Petra Hurtado, Chief Foresight and Knowledge Officer of the American Planning Association (APA)
* AI generated ranslation*

Grüezi and hello, welcome to the new episode of the Raumdigital podcast.

This time it's a live recording from the REAl CORP conference here in Graz this year.

It's the 30th REAl CORP and I'm very happy that we can be part of the anniversary edition of CORP with this live podcast.

My guest today is Petra Hurtado. She is Chief Foresight and Knowledge Officer of the American Planning Association, APA.

We had already given a wonderful keynote on "Planning with the Future" two days ago.

And I'm delighted that today we can talk about how to plan for the future, learn more about the APA Foresight Report and also how the topic of artificial intelligence in spatial planning is viewed from an American planning perspective. Welcome, Petra.

Thank you for the invitation.

Let's get started right away. How do you plan for the future? Until now, I've always planned for the future.

Yes, and that's exactly the catch.

So planning in and of itself, yes, includes the future. So you don't plan for the past, you plan for something that isn't there yet.

The problem, however, if you look at how we do spatial planning, you normally always start by collecting a bunch of data from somewhere. The moment it's collected, it's already from the past and then of course you look at what the current problems are, what the goals are that you have, based on what's currently happening in the city or in the municipality, so to speak, and you combine the past and the present in plans for the future, so to speak, and there's already a disconnect somewhere and our thesis is that we say, yes, we also have to include the future in the planning, That's why we say that we have to plan for the future with the future in mind and the idea behind this is that we really have to look, not just assume changes by saying that what is in our plans is what the future will be, but that we really have to look a bit outside of the box and really understand what other changes are happening around us that we as planners can't influence now . So we call this the external drivers of change and there are all those that originally come from the military or from the business world and business strategy world, which is foresight. And yes, we have looked at what methods there are and are currently trying to integrate them into planning processes so that we can really plan for the future.

And one result of this is always the Foresight Report, which is published annually.

That's right, our Annual Trend Report for Planners. Well, we've already published the fourth one this year.

And the idea is really that we can support planners in their work, that they can really include the future in plans, we also offer open access.

We know that it is also a lot of work to identify all these external drivers of change and then to see how this fits in with the planning, what can we do with it?

And simply to promote that, we are making this report available, open access, also with the support of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which I should mention here.

And yes, so that the planners already have a tool, so to speak, a basis that they can then use.

So it's not an academic report, but really an up-to-date guide for planners on what to expect or how to plan for the future.

Exactly, we really see it as a tool. It's not meant to be read from cover to cover. That would be rather exhausting, I think. And the idea really is that these reports almost always have around 100 trends.

And so that you can use this as a tool, we structure it in such a way that we structure these action items or activities that are related to them into timeframes, so to speak. So we have three so-called timeframes. The first timeframe is the "Act Now" timeframe. This is about existing trends and how you have to incorporate them nowadays. Some of these are not new things, but things that you can already see in our cities. Then we have the "Prepare" timeframe, which is really about what these "emerging" things are that are either generally new or simply new for urban planning and how we can prepare for them in principle. In other words, the first considerations are how to integrate this into plans, or into policies and other things, how to prepare plans, so to speak. And then the third timeframe, the so-called learn-and-watch timeframe. This is about potential future trends, i.e. things that are not yet trends, but, well, we also call them signals, these are the things where you think, yes, if this becomes a trend, then it can be really disruptive and bring about major changes and these are the things where you say, yes, we want to learn a bit more about that. So these are often things that, at first glance, don't look like they have anything to do with planning at all. So we also talk about things like Jeff Bezos traveling into space and then we look at what the impacts are on Earth and there are obviously planning impacts there too.

And that means we want to learn these things, understand them better, but also then, in other words this learn and watch, really observe which direction they really take in the future.

And if we stay with the watch timeframe.

You say it's the subject of flying to Mars.

So it's also about spatial planning on Mars?

Partly yes.

So it was really interesting how we started to thicken things up a bit.

The fact is that there are currently many programs at NASA that are very closely related to planning.

So there are projects where attempts are being made to generate solar energy directly from the sun, for example, and then bring it back to earth using microwaves.

to generate energy in outer space that can be used on Earth, so to speak. There is a program on the subject of outer space agriculture, so they have also planted tomatoes at the International Space Station to see how vegetables grow in outer space. It's also very interesting, so NASA is currently hiring a lot of farmers to actually carry out this research.

The tomatoes came back to earth last year. No one knows if anyone has eaten one. So that's

It's such a mystery at the moment. But the whole thing, for example, we're now talking a lot about these rare earth minerals and so on, where people are currently really looking at where they can be found on Earth, where people are now actually taking a closer look at topics such as Mars mining and moon mining. So fascinating programs at the moment and all of this is somehow connected to how these things are done on Earth and that's just one way of approaching it and there's also this idea of colonizing Mars, so there's Mars, there's also interesting research on how to genetically modify the human body so that you can actually live on Mars. I could probably talk for an hour on this topic alone.

