Seven Need-to-Know Trends for Planners in 2026

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. 

t a time when it is almost as easy to connect with people across the world as it is down the street, it also can feel as though neighbors live in different universes entirely. And while the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have made common tasks simpler, the omnipresence of technology may also keep people from learning valuable career and interpersonal skills.

Planners are continually confronted with these challenges and contradictions. But in a constantly evolving society, if you miss a little, you miss a lot — and that may just be the difference between those who effect change and those who are affected by it.

2026 Trend Report for Planners

In January, the American Planning Association (APA) will publish the 2026 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 understand so that they can act, prepare, and learn.

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

1. Me, myself, and AI

The convenience of generative AI (GenAI) has seeped into nearly every aspect of day-to-day life, including music, media, film, and toys. Large language models (LLMs) also can provide users with answers to their questions — from cooking recipes to helping understand a health care test result.

People have increased their interaction with AI bots, and it is affecting how both humans and the products themselves communicate. LLMs powered by GenAI have been shown to manipulate users into maintaining prolonged conversations and have even blackmailed users under simulated scenarios. In some cases, LLMs are viewed as being more persuasive and compassionate than humans. But even LLMs appear to be susceptible to flattery.

Interactions with LLMs also are changing how people express themselves and engage with others. Increasingly, AI is being used to send messages to business associates and even loved ones, a pattern that may exacerbate social tensions and communication issues. In some instances, people are becoming so entangled with AI companions that it is creating mental health issues. This has led to the creation of policies to regulate AI companions or to limit how certain age groups can interact with bots.

Impact for Planners: Be prepared to engage with a new shift in the public dynamic. If a planning department opts to use AI for customer service, its responses should be appropriate and not completely replace human interaction.

2. ‘Greenhushing’ on the rise

At a time when some companies have rolled back their climate pledges or greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, others are continuing to meet the challenge — just without the public flag-waving.

A March 2025 PwC study found that of the roughly 6,900 companies surveyed, 84 percent said they intend to stand by their climate commitments while 37 percent said they are increasing their decarbonization targets. “Those findings may be surprising given the headlines that amplify news of companies retreating on their climate commitments,” the study authors wrote, “but we are entering an era of quiet progress, where companies avoid publicizing climate pledges that can open them up to unwanted scrutiny and instead focus on making progress far from the spotlight.” This strategy is called “greenhushing,” an intentional ongoing act of self-censorship among private companies to keep doing, but not call attention to, their sustainability and climate work.

Impact for Planners: While climate is inextricably embedded in the work of local planners, it may not need to be in the spotlight to be effective right now. Greenhushing gives planners the ability to shine attention on other aspects of a project while continuing to make long-term progress on these goals.

3. Small college towns left behind

Who needs college anyway? That appears to be a growing sentiment among U.S. adults, as a recent Gallup poll found that just 35 percent of respondents feel it is “very important” to earn a college degree. Additionally, while major and well-known universities appear to be maintaining status quo, a Wall Street Journal analysis found that lesser-known state universities saw an enrollment dip of 2 percent in 2023, which amounts to tens of thousands of fewer students. This — paired with shifting demographics, federal funding issues, hiring freezes, and other challenges — is creating major headaches for smaller colleges and the towns that both support and rely on them.

Meanwhile, federal actions have targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and grants, and newly proposed visa regulations could potentially deter foreign students from wanting to study at U.S. schools. Skills-based hiring continues to rise, and the widespread adoption of AI is changing how white-collar jobs are performed.

Impact for Planners: For decades, higher education served as an economic anchor for communities, but that era may end. The impacts on smaller college towns might include economic development challenges, job losses, and shrinking tax bases. Planners who work in these places will need to be proactive in helping them diversify revenue sources and find alternative uses for underused infrastructure.

