Andrew Nash
Transportation Consultant

International City Planners Network

Andrew Nash founded the International City Planners Network in 2004 with the goal of facilitating meaningful exchange on urban planning issues to help planners develop and implement creative solutions to real-world planning problems.

The ICPN was an early social networking site for professional planners. The need for such a site has diminished significantly since 2004 due to the advent of other social networking sites such as LinkedIn. Therefore, the ICPN website was ended in September 2008. However, as outlined below, we are still working on some of the ideas behind the project.

The ICPN created a website which served as a forum where planners could learn about planning in other cities and identify potential contacts for learning more.

The ICPN website also provided planning information for participating cities, this information is now available on the City Pages section of my homepage. This information includes references to planning organizations in the cities, events of interest to planners, and planning oriented tours. Since for many planners planning's not just a job, it's an avocation, this information will help them learn a little about planning in the places they visit with the hope of applying these ideas at home.

The ICPN is based on the notion that books and articles don't always tell the whole story and there's not time to read everything one would like. We believe that fifteen minutes spent talking with the right person can be more beneficial than reading twenty reports, and more interesting.

The website is the first part of a broader effort that includes planning weeks-organized by local planning groups based on their interests and needs-and detailed study, consisting of a more formal study of some planning issue identified through the independent contacts and the planning weeks. This might consist of bringing experts from one city to another city to prepare a plan, having planners from both cities work together on an academic paper, or implementing and evaluating new technologies.

If you are interested in encouraging better city planning by participating in this project, we welcome your help as a volunteer. We seek particularly city leaders, whose work includes developing website content and keeping it up to date, and publicizing the project.

Please contact me for more information.

Updated: 31 January 2009