Title:بررسی اجمالی امتحانات سری مروری آزمون AICP و تحلیل فضایی تمرین برنامه ریزی

۱۰/۰۲/۲۰۱۲

قسمتي از متن فيلم: Inbox on the go to webinar menu that you can send in content questions to us okay again thank you for joining us this morning just to give you a little bit of background a few years ago the ohio chapter organized a planning webcast series for certification maintenance training for those who were already

Aicps this is essentially a spin off of that north carolina chapter this year decided that it would be a good idea and to offer this out to everyone and so illinois maryland north carolina and pennsylvania chapters have joined together to do this series it will be eight sessions

This is the first one today we are going to be focusing on exam overview information and then spatial areas of practice future sessions which will be offered every friday morning at 9 00 to 11 a.m eastern time until the end of march we’ll focus on content areas for example next week is

Functional topics my name is susan elks by the way i’m the professional development officer for the pennsylvania chapter joining me today is mark stivers he’s the director of planning and development with east hempfield township he is also a member of the professional development committee for the pennsylvania chapter of apa good morning everyone

As i said today’s background is exam overview a little bit of what and why of aicp and then test background on tips on the overall exam and a little bit on the different areas and then mark is going to handle the spatial areas of practice one question

That we have for everybody who’s out there today is where you are in the process and that will help us to kind of direct our direct the session today a little bit so i’ve just sent out the poll if you want to respond to that basically if you are

Approved to test that would be for this may cycle if you’ve applied but you haven’t heard yet or if you’re just kind of at this point in time thinking about aicp and whether you want to be doing that or not so i’ll give just a little bit more time for

People to respond to that okay it looks like most of our group is thinking about applying about half of you and then it breaks up applied and waiting to hear is about 30 percent and approved to test is 19 so it breaks up a little bit evenly

Half of you may be testing this year and half of you may be testing sometime in the future okay that’ll help know where i need to kind of be going with my information in particular on the exam overview so aicp that is american institute of certified planners it is the american

Planning association’s professional institute so it is tied to apa it’s not equivalent to apa to be aicp a planner needs to have several things you have to meet the requirements for education and experience to take the exam you then have to pass the exam and then you have to pledge to uphold

The ethical standards the aicp code of ethics and then engage in the ongoing professional development which apa and aicp refers to as certification maintenance or cm credits and right now the standard for that is over two year period you need to get 32 credits and credits are

Equivalent to hours so 32 hours of training over a two-year time period is what is required of those who are current aicps and just as basic information that was started i believe 2007 by aicp and in the five years since that time the availability of those credits has

Greatly increased it used to be certainly chapters would have their annual conferences and cns would be available there but now like i said the webcast series that this series is associated with is cm credits there’s a lot of availability for cm credits these days essentially so aicp

You know in my office about half people are aicp and half of the people are not aicp one of the things to be looking at is just essentially it is a demonstration you put these letters behind your name and it’s a demonstration out there every day to elected officials and community leaders

That you have a commitment commitment to excellence you know this is your career this is what you want to do and you want to do it as well as possible is essentially what those letters behind your your name say and then just a little bit more practically i guess

You know when you go to apply for jobs a lot of times as soon as you get out of entry level positions job postings will say aicp is preferred some will say aicp is required many will say aicp is preferred so it’s one extra thing that you can show on

Your resume to help help you in the job search process and salary survey apa does do a salary survey i’m not sure if it’s every year every other year they just did send it out to current apa members right now and one of the things they track is aicp versus non-aicp

And just you know across their membership aicps do earn more money for equivalent education and experience someone with aicp has has a higher salary in general through that survey that apa does to be eligible to test and to become an aicp you do have to be a current member

You can become a member as soon as you’re applying you don’t have to do that in advance necessarily the application is online that’s where you have to justify your education and experience the fee is 495 dollars currently and then of course you have to pass the exam

All of the details about all this of course on the apa website but in particular in the exam candidate bulletin it has every last detail you want to know about this so if you are getting close to applying essentially go to the website print out the exam candidate bulletin if

You ever have a question about a deadline or anything of that nature you need to be checking the bulletin or contacting apa the education and experience criteria for those who aren’t familiar pab is the planning accreditation board and so certain colleges and universities have gotten their planning programs accredited and apa recognizes that

Value in their education requirement so if you have a graduate degree from a pab school versus a non-pab school it shaves a year off the experience there for example i know the university of pennsylvania is accredited by the planning accreditation board temple university in pennsylvania has just been accredited

If you go get a degree from a planning degree from a different university in pennsylvania however you know that’s non-pab so essentially the more experience the more education you have the less experience apa is going to require for you to sit for the exam the experience professional planning as defined by aicp

And they do this is very detailed in your application process these four points of applying a planning process appropriate to the situation you know a comprehensive point of view professional level and influencing public decision making when you submit your experience you have to essentially address each and every

Single one of these points you know how you did these things in that job or apa is going to return it to you as either incomplete or just denied so pay close attention to these points when you are writing up your experience to qualify your for your two years or

Your three years or your four years or whatever it is you need you need to go back through however many jobs it takes for you to cover that time period for you and then you have to address all four of these points for that particular position

And i would definitely when it comes to to this print out the information from apa about you know they give you more detail on on exactly what is applying a planning process appropriate to the situation print that information out and then go into a word document and write up your

Experience you can do a word count that way you can spell check it that way and when you are satisfied with it then copy and paste that back into the application that is online it’s much simpler to do and apa does have nowadays a minimum and a maximum word count for

Justifying your experience and they put they always had a maximum and i think they added a minimum at some point in time to help people understand that they really are looking for detail here you don’t have to write pages and pages but four sentences is not going to be enough explanation for them

Your verifications you do have to send in a course physically to apa verifications of your employment and your degrees definitely check your dates carefully for this you know if you need to have two years of experience your letters from your employers need to support that two years entirely and that is

From your date that you apply or in the case of if you’re using your current position don’t get them to write the letter three months early if you need you know if you need your experience through the end of december and you’re applying in the beginning of january you need your

Employer to write and date their letter you know january 1st or something like that because apa for your current position will take the date of the letter as it comes in so be very careful with your dates and if you have any questions again you contact the pdo in your state or

Contact apa directly it’s not something you want to get caught up on later apa will tell you you’re incomplete because you lacked three weeks of experience or something like that it’s because the date on letter was simply a little early so it’s just something to be careful of the test windows

There are two test windows a year they’re two weeks long the test window is in may the application for that is due in january it’s open for about five weeks and you’ll hear around the march time period if you’ve been approved to test for the may cycle the second window is in november

And that application is due in the july time frame you’ll hear approximately in september apa does now have what they call the early bird and instead of a deadline being about the middle of january it’ll be you know december 21st or something like that but by getting it in early you will hear

Much earlier apa essentially was trying to get people away from applying on the last day i spoke with somebody at apa and i forget exactly when or what the percentage was but the great majority of their applications come in in like the 48 hours before the ultimate deadline in january they would

Much prefer people to apply earlier so they put in the early bird process where they guarantee you a much earlier notification and then that just helps you to better prepare for the exam so apa doesn’t encourage early submissions if you are approved to test or att as it

Is referred to at times or if your application is incomplete you’ll be notified by email if you are incomplete that does mean that you are automatically kicked to the next cycle you are you know if if right now you were informed by apa that your application

Was incomplete you will not be able to test in may they aren’t telling you incomplete so you can send something else in they’re telling you incomplete try again for november if you want so just be aware of that distinction with being called incomplete if you are denied that will be issued by

Letter and if the letter isn’t clear you can certainly contact apa and ask for some detail on exactly what you were denied for and so perhaps you lack some piece of information that you that you can add in and then be approved to test you do schedule on your own to take the

