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.

With a background in landscape architecture, Seung Kyum Kim has always been interested in the interplay between green space and the urban form.

After beginning his career at Design Workshop in Phoenix and Salt Lake City in the late 2000s, Kim relocated to South Korea in 2009 to take a role with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, working on flood mitigation, drought, and stormwater management. There, he got interested in “how to minimize risk from flooding, natural disasters, and climate change,” he says, which led him to pursue a master’s and a PhD from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

While at Harvard GSD, Kim joined a trip to several cities in China with Professor Richard Peiser and discovered he had an interest in housing and land policy as well. Since then, his research—which included work as an International Fellow through the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s China program in 2021—has spanned multiple disciplines, connecting urban planning, landscape architecture, housing and economics, environmental justice, and climate change.

In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Kim reflects on some of the most successful climate-adaptive green spaces around the world, why cities with aging residents are less likely to invest in new green spaces, and how park usage differs in the United States and South Korea.

JON GOREY: What is the main focus of your research?

SEUNG KYUM KIM: I’m currently a professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology [KAIST], which is very much focused on technology and science. The engineering school is very strong here, it’s like MIT in South Korea. My department is the Graduate School of Future Strategy, and I’m working on the economic side, urban planning and climate change, while some of the professors in our department are working on the engineering side.

I’m working on six research projects at the same time, so my field of research is kind of expanding, rather than going deep. I’m focusing on how climate policies like carbon taxes and the CBAM, or carbon border adjustment mechanism, influence the urban economy, particularly manufacturing competitiveness and urban inequality. I’m also exploring the long-term impact that these policies have on shrinking cities and urban revitalization.

One of my projects is on how blue-green infrastructure for climate change adaptation affects gentrification in urban areas in 32 countries on the African continent. And in one of my recent research papers, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, I was researching how an aging population impacts climate policy.

JG: What’s something that was surprising or unintuitive that you found in your research?

SK: I studied how the aging population impacts climate adaptation strategy in Southeast Asia. Using remote sensing and difference-in-differences approaches, I found that communities with a growing elderly population were seeing reduced green infrastructure and green spaces, making them more vulnerable to climate change. This was sort of surprising, and it underscored the importance of considering demographic change in climate policy planning.

As people get older in a community, the tax base decreases. So with a limited budget, the government’s priorities are different. As the people are getting older, the government mostly focuses on hospitals, the health budget is increased—but for environmental green space and parks, investments in those kinds of amenities, the budget is reduced.

JG: What do you wish more people knew about urban green spaces?

SK: I wish people understood that climate policy isn’t just an environmental concern. It is deeply connected to economic and social equality. Effective urban planning can simultaneously address environmental, economic, and social issues as well.

JG: You’ve studied green spaces all over the world. Are there any great projects that you think were particularly successful at combining green space and climate adaptation?

SK: There are a few inspiring examples of successful green space projects that also address climate change and provide cultural benefits. There’s the Cheonggyecheon Stream restoration in South Korea, this was 15 or 20 years ago. Originally it was a covered highway, and the Cheonggyecheon was restored into an urban stream and linear park in central Seoul. It significantly reduced urban heat island effects, improved air quality, boosted biodiversity, and provided the poor with an urban oasis in the densest area of the city.

One of the reasons they did not convert the covered highway into a stream and green space earlier was that land prices are very expensive in central Seoul, and because of traffic issues, transportation issues. So there were two phases. Before the Cheonggyecheon restoration project, they actually modified the transportation systems within Seoul. . . . The local government created a dedicated bus lane in the center of the road to solve the traffic conditions. After that, they did the stream restoration. So that kind of environmental project is not solely a green space project, it’s linked. That’s one of the reasons we need to see the broader perspective. We need to see the transportation and climate change and environmental benefits and the cultural benefits within urban issues.

China also has the sponge city initiative in various cities, including Wuhan and Xinjiang. It aims to incorporate permeable surfaces, wetlands, green roofs, and rain gardens throughout the urban area. The [sponge city] project improves urban water management to reduce flooding and runoff and enhance the urban ecosystem, making the city more resilient to extreme weather events.

JG: Have you noticed any differences in the ways we use or don’t use urban green space in the United States compared to South Korea?

SK: In the United States, green space often means larger parks . . . nature reserves and recreational areas that are generously spread out, especially in suburban or less dense urban areas. Expansive parks like Central Park in New York or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, they’re intended not only for recreation but also for preserving nature and wildlife within an urban context.