It's fascinating. The fact is, if any of these things really become a trend or mainstream, first of all, how do we  with it on Earth?

And then, of course, things like Jeff Bezos and so on, who is also somehow pushing this out-of-space tourism. What kind of impact do we have there, because space stations are being built everywhere.

So it's just, we try to look at it from a realistic perspective, what are the real impacts down on Earth.

And I mean, I also have a very critical view of the whole thing, because I think to myself, yes, shouldn't we be looking to live more sustainably on our planet and deal with things instead of now looking for other places where we can extract energy and resources and all sorts of things.

So, yes, I have my own opinion on that, but yes.

That would probably be Air-Twents, which would then appear at ACT and PREPARE, the topic of sustainability, right?

Exactly.

Yes, it's also quite exciting when you look back over the years.

So we had some topics in the watch-and-learn timeframe in the first year that have now really moved on to the ACT-Now.

So artificial intelligence is a topic where we initially thought, yes, let's see what that actually means for planning.

And that is now an ACT-Now.

So that is quite clear, it has developed very quickly.

So within three years is really fast from a watch.

I hope that the Mars colonization thing doesn't happen in three years' time.

That it takes longer, yes.

I hope so too.

How is the Foresight Report structured?

You have already mentioned the three timeframes.

How do you look into the future in order to be able to plan for it?

Yes, in foresight and trend research, you always start with quantity and then filter it down to quality.

We usually start with a really messy sheet where we just throw in everything we see.

So these are things that you read somewhere in the newspapers, things that you discuss with people somewhere in conferences.

So really this signal sensing and trend research.

We usually have somewhere between 600 and 800 topics in the summer and then we really have a matrix where we filter it, where we say, okay, what are the things that have the biggest impact?

What are the things where planners are least prepared?

And what are the things that are pretty certain to happen, with high certainty, so to speak?

I have to say, we are a team of five or six people at the APA who do this.

And of course we are not the only ones doing this.

So one thing that is also very important is that you need diversity.

So you simply need many different perspectives on the whole thing, because we often live in our mindset and don't really want to break out of it.

So we then actually started to recruit a Trendsguard community.

And this is really a group of around 50 people, from all over the world, who meet with us four times a year via Zoom to share their observations.

And what's really important is that we really have a diverse group together.

And is that an American group or is it more of a global one?

Worldwide. So really international.

I think we now have someone from every continent.

And the important thing is that in the first year we only had planners from different planning areas, i.e. transport planning or environmental planning, and then we realized that this does not bring us to this out-of-the-box thinking, these external drivers of change, and then we really started to recruit people from a wide range of disciplines.

So we have architects and engineers, but we also have anthropologists and sociologists, we also have a psychologist. We also have a public health specialist.

Computer science. So really right across the board. And what we soon realized was that we were talking about the future, but the future wasn't at the table, so to speak. So we started recruiting young people in particular. So we also have students in the group. So it's not just about everyone being an insane expert and thought leader, but we really just want to see how people see the world and how they see the future.

And yes, the group is really essential to the work, because we really do bring in very diverse perspectives

can. In other words, you then use these 600 sensors with the group, condense them and then prepare them in the timeframes so that they are manageable for the planners?

So the Trendscout community helps us to build up these 800 items, so to speak, and then we do this filtering with this matrix in the APE department.

There are always lots of Post-its involved in the conference room, on all the walls. It always looks very funny in our office. But yes, it really does involve this evaluation matrix.

And if you look at the report, you also have the future interviews in there.

Are these then people from this group or are they experts who you then specifically ask about individual topics?

Both.

So that is also very important.

Of course, we also want to feature the voices of the trend scouts somewhere in the report.

But we have also had people from outside.

It's often the case when we have a topic where we say we can't write too much about it now, but it wouldn't be interesting to hear someone's opinion.

For example, last year we had someone on the subject of water.

Then we'll do that.

When ChatGPT came out, we had an interview with ChatGPT about how ChatGPT sees the future of AI.

That was also quite exciting.

And exactly, and yes, our trend scouts are also featured there again and again.

Then let's take a look at a few trends.

And also with these different glasses.

For example, one trend that you have identified is the growing importance of public spaces.

I think it's somehow obvious at least once in the planning world that this is an issue for you.

But what surprised me was that you also included the importance of robots in the topic of public spaces.

What's it all about?

Yes, in general you have to say that public spaces have always changed with society, with technology and innovations.

For a long time now, the car was unfortunately the main factor in public space, especially in the USA.

But you can see, especially now after the pandemic, how people are actually trying to re-enter this public space and really have a community there.

