This content was developed through a partnership between the Lincoln Institute and the American Planning Association as part of the APA Foresight practice. It was originally published by APA in Planning.  

In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” 

Keep that in mind when you find that your next trip on a long weekend—which could be every weekend as more and more companies move to a four-day work week—will be on a solar—powered plane. Or when you buy your next multitool, which turns out to be made of a plastic that can change its form and properties when it’s heated or cooled. 

With a world moving faster than even a 24-hour news cycle can handle, it’s more important than ever for planners to stay one step ahead of the issues and prepare communities as change occurs. 

2025 Trend Report for Planners 

On January 29, the American Planning Association (APA) will publish the 2025 Trend Report for Planners in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. APA’s Foresight team and the APA Trend Scouting Foresight Community have identified existing, emerging, and potential future trends that planners will want to be aware of and understand so that they can act, prepare, and learn. 

The report includes about 100 trends and signals, exploring them in future scenarios, deep dives, podcasts, and more. Here are just a few of the trends you need to know about. 

1. More Housing Hurdles: Insurance Costs, Climate Impacts, and Population Shifts

Population is growing much more slowly in the US than in previous decades, and the Census Bureau projects just a 9.7 percent population growth over the next 75 years. The concept of family is changing, too. Single-person households and couples without children now make up more than half of all US households. Single-parent and multigenerational households also are on the rise, as are roommate situations. 

Less than one-fifth of US families now fit the traditional “nuclear family” model, and the typical concepts regarding households continue to evolve. But one thing that has not changed in recent years: finding housing that’s affordable is getting more difficult. According to research by Zillow, households need to earn $47,000 more than they did just four years ago to afford a single-family home. Inflation, high interest rates, and the shortage of affordable housing have put the American Dream out of reach for many, with homeownership now almost 50 percent more expensive than renting. 

Meanwhile, cities in the Northeast and Midwest are seeing population losses, while states in the South and West continue to gain residents even as climate change impacts are striking those areas the hardest. Relative tax burdens and lower costs of living are likely key factors. In fact, the drastic impacts of climate change are threatening the health, safety, and lives of millions of people, with 34 percent of people in the US living in areas at risk of natural disasters and flooding and 41 percent of rental units vulnerable to climate change. 

Climate change–related losses are also generating chaos in the insurance market. Insurance providers are raising rates substantially in many areas and have become reluctant or have refused to insure homes in hazardous areas. Big insurers have pulled out of Florida, Louisiana, and California, a state where insurance giant State Farm stopped accepting applications because of “rapidly growing catastrophic exposure.” (Future scenarios in the Trend Report can help planners explore how this situation could play out in the next 10 years.) 

To mitigate insurance market impacts to homeowners, regulators can employ strategies such as mandating insurance industry transparency and forbidding “bluelining,” the increase in premiums or withdrawal of services in high-risk areas by providers. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners recently adopted a National Climate Resilience Strategy for Insurance to guide regulators and providers alike, and Florida has passed several laws aiming to reduce insurance premiums and provide mitigation grants to homeowners and multifamily property owners.

2. Public Spaces for Shaggy—and Scooby Too

As the need for public, “third places” grows, some cities are reimagining how spaces can adapt or where new ones can be created. This includes factoring in places for pets, especially since more US households have pets than children. The global pet industry is expected to reach nearly $500 billion by 2030. Cities can obtain a “pet-friendly” certification to fetch more tourists, and the number of US dog parks is exploding, with a 40 percent increase in public dog park development from 2009 to 2020. In San Francisco, developers are adding dog-specific areas near housing complexes to attract buyers.

3. Water Is Precious and Under Threat

The Gulf of Mexico is the hottest it has been in the modern era, causing rapidly forming storms like hurricanes Helene and Milton this past year that devastated the US East Coast. Meanwhile, temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef are the highest they’ve been in four centuries, while heat-driven ocean expansion has caused a third of global sea level rise. In the Persian Gulf, water is scarce and valuable, as growing populations and development reach an all-time high. Globally, a quarter of all food crops are threatened by unreliable or highly stressed water supplies. At the same time, water currents in the Arctic and the Atlantic appear to be slowing down, with the potential to change weather patterns and put food-producing regions at risk. 

