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Preparing planners to effectively engage with climate change poses vexing multi-level challenges for instructors across content, pedagogy, and relationships. There exists an urgent need, and demand, for training and education in climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. This bi-national study assesses the current state of climate change planning pedagogy in Canada and the United States. Findings indicate wide variation in the breadth and depth of teaching climate change planning and major gaps to be addressed, including increasing the number of required and elective courses. Recommendations offered in the conclusion speak to program directors, instructors, and practitioners alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Just Energy Transitions" is a collection of articles that explore the intersection of urban planning, energy transitions, and social justice. The articles cover topics such as energy poverty, equitable access to renewable energy, and the role of Artificial Intelligence in energy systems. Authors discuss challenges such as predatory solar panel contracts, debt in energy systems, and the need for inclusive planning processes. The collection emphasizes the importance of integrating technological innovation with social equity to achieve just and sustainable energy futures. [Extracted from the article]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: What should planners do when members of the public "care loudly" at them? Planning scholars have recently called for more attention to the emotional dimensions of our profession. In the context of reflecting on Arnstein's "A Ladder of Citizen Participation," we identify the emotional paradox of public engagement. This paradox arises because our emotions often motivate us to plan so that all people in our communities can flourish rather than suffer, but our instincts, reinforced by our education, training, and professional norms, may lead us to try to control or avoid emotions altogether in the actual work of planning. Our research strategy involves critically analyzing the language of Arnstein's article for its emotional content. We systematically review contemporary sources of guidance and training for planners (including from the APA, the AICP, and the Planning Accreditation Board) to determine whether and how the emotional dimensions of planning are addressed. We synthesize insights on contending with emotion from the psychology and neuroscience literatures and also synthesize practice-oriented resources for leveraging emotional and social intelligence to overcome the emotional paradox. We find that Arnstein's article evocatively reveals the emotional paradox. Our review of the contemporary knowledge, training, and skills available from major planning organizations demonstrates contemporary pervasiveness of the paradox. Research from psychology and neuroscience demonstrates, from a basic scientific standpoint, that trying to maintain the paradox is impossible, which helps to explain common pitfalls that planners fall into when doing their work. Takeaway for practice: Planners should reflect deeply on how they engage emotions in their work and how their approach constrains and enables their effectiveness. Deepening emotional, social, and cultural intelligence holds considerable potential for meeting our field's aspirational goals of fostering more compassionate and inclusive communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adapting to the impacts of human-caused climate change is a critical challenge facing cities worldwide. But, local climate adaptation planning is in its infancy. Early on, cities must decide whether to take a narrow-scope approach focused solely on reducing risks from climate impacts or to take a broad-scope approach embedding adaptation planning within wider ranging community concerns. They also must decide whether or not to formally involve their planning agency in adaptation planning. We used content analysis methods to assess a national sample of United States municipal plans. We find that cities with plans with a narrow-scope approach, focused on reducing risks, perform better in terms of plan integration and including more land use policies that can steer development out of hazardous areas. Formal involvement of planning agencies in adaptation planning processes is associated with more plan integration, but not necessarily inclusion of more land use policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compassion—the awareness of and motivation to increase care and reduce suffering—is an ethical orientation that encompasses emotions and thoughts. A growing body of evidence indicates that compassion can be intentionally cultivated, with potentially transformative impacts at the individual, organizational, and process levels. We examine the applicability of compassion for planning, particularly for transforming strongly held values and norms that contribute to seemingly intractable challenges. We identify four categories of planning work in which compassion cultivation can be undertaken and four directions for future research on the application of compassion in planning practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Municipal planners write staff reports reviewing development applications to submit to planning and zoning commissions. Staff reports are probably planners' most common, but least studied, work products. A small literature provides -guidance on writing better staff reports, but questions remain: What makes a quality staff report; what are their contents; and what is the state of today's staff reports? We summarize the literature on writing staff reports and develop a tool to assess the content of a national sample of staff reports. We analyze whether staff reports include traditional and modern elements. We find that many staff reports provide traditional basic information, but do not summarize that information or use modern formatting tools to make text more comprehensible. Most staff reports reference the comprehensive plan but rarely cite the future land use map or plans of adjacent jurisdictions. Many mention checking traditional public facilities like roads, but rarely list parks or pedestrian or cycling facilities. Most do not include maps, arguments for recommendations, or references to soliciting public input. Takeaway for practice: Planning departments can improve staff reports through simple changes in report organization and graphics. Planners can use this assessment tool to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their staff reports, and scholars can use this approach to analyze how staff reports affect the quality of decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention to if and how plans are implemented is increasing. Among the conceptions of plan implementation used by scholars, plan conformance and plan performance are most prominent, though rarely have both been assessed in a single study. We assess plan conformance and a modified version of performance, which we call influence, for a sample of more than 100 local hazard mitigation plans developed in response to a national planning requirement in the United States. Our findings indicate that progress on implementation of the policies included in the plans (plan conformance) is moderate, but that the rate of progress varies widely by the type of policy and the state in which the local jurisdiction is located. The findings also indicate that coordination of hazard mitigation plans (plan influence) is strongest with other emergency management agency-led planning initiatives and weaker with planning initiatives led by other agencies. National officials interested in advancing local implementation of national goals need to consider the degree to which state and local governments are given autonomy to select and prioritize local policies included in plans, as well as constraints on coordination across planning initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broad stakeholder involvement cannot be assumed in all environmental planning and management processes that have critical land use dimensions. This paper illustrates how concepts and techniques from social network analysis (SNA) can be used to examine and better understand the roles of one type of stakeholders, planners, in environmentally oriented planning and management processes led by other professions. Two cases of natural hazard mitigation planning led by emergency managers illustrate the usefulness of three SNA concepts of network structural characteristics in understanding how differences in planner involvement may influence incorporation of land use approaches in local natural hazard mitigation plans aimed at reducing long term risks from natural hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]