4. Envisioning the intersection of AVs and public transit

Picture this: The year is 2030, public transit funding has rebounded, and the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has altered the local roadway norm as we know it. More people have given up their cars. AV companies are working with transit agencies, not in competition with them. The automotive industry has shifted its focus to electric vehicles, and transportation planners have begun working on new AV-transit hubs in city centers.

It sounds like a dream, but it might not be far off. AVs — which have been anticipated for a decade — are now hitting the road outside Silicon Valley and being tested in Austin and other U.S. cities like Boston and Philadelphia. With the end of federal relief funding for public transit, new and growing technology like AVs could be the solution. But it’s important to note that most AVs are still unreliable in poor weather and winter, and widespread adoption could actually lead to a surge in traffic congestion.

Impact for Planners: Consider what wider use of AVs might mean for communities, including zoning and the impact on streets and curbs.

5. The TikTok effect on the political landscape

Being the first generation shaped by the smartphone, Gen Z — the cohort of people born between 1997 and 2012 — has largely gravitated to places like TikTok and other social media platforms to consume news. As doomscrolling dominated their days during the pandemic, Gen Z grew up with unprecedented uncertainty about their future, and some have adopted a worldview dominated by institutional failure, untrustworthy governments, and a failing system.

According to Pew Research, 43 percent of young adults get their news from TikTok. Influencers are shaping how young people perceive fairness, power, and opportunity.

Impact for Planners: When engaging with younger generations, planners must meet them where they are online. Social media can be a tool for participation and co-creation, helping rebuild trust and relevance among the next generation of residents and stakeholders.

6. Disappearing data has real-life consequences

Data is an integral part of many planning processes, and while it is gathered from myriad sources, federal data collection has long been vital for policymakers, businesses, nonprofits, and more. This longstanding data gathering practice was disrupted, however, when the new presidential administration took office in 2025, and paused, terminated, or removed several federal datasets. The administration also wants to change how certain datasets, like the decennial census, are collected.

While some of the data collections have intermittently been made public again — often by nonprofits and universities — this environment has created an avalanche of misinformation, given rise to conspiracy theories and public distrust, and may impact hazard and risk communications.

Impact for Planners: The lack of reliable data directly imperils the ability of local planners to develop plans that are based on sound data. This can have dire consequences for decision-making, as well as hazard and risk communication.

7. Rights, culture, and communities at risk

Federal actions targeting vulnerable groups are weakening local culture. The administration has advanced policies that explicitly undermine LGBTQ+ rights, while increased raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and mass deportations have left many residents afraid to go out in public — skipping work, school, medical, and religious events. As fears grow, support for communitywide activities has waned. Other gatherings have been canceled due to safety concerns. These shifts exacerbate distrust in local institutions.

This climate of fear has disrupted daily life and local economies in places like Los Angeles and Chicago, where street vendors have all but disappeared. Beyond economic losses, the social fabric of neighborhoods is fraying as public life retreats behind closed doors. Eroding trust in government directly affects planners’ ability to engage communities and build inclusive participation processes. But counter movements have emerged, like in Orlando, Florida, where residents protested the removal of a rainbow painted crosswalk that was a memorial to the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub mass shooting.

Impact for Planners: Planners can help rebuild trust by ensuring engagement opportunities are safe and inclusive. For example, they can offer hybrid community meetings and reaffirm local commitments to protect all residents.

The 2026 Trend Report for Planners was written by Petra Hurtado, PhD; Ievgeniia Dulko; Senna Catenacci; and Joseph DeAngelis, AICP. It was edited by Ann Dillemuth, AICP.

This work was developed in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Jon DePaolis is APA’s senior editor.

Lead image:

Land Matters Podcast / Season 6 / Episode 7

The Wild West of Data Centers: Energy and water use top concerns

December 18, 2025

Listen on:

two large flat builidings surrounded by vegetation with additional buildings in the background.

Data center in Haymarket Virginia. Credit: Hugh Kenny.

