Functions
Like many professional organizations, the American Planning Association's main function is to serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas between people who work in the field of urban and regional planning. The organization keeps track of the various improvement efforts underway around the country, which may include the improvement or construction of new parks, highways and roads, or residential developments.
The organization is also a starting point for people looking for employment in the city and regional planning field.
The association holds an annual conference which attracts planners and planning students from throughout the United States, Canada and the world. The conference has been held in the following cities April 13–17, 2012- Los Angeles, CA; April 9–12, 2011 - Boston, MA; 2010 - New Orleans, LA; 2009 - Minneapolis, MN; 2008 - Las Vegas, NV; April 14–18, 2007 - Philadelphia, PA; 2006 - San Antonio, TX; 2005 - San Francisco, California; 2004 - Washington, DC,
The 2007 Conference was held in Philadelphia, PA, from April 14 to April 18; among the discussions were items on Hurricane Katrina, universal design, transit oriented development, protected open space, urban open space, land use, the development of Philadelphia itself (as well as the surrounding area), and other planning-related topics.
The association is subdivided into 47 state/regional chapters, such as the NJAPA (New Jersey Chapter of the APA) or the Western Central Chapter of the APA.
Read more about this topic: American Planning Association
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)