MON-A01: Community-Centered Design and Planning: Insights from Boston’s Urban Design Initiatives

Monday, October 13, 2025

8:30 AM - 9:45 AM CT

Location: New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Room 209-210

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW, AICP, NY/HSW, FL

Speaker(s)

Robert Ryan, FASLA

Professor
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Amherst, Massachusetts
Anne N. Lin, Affil. ASLA (she/her/hers)

Director of Transformative Community Planning
Just Cities Institute
San Francisco, California
Breeze Outlaw, ASLA (they/them/theirs)

Senior Urban Designer
City of Boston Planning Department
Boston, Massachusetts

Engaging diverse communities in design and planning requires innovation, creativity, and hard work. This presentation highlights cutting-edge approaches from recent urban design and planning projects in Boston from the perspective of the designer, client, and researcher, while introducing a framework for a more inclusive landscape architecture design and planning process.

Learning Outcomes:

Understand the challenges and opportunities posed by meaningful community engagement with regard to time, resources, budget, and social capital.
Develop strategies for more inclusive community engagement with diverse stakeholders and communities.
Explore collaborative interdisciplinary partnerships to address the complexity of designing and implementing community engagement across a variety of platforms and technologies.
Learn about resources to aid in augmenting your practice’s community engagement efforts throughout the planning and design process from pre-design to implementation and post-occupancy evaluation.