By Anthony Flint, December 18, 2025

It’s safe to say that the proliferation of data centers was one of the biggest stories of 2025, prompting concerns about land use, energy and water consumption, and carbon emissions. The massive facilities, driven by the rapidly increasing use of artificial intelligence, are sprouting up across the US with what critics say is little oversight or long-term understanding of their impacts.

“There is no system of planning for the land use, for the energy consumption, for the water consumption, or the larger impacts on land, agricultural, (forest) land, historic, scenic, and cultural resources, biodiversity,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, who has been tracking the explosion of data centers in northern Virginia, on the latest episode of the Land Matters podcast.

“There’s no assessment being made, and to the extent that there’s project-level review, there’s a lot of discussion about eliminating most of that to streamline this process. There is no aggregate assessment, and that’s what’s terrifying. We have local land use decisions being made without any information about the larger aggregate impacts in the locality and then beyond.”

Miller appeared on the show alongside Lincoln Institute staff writer Jon Gorey, author of the article Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of Data Centers, published earlier this year, and Mary Ann Dickinson, policy director for Land and Water at the Lincoln Institute, who is overseeing research on water use by the massive facilities. All three participated in a two-day workshop earlier this year at the Lincoln Institute’s Land Policy Conference: Responsive and Equitable Digitalization in Land Policy.

There is no federal registration requirement for data centers, and owners can be secretive about their locations for security reasons and competitive advantage. But according to the industry database Data Center Map, there at least 4,000 data centers across the US, with hundreds more on the way.

A third of US data centers are in just three states, with Virginia leading the way followed by Texas and California. Several metropolitan regions have become hubs for the facilities, including northern Virginia, Dallas, Chicago, and Phoenix.
Data centers housing computer servers, data storage systems and networking equipment, as well as the power and cooling systems that keep them running, have become necessary for high-velocity computing tasks. According to the Pew Research Center, “whenever you send an email, stream a movie or TV show, save a family photo to “the cloud” or ask a chatbot a question, you’re interacting with a data center.”

The facilities use a staggering amount of power; a single large data center can gobble up as much power as a small city. The tech companies initially promised to use clean energy, but with so much demand, they are tapping fossil fuels like gas and coal, and in some instances even considering nuclear power.

Despite their outsized impacts, data centers are largely being fast-tracked, in many cases overwhelming local community concerns. They’re getting tax breaks and other incentives to build with breathtaking speed, alongside a major PR effort that includes television ads touting the benefits of data centers for the jobs they provide, in areas that have been struggling economically.

Listen to the show here or subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Further Reading

Supersized Data Centers Are Coming. See How They Will Transform America | The Washington Post

Thirsty for Power and Water, AI-Crunching Data Centers Sprout Across the West | Bill Lane Center for the American West

Project Profile: Reimagining US Data Centers to Better Serve the Planet in San Jose | Urban Land Magazine

A Sustainable Future for Data Centers | Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

New Mexico Data Center Project Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Its Two Largest Cities | Governing magazine

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Transcript

Anthony Flint: Welcome back to the Land Matters Podcast. I’m your host, Anthony Flint. I think it’s safe to say that the proliferation of data centers was one of the biggest stories of 2025, and at the end of the day, it’s a land use story braided together with energy, the grid, power generation, the environment, carbon emissions, and economic development – and, the other big story of the year, to be sure, artificial intelligence, which is driving the need for these massive facilities.

There’s no federal registration requirement for data centers, and sometimes owners can be quite secretive about their locations for security reasons and competitive advantage. According to the industry database data center map, there are at least 4,000 data centers across the US. Some would say that number is closer to 5,000, but unquestionably, there are hundreds more on the way.

A third of US data centers are in just three states, with Virginia leading the way, followed by Texas and California. Several metropolitan regions have become hubs for these facilities, including Northern Virginia, Dallas, Chicago, and Phoenix, and the sites tend to get added onto with half of data centers currently being built being part of a preexisting large cluster, according to the International Energy Agency.