Exam it’s with prometric the approvals that apa provides for the exam they’re good for four exam cycles so if you are approved at this point in time that approval is good for all of this year and all of next year but apa does assume that you are going

To test in may and if you’re not going to test in may you need to let them know that by a certain date and then they basically hold you over to the next cycle but there is a deadline to inform them of that again that’s the uh a detail that’s

Included in the exam candidate bulletin so um be checking into that if that’s if you think that might be an issue for you if something comes up and and you’re thinking you know may is not going to work out for me i think i’ll hold off

Until november you need to let apa know that for the test centers themselves just a couple little things definitely arrive before your scheduled test time so you can get through paperwork issues you do not want to be taking up your test time with showing them your id

And definitely make sure that your id matches your approved to test form so i know some people in the past have had problems with well i you know always you know i drop off my first name i use my middle name and um you know things like that you’re approved to test should

Match whatever id you’re walking into the building with they do provide calculator paper pencil for you you’re not allowed to take anything into the testing room and just again apa is happy to answer questions so ask them and ask them when they come up don’t don’t wait

And find out that you have to pay a fee or that you’re just not going to make the cycle apa is more than happy to answer questions for people the test itself is 170 multiple choice questions that does include 20 sample or test questions that are not being scored for you but

Apa is essentially checking to see if they’re good questions that you know approximately the right number of people get right they’re not too hard they’re not too easy there’s not a flaw in the question so there’s 20 sample questions that are thrown into the mix you won’t know which ones they are

But they’re in there so there are 150 questions that count for your score 170 overall that you need to get through in the three and a half hours that you have for the exam you do have a brief tutorial before the exam where you can essentially go through

Just the setup and become familiar with sitting at that computer station and clicking you know the answers and things of that nature that’s not in that three and a half hours you have the three and a half hours for 170 questions the questions are weighted so scoring is on a scale

Generally speaking the pass rate is around 65 percent and it has hung around that area for years now at this point as far as i can tell apa did clarify in the past couple of years that of the 150 questions that count a person needs to get 110

۱۱۵ of those correct depending upon um you know the weighting of the individual questions and things of that nature so that’s kind of like a mid 70s score to pass the exam officially your score will range somewhere between the numbers of 25 to 75 55 is what is typically passing

Every year apa takes a look and before they make anything official they they re-up that 55 is the passing score but it’s been 55 for quite some time now one important thing to note in terms of just your preparation for the exam the test questions were last updated in

۲۰۰۸ so while apa has been putting out 20 sample questions here and there they haven’t added any new ones in since 2008 that means there are no 2010 census questions on the exam currently apa has stated that they’re going to update the exam in 2013. i don’t know if that means they’re going

To work on it in 2013 and put it into effect in 2014 or if in may of next year it will be new exam questions but for those of you who are testing this year you can be safe in knowing that there’s no 2010 census data on there and essentially nothing

Since 2008 on the exam and one thing to keep in mind about that is people frequently say oh you know go back through the planning exams or the planning magazines and you can kind of get a feel for what’s going to be on the exam if you’re going to do that obviously

Look through the planning magazines from 2008 and earlier the ones from 2009 and cents are not going to be the most helpful to you at this current time anyway so in in preparation for the exam the first stop is the apa outline of material and getting a good grasp of what’s on there

And then when it comes time for you to be studying you’ve got to pay close attention to what your background is your experience your education versus that outline if you’re someone who works in transportation planning on a daily basis then you really are not going to have to study transportation planning you are

However going to have to go out into those areas of the outline of material that are not in your everyday job so you know everything we say to you today you know think back to your own background and be like you know i think i’m i’m covered on that area it’s these

Other areas i need to work on so definitely pay attention to that start early it seems people are more successful if they do if they start about certainly three months out in advance if not a little earlier depending on on your study habits but to study you

Know multiple times a week instead of sitting down once every two weeks and studying for seven hours that doesn’t seem to be very effective for people certainly identify your weak areas and work on them more and more frequently some people really love study groups um they can definitely be helpful to kind

Of talk out different uh you know maybe some of the ethics situations or to just cover some i’ve seen in study groups where people essentially they assign sections of the content material and say you go write us up a good five page summary of this and bring it back to the

Group i’ll take this area and do the same so whatever works best for your study habits and then practice exams i’ve never had anybody complain essentially about practice exams except for maybe thinking some of the questions weren’t entirely realistic which can be true but in general people really do seem to

Benefit from sitting down in front of a computer and running through a practice exam just to get themselves in that mindset of taking an exam because for some certainly it’s it might have been a while since uh since you took an exam in that format

So back to the the test content just to run through this spatial is 15 according to the apa outline of material history theory and law all of those combined is 15 functional is 25 plan making is thirty public participation and social justice is ten and the ap aicp code of ethics and

Professional conduct is five percent certainly in looking at this pay attention to the fact that spatial functional and plan making together those are 70 percent of the exam and those areas lend themselves to questions that are approach and process or more scenario based instead of being a question that’s about

Seven words long it is a paragraph description of something and then you know what do you do next or what’s the best course of action um those type of questions so um that goes back to what i was saying about some practice exams are seem to be heavily weighted towards more simplified

Questions the real exam is more heavily weighted towards what i would call these process an approach or scenario based questions um this actually breaks down to you know 45 questions for plan making 38 for functional 23 for history law and theory combined 22 for spatial 15 for public participation and social

Justice and 7 for ethics something to keep in mind for that is that number one how you might categorize something isn’t necessarily how apa would categorize it and there’s definitely overlap in these areas so i don’t know that there are only seven questions on the exam that touch on the

Area of ethics i would say there’s probably seven that are primarily about the code of ethics but certainly a lot of those plan making questions could also be related to ethics and public participation social justice questions could also overlap with ethics so just keep that in mind these are a

General idea but it’s not hard and fast and then also the history law and theory i’ve had people come back and and say to me i studied so much law and then there was only four law questions on my exam how could that possibly have been and again maybe they were categorizing

Things a little differently than what apa was categorizing them but also um you know the category there is history law and theory all together there’s going to be 23 questions so you know maybe you got an exam that had five law and then the rest are all history in theory maybe somebody else

Gets a test where it’s they had 15 law questions and then just a few history and theory and that can happen because apa doesn’t have one exam they have an entire pool of questions they probably have thousands of questions at this point in time that they’ve been proven that are good solid questions

And you could have four people sitting in a prometric center taking the aicp exam and each one of you could have different questions and most certainly you’re not all getting the same thing apa is just pulling questions out and here’s an exam for you pulling different questions out here’s an exam for you

And then you know the number of questions that deal with each so keep that in mind as well as as you prepare for the exam i do have a couple sample questions here for people and i’m going to read through this and then i’m going to launch another poll for people to participate

In the poll doesn’t show the full question so pay attention to the slide first is what i’ll tell you but urban municipality has received grant funding to restore riparian buffers in order to improve the untreated water quality of the municipality’s public water which is drawn partially from surface waters which of the following

Steps is not necessary to get the project underway a research existing databases for information on water quality within the source waters watershed b determine ownership of parcels along surface waters within the municipality c review aerial photography to assess conditions adjacent to waterways within the source waters watershed d research the most effective riparian

Buffer restoration methods for water quality improvement such as differing buffer widths and vegetation type and e contact adjacent municipalities that contain any of the source waters watershed okay so that is our first sample question as i said we do have a a poll for that

Let me send that out to you now and you can respond one of the questions that can be categorized under different areas if you get into specific areas of study you’re looking at environmental it could be under there it could also be looked at as one of the

Regional questions in terms of spatial distribution so a good test it’s two different categories i think a lot from people that i looked through these practice exams and then i went and took the exam and this is when the pa chapter developed because we were trying to make

