Call for Entries for APA Techn Div Awards Pgm, Includes Best Use of Techn 4 P2

We're glad to share this announcement from the American Planning Association's Technology Division:

"The Technology Division of the American Planning Association will be issuing the following awards at the 2011 National APA Conference in Boston, MA. The deadline to submit an award is March 15th, 2011.

Category 1- Best Use of Technology to Improve a Plan or Planning Process This category recognizes an organization for the creative use of technology in improving planning processes. Examples may include technology in subdivision approval, urban design, or comprehensive planning.
Category 2- Best Use of Technology for Public Participation This category recognizes an organization for the best use of technology to enhance public involvement and participation in planning and decision making processes.
Category 3- Best Use of Technology for a University Urban and Regional Planning Program This category recognizes an accredited university planning program for the most effective use of teaching with technology in preparing future planners for professional work. This can include the work of a single class or the use of technology to benefit all students in the program.
Category 4- Best Paper on Technology in Planning This category recognizes a student for an outstanding paper on the use of technology in planning. Papers must have been originally written by a single author for a class in a planning program in a US college or university. Master's theses, terminal professional reports, and student group projects are not eligible. Papers may be no more than 20 pages long, including references. Tables, maps, and other diagrams may supplement the 20 pages of text, but not exceed five pages. Papers must be typed and double-spaced with margins of at least 1 inch and 12 point font.

Eligibility:
Open to APA members and non-members in the U.S. Any plan, project, program, process, report, paper etc must have been published, implemented, or completed within two years of the date of submission.
Nominators must assign each submission to one category. No changes will be allowed after the submission deadline. The jury may move a submission from one category to another.
Members of the Technology Division Awards Committee are not eligible to enter, to be nominated, or to receive awards.

Deadline:
Submission deadline for the Technology Division Awards is March 15th, 2011. All submissions should be submitted electronically.

Criteria for Technology Division Award Categories 1-4:
Originality/Innovation- Document how your entry presents a visionary approach or innovative concept to address agency or customer needs. Explain how the use of the planning process in this context broadened the use of technology within the context of the local situation.
Transferability- Illustrate how the entry has potential application for others and how application of your entry's components and methodology would further the cause of good planning.
Quality- Winning entries will represent excellence of thought, analysis, writing and graphics throughout the nomination, regardless of budgetary limitations. Indicate how available resources were used in a thoughtful and ethical process.
Comprehensiveness- Specify how planning principles have been observed, especially in consideration of your entry's effects on other public objectives. Identify to what extent your entry includes elements important to the local community.
Role of Planners- Clarify the role, significance and participation of the planner; for instance, how in-house staff and consultants worked together. Demonstrate the connection between the success of this effort and increased awareness of planners and the planning process. (Category 4 submissions do not need to address this item).
Effectiveness/Results- State how your entry addressed the need or problem that prompted its initiation. Be explicit about how the results have made a difference in the lives of the people affected. Convey the level of effectiveness your entry could have over time.

The entire awards application, along with other relevant details regarding the 2011 Awards Program can be downloaded here.

For questions regarding the 2011 Awards Program, please contact Harsh Prakash."

DiamondTouch, Cool New Interactive Hands On Tool for Engmt

Ken Snyder and the folks at Placematters have a cool new video on their website about a tool called DiamondTouch.

Visit their site to see Ken doing a brief hands-on demo with Adam Bogue of Circle Twelve of AnyWare using on a DiamondTouch Multi-Touch Touch Table.

New Article on New Generation of P2: Internet-based Participation Tools

Check out the new article entitled "The New Generation of Public Participation: Internet-based Participation Tools" by Jennifer Evans-Cowley, Ph.D., AICP and Justin Hollander, Ph.D., AICP in the latest issue of Planning Practice & Research.

Abstract
"Since the advocacy planners of the 1960s first brought widespread public participation to the planning process, there have been innovations and improvements. However, the participation practices in the real world, with its face-to-face politics of difference and unequal power relations, are flawed. Today, technology allows for an entirely new generation of forms and practices of public participation that promise to elevate the public discourse in an unprecedented manner while providing an interactive, networked environment for decision-making. This is occurring with asynchronous communities interacting with one another on a variety of planning subjects, which allows for more democratic planning and more meaningful participation. In this paper, we review the ways in which today's web-based virtual worlds, like Facebook and Second Life, provide platforms for public participation in planning in a manner distinct from previous formats. We explore the different ways that citizens and communities are using web-based technologies for citizen participation, including the use of Facebook for community organizing around planning issues and of Second Life for virtual workshops. We include case studies of communities that are using these tools. The paper concludes by exploring the contribution that virtual participation can make to planning and examines the challenges that it poses."

Click here to locate the article (if you do not have a subscription, there is a fee to download the article)

Technology Tools for P2

Earlier this year, the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy published a report entitled "Visual Tools for Planners: Representing Possibilities of Change for Places, People, Economies, and Ecosystems: A Handbook to Accompany the Visual Tools for Planners Website." The report complements the listing of visual tools that the institute has compiled on their website.

According to the report, this work focuses on the use of technology to illustrate or organize "four general ideas: the geography of physical place, the relationships and movements of individual persons and their relationships to each other in prior and newly emerging communities, the economy from individual firms to regional transformations to global disruptions, and the ecosystems (including in particular the hydrologic systems of river and coast, terrestrial and aquatic ecological communities, agricultural production landscapes, and global warming). The intent is to display relationships and change in ways that help people think systemically and creatively and to communicate across diverse perspectives of varying knowledge.