But in Korea, the green spaces are usually smaller—it’s a small country, so they’re more strategically placed within dense urban neighborhoods because of limited urban land availability. The parks tend to be compact and highly designed to maximize efficiency, often equipped with walking paths, exercise equipment, benches, and community gardens. Also, in Korea green space focuses heavily on accessibility, daily convenience, and the well-being of residents fitting seamlessly into the high-density urban environment. Another difference is cultural usage. Korean parks often serve as a community space for daily activities, like group exercise and community gatherings, whereas US parks might see more individual, family-based recreational uses, like picnics and sports and leisure activities.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or a favorite TV show you’ve been streaming?  

SK: Recently I read Elizabeth Kolbert’s Under a White Sky, which vividly explores how environmental innovations can sometimes have unexpected consequences. Another book I read recently was Ian Goldin’s Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World. That was also fascinating, especially how it highlights the factors determining urban success or failure.

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

Lead image: Former Lincoln Institute International Fellow Seung Kyum Kim. Credit: Courtesy photo.

El Instituto Lincoln ofrece una variedad de oportunidades de carrera temprana y media para los investigadores. En esta serie, hacemos un seguimiento con antiguos académicos y becarios del Instituto Lincoln para obtener más información sobre su trabajo.

Cuando Sonali Abraham comenzó a estudiar el uso y la eficiencia del agua urbana en la Universidad de California, Los Ángeles, en 2016, la región estaba saliendo de una sequía de años, por lo que es un gran estudio de caso sobre las actitudes y acciones de conservación del agua. Unos años más tarde, completó su doctorado con la ayuda de una beca de tesis doctoral del Centro Babbitt (Babbitt Center Dissertation Fellowship), que ayuda a los estudiantes de doctorado cuya investigación promueve la sostenibilidad y la resiliencia del agua. Ahora es investigadora sénior en el Pacific Institute, una organización sin fines de lucro con sede en Oakland, California, centrada en los desafíos y las soluciones globales del agua.

En esta entrevista, que ha sido editada con motivos de longitud y claridad, Abraham refleja acerca de las ideas erróneas que tiene la gente acerca de los paisajes sostenibles, por qué el agua se da por sentado, aún en climas áridos, y como las escuelas pueden tener un papel clave en la captura de aguas pluviales urbanas.

JON GOREY: ¿Cuál es el enfoque de su investigación?

SONALI ABRAHAM: El foco principal de mi tesis fue la eficiencia del agua, en especial al aire libre. La gran sequía acababa de terminar cuando obtuve la beca de tesis doctoral del Centro Babbitt, por lo que todavía había una conciencia en Los Ángeles y el suroeste de los Estados Unidos de que todos necesitamos conservar el agua. Pero cuando se trataba del uso del agua al aire libre, había una desconexión. Aún había personas con áreas de césped o fuentes de agua bastante grandes en su patio. Los Ángeles es un estudio de caso interesante, porque tiene ambos extremos: Tienes a las personas que son realmente buenas para conservar el agua y súper conscientes, pero también tienes personas que tienen los medios para no preocuparse. Primero analicé cómo la gente usa el agua al aire libre. . . y, luego, me centré en el sector comercial, porque me di cuenta de que había una gran brecha en nuestra comprensión de cómo las propiedades comerciales usaban el agua.

Estaba tratando de entender, ¿los espacios comerciales redujeron el uso de agua durante la sequía? ¿En qué están usando el agua, qué tipo de paisajes están usando? ¿Y cuáles son los paisajes sostenibles que podemos implementar que ahorren agua pero que también se vean bien? Queremos tratar de cambiar esta idea errónea de que los paisajes sostenibles son feos; no son solo un montón de rocas o cactus al azar, son hermosos por derecho propio. Se puede tener un paisaje sostenible que ahorre agua y recursos e, incluso así, tener un patio delantero realmente hermoso del que enorgullecerse.

JG: ¿En qué está trabajando ahora o qué quiere abordar a continuación?

SA: Uno de los proyectos geniales en los que estoy trabajando en este momento es buscar oportunidades de captura de aguas pluviales en las escuelas de Los Ángeles. El Distrito Escolar Unificado de Los Ángeles es uno de los mayores propietarios de tierras en Los Ángeles, y hay muchas áreas pavimentadas, por lo que había mucha preocupación por el efecto de islas de calor urbanas en las escuelas debido a todo el hormigón que las rodea y las altas temperaturas intensas. Se puede sacar esa superficie impermeable y crear ambientes realmente saludables, y de esta forma, ayudar a los niños que asisten a la escuela todos los días, pero también ayudar al medio ambiente en la comunidad circundante, de muchas maneras diferentes.