It very realistic to what people see on the exam and this is a completely made-up one it is not on the examples that apa is going for in its questions essentially just a little bit more time for people to vote people are still voting i can see that

It’s going to participate at this point in time so i’m going to go ahead and close this poll fairly evenly split for the lead between b let me b a few different things about this question first of all siri to get it underway say in b is that its ownership of parcels

Along all the surface waters within the municipality that is not kind of the subdurian buffers in their public water source which is drawn partially from surface waters so in looking at that you’re supposed to kind of think of a municipality and go okay they’ve got a lot of different surface waters but

They’re only using some of them for their public water since this grant is specific to the public water it’s got to be directed towards these surface waters that they are drawing from for their public water so determining ownership along all of the surface waters in the municipality

A certain amount of that would just be a wasted effort and definitely some of the other areas um are all you know kind of early steps you could argue over you know is c happening before e or is e happening before c but generally speaking their early steps in the project b

Should never be an early step in the project at least not to the extent of all the surface waters in the municipality so that’s one question for you second sample question which we’re going to do a poll on this one as well advocacy planning is associated closely with paul davidoff and saul olinsky

Which of the following was the significant effect of the ad advocacy movement a assisted single women with children find employment b call social planning to move from back room negotiations into the public forum c reduce the need for more environmental documentation d created economic stability all right so let me

Launch that poll for you and then you can start answering that um one of the things if you follow the current news much from the past few years anyway saul alinsky has been mentioned a lot in the past few years because of barack obama’s public organizing work in chicago

Every so often he mentions saul alinsky and then every so often other people mention him as a result of that and it’s just kind of interesting he’s been gone a long time and you still hear his name quite frequently so there’s no shortage of information available on him these days

And see this is a little easier question i can tell from my polling um i will go ahead and give just a little bit more time for people to vote on this and then share those results okay i’m going to go ahead and close this now and then share the results and

Most people got this correct call social planning to move from backroom negotiations into the public forum okay and one thing to note about this question um when you’re going through things you’ll find lists of people um to study this person and this this title and this

Person in this event and this person in this thing um when you’re looking through that and studying apa is not necessarily going to ask you you know saul alinsky wrote what book in what year they’re going to ask you something a little bit more along the lines of this

What impact did this person have on planning it doesn’t make it necessarily make it a very difficult question but just as you study pay attention to the fact that they may certainly ask you some dates and titles but they are more interested in finding out whether you understand what the

Impact of that person was so all right i have a couple other questions that i’m going to go through i’m not going to do polling on these unless you’ve been studying much you might you probably do not know them unless you’ve been studying so so we won’t poll

On these i do want to point out a few different things about the way these questions are set up essentially so this one is you know which of the following court cases is or are concerned with takings and then it lists four different court cases and then it

Gives you this you know maybe just the first one or just the second one or the first and the third with second and the fourth and this is a very standard exam setup where it provides you you know a lot of different angles to think about in this case it is d

So again the question format pay attention to that the other thing to pay attention to is court cases and just the fact that a question like this and it’s set up of this answer of one and three two and four apa and aicp the way to have this exam

Set up when you sit down at the computer you can answer a question you cannot answer a question and skip over it and whether you answer or not you can mark it and then at some point in time in the testing process you can ask the computer

To show you every question again you can ask the computer to show you just the ones that you skipped or you can ask the computer to show you the ones that you’ve marked i personally would recommend that you mark all the law questions because sometimes they give you a hint

For one in another one so i would use the marking option or make notes if you prefer that for law questions and my third point in this one is there we go next sample question the landmark case of aegon’s versus the city of tehran established a test

A regulation is it taking if it can be shown that it law questions you read this one and you think back oh here right now it’s telling you that agents is a regulation and deals with taking so you think back to yourself that other question asked me you know which ones

Are takings this one would help me answer that other one it’s just an example of why you would want to do marking or or taking notes on law questions question format again the multiple options taking notes and then i would just generally say that this is um

A more difficult uh case law question you know they’re not asking you just basically agents is taking this they’re asking you what were the details of that ruling and that’s totally in line with the exam that would ask you details of an important case on takings so this level of detail is entirely

Feasible for the exam um another sample question on law the supreme court case removed the substantial advances test for takings cases and then this is d um and this is again understanding the different cases law and then the relationship between the different ones um against versus tiburon created substantially

Advances lingual versus chevron removed it again just the type of detail that you need to know about the different case law i think yes i have one more sample question for you which of the following pieces of federal legislation focused on slum clearance in this case it is c the 1949 housing act

And we throw this question in here just to show you essentially that um when you’re looking through your study materials and you’re looking at these different housing acts that came down um on a regular clip kind of this is the level of detail that you want to remember about the different ones

And i do want to point out i just showed you i think six sample questions and three of them were lol and that is not how the exam will be it’s not 50 percent law i think generally speaking the questions that you will run into

More of them will be along the lines of the first question and less of them will be this type although this question a question of this nature can certainly be in there but generally speaking most of them are not going to be this short and direct i would say but

Certainly some of them are okay so preparing for the exam um the first thing i would say to you is that you have to get a comprehensive study source and you know i’m certainly going to advise you that you should go get the pennsylvania chapter professional development committee study notes because they’re free

Um and there’s no reason not to you can go to the the pa chapter website and and download them and print them out absolutely make use of those the professional development committee developed those and then updated them i think we’re in need of another update now

But it’s a great resource that we can thank mark actually and then earlier members of the development committee for particularly lee slusser and dave mcfarland who you will hear from next week if you join for the functional topics session so those study notes are there and definitely make use of them

Two other comprehensive study sources that are out there that i i feel very comfortable recommending either one to people um from looking at them and seeing them myself and then feedback from other testers planetazine has their plan 310 aicp exam preparation course last i checked that was 129

And then apa has their aicp exam prep 2.0 which is 195 dollars all of these generally view all the topics that are in the apa outline of test content um there are some other sources out there that um you know i wouldn’t call comprehensive study sources because they’re missing big chunks of information

That doesn’t mean they’re not useful it just means that they’re not comprehensive the planetaz and apa both of those include practice exams so as i said a lot of people find it very useful to sit down and go through a practice exam that they can sit at their

Computer and run through 150 questions just like the exam so people find this very useful planetazine and the apa study guide both have those planetaz is certainly more interactive you know you sign up for that um you can watch some videos i believe with that you can email people questions

You can chat back and forth with other people who are taking the course at the same time and of course it is it’s web-based and you can kind of pick and choose when you’re going to view different things and things of that nature so it can certainly fit into anyone’s schedule

But it’s it’s the more interactive of the two the exam prep you get the study guide and you get a cd with the practice exams on it both very useful it’s just a matter of you know what what suits your study habits a little bit better that’s what i would say about those

On the pa chapter um our website is noted there when you go across the top bar there’s a career center heading and aicp exam is under that and that is where you can find the professional development committee study notes and then we also have prior prep session powerpoints some ethics presentations ethics scenarios

And then also how to obtain the chapter president’s counsel manual and most every single chapter has copies of that so you can go to your chapter and ask them if they have it if you decide you want that resource but that’s what that’s what the pa chapter has on their website

Some other chapters that have a great deal of information on them i didn’t write down here specifically what other chapters have but these are five chapters who definitely have a great deal of information on them there could certainly be more but these i’m sure of and i’m sure that they’re current

North carolina in particular has a lot of law information and i would say if you’re looking for some more detail or information on law i would go to the north carolina chapter website and get that and they added some new information on that in 2010 and 11 i believe and essentially

I would say at this point in time if it’s a law issue and it’s not included in the north carolina information you probably do not need to know it i think they have everything in there that a person needs to study for the exam and then washington

