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American Planning Association, Pennsylvania Chapter Records
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Held at: Temple University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Temple University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The American Planning Association, Pennsylvania Chapter was originally established in 1985 as the Pennsylvania Planning Association, through the consolidation of the Central Pennsylvania, the Eastern Pennsylvania, and the Pittsburgh Regional chapters of the American Planning Association (APA). The chapter was founded to provide leadership in the development of vital communities, creating the organization as an advocate for excellence in community planning through education, empowerment, partnership, and public policy. The chapter's central platform is to engage its diverse membership; to meet the challenges of growth and change in municipalities across Pennsylvania by positively influencing the provision of resources and practice of planning at all levels among public and private sectors. Among the many activities developed to support professional planners and planning officials were annual conferences; regional planning workshops; a quarterly newsletter, Pennsylvania Planner, created in 1980, and redesigned in 2003 as The Vantage Point; legislative policy briefs and alerts; and peer counseling.
In 1992, the Pennsylvania Planning Association Chapter established the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute (PMPEI) for the purpose of providing training in community planning and land use regulations for appointed planning commissioners, zoning hearing board members, elected municipal officials, and others in the conduct and policies of planning in Pennsylvania under state law. Instituted over the years, these programs aided the organization in its growth, development, and expansion, with members committed to planning across urban and rural contexts.
In 2007, the Pennsylvania Planning Association was renamed the American Planning Association, Pennsylvania Chapter, signifying membership within the national body of the APA, with six sections including Central Section Lehigh Valley Section, Northeast Section, Northwest Section, Pittsburgh Regional Section, and Southeast Section. This coincided with the organization hosting the first APA National Planning Conference held in Philadelphia.
The collection is fifty linear feet and covers the period from 1948 to 2006. The APA-PA Chapter records document the administrative activities of the organization and how they followed their primary mission and concern: the advancement of community planning through education, empowerment, partnership, and public policy. The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, reports, programs, newsletters, oral histories, planning project proposals, and award nominations.
The collection is arranged into fifteen series. The Awards and Comprehensive Plans series comprise the bulk of the collection (thirty-five linear feet). For this reason, the collection can best be used to examine the various planning projects conceptualized, designed, and implemented by planning officials and organizations from 1959 to 2006. While both series contain comprehensive plans, the PPA Awards series has planning proposals, and documents individuals and organizations either nominated or rewarded for excellence in the field of planning in Pennsylvania.
The collection is arranged into 16 series as follows:
Series 1: Administration, 1974-2002
Series 2: Committees, 1970-2002
Series 3: Membership, 1985-2002
Series 4: Conferences, 1975-2004
Series 5: Workshops and Retreats, 1992-2001
Series 6: APA-PA Chapter Awards, 1986-2006
Series 7: Comprehensive Plans,1959-2004
Series 8: Financial, 1978-2002
Series 9: Publications, 1956-2005
Series 10: Francis A. Pitkin Speeches, 1948-1965
Series 11 Oral History Project, 2006
Series 12: Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Institute (PMPEI), 1992-1994
Series 13: Chapter Sections, 1985-2001
Series 14: Citations, and Memorabilia,1970-2003
Series 15: Audiovisual Materials, 1988-2002
Series 16: Accession 2018-22, 2007-2012
Donated by the American Planning Association, Pennsylvania Chapter on December 24, 2008, via Molly Wirick, Program Coordinator. Accession 2018-22 donated via Susan D. Shermer, 2018.
Original audiovisual materials, as well as preservation and duplicating masters, may not be played. Researchers must consult use copies, or if none exist must pay for a use copy. Certain digital files may also be inaccessible. Please contact the Special Collections Research Center for more information.
Collection processed and finding aid prepared in July 2014 by Brenda Galloway-Wright, Associate Archivist, and Weckea Lilly, Student Assistant. The collection was re-boxed in April 2016 for transfer to ASRS by Melissa Acheson, Student Assistant
People
- Bickel, Richard F.
- Bielski, Robert
- Byler, Richard P.
- Cosicia, John
- Davis, William Davis
- Fasic, George W.
- Loeben, Arthur
- Moore, Robert E.
- Pitkin, Francis A., 1899-1969
Organization
- American Planning Association
- American Planning Association. Pennsylvania Chapter
- Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Institute
- Pennsylvania Planning Association
Subject
- Publisher
- Temple University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center
- Finding Aid Author
- Machine-readable finding aid created by: Rajkumar Natarajan, Sky Global Services India (P) Ltd.