So we have a lot of different trends coming in with how public space is changing at the moment. When it comes to robots, there are currently a lot of different pilots for all kinds of robots.

In South Korea, for example, more and more people are now being included as life partners because people are simply lonely and the population is decreasing.

But there are many different forms, such as food delivery, where there are many pilot projects on how to deliver food with robots. And when it comes to public spaces, it's kind of a question of where these robots will move.

We already have the problem that we are really concentrating on the road, the sidewalk and possibly the cycle path.

We have three forms of space where different vehicles can move around. Now we already have the problem of where to put the scooters and all .
new vehicles that are being added.

And the same question also arises with robots, of course, if any food suppliers or delivery robots are suddenly also on the road.

I find that generally quite interesting. I think there was also a report from the OECD two years ago where they really thought about how vehicles should be divided up on the road and in public spaces.

And not in such a way that you say, okay, car, bike, scooter, robot or whatever, but rather that you look more at size and speed and change things according to size and speed.

I found that really exciting.

This means that the robots then virtually float together with the autonomous cars and then, when they slow down, move to other spaces.

Something like that, yes.

Yes, well, public space is discussed differently there than I perceive it here in Europe, where the topic of exchange and climate protection in public space is becoming increasingly important.

But also the issue of homelessness.

However, two years ago I was traveling on the West Coast during my sabbatical.

Homelessness in the USA due to the opiate crisis has a completely different dimension to what we are used to here in Europe.

Yes, it really is a huge problem. It's also constantly on the rise.

LA is really bad. There really is such a tent city with, I don't know, 200,000 people living there now. So LA and San Francisco are hotspots, Chicago and New York are also becoming more and more popular. Which is also interesting in terms of climate, because Chicago has really cold winters. But the interesting thing about homelessness is that it's really regulated differently in every city. In Milwaukee, for example, it's actually the responsibility of the city's health department because it's more of a hygiene issue.

For example, the planners have nothing to do with homelessness.

And then somewhere else it's a question of planning again.

What is also interesting in the USA is that you are allowed to camp on federal land. So if you pitch your tent under a highway, for example, is that legal in and of itself? Of course, this is also a question of regulation.

And I mean, of course, what then comes into play is that we are still trying to find out what the background is to why it is rising so strongly. And a lot of components come together. You mentioned the opioid crisis, but we also have a mega housing crisis in the US. So yes, it started before the pandemic. But then there are a lot of people who lost their jobs during the pandemic. There was this eviction moratorium, where you weren't allowed to kick anyone out of their apartment and after Covid that was just gone. That means all these people are now losing their homes. And at the same time, mental health problems are also a huge problem in the USA. You could say that many of these mental institutions have been closed in recent decades and there are fewer and fewer opportunities to reintegrate these people into society.

It's really like a snowball effect at the moment.

And yes, nobody feels responsible.

I think that's the really difficult thing.

It's now urban planning, it's public health, it's housing and it all has to work together somehow so that people have a chance to get off the streets.

Correct, yes.

what I always discussed with the planner back then and also what you could see in the cities.

San Francisco, Market Street is completely barricaded to Portland, the city center.

And life then takes place in the suburbs.

The Urban Quarters are getting a much bigger boost, because that's where the demand is and bars are springing up.

At some point, Jeff Bezos will come back with the Whole Food Market and then you know that the neighborhood will be gentrified.

But there are also quarters that go down again after a year or two and pop up somewhere else.

Yes, you have to say that a lot has changed with Covid. The fact that these mixed-use areas are not as strong as they are now in Europe because of all the zoning regulations in the USA has meant that all these central business districts have suffered completely because people no longer go to the city center to work.

And it's still the case that we still have an insane amount of space in Chicago where offices are still empty. So there's also a huge amount of competition between buildings at the moment and that of course also contributes to the fact that during Covid, life has simply become more focused on the neighborhoods, on the suburbs, and so the central business district has actually become less and less relevant.

Was that in your Forscheit report on the subject of unobservability?

We had that, I think it was last year or the year before last, as a rising trend.

We have already reported a lot on this whole housing crisis, because that is simply the real issue in planning at the moment.

We also have an initiative on this topic at the APA itself, where we are actually now pushing for zoning reform.

Just see that with the strict zoning regulations, you're actually taking away a lot of space that could actually be for denser development.

It's sometimes crazy what kind of lawsuits are going on when a city tries to develop a single-family housing estate So yes, quite, it's a bit different from...

But I think that when I look around here, we have exactly the same issue in Europe.

That is, no, from Austria to the Netherlands, in Switzerland, in Germany, that is exactly the topic everywhere, how do you manage to transform the space, not just densely for the sake of density, but actually to bring in quality.

Correct.

And density is such a word that you're not even allowed to mention it in public in the USA.

