Video: National Planning Award for Governor O’Malley

This is the video the American Planning Association produced to announce the “National Planning Excellence Award for Planning Advocate” that it gave to Governor Martin O’Malley this spring. He was the first governor so honored in nearly a decade by the national professional planning organization.

Picking up an award for Governor O’Malley

Md Planning Secretary Richard E. Hall with APA award for Governor O'Malley

By Richard Eberhart Hall

I was honored yesterday to accept a national planning award on behalf of Governor Martin O’Malley at the national conference of the American Planning Association, the largest professional planning organization in the country, representing 40,000 members. The APA selected Governor O’Malley for its 2012 National Planning Leadership Award for his advocacy of green policy and smart-growth planning.

A planner, a developer and a land-use advocate walk into a … study

The National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland, College Park, issued a report this week that concluded the smart growth framework that Maryland put in place  more than a decade ago has been insufficient and offered suggestions for improvement.

“Barriers to Development Inside Priority Funding Areas: Perspectives of Planners, Developers, and Advocates” was based on interviews with 47 Maryland planners, developers and land-use advocates. 

PlanMaryland as a “Wordle”

The entire PlanMaryland is 116 pages. The executive summary is 16. Here, we’ve boiled it down to a Wordle (Next: Planning haiku? Probably not.)

PlanMaryland Wordle

Why I’m at today’s forum?

By Richard E. Hall, Maryland Secretary of Planning

Duck hunting on Eastern Shore, Maryland

Plenty of people have urged me not to attend today’s forum about PlanMaryland sponsored by the Carroll County Commissioners at the Pikesville Hilton. People who concur with us that PlanMaryland is a long-overdue idea, and even some who are less enthused, say the event is one-sided, not a public meeting and not worth our time. Their concern is that my attendance would legitimize the commissioners’ invited speakers, whose views against smart growth and climate change are well-documented.  Even the executive director of the Maryland Association of Counties, a group that has voiced many concerns about PlanMaryland but has continued to work very seriously with us on it, said of today’s forum , “The potential for negative repercussions from this event … is very significant.”

The reason I’m accepting my invitation is simple: I’d rather engage than not.