En el condado de Los Ángeles existe este programa llamado Measure W (Medida W) que grava las superficies pavimentadas o impermeables por pie cuadrado, por lo que hay un gran incentivo para que las personas lo cambien. El distrito escolar trabajó con una organización local sin fines de lucro, Amigos de los Ríos, e hizo un muy buen trabajo. Es un proyecto hermoso. Lograron una gran participación de las partes interesadas, es un gran ejemplo de cómo se pueden hacer las cosas de forma colaborativa e inteligente.

JG: Ha vivido en muchos lugares del mundo, algunos con abundancia de agua, otros enfrentando una escasez preocupante. ¿Ha visto contrastes o similitudes interesantes en la forma en que la gente piensa sobre el agua?

SA: La similitud es que, en general, las personas subestiman el agua. Tanto cuando tienes mucho como cuando tienes poco, la gente tiene la impresión de que el agua es ilimitada. Cuando ves cuerpos de agua, creo que hay una impresión de que es interminable.

Ha sido interesante ver el cambio en la política centrada en el lugar. Cuando estaba en la India haciendo la licenciatura, no se trataba tanto de la oferta o la escasez, a veces había en exceso, sino de la calidad del agua. Eso es muy diferente de cómo se habla aquí, o en el Medio Oriente, donde crecí, donde todo se trata de escasez.

JG: ¿Qué desearía que más personas supieran sobre la conservación del agua?

SA: La parte de que cada pequeña acción importa. Es aburrido, pero creo que es importante. En este momento, estamos haciendo un estudio en Pacific Institute que analiza una evaluación nacional del potencial de eficiencia del agua, por lo tanto, cuánta agua podemos ahorrar en todo el país si hiciéramos X, Y y Z. Estos son cambios muy básicos basados en la tecnología, como grifos eficientes, no son cambios de comportamiento, y te sorprendería el impacto que pueden tener. La gente descarta esos pequeños cambios con facilidad y cree que ‘soy solo yo, es solo un baño’, pero esas cosas se suman bastante rápido.

JG: En lo que respecta a su trabajo, ¿qué la mantiene despierta por la noche? ¿Y qué le da esperanza?

SA: La parte de la equidad, en especial en un contexto internacional. Los problemas que enfrentan las diferentes regiones del mundo varían mucho, y el agua no sigue las fronteras de los países. Pero la forma en que las personas abordan los problemas a menudo es sobre una base muy política, y eso me preocupa. . . . Tengo la esperanza de que haya un camino por seguir a medida que la gente investigue más y se corra más la voz de que estas cosas tienen que administrarse como un recurso para una comunidad en conjunto, y esa comunidad puede ser el barrio, puede ser la ciudad, puede ser el mundo, porque literalmente es transversal a todo eso.

La escala a la que van las cosas es realmente alentadora, la conciencia solo está aumentando y está aumentando a un ritmo mucho más rápido que cuando comencé este trabajo. . . . Es lamentable que el cambio climático sea uno de los impulsores que ha llevado a las personas a ser más conscientes, pero es genial que las personas tengan mayor conciencia.

JG: ¿Cuál es el mejor libro que ha leído recientemente?

SA: Tengo un libro que recomiendo que todos lean. Se llama The Covenant of Water (El pacto de agua). Es ficción y escrito por Abraham Verhese, un doctor que se volvió autor. No puedo decir mucho, pero toma lugar en el sur de la India, de donde viene mi familia, entonces tengo una conexión personal. Es parte misterio médico, parte ficción de familia y parte conciencia cultural del agua y cómo, fuera de todo lo científico y técnico, el agua tiene una importancia visceral para muchas comunidades.

Jon Gorey es redactor del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo.

Imagen principal: Sonali Abraham. Crédito: foto de cortesía.

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.

How do you get people to consider drinking recycled wastewater? That was the challenge Marisa Manheim sought to address as a doctoral student at Arizona State University. With the help of a Babbitt Center Dissertation Fellowship, Manheim worked with 15 tap-water skeptics to conceive and codesign an exhibit aimed at inspiring curiosity about—and perhaps even acceptance of—a concept that many people reflexively reject.