Oh yeah i would add too that the utah chapter is another good place and i think that’s where these webinars are going to be located if you if you miss one you want to catch up or review it again i think it’s going to be on the ucoll chapters website yes they’re going

Hopefully we’ll be successfully recording all of these sessions and then they’ll go up on the utah chapter in the webcast page somewhere there um i think i have a link at the end to as where we think they’re going to end up but yeah there’s a lot of good chapter

Information out there georgia has basically every presentation they’ve ever done up on their page and all the information from last year and it’s divided up by content area so that’s really clear i believe it’s florida that has specific links to suburbia pages where there’s discussions so just a lot of good information out

There you know certainly check your own chapter but i would look at at all these at least to some extent apa obviously has lots of information the exam prep which you can buy from apa sometimes you can also borrow that from your chapter you just have to check with

Your chapter if that’s a possibility the exam prep guide is really not much use to you so 2.0 has been out now i think three years um the ethics code one thing i would say about that i think on the exam prep page but there’s actually more from then code

To the ethics page they have for people offering cm training on ethical scenarios and so that can be very useful to review policy guides i think are very important and very important in particular for areas that you might not be familiar with um it will give you a rundown of what’s important

In an area and then also what apa really thinks is important and what apa thinks should be happening in this area and policy guides i mean there’s policy guides on surface transportation and food system planning and just um you know a variety of issues so in particular when you go through

The outline of the test content and if you see areas that you just think really i don’t know much at all about that go see if apa has a policy guide on it and and be familiar with it some legislative information some top 25 these are several years old now but um

You know 2000 m3 was not that long ago and you know if in 2003 apa decided that a case was one of the top 25 planning cases ever it’s still important to know it’s definitely something you should know for this exam and then the timeline or in places

You’ll see it called the pathways of american planning history i think it takes a little bit of searching to find that on the apa website sometimes it’s a little bit easier to google it i believe it’s also included in the pdc study notes but it’s a really important

Very long about eight or nine pages for sure timeline but it gives you a really good indication of you know people and events and law cases and just a ton of information in there so definitely get that and print that out and be familiar with with the items that are on that timeline

A couple other sources planetazine in general planningprep.com it is free now and i think the reason they’ve made it free is because they haven’t updated it in a little while but i think there’s still some useful information there and as i said since the exam itself hasn’t been updated since 2008

I think some of the information on planning prep is still very useful you can do electronic flash studystack.com and the screenshot up in the upper right is from that you can just search apa or aicp and it will generate flashcards for you there’s apps to now create flash cards the oyez.org legal site

I wouldn’t go there unless you’re really confused over a particular law case and i would certainly check the north carolina chapter information first the colorado chapter link that i had prepared recently 2009 i believe it was it’s not on their website anymore you go to click the link and it just takes you

Nowhere i did actually email the colorado chapter pdo yesterday to ask him if there was some way that that could come back or be put somewhere else because it was a a good timeline and a little bit more interactive than um than the one that i noted on the previous slide

But we’ll see if i uh hopefully that’ll come back up on the column saved messages from before and um and you know maybe like the chapter president’s council um you can get that through your chapter most times um i do not list that as a comprehensive source while it has some very detailed

Information on certain areas transportation for one i know it has uh has a lot of information on transportation but then there’s whole sections of what the current test content um so again i just want to go back and show you this top medicine or the exam

Prep or if you go to planning prep or some various other sources with practice exams don’t memorize the specific questions you know use them to test yourself and understand how well you know the topics that they’re talking about and certainly don’t let them kind of confuse you as to

How the real exam will be that’s the most common complaint i’ve heard in general about practice exams are that you know it’s a practice exam and 18 questions were you know one line question with three sentence or three-word answers and that’s not how the real exam goes you know questions are

Are fairly complex for the most part on the actual exam and they do require a mix of professional judgment and technical knowledge so they’re not all um you know this answer is very clearly this this or this it’s more of a think through this and what’s the best answer for this particular question

On the apa website they do have a selected readings list and it is very very long don’t worry yourself by thinking that you have to go through and read every book on this list because that’ll be years and it is not necessary they do have a few general reference

Books listed up top and then they go through and they give you readings for particular areas so like i said before if you have if you’re a transportation planner and you have that topic down but say you’ve never worked in historic preservation planning if you go through your comprehensive

Study sources and you still think that you’re a little weak on historic preservation planning well come look through the apa list of of what other resources you could look for for information on that use it in that fashion don’t use it as a oh my god i’ve

Got to read all these books type of resource and a couple of things on the the general reference materials they do list the practice of local government planning which now i think has got yet another edition out and looks different and is organized sector experience you have

The more important it probably is to get a hold of that book and and read through sections of it if you have a great deal of public sector experience focused area the practice of local government planning is is probably more important for you to look through

The ethics book that is shown there on the right everyday ethics for practicing planners um i would say however you know if you’ve gone to some ethics sessions at a conference perhaps cm guide to how the how to then that book probably is more necessary for you it is

Several years old now and it’s actually based on the prior code of ethics so if you do read it read it for the work through of how you get to the right ethical answer um don’t read it for you know section a of the code says because that is not necessarily correct

At this point in time in that book but the work through of how you come to the the right ethical answer is good in that book um so some of these are some very general test tips i’m not gonna go through all them i will say the test is

Long three and a half hours is a long time so you know don’t cram the night before and stay up all night not a good idea um use the marking option you know however you want to use it for yourself but i mean it’s there and take advantage of it

However you want to i know when i took the exam i did take it in this in this format that it’s currently offered i went through the entire exam once i skipped a few questions but not that many but i did mark quite a few and then i when i got through everything

Once i went back through and i looked at all the ones that i had marked and went through those and i think i might have had to go through those twice just to kind of compare back and forth to questions um and then i said you know what i’m done

I know i’ve had people say i’ve heard people say oh you should definitely go see through the entire exam twice um i went through the entire exam once i went through my marked questions twice and i said i’m there’s no way i’m looking through every question i just

I’m tired you know it’s been two and a half hours that was plenty of test taking and at that point in time i really didn’t feel like going back through questions that i felt fairly confident about on the first go through would be of any benefit whatsoever

So definitely get a good night’s sleep before the exam um and then um just at the bottom the think national think apa if in your state you have some planning quirkiness like pennsylvania does don’t carry that into into your study preparation and don’t carry it into the testing room with you

It is a national i want you to know that you know there’s something strange going on in pennsylvania in the way they do things so cpa exam is not the exam for planning ought to be done this is what apa wants planners to be doing when you take the exam through

The question you look at the answers and you’ll think this is wrong and this is wrong but these two here both of those seem kind of okay and at that point in time that’s when you really have to start thinking back about apa policy guides and things of that nature and the ethics

Code and the focus on public participation and social justice and things like that and you know what is the best answer what does apa want you to do as a certified planner so that’s that’s what i would say about in terms of you know thinking apa when it comes to answering questions so

After all that um we can do some questions on exam overview if people have sent them in or we can um move on to the spatial planning if people want to do that i will say i see a couple questions in here is it possible to make these slides

Available for note taking prior to the webinar that’s a good point and i think we can probably get that worked out somewhere along the way um we’ll have to see about whether that would be um you know chapter by chapter basis like pennsylvania chapter is presenting this

Session we are presenting next friday so if we can post our slides it would probably be to the pa chapter website next friday um i’m not sure if we can get it together to have them posted in one central location necessarily we will however definitely after the fact these will be posted

Whether our recording is successful or not the recording will go on the utah chapter website the slides themselves will absolutely go on the pennsylvania chapter website so all of the slides will be available for people to view let’s see here someone had a question about the planetazine course

That’s currently for november and that just may be a timing issue i’m not sure exactly if they this being early february they may have they may have had one in december or something like that i’m not sure about the timing but regardless of like i said the test right now is all

