APA Revises National Awards Program

by Dennis Andrew Gordon, AICP Director, APA Region IV

Notice of the 1998 Call for Entries for APA's National Awards for Planning is shown below. Please take time to review it and don't hesitate to obtain the actual entry form, available through various options. You'll see a number of positive changes to the awards program made this year by the Board of Directors. The improvements include new categories to broaden the scope of entries, more detailed criteria, and stricter limitations on each entry's volume.

It goes without saying that encouraging excellence in planning has been APA's major purpose since the association's inception. Within those past 19 years, the awards program has been one of APA's most highly visible programs to accomplish this, according to Planning Editor Sylvia Lewis. That visibility continues to grow.

The awards presented in San Diego generated more media interest than any past effort; this included a number of spots on San Diego television. The recent addition of award winners to the APA web site (http://www.planning.org/abtapa/awards.html) will only increase this visibility.

APA's newly adopted organizational development plan set a course for a comprehensive public education program for the association. This improved awards program is just one of the "tools" APA President Eric Kelly was talking about when he told the awards luncheon in San Diego that APA was going to work hard to provide planners the tools they need to "tell the planning story."

When you combine the growing visibility of our awards program with the commitment of the Board and Mr. Kelly to communicate the importance and value of planning, you see why the review of our awards program was in order. As the nation's only professional association dedicated to good planning, APA should set the standard for what is "good." If you compare the past awards program with the revised content of this year's brochure, you'll see the Board has put us in a very good position to find it.

Please encourage your peers to nominate those efforts that will help us professional and as an organization. With a little effort by everyone, APA should be able to ferret out those cutting-edge planning efforts that will help us all "tell the planning story."