While all water is recycled, in a sense—that’s how the water cycle works—some communities in arid areas, such as Scottsdale, Arizona, have been piloting direct potable reuse (DPR) systems, using advanced purification processes to treat wastewater to standards that exceed those of bottled water. Manheim decided to investigate the public’s response to such programs, bringing theories of embodied cognition to her research and exploring how emotions and bodily sensations contribute to decision-making.

Before pursuing her PhD, Manheim earned a master’s degree in experience design, and worked in corporate design research roles she found less than fulfilling. “A detour into activism” led her into urban agriculture just as the movement gained national momentum in the early 2000s.

Now an assistant professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo in New York, Manheim continues to take an interdisciplinary approach to her research. In this interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Manheim explains how good music can influence our choices, why urine makes great fertilizer, and what she’s learned about challenging social norms.

JON GOREY: What was the focus of your dissertation research?

MARISA MANHEIM: I was always trying to answer the question, why is urban agriculture such an amazing launching point for environmental awareness building and intersectional justice and civic participation and all these pieces that have a really hard time getting traction otherwise? And I eventually landed on embodied cognition and activism, which are ideas from cognitive philosophy and psychology about how we process the world around us. It’s very much trying to reintegrate ideas about the body and sensation and social situations into how we conceptualize consciousness and cognition, decision-making, and so forth. I wanted to study something that helped me to explore those ideas further, but didn’t know what it would be.

When I found the concept of recycling wastewater as a drinking water supply, it was basically love at first sight. It’s just such an interesting topic, because it’s about water policy, it’s about food policy, and it’s about novel technologies and the way we tend to be very distrustful or suspicious of them. And because it really comes down to this moment of disgust and reaction, and the way that all manifests, it allowed me to ask a lot of questions about embodied cognition.

The research itself looks at how we are responding to the idea of introducing recycled water into the drinking water supply in central Arizona, how the people in charge of that from a policy and instrumentation side are anticipating and responding to those consumer perceptions, and also how we can apply lessons from design practice and design research to help inform and improve how the decision-making plays out around that topic.

I recruited people who are specifically going out of their way to secure alternative drinking water—so they don’t drink their tap water. I worked very closely with this group of 15 water skeptics to understand and cocreate ways to help other people become curious about the possibilities of incorporating advanced purified water into the drinking water supply . . . and then turned that into an exhibit that engaged 1,100 people in three public festivals.

It starts at the entrance, where there are panels teaching you about water scarcity and the changing climate and the uncertain future of the water supply. Then you go through this inflatable tunnel with this big display about direct potable reuse and how it works. And then you go out of the tunnel, and you’re in this circle where people are standing around drinking water, and there’s lots of fun colors and greenery and music, and you’re invited to sample the water and share your responses to it.

At the entrance to the exhibit, which is called the Future Taste of Water, we had people vote by dropping a marble into one of three water bottles, so they were able to say whether they would support the use of recycled water as a drinking water supply. Something like 77 percent said they wouldn’t support it at the entrance. And then at the exit, they had the same question, and almost everybody supported it.

So the concept is, what works to promote curiosity about a topic with a group of extreme skeptics is highly likely to work with people who are more neutral or who haven’t made up their mind yet.

JG: Many solutions to our biggest challenges hinge on some kind of shift in human behavior. Has your research revealed any strategies that can help reshape people’s attitudes and actions?

MM: Mainly it’s bringing in materiality. It’s very easy to do with recycled water, because we have this artifact, this thing, the water itself. Taking it out of this conceptual, speculative space and making it about something that people can directly interact with completely changes the dynamics.

It’s also social setting; that’s the other ingredient. We did this in a very public space and did things to make it really cool and celebratory—[provided] good music, good aesthetics—and people were almost always surrounded by other people doing the same activity. So there was an opportunity to calibrate your response based on how you think others are responding around you. And that’s the other part of it—we’re constantly calibrating in relationship with the people around us, especially around things that challenge social norms.

Social norms are so important because they reduce the transaction costs of social exchanges. We don’t have to think about, ‘How should I respond to this?’ because social norms have shaped and patterned those responses. When we’re confronted with something and asked to actually slow down and consider responding differently, we can’t rely on those social norms anymore. We have to look around, and think about what we actually feel, the sensations that we’re getting from this beverage, and how we see other people responding.