But it's no different here.

Density tends to arouse fears rather than saying, cool, more will happen there now, more sports facilities, more schools will be built there because more people live there.

So we make the connection between planning colleagues, but not in public.

What I also find very exciting about this topic is that you can't achieve very much with digital twins and visualization and things like that, because people often can't even imagine how a street space is changing.

Simply by saying, okay, we'll add another storey to make it denser.

And it's often the case when you've seen the pictures or the visualization that people then say, ah yes, that actually looks much nicer.

And then they actually tend to say, yes, that's actually what we want.

Tools like this are now also very, very helpful.

You mean because people are more likely to see that it won't be so bad, the neighbor won't shade my property after all.

Exactly.

Yes.

I've already seen this at several conferences, where case studies are presented and there's a huge crowd because nobody wants the plan that's been drawn up to be implemented.

And then you have somehow created a digital twin and then the different variants are shown and so, well, actually, that's nice anyway, let's do that.

Yes, very interesting to observe.

And how far along are American cities when it comes to digitalization and digital twin? Can you estimate that?

These are big differences and it is also very interesting because it correlates a little with the feedback we received from our members on our Trend Report.

So there are really some people who always want to try out the latest things and then somehow find ways to do it.

In some cases, the costs are also an issue.

And then there are others who say you're so completely insane, what are you talking about?

And that's how it really is in the landscape.

You can see both in the USA.

Does this have anything to do with the size of the cities or with the location in the country where these cities are located?

I don't think you can say that at all.

We also have this program with the Big City Planning Directors, where the planning directors of the 30 largest cities in the USA meet twice a year and you can actually see both.

So you see some who are completely innovative and want to try out everything new and then there are some who say, no, off to the Schindle, I don't want that. So even if these are the biggest cities in reality.

And at the same time, you can also see in smaller municipalities that they are happy to try out new things, as long as there is some kind of funding available.

So with the size, the money issue is more of a problem.

I don't know, so there are things like that, but basically, I think, when it comes to planning, it's more like the government and when it comes to planning, you're always dependent on political will.

But in general, I would say that there is a complete mix of planners. So I couldn't say that this type of planner is innovative and that type is not.

And what is the situation with AI among planners? Is that an issue? I mean, you have a plan report in there.

Yes, we really made it an issue with the planners in the USA. So of course there were a few people who were already dealing with it, but that was more like counting on one hand. It was also an issue when we started five or four years ago, when people asked us, since you've been fully involved, why are you talking about this? But the interesting thing was that we actually started five or six years ago and distributed all kinds of guidebooks and papers and podcasts and everything else to our members to raise awareness of the topic.

The big turning point came with chat GPT, I would say, because everyone really uses it in their private lives or professionally and it was then that our members actually came to us and said, "Hey, we need your training, could you help us?" And we were like, yes, we've been talking about it for five years, but we'll do it. And then we actually had a training course on how to use chat GPT responsibly in planning. We had over 1000 people attend the webinar. So that was well received.

And so how I perceive it now from the other side of the pond is that the discussion about the responsible use of AI is more present than I perceive it here, at least in the DACH region. But of course I look at the DACH region differently and there I just see LinkedIn, I see your APA seminars, so I only have a specific view. Would you say that's the case or do I have a shifted or limited view there?

No, I think that's also very important in our planning.

In the USA, planning in and of itself has a very poor reputation.

So there have also been things in the past where planning has actually created inequalities in the cities, with the segregation of people, with redlining, where certain population groups were really excluded from entire neighborhoods, intentionally. Planning really does have a black past, if you want to call it that. And over the last ten or twenty years, people have really tried to change that and really bring in inclusion and diversity and equity and all these things and really put that as an umbrella over planning. And we're already aware that if we don't use AI responsibly, it can of course reinforce all these inequalities. So it's really about the question of what data goes into the program, what algorithm is in there, what effect it has and what comes out of it. So we really discuss this with our fellow children and say, yes, you can't just blindly accept it all, you really have to question it. Who in the population is included in this data, who is not included, how can this data then be recorded so that we can really, how do you say, this is really an important point in planning in the USA, because so many mistakes have  made in the past.

Can you name a few cities, a few projects where you say they are well on the way?

So I would say a lot depends on how cities handle the data. New York, for example, is quite interesting because they actually store and share their data across departments now.

In other words, the Water Department talks to the Planning Department and they can really use all the data, so they actually have a much larger basis for implementing things like AI, as they say.

And that wasn't the case before. It was more the data silos.

Exactly. And that still exists in many cities. So it's really starting to become clear that it would actually be important to coordinate this data. And simply to create the basis for implementing certain tools, including twins and things like that.

And what  data availability?

Well, we don't have the kind of data protection laws in the USA that we have in Europe. Although many states actually look very much to Europe. California has this Consumer Protection Act, which I think is a copy paste of European regulation.

