PAS Essential Info Packets

PAS Essential Info Packets offer valuable information on a variety of topics. The PAS researchers carefully develop each packet to ensure quality, relevance, and timeliness. PAS Essential Info Packets represent the type of materials you receive when placing a research request through PAS.

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Packets are available to current PAS Subscribers at no additional charge. Log in to PAS Subscribers Only to view a complete list of packet contents and to request packets.

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If you are not a PAS Subscriber, or you are a library that subscribes, PAS Essential Info Packets are available for $30 each from APA's PlanningBooks.com. Click on the link under each packet to view a packet preview and place an order.

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Available Packets

Regulating Holiday Sales Lots (EIP-01)
Are your local regulations ready for the holiday season?  From September to July, communities across the country are bustling with a variety of holiday festivities. Don't dampen the season with dated pumpkin, Christmas tree, and fireworks sales lot regulations. This updated PAS Essential Info Packet contains useful definitions and a colorful sampling of ordinances to regulate these celebratory temporary uses. The ordinances vary in the detail, providing planners with many alternatives to consider for hours of operation, site design, and permitting. 

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Adult Use Impact Studies and Regulations (EIP-02)
Adult uses remain controversial in America, but what impacts do they really have on their communities? And how should they be regulated? This comprehensive PAS Essential Info Packet offers answers to these questions through recent articles, reports, and local regulations as well as through a compendium of classic impact studies that analyze secondary effects of adult use establishments. These landmark studies have been cited nationwide as a basis for adult use regulations. Collectively, the materials in this recently updated packet highlight critical considerations for any community looking to draft or update an adult use ordinance.

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Improving the Development Review Process (EIP-03) Updated for 2008
Re-examining your development review process? This updated PAS Essential Info Packet is a must for planners who are either contemplating or in the process of changing their development review process. The packet contains many invaluable resources, starting with a classic APA guidebook on streamlining all stages of the review process. A development review toolkit provides recommendations for short- and long-term improvements as well as performance measures to track overall effectiveness and customer satisfaction. Audit reports from several municipalities evaluating their development review processes let you learn from other planning departments seeking to improve their performance. Finally, a collection of development guidebooks shows how to provide the public with the information they need to successfully navigate the development review process.

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Controlling Non-Retail Uses in Retail Districts (EIP-04) Updated for 2008
Having trouble with the proliferation of bank branches, beauty parlors, realtor and medical offices, travel agents, attorneys, and other non-retail uses in your downtown or retail district? This updated PAS Essential Info Packet is a must for planners who are concerned about declining sales tax revenue and a loss of vitality in pedestrian-friendly districts. The packet contains articles highlighting retail protection strategies, excerpts from local plans, staff reports discussing non-retail encroachment, and a broad array of local zoning regulations that restrict non-retail uses in retail districts.

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Regulating Moving-Image Signs (EIP-06)
Is your community ready for yet another trend in outdoor advertising: moving-image signs with large, bright, television-style graphics and screens? Their characteristic flashing, fast-moving displays can have a serious impact on the built environment in your community. Once associated almost exclusively with Times Square or Las Vegas, these signs are now in less predicable places, including neighborhood commercial districts, suburbs, and along busy highways. This updated PAS Info Packet includes definitions, a selection of reports addressing the safety issues associated with this type of signage, and a compilation of current ordinances from which planners can adopt language to craft their own provisions. Among them are regulations for animated signs, video screen signs, electronic display screens, and tri-vision signs; signs that contain light emitting diodes (LED lights); and other types of moving-image signs.

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Inclusionary Housing (EIP-07)
How affordable is your community? Do you have enough affordable housing to meet present and future needs? Would inclusionary housing help? Learn more about this popular, but often controversial set of tools in this PAS Essential Info Packet. This updated collection features background materials culled from various APA publications as well as many inclusionary housing regulations with a proven record of success. These regulations represent a diverse range of cities and illustrate some of the best practices for providing housing that is affordable to all residents.

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Temporary Portable Storage Containers (EIP-08)
Dealing with construction, moving, or spring cleaning? These activities often create a need for temporary portable storage containers — containers about the size of a small garden shed that can be rented by the month and stored in front yards, driveways, and parking spaces. Are your zoning regulations ready for this type of temporary use? Don't let temporary portable storage containers overstay their welcome and become rusty eyesores in the front yards of your neighborhoods. This PAS Info Packet contains a variety of methods for regulating these uses, such as standards for the number of units, duration of stay, setbacks, and siting restrictions.

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Regulating Temporary Summer Uses (EIP-09) Updated for 2008
Are your regulations ready for summer sales and events such as garage sales, farmers markets, sidewalk cafes, and carnivals? While these uses are temporary, they can overstay their welcome in communities without adequate regulations for parking, hours of operation, signage, and other important factors. This updated packet contains sample regulations, guidebooks, and permit applications for many types of summer temporary uses — from flea markets to sidewalk vendors — to help planners assure that summer festivities don't turn into neighborhood nuisances.

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Regulating Large-Scale Retail (EIP-10)
Can big box retailers co-exist in harmony with small, downtown merchants? Sometimes. But planners and elected officials must first consider the defining factors of size, location, design, and economic and social impact before succumbing to the development and market pressures of the big box giants. PAS has compiled a comprehensive set of materials about big box retailing, including ordinances and articles on building size limitation, district designation, land-use classification, economic impact studies, and much more to help your community deal with some of America's favorite retailers.