Meanwhile, large-scale commercial water bottling operations driven by private equity are posing an increasing risk to the stability of local water sources in the US, as is the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers that need massive amounts of water for cooling. That is threatening local and regional reservoirs, aquifers, and freshwater sources, and some places are implementing water usage regulations as a response.

4. Could We Evolve to a Post-Work World?

The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise in remote work has blurred the lines of traditional work patterns. Take the growing popularity of “workcations” and “bleisure,” which suggest that work and personal life may increasingly overlap. Not everyone likes it; Australia enacted a “right to disconnect” law for workers in August 2024. 

Four-day workweek pilots introduced globally and in the US show that reduced hours can lead to higher productivity and greater life satisfaction. Workers think so, too. About 80 percent said they would be happier and just as productive dropping a day from the traditional schedule, according to the 2024 Work in America study. 

At the same time, our relationship with our work is shifting. A 2023 Pew Research Center study uncovered a new trend: only four in ten US workers see their job as central to their overall identity. This shift is reinforced by the idea of viewing a job as a verb (something you do) rather than a noun (something you are, like an accountant or technician). 

Attitudes toward leisure are changing, too. If individuals use their free time to pursue personal projects or passions, leisure could replace work as a primary focus in life. With the percentage of Americans older than 65 expected to rise to 23 percent by 2025, these current and future retirees also are seeking to make the most of their next chapter in life.

5. Digital Fatigue (and Pushback) Sets In

Digital fatigue is real. It is showing up in various ways, from a growing distrust of online news and increasing concerns over AI-generated content to disillusionment with online dating. Schools are banning mobile phones in classrooms, and states are restricting children’s access to social apps. The US surgeon general has even suggested that social media platforms should carry warning labels like those on cigarettes. In July, the Senate passed the first major internet safety bill for children in two decades. 

These measures reflect a broader effort to balance the benefits of technology with the need to be more conscious about the younger generation’s well-being. For planners, this trend suggests a greater need to balance digital public engagement with face-to-face interactions, fostering meaningful communication and empathy within communities. This includes creating in-person opportunities to engage younger people in planning processes, which can help connect those generations to their communities and each other.

6. Fungus Is the Future

Pop culture may lead you to think an age of fungi marks the last of us, but the ecological and health benefits of fungi should have more than just “mushroompreneurs” jumping for joy. Fungi can help shift us away from fossil fuels, lower cholesterol, help with successful organ transplants, tackle plastic pollution, eliminate micropollutants from contaminated water, and transition to more sustainable food systems. In 2023, US mushroom sales reached $1.04 billion, and the market is projected to triple in the next 10 years. As planners look for nature-based solutions for urban environments, fungi could become a key partner in creating better living spaces for all.

7. Balancing Green Energy Demand with Indigenous Rights

As the interest in renewable energy has spiked, so has the need for mining the raw minerals and metals required by these technologies—with some estimates believing demand will quadruple by 2040. These include lithium, cobalt, and silicon, as well as over a dozen rare earth elements. But mining comes with myriad human and environmental costs, often occurring in and at the expense of disadvantaged areas. This potentially pits government and private interests against Indigenous peoples, primarily through the extraction and exploitation of resources on tribal lands. 

More than half of projects to extract energy transition materials are on or near Indigenous land, and Indigenous peoples are directly impacted by over a third of global environmental conflicts, either through landscape, land, or livelihood loss. Some efforts are underway to boost Indigenous sovereignty. 

Central to the issue—and potential solutions—are land use and ownership, as well as the ability to apply different lenses to see the points of view and needs of the people these decisions will affect the most. Protecting the sovereign rights of Indigenous peoples could reduce the negative impact of environmental conflicts over the green energy transition and provide solutions. One such way is by adopting Indigenous knowledge into existing approaches to climate change mitigation and adaptation, like how several Native American nations are reintroducing bison to the US plains to enhance environmental and socioeconomic outcomes. 

