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Game Changing: Local Planners Rising to Meet Global Challenges
As a profession, urban planning engages the public and decision-makers to define and achieve the future they desire. It is our job to make the choices clear and consequences of those choices understood. Since 2011, planners in the Pacific Northwest are seeking ways to make far-reaching and fundamental social change on a variety of major issues, in short: Game Changing!

Focusing on the mega-issues of the economic recession, polarized politics, and climate change, we initiated a joint effort between Oregon and APA Washington and allied organizations to engage our members at the local level in these emerging global challenges. Planners from across the Pacific Northwest have been meeting to discuss these complex and enormous “wicked problems” facing our region and the nation in order to chart a course to the year 2050.

Through the initial launch with a symposium of 60 regional leaders, multiple conference sessions in both states, and a Daniel Burnham Big Ideas Forum co-sponsored by national APA, we have engaged hundreds of our members in this process.

APA Washington’s Big Ideas for Washington’s Future represents the outcome of these discussions for Washington, presented in this website. In Oregon, the latest version of their efforts is the 2050 Alliance. You can check out their progress here.