Thank you for being a part of the Planning Association of Washington (PAW) Community. We hope that you have enjoyed the events and educational opportunities that PAW has offered over the last year. It was so great to reconnect safely at our 2021 Annual Conference.
For 2022, we have a lot of exciting opportunities for education and networking. We have 6 planned webinars, our Annual Conference, and 2 Boot Camps planned for this upcoming year. Your membership allows us the opportunities to fulfill the PAW Mission:
- Our vision is of strong and livable communities guided by informed citizens. Our mission is to help shape a vibrant Washington through effective and informed community planning. We do this by providing an inclusive forum for sharing problems and solutions, developing planning knowledge and putting this knowledge into the hands of the public and their elected officials. Our goals are to provide education, develop a sustainable infrastructure that will build organizational capacity and grow awareness of the purpose and value of PAW.
PAW Membership has been putting knowledge into the hands of the Washingtonians and their elected officials since 1963! Join or renew today by clicking the button below.
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From desks to kitchen tables and suits to pajamas
Planners managed to progress during times of distress
Even when times felt bleak and dark
Planners rallied with hope and internal spark
Permits flew out faster than Santa’s Sleigh
And Zoom became our every day
With uncertainty looming and cold nights coming
Remind yourself Planners to keep on going – you are the best!
-Happy New Year and Cheers
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New Board Member Spotlight: Michelle Thompson, DAHP |
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Hello, Everyone!
My name is Michelle Thompson and I am PAW’s newest Ex-Officio Board Member. I work for the Washington State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) alternately known as The Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP). Officially, my title is State Coordinator for the Certified Local Government Program (CLG) and Main Street Design Specialist. There are a lot of acronyms involved here….sorry! Basically, what this means is that I am a historic preservationist who works with Washington communities at the local level to help them to protect, educate, advocate, and best care for their historic buildings. Part of this involves working closely with folks at the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation who implement the Washington Main Street Program. I am a strong believer that adaptive reuse can be an economic driver and contribute greatly to the health and well-being of a community. For me, there is something magic and transcendent in historic places, a feeling I think many people share. To PAW, I hope to bring my enthusiasm and expertise to the table and to serve as a resource and collaborator for any of you that share an interest in historic preservation. To start the ball rolling, I wanted to share with you our new Main Street Guide for Property Development. This guide is designed to provide information on financing downtown historic property redevelopment https://preservewa.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Main-Street-Guide-for-Property-Development.pdf I hope you find this a useful resource.
Happy New Year!
Michelle
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PAW is excited to announce that at our 2021 Annual Conference, PAW raised $550 for our new PAW student scholarship. These funds will be used to register more students for PAW's educational events. If you know a student who would love to attend PAW's educational event, please email info@planningpaw.org for more information.
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PAW 2022 Annual Conference: Planning in a Changing World |
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We are looking forward to seeing you on April 27-29, 2022 for the 2022 PAW Annual Conference in Chelan, WA. Please add this date to your calendar, you do not want to miss it!
PAW is building our agenda to provide excellent educational opportunities for our attendees. We are requesting proposals for our 2022 Conference at this time. The deadline for proposals is February 4, 2022. To read more about RFPs, please click here.
In addition, we are excited to announce more networking opportunities in 2022. At the upcoming conference, we will be hosting Technical Assistance Roundtables. Please submit questions, topics, or experts you would like to hear from using this easy form. PAW will be organizing the questions and topics and recruiting experts to lead roundtable discussions during this conference session.
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Design Thinking in Planning |
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By Amanda Tainio, Principal Owner / Principal Planner with Synergy Resources Consulting (SRC)
Design Thinking is “a human-centered, problem-solving process that leads to better products, processes, and services.” It is based on empathy, seeking to deeply understand how a challenge affects people, and what they most need from a potential solution. Design thinking is a way to bring more creative, “right brain” insights into linear, “left brain” processes. For the planning profession, design thinking also represents a creative, human-centric based approach to the physical environment, complementing more data-driven, social-science approaches.
Design thinking is a human centric, iterative process that shifts the mindset of problem-solving from solution-focused to problem-focused, with attention to the user experience. It utilizes three phases (immersion, ideation, and implementation) that are comprised of six stages (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and scaling/implementation).
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Design thinking focuses on outward thinking vs. inward thinking and empowers planners to be facilitators for idea generation! Design Thinking offers communities an effective toolbox to realize their goals and to leverage assets that they might not have recognized they had.
Want to learn more? Register for the January 28th webinar, Design Thinking in Planning by clicking the button below.
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