The 2025 Trend Report for Planners was written by Petra Hurtado, Ievgeniia Dulko, Senna Catenacci, Joseph DeAngelis, Sagar Shah, and Jason Jordan. It was edited by Ann Dillemuth. 

Jon DePaolis is APA’s senior editor. 

Lead image: Steam rises above the cooling towers of Google’s data center in The Dalles, Oregon. Credit: Courtesy of Google.

The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

When Sonali Abraham began studying urban water use and efficiency at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2016, the region was emerging from a years-long drought—making it a great case study in water conservation attitudes and actions. A few years later, she completed her PhD with the help of a Babbitt Center Dissertation Fellowship, which assists doctoral students whose research advances water sustainability and resilience; she’s now a senior researcher at the Pacific Institute, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit focused on global water challenges and solutions.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Abraham reflects on people’s misconceptions about sustainable landscapes, why water too often gets taken for granted, even in arid climates, and how schools can play a key role in urban stormwater capture.

JON GOREY: What is the focus of your research, and how did your Babbitt Dissertation Fellowship help you build upon that work?

SONALI ABRAHAM: I got the Babbitt Dissertation Fellowship in early 2020. I had finished all the in-person research for my dissertation, and it just came at such a fortunate time, going into a year where everything was so uncertain because of COVID. My dissertation was mainly focused on water efficiency, especially outdoors.

The big drought had just come to an end, so there was still an awareness in LA and the southwestern US that we all need to conserve water. But when it came to outdoor water use, there was this disconnect. You still had people with pretty significant lawn areas or fountains in their yard. LA is a cool case study, because you have both extremes: You have the people who are really good about conserving water and super aware, but you also have people who have the means to not care.

I went into it first looking at how people are using water outdoors: Are we seeing a big difference in seasonality, or when there’s a drought year? How are different demographics and different communities using water outdoors? And then I focused in on the commercial sector, because I realized there was a big gap in our understanding of how commercial properties used water.

One of the big things is that they’re not metered separately. You’ll have one big building with different offices in it, and everything’s on one water meter, so you don’t know how much a single office uses. And then it’s also regulated differently. They put in conservation restrictions around the drought, but almost everything was focused on the residential sector. . . . So it was trying to understand, did commercial spaces reduce water use during the drought? Where are they using their water, what kind of landscapes are they using?

And as the final solution to all of this, what are the sustainable landscapes that we can put in place that will save water but also look good? We want to try to change this misconception that sustainable landscapes are ugly; they’re not just a pile of rocks or random cacti, they’re beautiful in their own right. You can have a sustainable landscape that saves water and resources but still have a really beautiful front yard that you can be proud of.

JG: What are you working on now or looking to take on next?

SA: One of the cool projects that I’m working on right now is looking at stormwater capture opportunities around schools in LA. The Los Angeles Unified School District is one of the biggest landowners in LA, and there are a lot of paved areas, so there was a lot of concern in the last year about the urban heat island effect on schools because of all the concrete around them and the intense high temperatures. You can take out that impermeable surface and create really healthy environments, both helping the children who are attending the school every day, but also the environment in the community around it, in so many different ways.

In Los Angeles County there’s this program called Measure W that taxes paved or impermeable surfaces per square foot, so there’s a big incentive for people to change it out. And that school project is a really cool example of that. The school district worked with a local nonprofit, Amigos de los Rios, and did a really good job [replacing almost half an acre of pavement from the schoolyard]. It’s a beautiful project. They did great stakeholder engagement, it’s a great example of how things can be done collaboratively and in a smart way.

JG: You’ve lived in many places around the world, from the Middle East to South Asia to both American coasts—some with an abundance of water, others facing a worrying scarcity of it. Have you seen interesting contrasts or similarities in the way people think about water in different regions or cultures?

SA: The similarity is that people undervalue water in general, I think that’s a through line. Both when you have a lot and when you have a little, people just have this impression of water being limitless. When you see bodies of water, I think there’s an impression of it being neverending.