- Access Restrictions
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Collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
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The American Planning Association, Pennsylvania Chapter Records are the physical property of the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. Temple University holds intellectual property rights only for material donated to the university with such rights specifically assigned. For all other material, intellectual property rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. Researchers are responsible for determining the identity of rights holders and obtaining their permission for publication and for other purposes where stated.
Collection Inventory
This series consists primarily of minutes and related records for meetings of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the APA-PA Chapter dating from August 1983 to May 2002. This series also includes bylaws, membership lists, organization history, and the Articles of Incorporation adopted in 1974, handwritten notes, memorandum, and report summaries. The minutes discuss a number of topics including conference planning, membership, organizational governance, various proposals, and group objectives.
The Committee Series principally contains documents concerning organizational governance and committee work. This material is housed in boxes 11-14, dated from 1970 to 2002. The committees represented here are the Awards, Consolidation, Economic Development, Legislative, Long Range Planning Newsletter/Publicity, Nominating, and Professional Development. The files include a range of items including correspondence, proposals, publications, reports, and meeting minutes. The Consolidation Committee files document the organizations activities from 1982 to1985 to consolidate three state chapters to form the Pennsylvania Planning Association Chapter of the APA. The bulk of the records in this series detail the activities of the Legislative Committee including the monitoring of Senate bill items for federal block grant allocations, mergers, waste management, and other related legislation introduced or enacted in Pennsylvania from 1985 to 2002.
The Membership series consists primarily of correspondence from the office of the membership coordinator. All communications including letters, memoranda, emails, facsimiles, and invoices address some aspect of the Membership Committee activities related to individual and chapter memberships throughout the state. These include membership drives, dues, address changes, reports and membership withdrawals. Other items in this series include spreadsheets, membership list, receipts, and bound directories. The material dates from 1985 to 2002.
The Conference series houses material produced by the conference coordinating committee. The items here cover the PPA's conference activities from 1975 to 2004. Of the committee's work, there are planning correspondence with hotels and conference participants, financial records (invoices, budgets, revenue/expenditure lists), program schedules, personal handwritten notes, conference evaluation forms (the majority of which are completed) and statistics, booking contracts, vendor registration forms, lists of consultants, speakers evaluation questionnaires, corporate sponsors and exhibitors lists, attendees/registrants lists, complaint letters, and receipts. Related items include newspaper clippings, proclamations issued by the Governor, and other welcoming letters and notations from local mayors and council persons in locales where the conferences were held. The conferences were located throughout the state including Bethlehem, Erie, State College, Allentown, Philadelphia, Mechanicsburg, and Pittsburgh.
The Workshop and Retreats series detail training and educational opportunities offered by the APA-PA Chapter for its members concerning a number of topics such as professional development, natural resource management, and urban governance. Some of the workshops were held at the annual conference with some overlap with materials found in the Conference Series. The materials here include brochures, memoranda, and other correspondence, registration lists, evaluation forms, budget reports, workshop planning booklets, invoices, and payments received reports. The more informative documents in the series are the workshop/retreat material handouts including agendas, legislative briefs, APA-PA Chapter policy statement booklet, full workshop packets, newsletters, and magazines.
The Pennsylvania Planning Association-PA Chapter awarded its members' contributions to many fields in planning. Dating from 1986 to 2006, this series contains award application/nomination packets, which were either completed by individuals or organizations. The award categories include merit, outstanding journalism, outstanding planning activity in the public or private sector, distinguished leadership/professional planner, distinguished service, public education, comprehensive planning, implementation of planning, current topic, student project, and citizen planner. The application material contained here includes completed application forms, recommendation and support letters, booklets/manuals, diagrams/charts, CDs, and other related items. The topics of the material include historic preservation, landscapes and community development, local planning initiatives, journalism, transportation, zoning, industrial development, natural resource management, and leadership. There is no division based on the winning or honorable mention applications or by category; the material, however, is arranged chronologically by nominated individual, organization, or project with the winners noted.
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This series contains comprehensive plans submitted to the APA-PA Chapter by members from 1954 to 2004. The comprehensive plans are rich in planning resources and research concerning state and local polices regulating planning in Pennsylvania. Among the many areas of research, projects, and programs explored are residential and township development, historic preservation, land development ordinance, regional planning, environmental pollution control and management, and land use and traffic studies. In addition, many of the comprehensive plan submissions are housed with supporting material including handbooks, handwritten notes, correspondence, slides, and compact discs. The plans are as varied as the individuals and organizations who submitted plans and include plans from Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties. Some of the plans in this series may have been submitted to the APA-PA Chapter Awards Program held at the Annual Conference.