The same for now there’s no question difference between between the may exam and the november exam so whatever you can work into your schedule for planet is in and someone says that they just signed up for that the planet is in course and it can still be registered for

Susan why are you reading questions let me just jump in quick one of the things that i know helped me a lot is to join a study group if there’s one that your your chapter is organizing or people want to get together that is has always been in when

I took my exam and as i’ve helped other people prepare for the exam a great way to prepare one is if you get a group of people together i know i helped with a group that met in philadelphia um they they had a set time so it encouraged you to

Stay with your studying you you agree to meet um on a regular basis you you tend to show up and it does help in a study group if they can yeah i think one of the things that study groups i’ve seen really helpful for them wouldn’t surprise me policy guides are

Very important i would definitely say that um planet is in for the november exam usually starts in mid-june someone sent that in for us see what else is in there as i said definitely the slides themselves will go up on the pa chapter and hopefully the overall recording with

The slides included will go up on the utah chapter i can’t seem to order the aicp exam prep 2.0 online and also can’t reach the 800 number you might want to try i don’t know why it wouldn’t be working to order it online but apa has an email address which they are

It might take a few days for them to reply to it but that they do reply to their emails that they get in and i have found sometimes that works better than their 800 number essentially did you say if the application is not completed the test day will be postponed to the

Next cycle if apa determines that your application is incomplete they’ll just notify you incomplete and you do not have a chance before the current testing cycle to complete it you will automatically have to complete it prior to the next test cycle if you’ve gone in and opened up an

Application but never really completed it you can just go back in anytime and start start again essentially but if you’re if you officially hear from apa that you are incomplete you do not have an opportunity to complete for this cycle you have to move to the next one um someone did not

Do their job verification and degrees i think they might have missed that deadline i would call apa or send an email to apa on that one they are generally very hard and fast about job verifications and employment and education verifications however sometimes they do extend the deadline so i’m not sure

I did not hear about an extension for that deadline but that that’s possible that they could have done that um if you were accepted to test you should have gotten an email from apa that would explain like when your att would be coming and things like that and if a certain period

Of time goes by and you do not get it call apa um absolutely it uh it’s like i said it’s definitely better to to call or email them um instead of going well i guess that’s okay like i would not guess that anything is okay the 170 questions versus the 150 150

There are 150 real questions um you have to answer between 110 and 115 of those correctly there will be 20 test or sample questions which will make it so when you sit down at the computer to take the exam you will have to answer 170 of those

It will not be differentiated which ones are sample questions that they are just running out there and which one are the 150 that count um and so when we give you a number that says there’s you know 23 history law and theory questions that’s out of the 150

That’s not out of the 170 apa does not let anybody know um you know what those 20 questions how they break up or anything like that someone said the acceptance email said that we will be contacted to sign up for the test for the um i would give about three weeks from the

Time you get your first acceptance from apa i’d give about three weeks before you know waiting for the next thing if you don’t hear anything i would contact them let me see dates on employers letter i would just say you know if if you need three years of experience

And you can document four um then you’re basically in the in the clear and dates are not you know very very critical um but if you need three years of experience and let’s say now you’re applying for november um and you need your three years of experience and you will have your three

Years of experience as of june 1st of this year and for the sake of simplicity let’s say that you’ve worked all three of those years with the same employer your employer is going to write a letter and say this person did professional planning for us they started on this date

And then up top they’re going to have the date that they wrote their letter if you need to show that your three years was three years you know june 1st then they need that letter to be june 1st or after june 1st if they decide to write the letter early

For you and it’s dated may 15th then you’re going to be 15 days short of your required experience so you know if you are close like that be very careful make sure that the date on the top of your employer’s letter your current employer shows the full amount that you’re

Claiming off of them if you need a year from this person and in the letter it says you started december 1st you know then that letter has to occur sometime after december 1st of the next year for you to claim that full year so just be very very careful about that

The fee is due at the time of the application if you are not approved to test apa will refund a large portion of that they still charge you an application fee but they return all of your apa membership and and various things like that

But you do have to pay the 495 when you apply if you have an employer who’s not being helpful with you in terms of a verification letter i would call apa directly and ask them how to how to deal with that at times basically you know you don’t necessarily need

The person who was your direct supervisor somewhere you can get someone in hr to write a letter something like that but if you’re having issues of that nature i would contact apa directly but it does it definitely does not have to be the person who is your one boss it can

Be someone in hr or just someone higher up in the company or something of that nature policy guys written 2009 and pass in i would i would read those over i think there’s still value because it’s essentially formalizing something that apa has probably had in the works for several years so i think

Policy guides written since 2008 would still be useful the top 25s in the planning history timeline like i said the timeline is available in the pdc study notes for sure the top 25s and the timeline you might be better off to google those and find them if you’re still having issues finding

The top 25 you can contact your pdo in your chapter or the pennsylvania chapter if you’ve already been approved to test then your verifications were already submitted if you were approved to test you’re approved to test that for cycle approval you are not required to send in new verifications okay um

We have a lot of questions here i think i’m going to go ahead and hand things over to mark and then we will i might type some email responses back to people um and then maybe we can cover some more when mark is done

Um but mark are you uh ready to to go now i’m here okay um let me just jump in by saying i i give you guys a lot of credit for moving into this realm as susan said in the beginning this is a it’s a big test

Let me encourage you that it’s it’s a very it’s a very broad test uh to be honest one of the things that attracted me to the planning field is that it’s it’s a whole lot of topics going a lot of different directions a little about me quick um

I have been in planning off and on since 1988 i worked number years for the lancaster county planning commission i’m now the planning director at a township here in lancaster county east hempfield township the longer i’m in this field the more i realize the variety of things you get

Involved in and that is something that i i do thoroughly enjoy you get involved in transportation issues then you next thing i know i’m jumping to an environmental concern then there might be a legal concern that comes up on a certain issue so really having the breadth that this this test

Looks at is is definitely beneficial as you move forward in in your planning career so i wish you all well in that couple other observations i have um just some practical things that i did uh maybe a bit nerdy but i actually made up flash cards i can’t tell you how helpful

That is if you if you use mass transit or something to get to and from work if you’re going somewhere you know throw your flash cards in your briefcase or something and just flip through them one thing i found very helpful is to to study a little bit over a longer

Period of time and and keep reviewing their the test can seem overwhelming i think if you just slow down take a deep breath and just study a little bit at this time um chances of you doing well increase greatly and as susan mentioned let me just re-emphasize this don’t rush too much on

The exam you do have time they give you they give you playing time to get through it all i had plenty of time but let me encourage you also as susan said um resist the temptation to go back and double check every question you want to avoid second guessing

Yourself anyone who does testing or has taken these kind of tests will know that um as soon as you start second guessing the chances are good you can start changing correct answers to wrong ones so unless you really don’t know the answer and you mark it and you if you’ve given an answer

Let it go trust your instincts okay let me jump into spatial areas of planning when i took the exam this was not part of the exam but it was incorporated in they have now separated it out as a separate section throughout the planning world you’ll see this is has increased in significance for

Example here in pennsylvania if i am applying for a state grant for something let’s say i’m going for a park grant to construct a park one of the criteria in the grant application will be are you working together with other agencies are you working with other municipalities in your area the county um

Is this a regional park or is this just for you they they’re looking very long hard at regional issues we are looking at some transportation funding issues right now as we are entering into our next um transportation funding cycle and one of the big questions that

Our rdot looks at is is this a regional project or is this a project that just helps your municipality so keep that in mind i mean it’s not just for for purposes for questions but really is a big point in um and planning as a whole