It is very country-specific where you are. There are also certain regulations that focus specifically on one topic and data protection in that topic.

So California really is the stricter state, I would say.

But basically it really is like this, the federal government really is like this, they now have these AI groups to sort out what should actually be introduced nationally and what should be determined at state level?

So there's a lot of uncertainty and a bit of fiddling around, I would say.

Europe now has a risk-based framework via the EU AI Act.

Switzerland has just started the discussion about how it wants to regulate, which is somewhere between the EU rules, which it has to adopt to a large extent if you have an export-oriented economy, but also its innovative strength through less regulation. This is where Switzerland is trying to fit in.  that seems to be similar in the USA.

Yes, they always try to find this balance in the USA. Of course, you don't want to slow down innovation now. They also want to be and remain the market leader. I think it's still the USA at the moment.

So it's always very important in America, but people are usually aware that it can also cause a lot of damage. And I believe that planning is really special in the USA, that people are so careful, simply because they are aware of the past of planning.

In the EU, planning is actually in the third risk category with personal data. We already know the dangers behind this.

On the other hand, there is also legal certainty for areas that are not personal, where you can act quite freely, even as a municipality.

Exactly. I mean, the other thing that we've also shared more in our members in recent years, so to speak, is all these environmental effects of AI.

It's crazy how much energy and water is needed to cool these data centers.

Which is of course also a planning issue, because where will these data centers be located?

What is the impact on the community there?

And I recently read an article where they said that creating an image with Generative AI, like DALI or Journey, consumes as much energy as charging your phone from 0 to 100, so to speak. And you can create images like that quickly and it's fun, and then you get motivated and take lots of them. But many people don't even realize that they're actually using so much energy.

And that is

We have included this in this year's Trend Report as a so-called Deep Dive Topic, i.e. a focus topic. Yes, because it's also important to tell people that, on the one hand, you want to understand how to use this technology and how to train with it so that you really keep up with the times and, on the other hand, yes, you also have to say that you should think about what you really use it for and not use it for everything.

Yes, I read in the report that all data centers in the USA accounted for 2% of CO2 emissions last year and that, I was particularly surprised that this is comparable to the CO2 emissions of all domestic airlines.

Okay, I don't know the figures, but I know, I think it's even 5% worldwide now, which, yes, that says it all anyway, that you should actually think about how to deal with it.

So, that's now the topic of the direct spatial impact of artificial intelligence.

You also focus so much on the topic of how planning is done.

This is now the subject of image recognition, that there are positive things, such as wildfire detection or similar, which is only possible with such computing power.

What direction are you thinking in?

So we are still pursuing both directions.

So on the one hand, we can see that it can be an insane opportunity.

I have to say, there's always this fear that you'll lose your job because of AI and things like that.

And I think, yes, this mass unemployment never really existed, even during the industrial revolution.

I think new jobs are simply being created.

And so we are saying that we should simply keep at it as planners, that we know how to use these tools.

But I believe that this also somehow creates the opportunity to focus more on the human component of planning.

For example, you can use AI to carry out traffic counts. Nobody is interested in doing that anyway. And it's time-consuming and simply takes time away from doing other things at work.

accomplish. And that's where we see the opportunity on the one hand, which is why we will continue to share all this information with our members, but on the other hand we will also share the challenges and the risks, and it's important to spread both. And I think I've forgotten what the question was actually about.

What exactly was the nature of our planning?

Both sides are always illuminated.

Does the APA have a claim to political advice?

Does that exist at the APA or do you say you do services for your members and they then make the policy?

Exactly.

So the planners themselves don't make policy. They try to navigate politics, I would say.

But yes, we are independent of politics and we have a department for advocacy and policy, so we also have someone in DC who, well, we don't do any lobbying because we are a non-profit, but we are always interested in accelerating certain policies or preventing others. But basically, our focus is on the planners themselves and pushing for what planners need to prepare. So we always have a lot of training on new topics. We have this upskilling initiative, which is really about what new skills planners need to learn because they are simply not part of the basic training at the moment. So these are our focus areas.

Can you describe the upscaling in more detail? Are these webinars or are they classic tool user courses? A bit of everything. So we really look at soft skills and hard skills.

As I said, we have already done training for chat type tea at AI, for example. We've done training for Dali on how to use it in planning. And we had one a month ago on the topic of digital twins.

How do you set something like this up? How can you use the budget so that it is somehow justified? Things like that. But we also look a lot at soft skills, where you say, what are the current trends, where you simply realize that planners now need skills that simply didn't originally exist in planning or that have never really been pushed. For example, one thing that is currently a real problem in the USA is public engagement meetings, which are simply becoming increasingly uncivilized. And a lot of it has to do with the political polarization there and the strength of how an opinion is revealed, so to speak. And there have also been some incidents where planners have been threatened with their lives, or where such meetings get completely out of hand.