The updated packet includes commentary on the legal defensibility of some of the most popular approaches to large-scale retail development controls, and how to draft regulations that discourage legal challenges and corporate-sponsored ballot box initiatives.

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Planning for Seasonal Populations (EIP-12)
Successful planning for many communities today requires that planners understand the impacts of seasonal populations, which are short-term visitors (mostly tourists) staying in hotels, bed-and-breakfast establishments, short-term rentals, and campgrounds, and semi-permanent residents. The latter group may include retirees or second-home owners whose primary residences are elsewhere but who may, at any time, become year-round residents. This PAS Info Packet includes reports and studies on the impacts of fluctuating populations on community character, local economies, traffic patterns, housing, and other types of infrastructure, and the consequent expenditure and revenue needs.

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Planning and Zoning for Green Buildings (EIP-13) Updated for 2008
Is your zoning ordinance environmentally friendly? Green building issues are not just reserved for building officials and architects anymore. Planners across the country have initiated green building incentives, density bonuses, performance standards, zoning requirements, and other programs. Don't let your community fall behind in the green building revolution. This updated PAS Essential Info Packet showcases a variety of innovative techniques to help make development more sustainable in your community.

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Planning, Public Health, and Physical Activity (EIP-14)
How can planning be used to encourage a physically active community? How can public health goals be incorporated in comprehensive plans? This PAS Essential Info Packet is a must for planners looking for answers to those questions. PAS has compiled a variety of materials, including articles and issue papers to provide you with a solid foundation on the issue. Some communities have already integrated physical activity and public health goals into their comprehensive plan, and you'll find those examples included in the packet. What about zoning to promote health? The packet also includes four model ordinances from forthcoming PAS Report, Model Smart Land Development Regulations. Finally, the packet includes two fact sheets to help you understand key public health terminology as well as work with your locally elected officials.

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Low-Impact Development (EIP-15) 
Is your community tuned in to the environmental and aesthetic value of Low-Impact Development (LID)? The goal of this site design approach is to reduce the negative impacts of development on receiving bodies of water. Planners and ecologists have developed a number of innovative practices such as rain gardens and grass swales as alternative ways of controlling storm and waste water. This PAS Essential Info Packet contains in-depth reports from organizations that are leaders in promoting LID as well as strategies and regulations from communities which have successfully integrated ecologically sound stormwater and wastewater management into their site design procedures thus minimizing environmental and development conflict.

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Food Systems Planning (EIP-16) 
Food is a necessity of life. As planners take an increased interest in the interrelationships among food, land use, transportation, economic development, and public health, questions have emerged. How do planners ensure adequate and equitable access to healthy food? What role can urban agriculture play in food security? How does local food help the economy? What can planners do to help create more sustainable food systems? The answers to those and many other questions are included in this PAS Essential Info Packet. PAS has compiled a variety of articles, reports, and other resources to bring you up to date on planning for the food system. In addition, this packet includes innovative local policies and regulations from communities on the cutting edge of food systems planning.

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Design Review (EIP-17)
Are you looking to completely revise your design review procedures? Whether you're implementing an all-new design review process or just want to keep abreast of current practices, this PAS Essential Info Packet will provide you with useful information on design guidelines, review procedures, and establishing a design review board. Also covered in this packet are design review programs tailored to enhancing downtowns, promoting traditional neighborhoods, and combating monotony in residential areas.

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Planning and Zoning for Renewable Energy (EIP-18) NEW
Do your community's plans and ordinances address renewable energy sources? Not since the 1970s have energy issues consumed as much national attention as today. Climate change and global warming, rising energy costs, and worldwide political instability are problems stemming from our society's overdependence on fossil fuels. Yet clean, abundant sources of energy exist, and interest in solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources is growing daily. Planners have a role to play in encouraging their communities to implement efficient and clean energy strategies. This Essential Info Packet provides an overview of the current state of renewable energy planning, as well as plans, policies, and ordinances from a wide range of communities focusing on wind and solar energy systems in urban and suburban environments.

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Transit-Oriented Development (EIP-19) NEW
Is your community considering light rail or bus rapid transit? Do you want to know how to encourage pedestrian-oriented development in transit station areas? Land-use patterns and site development practices have significant effects on the efficiency, convenience, and cost-effectiveness of multi-modal transportation systems. Transit-oriented development (TOD) seeks to create an appropriate mix of uses to maximize transit access and use. This Essential Info Packet provides an overview of how communities around the country are planning for TOD, as well as a wide variety of local plans, policies, and regulations highlighting the cutting-edge in TOD practice.

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Teardowns and Mansionization (EIP-20) NEW
Is your community experiencing an epidemic of residential teardowns and McMansions? Demolishing older houses and replacing them with super-sized homes can affect community character, historic preservation, and housing affordability. Learn more about the teardown phenomenon and what communities are doing to address it in this PAS Essential Info Packet. APA resources and municipal reports provide background information on this trend, and a collection of sample ordinances demonstrates regulatory techniques for combating this issue in your community.

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