Okay let’s just break it down one time planning at a national level um planning really started out early on as a a national influence if you go back through the the history of planning and you look at like i know the pa chapter notes are very good at some

Of the history things uh that section dave mcfarlane here in pennsylvania put together it’s a great timeline look at that and know that um you know don’t memorize it but have a good idea of the flow of how things happen one of the big things that i’m dealing

With right now and and i know it’s a statewide issue is ms4s um if you are involved in municipal or local government or accounting planning this is a term you will come to love to hate um it is based on the 1972 clean water act and it is now being pushed very hard

The clean water act is has been the subject of a recent executive order from the president coming down it affects me directly because we are in the chesapeake bay watershed and i’ll talk about that more but um as part of the chesapeake bay watershed we have directives coming down from the

Federal government saying this is what we need to do so be familiar with these federal acts uh the clean water act the housing acts susan had a sample question on those already look those over do not feel like you have to memorize them just be familiar with them be able

To answer you know a general understanding of what they are another one safety lou if you’re involved in transportation planning at all you’ll know that that is the current federal transportation enabling act for funding um it has been extended for a number of years they are looking to adopt a new one soon

We all hope um but that that may come up on a test so so know that one um that was adopted within the period that the test is testing so so look at that planning for multi-state or regions recently if you were involved in any of the federal grant applications for the

Arra grants you’ll know that they really looked for and they funded a lot of multi-state projects they really like that tennessee valley authority i have actually seen questions on this authority come up on the exam very important because it was one of the first examples of of multi-state planning dealing with power

Generation dealing with flood control and actually was even dealt with job issues as they took old factories and converted them into producing fertilizer so the tennessee valley authority if you google it and look it up you’ll see it still exists they are a power generating authority

But has had a lot of influence in the planning world over time so know that one some other examples chesapeake bay watershed i talked about that briefly um sierra club and epa there was a lawsuit that was filed i i as far as i can tell

Is still ongoing but it it may come up because sierra club challenged epa and said hey listen you’re not enforcing the clean water act what are you going to do about it and there’s been several cases around the u.s that have looked at that so epa now is is

Tightening up and if you want to know lancaster county we sit right about here we are the subject of a lot of the action on pacific bay because of all the farm fields we have here and that the major river that drains majority of lancaster county the susquehanna river

Is the primary source of fresh water for the bay so we are right in the bullseye of epa i’ve actually had meetings with epa recently to talk about ms4 and tmdls i don’t know if tmdls are going to show up on your test or not but total maximum daily load it’s a

Evaluation of pollution levels and streams again a good example of an issue that could be considered a spatial area of practice but it could also be under specific topics an environmental question so again don’t panic a lot to study but good things to know port authority of new jers in new york

Created early on in 1920s it does a whole lot of work with looking at regional transportation infrastructure um very very forefront in the news right now because the rebuilding of the world trade center plaza so you will hear that name coming up in the news would not be surprised if

The port authority comes up on the exam other examples hoover dam or boulder dam huge power generating considered one of the engineering marvels of the world so to speak but there was a lot of there was a lot of issues around constructing that there were environmental concerns um environmental impacts of this

Structure were significant and it affected a lot of people out west the the valley that was flooded and how that affected everything look at those kind of things see what they’re doing there planning for the state now again as susan said in the very beginning this is a national exam so

They are not going to drill down into specific details of a specific way a state does things and we we hit that very hard here and we do the exam prep sessions in pennsylvania because pennsylvania is fairly unique in how we do planning one we are a commonwealth not a state um you

Can look up the difference but um we are we are one of the four commonwealths left in the us um as such we have been broken down into very small we have over 2600 small local governments here um so so pennsylvania does things somewhat differently so don’t drill down

Too much for your state but it’s good to see what other states are doing and again a good place to look at that is the planning magazine if if you have a planning library in your county office or if you know people in your county planning office or around that that may

Have those magazines ask if you can look at them go back a couple of years don’t don’t get the recent ones but look at look at what other states are doing in the in the broad sense they get a good idea a good example is that out west is where

Growth boundaries begin and portland oregon is is well known for its early work in developing urban growth boundaries that’d be good to know um good to know they came out of the west it moved here east i know that the county planning director ron bailey for lancaster county now

Susan’s boss over there in chester county he brought that with him when he came out from the west and now here in lancaster we do have growth boundaries i know that chester county does as well but definitely a tool that was started out there definitely something that that is highly

Discussed now smart growth is something that you want to see maryland is is is very well known for smart growth laws and not always easily passed through but i know maryland’s had some challenges on their on their smart growth laws and their smart growth stance so a good thing to look look up

I know that the maryland chapter has some information on their site on their smart growth policies i would look those up um dylan’s rule if you’ve never heard of that if you never have come across that i would take some time to get to know that

Dylan’s rule was based on john dylan who was a judge back in the 1800s and he he ruled in a case that said that the powers of of local governments are are granted by the state and and those are passed down by the state um it’d be interesting to look up we i

Actually had to do some research on that recently because um lancaster county was looking at a whole home ruled charter for the county government and it was based on a lot of dylan’s rules so i had to go look it up just for my own work here

Good one to know good it definitely shaped planning and how local governments are involved in planning across the u.s planning for sub-regions a lot of times the planning for sub regions focus around environmental and transportation issues um sometimes even park and recreation um outer banks as an example olmsted parkway if you’re familiar

Around dc the george washington parkway is another multi-state it crosses from virginia into maryland a good example also sub-region or sub-state regions include mpos metropolitan planning organizations and rpos rural planning organizations look that up and get to know that mpos were were formed to help state dots um distribute funding

Um as you go on you’ll you’ll learn and understand that so much of what planning does really has to do with funding if you look at at why we do a a census every 10 years a lot of it has to do with the distribution of funds from the

Federal level and down into states and who gets what and how much so funding is very important um and your your mpo your rpo is is charged and tasked with the job of how to select projects for funding and how that funding is is distributed so get to know

That if you can um i would encourage you to if there’s one if there’s an npo meeting near you you can get to it go to the meeting see what’s going on there on that note let me just say that if you are in private sector and you are not a

Public sector planner um my experience has been that this test is bent more towards public sector planning so if your if your career experience has been focused mostly or entirely in in the public in the private sector side i would encourage you greatly to get involved somehow

Attend the meeting get familiar talk to public sector planners because when i took the exam it seemed to me that most of the of the questions that were ethics um bent towards a scenario that related to public sector planning so it would be very helpful to to make yourself familiar with that

And as soon as i mentioned earlier too if you have specialized in a particular region of planning and i hate this and tell you this i have seen that transportation planners tend to struggle with taking the aicp exam because their that field is very specific environmental planners may be

The same way if this is your area of expertise this is what you studied and you want to take the exam make sure you broaden out and you look you spend a lot of time studying these other areas you don’t get bogged down with just your area of expertise however

Give a little plug if you do pass the iacp exam and you want to go on apa is now developing specialized certifications and right now we have transportation and environmental so if this is your strength and you want to go on then there are specialized trainings that you can specialize

Certifications you can accept after you get your aicp county level hazard mitigation plans growth management plans hazard mitigation has exploded i know on the eastern seaboard a lot recently due to hurricanes and flooding i can tell you last year as a practicing planner i spent a lot of my time dealing

With the after effects of hurricane irene and tropical storm lee as they came through we had a lot of flooding here in pennsylvania if you want to see the magnitude of that i know some of you if i deal with this more often than we do but if you go online

There there are images of the flooding that occurred in hershey park that are just incredible you see rides just disappear under the water they had eight ten feet of water in certain places around the park um incredible flooding that we had has raised the awareness of hazard mitigation plans in the area

And something it’s not new though it’s something that’s been around for a long time and so expect questions on that on the importance of of hazardous mitigation planning and the things that impact that growth management i will assure you there will be questions that are related