So if you can make it material for people and if you do it in a social way . . . you can really move things into a space of positivity. . . . My suspicion is that, across almost all of these difficult sustainability transitions that we’re trying to overcome—why is it so hard to get people to ride public transportation? why is it so hard to get people to eat differently, in a more low-carbon way?—if there are opportunities to experience what it would mean on a daily basis, and how it would feel over time, it can provide an experiential foundation for larger changes.

JG: What have you been working on more recently?

MM: I was invited to sign on to a [National Science Foundation] grant as part of the Convergence Accelerator program . . . and the project that I’m a part of is about urine recycling using source separation. So rather than combining feces and urine into a flow and then having to treat them and separate out the things that are valuable for reuse later, the idea is that we can work upstream—literally—and separate the urine and then recycle it as a fertilizer. The piece that I’m responsible for on that project is drawing on my user experience and design research methods, doing a lot of exploratory user and stakeholder interviews and codesign sessions.

If we’re successful in phase two, we’re going to be building out a fully functional mobile demonstration unit with toilets equipped with urinals, female urinals, and potentially a source-separating toilet, where people can go and use the facilities. So it’ll help demystify what it’s going to feel like from a toilet user perspective, but then also you can see how the treatment system works, so it’ll help to demystify what it will look like from an operator’s perspective if you’re a building engineer, architect, or municipal decision-maker.

A big part of the other side of this research, in terms of the design work that I’m involved in, is to work with farmers, extension educators, and other people involved in the agricultural system to inform the product design for the granular fertilizer created by the dehydration process. What is the packaging and labeling? What kind of certification would be necessary? How important is it that it doesn’t have any smell? It has to be a certain size so that it can fit into farm equipment, and obviously the nutrient makeup has to be very consistent and accurately communicated. But there’s a lot more that we don’t really know.

JG: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve found in your research?

MM: Disgust is different when you give people the actual thing instead of the speculative thing. When I worked with this group of water skeptics in the Phoenix region, one person in particular thought that she would never, ever allow her municipal drinking water to pass her lips. They use it for cleaning in her household, and that’s it, because of the taste.

When we gave her the opportunity to try actual DPR water, because we went to the Scottsdale water treatment facility and she got to sample their advanced purified water, she thought it was so good. She had been skeptical about DPR, and she became a huge proponent: “I want that water. Why don’t I have that water now?”

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

MM: The thing that keeps me up at night is the polarization in our society. I see it as a positive feedback loop—the more polarization we have, the more echo chamber and social division, people are only listening to people they already agree with. There’s not this cross-pollination and constructive debate that goes on in a society that isn’t polarized and divided. So it just increases, because you’re surrounded by people who share your viewpoint, and anybody who doesn’t is an “other” and is demonized, or at least not afforded respect.

What I think about a lot is, what can we, as individuals, as universities, as people involved in nonprofit organizations, be doing to help to pull people out of that cycle of polarization and positive reinforcement, and into a space of engagement and interplay and deliberation?

What gives me hope is the work that people are doing and all the intersections I can find. Even though we’re in this moment of crisis and it feels very hopeless, and things are headed in the wrong direction, I don’t know why I’m such an optimist. But I just feel like if enough of us are finding the kernel of truth that we feel motivated by, and if we are doing it in a way that helps us find each other, we can be building alternative futures.

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

MM: It’s called Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert, by Sunaura Taylor, who graduated from the University of Arizona. It’s about the TCE pollution [trichloroethylene, a carcinogen] in South Phoenix related to the aeronautics industry. I picked it up because I’m teaching a Water and Society course this semester, and I was looking for texts that might be worth including. She’s telling a really important story about environmental injustice and persistent pollution, but because she’s a disability scholar, she’s telling it from this embodied perspective that I think is often really missing in these narratives around the environment and injustice.

Forever chemicals and things that are consistently present in our environment—if they’re in our environment, then they’re in our bodies. And this has been borne out by a lot of research, that we are actually part of the disabled ecologies that we’re so concerned about. When we’re trying to restore an ecosystem because it’s an important site for waterfowl or something like that, we’re actually trying to restore our own bodies as well, because we rely on those ecosystems. And so pollutants really help to bring all that into focus. It’s a great way of pulling that all together for people, and I’m definitely going to be using it in my class.

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

Lead image: Visitors to an interactive Future Taste of Water exhibit sample recycled wastewater. Credit: Marisa Manheim.

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.