For example, we now offer training courses on conflict management in public meetings.

So there are also issues like that. We're seeing a lot of developments where we simply have to equip planners with several soft skills so that they can get through and really do their job.

And then your report helps you to prepare yourselves as to what training you need to do. Right, so every year we hold a workshop in the spring when the report is ready, where we really look at each individual trend and discuss what things planners need in order to be able to tackle this trend, so to speak. And then we really look at what knowledge is needed. We then go out to publications or look at who is already doing this and then connect with other experts on the topic. And then we look at what skills we need to be able to respond to this trend.

If we stick to the topic of AI again. We've just been talking more about Act Now.

What trends do you see in the Prepare or even the Watch area at AI?

Yes, so the next focus for us is to really look at what tools can really be used in planning. We are currently working with a city - I'm not going to say the name because it's not official yet - which is actually a testbed where you can actually make certain tools in Pilot.

So for us, the next step is really to give the information to our members and say, yes, this tool can automate permitting processes and then share it.

Because that's also a big question that we're getting a lot of at the moment.

So, yes, now you've explained all these things to us, now what?

And so now it's really about looking.

In some cases, there are tools that are specifically designed for planning.

Some of them are custom-made things that you see somewhere in certain cities.

And then, of course, there are also tools that are not designed for planning, but can actually be helpful for planning.

And we are currently looking through this jungle to see what we can offer our members.

And then also be able to see what makes sense, what doesn't, what is good quality, what do I want to build myself.

Are tools such as those that have now been discussed here at the conference, such as microclimate simulations for building positioning, satellite analysis, image recognition, etc. in this area?

Exactly, so really across the board, so yes, all areas of application in the planning.

The planning is already very broad in itself, so there are many things, but we also work a lot with universities, because a lot of work is already done on the topics beforehand. So we are really looking for partnerships.

And if you look at the AI sector now, what watch trends do you see there?

I mean, I think the sky is the limit. So AI, I think there are just so many promises at the moment about how far it can go. Digital twins is a huge topic in itself, and what I find very exciting at the moment is when you combine digital twins, i.e. digital city twins, with digital human twins.

There is now a lot of research in the health sector into how AI can be used to really collect all kinds of health data and draw certain conclusions from it from individual people, so that health care can actually be much more individualized. If you think about it, the main problem in planning is always that you can always predict and plan a lot with the built environment, but the question is always how people behave in the city and not everything always fits together. If you then suddenly incorporate this into the planning, i.e. a whole bundle of data and can evaluate it in order to really inform the planning process as to what can be done better, it is of course a complete data protection nightmare, I would say.

But I also think it's a very exciting topic at the moment, how all these disciplines come about.

In other words, not just between, let me say, the engineering department and the planning department instead of sharing the data, but simply being able to incorporate individualized data into the planning.

And, of course, a twin concept of not talking about the individual person, but about representative parts of a community. The entire population, exactly.

It's an exciting shift. It will be interesting to see if this is still the Watch scenario.

How long it takes. Exactly.

Whether it will be an act scenario in preparation or in a few years' time. We've already talked about the type of planning. You also include the topic of dynamics and planning in the report. What do you mean by dynamic plans?

Yes, I would say that the main reason for the term dynamic planning is really to get away from the word "agile", because it's just such a buzzword at the moment. We just wanted to separate ourselves from all the buzz. But the issue really is that if you look at these developments and changes, the speed is getting faster and faster. And if you look at how we've always done our planning, you might plan for the next five, ten or even longer years and then every five years you look at how you need to update the plan, but you have to adapt it.

And that is simply no longer the state of affairs when things can change on an hourly basis.

And simply, when we talk about dynamic planning, we really mean that you have to shorten these cycles of evaluation and replanning, that you really have to change the frequency, that you really have plans that make sense and move with the times and are not static, so to speak.

But is that realistic in these short cycles, so I wouldn't disagree with you internally, but in these short cycles, when we have major infrastructure projects, where you actually have planning processes and financing processes of up to ten years and we know that what you end up with is legally binding, planning bases that are sometimes decades old, then getting into the faster cycle becomes extremely difficult.

That is also difficult and that is one of the reasons why we are now pushing for this integration of the past in planning, because you can actually avoid a lot with it. So right now, if I'm planning a mega infrastructure project, be it a highway or a subway or whatever, if you look at where society is going, then you could come to the conclusion today, for example, well, a highway may no longer be relevant in 10 or 20 years.

Should we really spend the money on this now or should we really rethink and perhaps orient ourselves to these trends that we are seeing, which will perhaps turn the entire transportation system completely upside down in 10, 20, 30 years.