To growth management it is a hot topic it was a hot topic before this economic crisis and this housing crisis expect there to be questions a big thing that planning does is to look at how to manage growth it may seem like a newer term but it

Really is a foundation of what planning does so get yourself familiar with those those terms and topics um planning for urban areas urban infill redevelopment those kind of things food distribution planning again this will cross over to other areas and you’ll be getting more of this i think dave and farland

Next week we’ll be covering this in more detail but those type of things are definitely for urban area planning and suburban areas i work in a more suburban and rural township we have farmland in the north part of our township here we are very suburban in the lower two-thirds so

We do a lot of these issues sprawl transportation connectivity infrastructure water authorities sewer authorities how they work um how authorities work these are all good things they like to grab and test you on so make sure you’re familiar with how authorities are constructed how they’re set up what their level of

Authority is what they can do um aging in place has become a big topic here um i know that uh dr debra howe at temple university has done a lot of work on the significance of aging in place and how people are trying to who grow up and

Age in the place they’re familiar with their family is and so aging in places become a significant issue i know you in florida deal with that believe it or not here in pennsylvania lancaster county and around here we are very significant in the number of retirement communities here so be familiar with that

Planning for small towns in rural areas if you are a city planner you work in a larger city you may want to work on becoming familiar with um the issues that small town and rural areas deal with services provided infrastructure character economic development and i know that the test goes back to 08

But economic development obviously is a hot topic right now for a lot of us so those type of things are very good to understand and know and and not only for the exam but for your own professional development one thing that i’ve always said in these training sessions is don’t look at this

Purely as just a way to get um your aicp certification i was i stepped out of the field for a while to do some other work when i came back in i actually prepared for the exam purely just to study and become familiar with the significant topics that are coming on in

The planning world so don’t don’t study purely for just trying to pass the exam but look at it as a way of furthering your career and advancing yourself professionally whether whether you pass or not and i hope you all do um it’s definitely a good source of professional development for you

Uh one of the things that you will learn is as you pass the exam is that you need to maintain your your certification through um continuing education credits i think it’s a phenomenal way to go because it keeps you up to date on what’s going on and it helps you to

Understand the current topics it keeps your mind fresh if you don’t use something for a while it’s good to review it again and look at it so study study with that in mind as well um neighborhood planning understanding the the significance of of neighborhood planning um there’s a link here when the powerpoint

Is posted there’s a link to the apa policy guide susan mentioned them there’s a policy guide on the 1996 symposium on on neighborhood collaborative planning this is a great question that tends to cross over because a lot of advocacy planning that that susan also talked about earlier has to do with local areas

Advocates tend to want to advocate for things in their region so you’ll find housing is a very common topic in advocacy planning the need for affordable housing all all good things to understand the housing laws and how they’ve developed over time and what the current status is is all very important

Information to know downtown business improvement districts tax increment financing tips can be a little confusing i think the best thing to know is is not the detailed of how to how to calculate them but make sure you understand the terms i think one of the things that we have

Encouraged over the years of people taking the exam is is read a lot so that you’re at least familiar with terms if you’ve never heard of a tiff and you have no idea what it is it’s gonna be hard to answer those questions if you’ve at least read

It you you’re familiar with oh that has something to do with tax financing or something it’s going to help you answer the question okay don’t let terms trip you up study that i know that in our the pennsylvania chapter study guide that there is a good listing of all the key

Terms and things you need to know look at those be familiar with all of them traffic related issues again be familiar with terms of transportation planning if that’s not your specialty understand what a level of service is and how that works in a single signalized versus non-signalized level

Of service calculations good things to know um mixed use and density issues definitely related to uh growth management and planning um how you calculate density we get into discussions here quite often on gross versus net density do you take the full 50 acres and look at your

Density there or do you net out the the undeveloped areas the areas for infrastructure etc base your density on that be familiar with those kind of terms how they work how how density is calculated mixed use the the the areas of mix that are using now the the mixed use

Term um a lot of times you’ll see in an ordinance mixed use and what they’re mixing is commercial and industrial misuse is not always by right a mix of residential and non-residential uses so so look at those things way finding um greening is a huge push right now for for green

Green everything green infrastructure i’ve been involved in some studies here that look at the urban canopy and percentage of trees and urbanized areas and how you can increase your urban canopy it’s a big issue with ms4 in terms of your your water quality but it is a growing topic

Many studies have been done on the effects of trees in the ability to reduce the urban heat island effect green roofs green buildings lead leed certifications different levels of leed certifications um living building building challenge um a new one is kind of a step above lead now that’s that’s

Taking lead to a new level i don’t know when that came in to be um but these are good terms to be familiar with as they they tend to pop up on their on the exam tourism always a big one um lancaster county pennsylvania being a tourist area we are very familiar with

This we have the county level we have a tourism planner who focuses on those kind of issues if you’re not in a tourist area may not be a big issue for you but if you are you’ll understand that agri-tourism has become a common term now looking at agricultural

Areas and and how they attract tourists again that’s something that anyone around this part of pennsylvania is extremely familiar with we have farms that do tours we have trails through the maze of corn the maze maze as they say um agritourism is a growing field and and one to become familiar with

And it’s a great great way to get out in the fall you can run through the corn maze um visibility uh kind of a term that has risen in the planning field i apologize not on the slides but the ability for for people with handicaps to visit other

People has become a common topic now in a term that’s growing in the planning field um the ability to go out and and to visit your neighbors uh ada requirements and accessibility so those kind of things are becoming important so when you look at downtowns you’re looking at neighborhoods those

Issues do do tend to come up in their planning profession but also expect to see those kind of things on the exam talked a little about this corridor planning transportation and greenway trail planning um all good good topics to understand and and no again don’t go down into a whole

Lot of detail just become familiar with these topics uh waterfront planning a big issue the environmental the recreation issues the hazard mitigation flooding accessibility economic opportunities that occur along waterfronts so you can again you can see how these these topics tend to overlap and relate historic districts um become familiar with the

The federal historic acts um what it takes to to get a property on the national register and what that means landmarks harb historic architectural review board that might be a pennsylvania-ism but i know across the u.s they have similar things where you have a local group that looks at

Historic areas and historic preservation they look at um preservation of historic buildings in your community so all good things to look at and if you’re up this way of course the gettysburg battlefield always a fascinating place to go to around if you’re a cyclist great place to bike

Phenomenal bike tour if you’re a geologist nerd there’s some incredible geology sites out there a little plug for gettysburg go go check those places out um traditional town features each of the following characteristics except i believe susan this is one of our test questions traditional small towns they look at a

Incremental growth outward from a core b low to very low density of development c open space around the edges or d street scaled for routine daily use rather than rush hour demand susan you there do you have that test question yeah do you want me to launch that one mark sure yes please

All right traditional i’m going to launch that one and give people some time to vote on that mark can you see the results coming in or no i cannot so okay all right i’ll let you know what those are again if you’re an urban planner these

Are the kind of things you may want to focus on what are the issues that are dealt with in small towns i feel somewhat blessed here is that we have two small towns in my community we are right next to lancaster city which is a growing city and we have some of the

What we brag about some of the best farmland in the us so we have the ability to look at all these areas we have results coming in uh yeah we’re just about up um to where things are slowing down um so i’ll give a just a little bit more here

And then close it in a few seconds uh right now i can tell you that b is in the lead with about 46 percent um a is at 25 and then c and d are the kind of split you know 15 and 13 between the two of those so um

I’ll go ahead and close that now and share it with everyone so you can see what the answers were and this is a good good example of one of the testing skills that we talk about often and that is when you do this read the question and then read the answers

