Leech Lake, Red Lake, White Earth” 

Marisa Espinosa, Director of Scenario Planning, City of Vancouver Planning Department, “Vancouver Plan: Using Scenario Planning and Equitable Engagement to Inform Recovery Planning”  

Tim Reardon, Director of Data Services, Metropolitan Area Planning Council, “‘Segregation Scenarios’ and Environmental Justice Analysis” 

The public-private partnership between the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, the Urban Land Institute' Columbus, the Central Ohio Transit Authority, and the Columbus, Ohio, business community formed to study five regional corridors for their potential to support redevelopment and high-capacity transit. The results of their scenario analyses were so compelling that the local transit authority, business community, and local governments are now following up with detailed engineering and environmental studies to make the scenario a reality.  

This session will detail the scenario planning process used in Columbus and consider why the analyses were so compelling. Attendees will come away with an understanding of how public-private partnerships can create buy-in to a scenario planning process. (CM 0.75)

Speakers:

Honorable Joe Begeny, Mayor, City of Reynoldsburg, Ohio 

Kerstin Carr, PhD, Director of Planning and Sustainability, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission  

Leah Evans, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Development, Homeport 

Kimberly Sharp, AICP, Senior Director of Development, Central Ohio Transit Authority 

As legacy cities—former industrial powerhouses across the Midwest and Northeast—emerge from decades of decline, what comes next? Will these cities continue their rebound, lapse into continued decline, or land somewhere in between? Join a panel of experts from Youngstown, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for an engaging discussion about their use of scenario planning tools and techniques in cities and regions where continued population and economic growth is not a given.  

This session will cover how novel scenario planning techniques and forecasting frameworks help bring order to the uncertain futures of legacy cities. Attendees will come away with a sense of how to incorporate that uncertainty into population forecasting, as well as a sense of tools and techniques to incorporate multiple futures into planning. (CM 0.75)

Speakers:

Tom Hilde, Assistant Professor, Cleveland State University  

Anthony Kobak, City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  

Hunter Morrison, Senior Fellow, Cleveland State University  

Alex Steinberger, Managing Partner, Cascadia Partners 

Join regional planners from Boston, Massachusetts, and state-level planners from Michigan as they discuss scenario planning efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Boston’s Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has created scenarios to investigate possible mid-term (3–5 year) economic impacts of COVID-19 and to determine a range of responsive policy strategies which may be needed immediately as the economy is impacted by the pandemic or later, as the economy rebounds.    

Michigan Mobility 2045 launched its forecasting and scenario planning practice just as COVID-19 struck, leaving the team with new questions about economic trajectories alongside new demand for e-commerce, telecommuting, and other technology changes. EBP used consensus building workshops to inform data analysis tasks, including travel demand model runs, which helped the agency understand how slower and faster growth and shifts in location preferences might affect network performance.  

Presenters will touch on incorporating unemployment, supply chain for key industries, activity location, technology, and other areas impacted by the pandemic into scenario planning processes. (CM 0.75)    

Speakers:

Sarah Philbrick, Senior Research Analyst, Metropolitan Area Planning Council  

Kyle Schroeckenthaler, Principal, EBP  

Naomi Stein, Principal, EBP  

Attend this final networking opportunity to sit down with fellow conference attendees and discuss hot topics in scenario planning today such as COVID-19, Diversity & Inclusion, Legacy Cities and more. This networking hour will take place in Remo, an interactive networking space with tables and couches (yes, virtual couches!) where you can catch up with fellow conference attendees.

When you arrive, peruse the topics at each of the tables and choose one that interests you most and enjoy a robust discussion with fellow attendees. If you wish to attend, but skip the topics, not to worry - just step away from the tables and head to the couches at the side of the room to continue your conversations.

Hear from four of the Consortium’s RFP winners whose projects build on our understanding of how to adapt scenario planning tools and processes for communities facing limited economic and/or population growth or decline. (CM 0.75)

See RFP project descriptions under the Resources section for additional information. 

Speakers and Projects: 

Arnab Chakraborty, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, “Scenario Planning for Shrinking Regions: A Toolkit”  

Tom Hilde, Assistant Professor, Cleveland State University, “‘Comparative Analysis of Scenario-based tools for Legacy City Planning in Youngstown, Ohio”  

Raul Santiago-Bartolomei, Research Associate, Center for a New Economy, “Tracking Changes in Geographies of Opportunity for Post-Disaster Legacy Cities: A Case Study of San Juan, Puerto Rico” 

Ian Varley, Planning Manager, City Explained, “Guidebook and Case Study for Scenario Planning in Areas of Decline and Low-Growth” 

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) uses exploratory scenario planning to assess uncertainty within a changing environment, tell better stories about the future, and inform its long-range plan development.   

This session will cover the process of working with stakeholders and the public to identify and evaluate the structural forces that shape regions, creating an expansive range of extreme but plausible futures, and incorporating scenarios into a long-range plan and other strategic planning efforts. Attendees will also come away with an understanding of how the DVRPC’s scenarios help planners understand different ways in which highly automated vehicles could be deployed in the Greater Philadelphia area within a broad socioeconomic framework.  (CM 0.75)

Speakers:

Jackie Davis, Senior Planner, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Agency  

Brett Fusco, Manager, Long-Range Planning, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Agency   

Scenario planning tools and practices often imply a baseline of growth and can be hard to apply in shrinking regions as they experience declining populations and economic disinvestment. These regions are often challenged by a lack of financial and organizational capacity and austere sociopolitical dynamics, and they require scenario planning processes that are flexible and practicable, and that emphasize collaborative decision making and social learning over digital tools and modeling. Arnab Chakraborty, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and Emma Walters, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, are developing a draft toolkit for shrinking regions that emphasizes multi stakeholder engagement, storytelling, flexible planning horizons, and integration with programs that are common in shrinking regions.  (CM 0.75)

Speakers:

Arnab Chakraborty, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign  

Emma Walters, Graduate Student, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign  

As the role of urban and community planners continues to evolve, the influence of planning professionals in municipal policy development has grown, particularly in areas related to housing (both in terms of affordability and growth capacity), homelessness, and economic development.     

This session will show how two cities use web-based geospatial tools to validate policy and then translate that policy into viable development scenarios for review.  (CM 0.75)

Speakers:

Keith Cooke, Industry Manager for Planning and Community Development, Esri  

Topic proposed:

How are you planning on addressing the major budget cuts to transit service due to the pandemic?

How will these cuts affect land-use patterns over the next 10 years?

by Anders Hart

Topic proposed:

How should climate scenarios impact planning e.g. sea level rise in coastal areas?

by Stephen Still