So that also helps to make such decisions more future-oriented than what you say now.

I also had a quote in my presentation on Monday from Michael Betty who said that we always look at cities as if they are frozen and the only change is what we propose in our plans, but in reality so much changes in the interim between planning and implementation.

I believe that if you look at what these external drivers of change are, you can incorporate them much more and therefore make different decisions.

If you incorporate this and then also ensure that these evaluation cycles are shortened, then I believe the plans will also become much more relevant and resilient.

But that means that we would actually need a dynamic component in addition to what is planned in a zoning area with a fixed date, in order to counteract plans in a legally binding manner.

Yes, and we now have a, I don't want to call it a process, but it really is a process of how to integrate this.

So there is also this, it's called backcasting, where you say, based on various future scenarios that you can develop based on these drivers of change, you can then ask yourself the question, what has to happen today for the preferred scenario to occur, so to speak.

What are the positive things you see in the scenarios?

What are the negative things?

And then, what do we have to do today so that the positive things can be achieved and the negative things can be avoided?

And you can do that in principle.

So you clearly have to start somewhere with a plan.

But the way it's done in business strategy, for example, is the strategy stress test.

And this strategy stress test can really be applied to our plans.

that you then simply do an annual plan stress test to see, based on these external drivers of change that you see, is the plan still relevant or do you need to change something and then simply make smaller changes, perhaps on an annual basis, rather than having to rethink the whole plan every five years because things have changed so much.

You are now demanding monitoring of plans and success control.

That doesn't sound good at all.

No, of course I agree with you, we actually need that in order to be able to take countermeasures. But this is not anchored in the planning instruments at all; instead, a new plan is drawn up every 10, 15, 20 years and changes are taken into account. But it is precisely this dynamic of saying that we need adjustments and plans that are not static, but are updated and also in shorter cycles that is still far removed from the discussion of the planning instruments we have available today.

Exactly, and I think the good thing is that many of these methods that you use beforehand can also be carried out together with the people who live in the city or in the community. So this scanning for trends and so on, for example, if you bring in the business community and they tell you, yes, I've made a full profit on bike sales in the last few years, that tells you something about where society is going. And these signals, which you can also see in the community, you can actually do this all year round.

It can be a survey, it can be a community meeting, it can be a public festival where you simply ask people.

And then you always have this ongoing constant input, just like we do with the Trendscout community, you can actually do that with the whole community.

And then I think you also have a much better, how do you say, identification with the plans that are then created, because the community simply recognizes that they were part of the process and are therefore perhaps also more likely to accept changes

become. In other words, participation. In the past, people's observations  already included in the signals.

And then, of course, with the scenarios that you can then create for the most diverse future possibilities that exist. But where you can also discuss together with the community, yes, what would be the ideal future of all the different possibilities that exist. And I always say that consensus cannot be the goal of an event, because people have opinions, but simply taking part and being there, I believe, is very important for many people.

I'd like to address another topic and now make a change to the group, because I really wanted to talk about your chapter "A Sky Full of Stuff".

So how do you see the future of aviation or what it looks like in the air?

It's also one of those topics where many of our members have asked us whether we're completely insane now. But the interesting thing is, for example, flying cabs are a topic in the chapter.

And what's really interesting is that I also talked about Hindsight, Insight and Foresight in the presentation on Monday. So you always have to understand how you got to where you are today. And then I actually discovered that the APA published a report on the subject of flying cabs back in the 1960s, when people were quite sure that helicopters would enable people to fly from A to B and that it would be much better than the subway or cars, and of course it wasn't really realized back then.

It has now become an issue again, but on a completely different scale.

It has now also been implemented in some cities and there are many pilot projects, simply because the technology has developed further.

Can you give us a few examples?

So there is a city in England, whose name I can't think of now, but you can read about it in the 2022 Trend Report, where there is now a "Wordy Port", where mainly, yes, they are basically drones, so also electrified aircraft, you can call it that, it's not a vehicle, vehicles, which then also make less noise, so to speak, like helicopters.

In many cities it is mainly to connect the airport with the downtown, which is often a problem with traffic and not everywhere there is public transportation.

There are some pilot projects in China, and there are also some in the USA.

I think there's one in Arizona and one in Florida.

And Chicago, we've already talked about possibly launching this next year.

So the flight from the airport to downtown, I think, is now priced at 70 dollars.

So, yes, if you want to afford it, you can ride the subway with 5 dollars.

But, well, this is really a topic that now has the New Awakening, which has been discussed for a long time.

And what is there for planners to do?

That's the big question.

So, of course, as a planner you want to be part of the discussions, because it's also about where these "worthy ports" are.

And how can they be linked to other mobility hubs?

