Land Matters

Urban planners are trying to figure out the future just like everybody else. The 2026 Trend Report for Planners looks at the top issues—from artificial intelligence to the future of work—that planning professionals must keep an eye on as they help guide growth in the world's cities and towns.

The oftentimes fast-tracked construction of data centers across the US has raised concerns about land use and water and energy consumption, as communities try to balance the promise of jobs and economic activity with long-term sustainability.

At a particularly challenging time to work in government, the Lincoln Vibrant Communities fellows program, an initiative of Claremont Lincoln University and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, builds capacity and broadens horizons for local leaders and innovators.

A conversation all about density, on the occasion of the return of an online resource, Visualizing Density, at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy website. Density is in the spotlight as cities and towns seek to build more multifamily housing to help address a stubborn affordability crisis.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, in an interview for the Mayor’s Desk series, details work on housing affordability, homelessness, and other growing pains amid the city’s increasing popularity. Solutions include reducing building costs, incentivizing new construction, and taking better advantage of the metro region’s extensive light rail network for transit-oriented development.

Demand for walkable urbanism is stronger than ever, according to Mallory Baches, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, an organization that has been promoting compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented development for more than three decades.

At the helm in Providence,Rhode Island after 30 years of steady revitalization, Mayor Brett Smiley hopes to keep up the momentum while also addressing affordability and fiscal challenges. The latest municipal leader to be interviewed in the Mayor’s Desk series, he also talks bike lanes, nightlife, and the vagaries of community engagement.

Rob Walker, author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape, reflects on how artificial intelligence could transform urban planning, along with other advances in technology that are poised to improve quality of life in cities.

Community Land Trusts, where homebuyers purchase homes but not the land underneath, is an affordable housing solution that deserves more attention, say the authors of a new report that reveals the critical ingredients for success.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones talks about regeneration strategies for the Gateway to the West, a postindustrial legacy city trying to bounce back from manufacturing and population loss. The interview is the latest in the Lincoln Institute’s Mayor’s Desk series, highlighting municipal chief executives from around the world.

Technological advances in satellite imagery and data management have boosted the field of geospatial mapping, making it possible to show all kinds of land uses across parcels, blocks, neighborhoods and regions. Jeff Allenby at the Center for Geospatial Solutions explains how the tools are helping local decision-makers understand property ownership patterns and the potential for much-needed new housing.

As the US marks Juneteenth, self-described “death and dirt” attorney Mavis Gragg recounts efforts to secure title and reclaim legal ownership of Black-owned land, in the burgeoning field of heirs property.

An interview with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has led a pioneering zoning reform effort to increase housing supply, beginning with banning single-family-only zoning. As part of the “Mayor’s Desk” series of Q&A’s with municipal leaders, he also reflects on bike and bus lanes, regional governance, value capture for urban infill redevelopment, return to work, and the city’s infamous system of skyways.

Highlights from the Lincoln Institute’s Journalists Forum: Innovations in Affordability reveal emerging solutions to the extraordinary challenge of the housing crisis—reforming statewide zoning to increase supply, outmaneuvering institutional investors, shifting the property tax to a land value tax, and changing the home financing system.

An assessment of what was accomplished at the recent COP28 climate summit in Dubai, including more prominence for the critical issue of land use and cities, by four members of the Lincoln Institute staff who were there

Mayor Paige Cognetti is guiding the postindustrial reinvention of Scranton, a coal-mining crossroads in northeastern Pennsylvania that is President Biden’s hometown—and has gained notoriety as the setting for the TV comedy series “The Office.” 

Jim Holway, who retired as director of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy this summer, reflects on decades of trying to solve the puzzle of sustainable water resources in the West, and looks to what the future may hold.

Record-breaking heat, out-of-control wildfires, and eye-stinging smoke have made the impacts of climate change inescapable for millions of people this summer. Containing the destructive fires is mostly a matter of land use management, says Canadian science journalist Ed Struzik.

The job of the urban planner is getting tougher these days, as cities confront climate change and a shortage of affordable housing, amid increasingly divided constituencies. Veteran journalist Josh Stephens shares insights from his interviews for the book Planners Across America.

The former President and First Lady of Costa Rica, taking a year in the United States after being in power from 2018 to 2022, reflect on their home country’s record of leading by example on climate, from rainforest conservation to electric buses.