On-Demand Webcasts
On-demand sessions are available to view at your convenience for CM credit through December 31, 2023
** More webcasts will be added to this list throughout the year **
Planning for Sustainable Energy Production: A Nature-Based Approach to Large-Scale Solar
#9262544
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
Ecosystem services and… solar energy? It’s not exactly chocolate and peanut butter. This webinar will present the ground-breaking results of the PV-SMaRT project and the “community co-benefits” approach to solar development. This U.S. DOE funded project developed new tools for planners to assess water quality risks and opportunities associated with solar energy. The webinar will also introduce a new project, launching in 2023, on nature-based solutions for solar development that can provide communities with more tools for ensuring local benefits from large-scale solar development.
Large-scale solar is a rapidly growing land use that is critically important to solving the climate crisis, but also poses unique risks and opportunities to local ecosystem functions, including water quality, soil health, habitat, and cultural/visual functions. Indeed, some solar projects have resulted in spectacular water quality failures or ecosystem damage. But the opportunity for creating “co-benefits” in local ecosystems is also remarkable. Planning professionals strive to protect community natural systems in the development process. If we restore watershed functions, create new habitat and build soil health… is it a solar farm, or is it green infrastructure?
Planning for Equity: Supporting At-Risk Communities in Regions That Flood
#9262811
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
At-risk communities are disproportionately impacted both by increased flooding and the policy and market responses to flooding conditions. In this context, what is “social equity” and how is it related to climate resilience for all? How can planners ensure an equitable response to flooding?
Panelists Shannon Van Zandt and Jaimie Hicks Masterson of Texas A&M University and Dr. Tisha Holmes of Florida State University will talk to planners about working in partnership with communities of color and other socio-economically disadvantaged communities to increase resilience to flood risk and its associated impacts. Drawing on urban and rural examples across the United States, this program will illustrate the proactive role for planning in addressing equity issues in flooding-impacted regions. These issues include infrastructure planning and provision for at-risk communities, market pressures leading to displacement, planned retreat, emergency management, and community capacity building, to name a few.
Climate change will continue to disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. This session will highlight why social equity needs to be front and center regarding all climate action and will highlight how equity has been integrated in the tools and resources overviewed.
The Climate Data Power Hour
#9262596
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
As climate conditions change, understanding what data and tools are available to inform planning decisions is critical. This webinar features a climate data & technology vendor panel to introduce urban planners to data and tools to help communities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and respond to climate impacts. During this session, each climate data and technology provider will speak for (5-7 minutes). These presentations will be followed by a facilitated discussion with all providers.
This webinar is sponsored jointly by The APA Technology Division, APA Sustainable Communities Division, and APA's Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division and is based on a similar event organized by Alta Planning + Design.
Advancing Large-Scale Climate Resilient Projects through Planning & Financing
#9266007
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
This webinar aims to link the importance of the planning process with the financing options needed for implementation. The webinar will provide an overview of planning processes by two Federal Agencies (HUD and DOT) with examples of creative financing tools offered by government to help communities develop large-scale, front-end investments in climate resilient infrastructure. Representatives from the federal agencies (HUD, DOT) will provide an overview of an example of financing resources that enable large-scale climate resilient infrastructure projects.
The Climate Planner: Doing the Hard Work of Community Engagement on Climate
#9266008
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
The world’s changing climate is a global problem that must be solved at the local level and yet many urban planners are averse to getting in the middle of another political hot-button topic; especially because they don’t know how effective they can be. At the local level, there is neither consensus that the climate is changing nor an agreed-upon approach to mitigate or to adapt to change. Jason King’s The Climate Planner: Overcoming Pushback Against Local Mitigation and Adaptation Plans (Routledge, 2021) demonstrates how urban planners can make a visible and important difference through local community actions that address the global climate problem. The book has stories from 16 years of climate planning in every kind of place: from progressive coastal cities facing sea level rise to conservative rural municipalities contending with an increasingly arid landscape. This webinar is about overcoming the objections to climate change mitigation and adaption that planners face everyday. Two climate planners will describe how to draft climate plans that encounter less resistance because they involve the public, stakeholders, and decisionmakers in a way that builds trust, educates, creates consensus, and leads to implementation.
Nature-Based Solutions: Cutting Edge Planning for Sustainability
#9268673
CM | 1.5
SR | 1.0
Planners today are asked to respond to a complex set of community challenges, including the mitigation of extreme weather effects, provision of equitable open space access, beautification of public spaces, and collaboration with a diverse array of actors who build, maintain and regulate the built environment. “Nature-Based Solutions” or “NBS” is a term which refers to a broad set of practices that work with the natural environment to create healthier, better functioning, and risk-prepared urban places. In this session, you will hear from three professionals employing innovative NBS solutions in regions such as New England, the Mid- Atlantic, and Western plains states.