And the problem, however, is that everything that happens in the air is not the responsibility of the municipality. In the USA, it's the Federal Aviation Agency that regulates it. This means that you don't have much say in what the lines are, where they are allowed to fly and which regions and districts are actually affected. That is of course a huge problem. So it's also very similar to these delivery drones, which now exist in many pilots, where Amazon now wants to move from one-hour delivery to 20-minute delivery. So I don't know who needs their orders so urgently.

But that's where the question arises again: where are these drones flying around and who is actually being disturbed by them? And who benefits from it?

This means that when the drones land or take off, it is a municipal task. And as soon as they are in the air and which routes and roads they use, that is a federal task.

Correct, yes.

For smaller municipalities in particular, this is of course a gap that they cannot manage at all.

Yes, and the fear is that it will come back to something like we've had in the past.

So when all these highways were built, many marginalized population groups were governed for the first time and many buildings were demolished, where this highway simply went right through and then a whole neighbourhood was divided into two parts, so to speak, so that the quality of life there deteriorated, because of course exhaust fumes and noise.

Because yes, where do these things fly then?

The rich in particular can afford to shout out loud.

And the less affluent will probably be the victims again.

And that's why I think it's so important for us at the APA to raise this issue and build awareness.

Because, as I mentioned on Monday, yes, I'm not a fan of it either, if I look away, it won't go away. And now we simply have the opportunity to prepare for it, to see how a planner can perhaps even get in touch with the FFA to see who the contact persons are, how this can perhaps be better regulated locally.

We have a similar question when it comes to autonomous driving.

At least once in Europe, parking and parking space management is a municipal issue in the vast majority of cities. But when the vehicles drive autonomously, they will not only park in their own municipality, but also in neighboring municipalities. Either it makes sense or it doesn't. But even then, you have to have inter-municipal parking space management, which only some larger cities have so far, but many cities do not yet have this. It's a similar problem to taking off and landing and flying drones in the end.

Yes, although in the USA there is also the vision that the autonomous vehicles will basically drive around and never actually park, that you won't actually need any more parking spaces because you can order the car with the ridesharing and so on with the app and then there will be more drop-off and pick-up areas and that parking spaces will actually become obsolete.

But then, of course, the traffic volume will be extremely high and the roads will actually be permanently congested, because even if there is no demand, they will drive around if they can't park. So from a planning perspective, the future we want to have is one in which we don't have to be prepared to ultimately prevent something like this.

And I mean, I think this vision is really more about saying that you won't own your car anymore, but that it will simply be ridesharing, which is also unrealistic, especially in a culture where people still have the so-called "love affair with a car".

I also don't believe that this could be pushed so strongly in the next ten years.

But the ideal is that no one will have their own car any more, but that they will simply circulate around and perhaps there will be fewer of them.

Because now most of the time the cars are parked and not actually used.

And if you could make it more efficient, that would be a benefit.

We also had a project a few years ago where we looked at what could happen to these parking spaces.

And of course, the "greening of the city" was a huge topic, that you simply need more parks, i.e. "making parks" or "parking", so to speak, because people are also aware that we need more greenery in cities, especially now with climate change and rising temperatures, how can we naturally cool cities.

And so, yes, there are a lot of ideas, but in the meantime, you're still waiting for them to really arrive, the autonomous vehicles.

That's one of those things that you've seen so long before.

We will see.

It is always said that planners are not very proactive in standing up for their concerns.

Exactly what we have just discussed.

From a planning perspective, technical systems should actually be pushed in this direction.

What do you say with an American perspective, with a certain understanding of marketing?

What tip can you give us planners in Good Old Europe? How do you make your voice heard?

So I think it's also a huge problem in the USA.

The main problem is that the political will always makes the final decision in the end.

And yes, politicians think in terms of legislative periods, they think about the next election.

and what is now most popular with the population so that I can be re-elected.

I think that's a global problem in planning, that you're always up against something.

Basically, I have to say that it's also really interesting for me when you always have this image in mind that Americans know how to do marketing, Americans know how to communicate things.

I don't see that very much in the planning.

And we are now also really, this is also a whole training area of our Upskill Initiative, where we say, yes, planners have to learn this.

At the EPO, we currently have this initiative on "The Voice of Planning", where we actually offer communication training and also have a PR campaign with Decision Makers.

So we've now had pilots in two states, where you really try to use the planning as a valuable marketing tool in the community

and they really want to roll it out across the whole of the USA and have the hashtag "It takes a planner" and things like that. So of course they have it great.

And that has really happened, that the planning profession is actually involved in marketing because our voice is obviously not loud enough.

Yes, thank you very much for your practical tips on ACT in planning, for your view on different foresights in planning.

And I will add the current report, the 2002 report, to the show notes.

And of course a link to the CORP, so that you can be live next time, so that you don't have to listen to the podcast.

Petra, thank you very much.

Thank you very much for the invitation.