Entry Details

About the Entry

Category: 
Overall Excellence > Project of the Year

Title of entry: 
Planning's 90th Anniversary

Issue or Publication date:
Winter 2025, Spring 2025, social media October-December 2025

Publication name: 
Planning magazine

View Website home page:
planning.org/planning

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Entry Essay: 
Planning, the flagship publication of the nonprofit American Planning Association (APA), elevates innovative ideas, best practices, news, research, and case studies that educate and empower urban planners as they create vital communities for all. It chiefly serves APA’s 40,000-plus members, but a decade-old decision to unlock most content means its reach extends to allied professionals, local elected leaders, and citizen planners around the globe.

In 2025, Planning celebrated its 90th anniversary with a yearlong project that helped planners understand the factors that have shaped the profession, from foundational endeavors, legislation, and social movements that mark the evolution of the profession to the innovative thinking and strategic work of planners themselves in guiding communities through constant change.

Today's planners work in an atmosphere of distrust in government, polarized partisan politics, uncertainty about pro-planning programs and funding, and criticisms of planning’s historic role in harming vulnerable populations. So, in addition to celebrating planners and sharing the “good work of planning” to nonplanners, this project aimed to foster a sense of community, belonging, and shared meaning among peers.

To prepare for the 90th anniversary celebration, the editorial team flipped through dozens of hardbound volumes containing every issue of Planning. Under a unifying theme — “Through a Planning Lens” — we developed a multipronged plan that looked back at historical events in the profession, persistent themes and issues, and of-the-moment concerns, while also looking forward at the issues of today and tomorrow, from equity and climate resilience to the growing housing crisis to AI’s promise and peril.

To preview the project, APA Editor in Chief Meghan Stromberg shared the evolution of the publication and recommitted to Planning as the profession’s voice in “Happy Birthday, Planning,” published in the Winter 2025 print edition (and online in December 2024). That was followed by a special Spring issue featuring a 90th anniversary graphic element on the cover and throughout its feature well, complemented by a sepia-toned, running sidebar that paired archival images, headlines, and other content with stories diving into the profession’s modern challenges and solutions.

An experiential element came into play at APA’s annual conference in April. Attendees got to “picture themselves on the cover of Planning” by taking a selfie with a cutout frame designed to look like the magazine masthead and editors handed out limited-edition 90th anniversary T-shirts, including at a planning-themed game show.

The capstone was a social media campaign in the fall. Engaging posts on APA’s Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook shared magazine content decade by decade alongside commentary by the editors. Rather than show only the highlights, the team chose to focus on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

We had a lot of fun with it, too. We got to show off some of the quaint and quirky moments —the cartoon by Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) depicting the need for sign regulations in his hometown or strategies to address the proliferation of honky-tonks — in addition to the momentous markers of the profession.