Urban Planning Conference Sessions

I’ll be attending the American Planning Association 2009 National Planning Conference in Minneapolis next week. It’ll be only my second visit to Minneapolis so I’m excited to explore the city. However, that will have to fit around some of the conference sessions. Here’s a few that have caught my eye so far, including some sponsored by the group’s Technology Division.

• An Interactive GIS Tool: “Get an overview and online demonstration of Local Decision Maker, a GIS-based decision support system for comprehensive planning developed by Purdue University”
• Automated Land and Zoning Management: ‘See how planners … are using an automated system that manages land-use and zoning cases and provides access to numerous other data layers that can be seamlessly imported to provide additional decision support.”
• Using Motion and Touch Sensitive Applications: “This session provides live demonstrations of several motion-sensitive, touch-sensitive, and location-aware tools that can make the public participation side of planning more interesting and interactive.”
• Does Citizen Participation Matter?: “This session helps planners learn the differences so they can advise others about what citizen participation model fits the case at hand.”
• The 10 Best Free Web Applications: “Explore the leading Free Web 2.0 technologies that can be used immediately and freely to support planning.”
• Hiawatha Light Rail Line: “This session focuses on the technical and political factors that shaped the plan for the Hiawatha Light Rail and Central Corridor Transit Line, including the plan’s implementation and performance.”
• Community Indicators: “Learn to create a vibrant steering committee [that can] serve as the community touchstone for data prioritization and analysis of key comprehensive planning elements such as transportation, health, and housing.”

In addition to the sessions I’ll be attending some of the happy hours and receptions, including the Next American City reception on Monday 4/27 at 7:30 p.m. in the lobby of the Hotel Ivy.

What sessions are you attending?

Boston Work

I thought I would note here that I recently moved to Boston, and last week started work as a Research Analyst at the Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a planning agency that represents 101 cities and towns in the metropolitan Boston region. I’ll be working in the agency’s Data Center, as well as on the interactive mapping website MetroBoston DataCommon they operate with several partner organizations.

Moving to Boston

I thought I would announce here I will be moving to Boston in September, as Saturday I signed a lease on a Cambridge apartment. My girlfriend Libby will be starting Harvard Law School and I am looking for planning work. Any assistance or advice regarding either endeavor is welcome.

Archives

I just revised my archives page, and created a new index by category and month.

The Power of (Web) Design

It has been just about two weeks since I switched from a more conventional blog site design to this design. Previously, the blog contained a long column of links on the left and the last seven posts displayed on the main page. I chose this new design because I felt it worked better for the type of blogging I do: longer, more substantive posts a few times a month.

I’ve compared the two week period from before the switch with two weeks since. In terms of visits, traffic stayed constant. Since it takes time to build readership and my topic and frequency stayed about the same, I’d imagine this kind of change would take longer to appear. Other measures show some interesting results. First, the “bounce rate,” or the percentage of visitors who visit only one page on the website before leaving, declined from 70.4% to 63.61%. This decrease is very consistent, and after the change every day except three was below the previous average. The decline from the previous month’s average was about 9% This means more visitors are reading more on the site. The number of comments has also increased. The average number of comments on the 8 posts previous to the new design was 2.9 per post, and on the 8 since it was 4.6 per post.

Upcoming Conferences

I am planning to attend the following upcoming conferences:

Society for City and Regional Planning History Conference
October 25-28 – Portland, Maine ($150 for students)

Washington, D.C. Historical Studies Conference
Nov. 1-3 – Carnegie Library, Washington, D.C. (free)

American Historical Association Annual Meeting
Jan. 3-6, 2008 – Woodley Park, Washington, D.C. ($75 for students)

New Site Design

Readers will notice I’m experimenting with a new design for this website. What do you think?