National Community Planning Month 2022

Every October is National Community Planning Month. No, it doesn’t mean that you have to adopt a planner. But it wouldn’t hurt to buy your local planner a beer in celebration *wink*.  It also doesn’t mean that community planning is only important during one month out of the year. Planning should be a priority throughout the year, but October is for celebration!

October is a time to celebrate planning’s impact on your community. It is time to look back on your planning studies and consider how they’ve transformed your community’s mindset. This is also a good time to look back on how good planning has impacted your community development. It could be a well-designed new development or redevelopment of a run-down area of town. Planning can have a positive impact when applied by those who believe in the future of your community.

Learn more about National Community Planning Month at www.planning.org/ncpm.

Now, after you thank your local planner (preferably with coffee…or chocolate….or a beer), go to that shelf in your office and dust off all of your existing community plans. Take some time to read them. Don’t just look at the goals or the renderings of what could be, read it thoroughly to know it inside and out. You’ll have a better appreciation for the plan and will be in a better position to help make it a reality.

Rural Resurrection will do our part, providing a series of posts specifically dedicated to planning in October. Last year we featured the following posts:

• Implementation Month: The Implementation Plan – Implementation plans are created to define a pathway towards the successful completion of a project. Learn more about how they can help your community.
• Addressing Need with Housing Needs Assessments – Regardless of level of need for housing in your community, housing needs assessments are important tools to address the housing issues in your community.
• Should your Community have an On-Call Planner? – Most rural communities have an on-call engineering consultant hired out of need. But what about an on-call community planner?

Regardless of how you celebrate National Community Planning Month, it is a good time to sit back and contemplate the impact that planning can have on your community. As the American Planning Association’s website states:

“Planners work to improve the well-being of all people living in our communities by taking a comprehensive perspective. This approach leads to safer, resilient, more equitable, and more prosperous communities. We celebrate the role that planning plays in creating great communities in October with National Community Planning Month.“