And then read the question again so that you you read the question you get on the answers you get a good idea of what they’re looking for then go back and reread the question and a lot of times when you do that you pick up a word you might have missed

When you’re going through and this one the word accept is brought out it may not be that way on your test but they’re looking for what are things it is not and of course a small town is is jump to the answer it is not looking at low to very low density

Of development small towns you want to see you talk about open space you talk about street scale we’re talking about incremental growth we stay outward from the core that is definitely a planarism growth happens where where people want to develop but definitely incremental you want to be able to stage growth

You want to be able to stage growth for the ability to ensure the infrastructure keeps up with the growth demand very big issue whether you’re talking about the exam or in practical planning you get ahead of your ability to provide water or sewer service police fire schools etc

Get ahead of yourself so incremental growth is a big deal which is really the focus of growth management and what it talks about but low to very low density no it’s not going to be an issue to deal with in small towns all right let’s go to the next test question

Neighborhood rather than regional planning may be more likely to address a wetland in floodplain protection b airport accessibility c availability of grocery stores and or d provision of overnight parking for 18 wheelers again the question neighborhood rather than regional planning may be more likely to address which of the following

I think students launched that question yep i just launched that one and i do want to just let people know uh people have been sending in questions throughout and um some of them are individual questions some of them however are useful for everyone so i’ve been and going back in and typing in

Responses for example someone sent in the link to the top 25s so i shared that back out with everyone so people may want to look in their question bar and their go to webinar menu and because there’s some information in there that’s uh that they may want to

See like i said links back out to some things and and then some other issues and we’ll go through questions some more at the end that are relevant to everyone um and someone did ask if they could be unmuted and and why wasn’t everyone unmuted and i will just tell people that

We have um right now on this session 348 attendees so we can’t unmute all of you so that’s why that’s why you have to send in your questions and then um and then we can repeat them back out to everyone and share them or or just send

A response to you but we can’t unmute 350 people so i think you have all the votes that you’re going to get on this question and i’m going to go ahead and close it and then share it back out and it looks like uh yeah 75 percent for c

And then 20 percent for d and then just a few between a and b so um people seem fairly clear on this one yeah and it is the availability of grocery stores and i’ll share this it’s funny grocery stores are such a key thing in downtown lancaster a study was done and

There was only two grocery stores in the whole city that were actually downtown the rest were all outside so definitely something on a neighborhood scale that that needs to be looked at as soon as i know that we have some other test questions here but uh

Look at the clock we only got a few minutes left in this session are there any questions you want to review before we jump on to any more sample questions um now like i said people should look through their their question bar and and see a few links in there for sure and

Then i guess just a couple things on people asked about degrees you can actually have no degree and still apply for the exam you just require more experience so any type of degree whether it’s a pab university or not or no degree at all is actually fine

It’s just going to take more experience to be eligible to sit for the exam and someone did just send in and they noted and they just wanted to point out to everybody else someone who has already applied and been approved that the experience write-ups do take time so

Start early on those and that is a good reminder for everyone particularly if you have several jobs that you have to go through to justify your experience and then someone asked about the cm credits it’s 32 every two years and then that is ongoing so you’ll have your first reporting cycle

You’re in you’re in you’ll do your 32 credits and then you restart and you have to do 32 more apa does allow you to carry over credits if you have them up to 16. and so far most people have not had an issue with complying with that requirement if if

They’re at all interested in it essentially so i think that catches up on most of the questions and otherwise look in your your question bar and catch up on some links and and things like that okay sounds good let’s go through one more question and then maybe we can

Just jump to the end here and make sure you guys have our contact information um the benefits of intensity valley authority we talked about that earlier project including power generation and flood controls extend to what type of area this should be a pretty straightforward question national b multi-state c county or d

Urban what type of area spatial area is related to the tennessee valley authority this should be a fairly quick poll yes it’s going to be a very very quick poll so far we’re running at um 96 for be multi-state so all right are fairly clear on that one

So i do see one of the questions that came up is that we need to know all the acronyms um i know in the past when the test was first put out they actually developed questions to try to trip people up on purpose i think most of those have been filtered out now

If it’s a very common acronym they’ll assume that you know it like mpo something like safetyloo if you’ve never seen it never heard it i hope they spell it out but i don’t know don’t take that risk as i said earlier try to be familiar with these kind of terms and these kind

Of acronyms especially on the national level if your local state or local community has some those will not show up on tests but be familiar with all the big national ones all right we don’t have to pull this one necessarily but which is the following is not true about a metropolitan planning organization

Is it over 250 000 population b do they funnel federal funds transportation projects see they maintain a long-range transportation plan for the region and d their decision-making committees can be compromised of local state and federal representatives this one is actually a the requirements are 50 000. this is the

Kind of stuff they do like to kind of test to see if you do know if you’re familiar with the criteria for mpos all right and again a quick review categories are not exclusive um you may want to study specific areas as you go through but they do bleed over a lot um

The complexity of the planning process grows as a planning area grows we’ve talked about that several times um things in planning are always happening things are changing um the kilo case that happened several years ago up in connecticut wasn’t even on the radar years ago now

It probably is one of the test questions because it really had a lot to do with with the significance of economic development and can economic development be used in terms of taking so you know keep up but again as susan i i said that the last test was when in 2008 this last

Update so don’t don’t cram too much beyond that time um look at these kind of things um and be familiar here’s our contact information um if 300 some people email us all the questions may take us a while to get back to you but if you have a specific

Question and you would like some help or or something that you think we can help out with please feel free to email us we’ll get back to you when you can okay with that i think we’re about done susan i don’t know if you have any other further follow-up or questions you want

To hit uh yeah let me just look here for let me look through some of these last questions here i think most of this we have addressed to some degree or another okay someone’s asking if there’s an exception for an amount of experience no they really that is one that there’s

Absolutely no exception for that one i’ve seen um the deadline has passed for the may exam so you have to if you have not applied at this point you have to wait for the november exam and like i said those those deadlines to apply come up early

In relation to the exam itself you know apa has to go through every single one of these applications and make a determination so the deadline for november is sometime in july and keep in mind i think i think it’s about 600 people who test annually and of course there’s more

People who apply who are not approved so that you know it’s a lot that apa has to go through so that’s why those are so early um oh somebody asked about how many hours you should study i’ve heard this general number of 80 to 100 hours you know over

The course of your studying period which i think for most people is kind of about a three-month window um some people start a little bit earlier but 80 to 100 hours and the questions will be and answers are captured in the powerpoint presentation so you can see that the

Polling responses will not be in there but the answers will absolutely show up in there um and just generally speaking i will try and find that top 25 link somewhere and see if i can put that on the pa chapter website it seems to be a little bit difficult for people to find

Or if i find it today i’ll actually put it in the powerpoint presentation before it gets posted the the pa chapter website will certainly include a link to the powerpoint presentation if our recording was successful the utah chapter site will include the recording itself with the slides

Synced to it so hopefully that will um will work well when you close this out just to let you know there will be a survey and we’d really appreciate it if you’d give us some feedback that’ll help us with future sessions again sorry about the delay to start with

But since we’ve been through this once now i think next week and following weeks will go better but thank you and thanks to mark and good luck to everyone on the exam feel free to contact us you know our contact information is back there and also just you know more generally

Certainly um the professional development officer for your own chapter is a good resource so um absolutely make use of those so good luck to everybody and thanks for joining us today i wish you all well uh okay ugh uh mark are you still on

I am but i’m about to log off i’ve had to step away is everything all over yeah we can okay i think i think you need to officially end the broadcast yes i will right now thank you for everything and uh we’ll talk to you soon okay thanks a lot thank you okay

Bye

ID: RSjmTIllTDE
Time: 1375234505
Date: 2013-07-31 06:05:05
Duration: 01:50:19

منبع