The financial series covers much of the financial history from 1978 to 2001. The documents contained here includes the finance committee's correspondence and voting ballots, contracts with Warner Associates, expense reports, tax documents, and research and grant reporting for projects such as the APA-PA Chapter website in 2006.
This series consists of copies of the newsletter produced by the PA Chapter from 1956 to 2005. The newsletter was the information organ of the organization and distributed news about members, and individual chapter happenings. It was first published in 1956 as the PPA Newsletter. In 1963 the name of the newsletter was changed to the Pennsylvania Planning Association News. It was renamed the PA Planner sometime around 1980, and finally The Vantage Point in 2003. While the publication continued to showcase chapter and membership activities, the newsletter also offered more articles regarding planning and natural resource management. Some newsletters are missing between 1972 and 1980.
This series contains the speeches of Francis A. Pitkin (1899-1969), a founder of the Pennsylvania Planning Association, who served as Secretary-Treasurer of the organization from its founding in 1953 to March 1969. He has held several influential positions: Executive Director of the State Planning Board (1936-164); Director for the Bureau of Community Development in the PA Department of Commerce (1955-1959); Interstate Commission on the Delaware River Basin (1948-1964); Vice Chairman for the Great Lakes Commission; and National Director of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress. The speeches here were delivered to a range of organizations and cover topics including community and economic development; natural resource management – especially dealing with water use and conservation (i.e. watershed); professional standards in planning; local, state, and federal partnerships in planning; zoning; suburbanism; legislative impact on planning; and industrial development. These talks were given at local, state, federal organizations throughout the country.
The oral history series contains typed transcripts from the interviews conducted in 2001 with prominent members from the planning profession. This project represents of the organization's attempt at preserving some of its historical legacies of the planning practices and, offering an overview of the planning policies and legislations in the state of Pennsylvania. There are eight interviews, with Richard Bickel, F. Robert Bielski, Richard P. Byler, John Cosicia, William Davis, George W. Fasic, Arthur Loeben, and Robert E. Moore.
This series is restricted due to the fact that the oral history permission release forms as well as the original tapes are still housed at the American Planning Association national headquarters.
The Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute was organized in 1992 through a cooperative agreement between the Pennsylvania Planning Association and the Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs, in cooperation with the Pennsylvania State University Cooperative Extension. The institute's goal is to provide courses in community planning and land use throughout Pennsylvania. This series contains PMPEI Board of Directors Meeting minutes, bylaws, contract agreements, correspondence, and the Basic Training for Planning Commissioners (BTPC) and Train the Trainer course materials. The BTPC course objectives sought to teach, review, and discuss planning codes in Pennsylvania, to discover key figures in the planning field, and to learn professional standards of engagement and interaction. The Train the Trainer workshops were initiated in February 1992 to teach the BTPC course. The material is dated from 1992 to 1994. The course files include printed attendees lists, (signed) sign-in sheets, completed registration forms, correspondence, and certificates of completion, course descriptions, and notes.
The various regional sections that constitute the Pennsylvania Planning Association are contained here with some items for each entity. These sections include Central, Lehigh Valley, Northeast, Northwest, and Southwest (formerly Pittsburgh Regional). Although fairly limited, the material in this series concerns the administration and organizational affairs of each entity. Documents include budget reports, correspondence, newsletters and bulletins, planning information, directories, by-laws, and minutes. Additional material concerns sectional rebates per the PPA and workshop planning primarily consisting of correspondence about financial matters, payment lists, and speakers.
This series consists primarily of citations awarded to the APA-PA Chapter by various Governors and state officials of Pennsylvania from 1970 to 2003. These citations were routinely presented around the time period of the annual conference. This series also included one undated PPA Conference banner.
The audiovisual materials in this series are dated from 1988 to 2002. The materials consist of slides and VHS tapes included in APA Award submissions or comprehensive plans, and images from the annual conference in 1988. A paper copy of the Williamsport Trade and Transit Centre Plan can be found in Series 6: PPA Awards.
Series 16 contains additional records donated in 2018, primarily comprehensive plan award winners from 2007-2012.
The materials in this series have not been cataloged or organized for use. They have not yet had any necessary preservation actions taken on them. There may be restricted files to protect third-party privacy issues. There is a box level inventory. Interested patrons must contact the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) prior to their visit to see if materials can be made available.