It’s been interesting to see the shift in what policy is focused around based on where you are. When I was in India doing my undergraduate degree, it wasn’t so much about supply or scarcity—sometimes it would be in excess—but where I was specifically, it was about water quality. And so the things that you focus on, the way that water is talked about in common culture and society, is very different from how it’s talked about here, or in the Middle East, where I grew up, where it’s all about scarcity.

JG: What do you wish more people knew about water conservation?

SA: It’s the every-little-action-matters piece. It’s boring, but I think it’s important. We’re doing a study right now at Pacific Institute looking at a national assessment of water efficiency potential—so, how much water can we save across the country if we did X, Y, and Z. These are really basic technology-based changes, like efficient faucets—not behavioral changes—and you’d be surprised at how much of an impact those can make. People easily dismiss those kinds of small changes and feel like, ‘It’s just me, it’s just one bathroom,’ but those things add up pretty quickly.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

SA: The equity piece, especially in an international context. The issues facing different regions of the world vary a lot, and water doesn’t follow country borders. But the way that people approach problems is often on a very political basis, and that worries me. I see how it’s used as a weapon in a lot of places, and that is scary. I am hopeful that there is a path forward as people do more research and the word gets out more that these things have to be managed as a resource for a community as a whole—and that community can be your neighborhood, it can be your city, it can be the world, because it literally crosses all those pieces.

The scale at which things are going is really heartening, the awareness is only going up, and it’s going up at a much more rapid pace than when I first started this work. When I tell people I work in water, there’s often excitement and interest and people have questions and want to know more. It’s unfortunate that climate change is kind of one of the drivers that have led people to become more aware, but it’s great that people are getting more aware.

I also think we’re seeing a lot more policy that actually does drive change from the ground up. So in most California cities, you’ll see that the gallons per person per day that people are using have actually steadily decreased. Even though the population is increasing, the water usage per person is decreasing because of changes that we’ve implemented through policy for buildings and new development.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately?

SA: I have a great book recommendation I tell everyone to read, it’s called The Covenant of Water. It’s fiction, it’s written by Abraham Verghese, a doctor turned author. I can’t give away too much, but it’s set in South India, where my family’s from, so it has a personal connection for me. It’s part medical mystery, part family fiction, and part cultural awareness of water and how, outside of all of the scientific, technical pieces of it, water just holds this visceral importance to a lot of communities and how they’re connected to it.

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Sonali Abraham. Credit: Courtesy photo.

The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work—from building housing in New Orleans to conserving water in the West, from developing new tax appraisal tools to studying how post-pandemic retail patterns intersect with land use.

Exploring the New Economics of Downtown
Economist Lindsay Relihan has spent years studying the connections among cities, technology, consumption, and our shifting shopping habits. We caught up with Relihan, a participant in the Lincoln Institute Scholars Program, to find out what she’s learning in the wake of the pandemic.

Mapping Our Most Resilient Landscapes
As director of The Nature Conservancy’s North America Center for Resilient Conservation Science, ecologist and former Kingsbury Browne fellow Mark Anderson is leading a comprehensive mapping project to document connected, climate-resilient landscapes.

Building Affordable Homeownership Opportunities in New Orleans
After Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, housing in New Orleans became scarce and expensive. Fulcrum Fellow Oji Alexander (shown above) is working to expand affordable homeownership opportunities in the city and address the racial wealth gap.

Designing a New Approach to Property Tax Appraisals
Appraising property is a complicated undertaking, but new tools are democratizing and modernizing the field, including an approach developed by Paul Bidanset, a former C. Lowell Harriss Dissertation Fellow at the Lincoln Institute.

Rethinking Stormwater Management in the West
Former Babbitt Center fellow Neha Gupta is a joint assistant research professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. We caught up with her to talk about climate change, urban stormwater, and her favorite cli-fi novels.

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Oji Alexander, CEO of People’s Housing+ in New Orleans and a former Fulcrum Fellow, in front of two People’s Housing+ homes. Credit: Courtesy photo.