July 2, 2018

Educational Article Series:
Getting Started with Real Time Planning

How can we hope to build resilient cities, when the processes that govern cities are not resilient?"

What is it?
Real Time Planning involves improving planning processes to ensure that they are kept up to date. It entails identifying elements of the planning process that hinder this goal and fixing them, such as identifying elements subject to change and specifying the ways in which they might change over the years. It enables plans to be kept current, avoiding the pitfall of outdated plans with past information that is no longer relevant.
 
Real Time Planning works from the broadest strategic scale down to the narrowest project scale to dissect and identify why certain decisions are made, the fundamental elements of the decision, and how that decision might change over the years. This can be a great help to capital planning, programming, and budgeting to keep decisions as flexible and responsive as possible.
 
For whom is it?
Any urban planning and management professional at executive, managerial, and operational levels can apply Real Time Planning. It is best suited to professionals who ask themselves questions such as, why are we relying on a 5 year plan document, when we know that by year 3 the recommendations and projects will be out of date? Why are we “remaking” the plan every 5 years and losing the continuity and progress measurement of the last plan, as opposed to refreshing the plan? With the rate of change these days, why do we have a plan document that is frozen at one point in time without tools to update it between year 1 and year 5? 

How is it useful?
Urban planning and management professionals put an incredible amount of time, energy, skill, and thought into each planning process and document. By switching our mindsets and actions to a place of flexibility, rather than rigidity, we do the profession and the places we lead a service. The world is moving too quickly to pretend that what was decided 3 years ago still holds true. It often does not. 
 
Real Time Planning helps professionals with small changes that add up to a big difference. By applying a few rules of thumb, even an already existing planning process can add in elements to become more flexible and responsive. In terms of day-to-day work, this means that plans can be updated with ease, consultants do not necessarily need to be involved each time, and professionals have the peace of mind that they are operating on the best, current information. In the big picture, our cities will become more responsive to change, uncertainty, and unknowns as a result. In this day and age, this is sorely needed.
 
How can we hope to build resilient cities, when the processes that govern cities are not resilient? 

What are the articles in the series?
Background

• Why is real time planning needed to navigate urban change? This article serves as a primer on the state and pace of change while calling for more structure and transparency for planning and decision-making processes. It closes with an explanation of why solutions are needed.

​Instruction and Guidance

• How to apply a 10-point checklist for future-proofing your plan - This article breaks down a real time planning approach into 10 checklist items to apply to existing planning processes. You can quickly see if your process has these elements, and if not, identify gaps in adaptive planning to address later. 
• How to identify tipping points and triggers - Tipping points and triggers are the indicators that tell us a possible future event is occurring in real time. This article gives examples of what they are and how a plan could leverage a set of tipping points and triggers as an alarm system of sorts to put responsive projects in place. 

What's Next

• Email me to share your thoughts and questions. I'd enjoy hearing about your work and would like to help.