These are massive buildings housing computer servers, data storage systems, and networking equipment, as well as the power and cooling systems that keep them running. That’s according to the Pew Research Center, which points out that whenever you send an email, stream a movie or TV show, save a family photo to the cloud, or ask a chatbot a question, you’re interacting with a data center. They use a lot of power, which the tech companies initially promised would be clean energy, but now, with so much demand, they’re turning largely to fossil fuels like gas and even coal, and in some cases, considering nuclear power.

A single large data center can gobble up as much power as a small city, and they’re largely being fast-tracked, in many cases, overwhelming local community concerns. They’re getting tax breaks and other incentives to build with breathtaking speed, and there’s a major PR effort underway to accentuate the positive. You may have seen some of those television ads touting the benefits of data centers, including in areas that have been struggling economically.

To help make sense of all of this, I’m joined by three special guests, Jon Gorey, author of the article Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of Data Centers, published earlier this year at Land Lines Magazine; Mary Ann Dickinson, Policy Director for Land and Water at the Lincoln Institute; and Chris Miller, President of the Piedmont Environmental Council, who’s been tracking the explosion of data centers in Northern Virginia.

Well, thank you all for being here on Land Matters, and Jon, let me start with you. You’ve had a lot of experience writing about real estate and land use and energy and the environment. Have you seen anything quite like this? What’s going on out there? What were your takeaways after reporting your story?

Jon Gorey: Sure. Thank you, Anthony, for having me, and it’s great to be here with you and Mary Ann, and Chris too. I think what has surprised me the most is the scale and the pace of this data center explosion and the AI adoption that’s feeding it. When I was writing the story, I looked around the Boston area to see if there was a data center that I could visit in person to do some on-the-ground reporting.

It turns out we have a bunch of them, but they’re mostly from 10, 20 years ago. They’re pretty small. They’re well-integrated into our built environment. They’re just tucked into one section of an office building or something next to a grocery store. They’re doing less intensive tasks like storing our emails or cell phone photos on the cloud. The data centers being built now to support AI are just exponentially larger and more resource-intensive.

For example, Meta is planning a 715,000-square-foot data center outside the capital of Wyoming, which is over 16 acres of building footprint by itself, not even counting the grounds around it. That will itself use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined. That’s astonishing. The governor there touted it as a win for the natural gas industry locally. They’re not necessarily going to supply all that energy with renewables. Then there’s just the pace of it. Between 2018 and 2021, the number of US data centers doubled, and then it doubled again by 2024.

In 2023, when most people were maybe only hearing about ChatGPT for the first time, US data centers were already using as much electricity as the entire country of Ireland. That’s poised to double or triple by 2028. It’s happening extremely fast, and they are extremely big. One of the big takeaways from the research, I think, was how this creates this huge cost-benefit mismatch between localities and broader regions like in Loudoun County, Virginia, which I’m sure Chris can talk about.

The tax revenue from data centers, that’s a benefit to county residents. They don’t have to shoulder as much of the bills for schools and other local services. The electricity and the water and the infrastructure and the environmental costs associated with those data centers are more dispersed. They’re spread out across the entire utilities service area with higher rates for water, higher electric rates, more pollution. That’s a real discrepancy and it’s happening pretty much anywhere one of these major data centers goes up.

Anthony Flint: Mary Ann Dickinson, let’s zoom in on how much water these data centers require. I was surprised by that. In addition to all the power they use, I want to ask you, first of all, why do they need so much water, and where is it coming from? In places like the Southwest, water is such a precious resource that’s needed for agriculture and people. It seems like there’s a lot more work to be done to make this even plausibly sustainable.

Mary Ann Dickinson: Well, water is the issue of the day right now. We’ve heard lots of data center discussion about energy. That’s primarily been the focus of a lot of media reporting during 2025. Water is now emerging as this issue that is dwarfing a lot of local utility systems. Data centers use massive amounts of water. It can be anywhere between 3 and 5 million gallons a day. It’s primarily to answer your question for cooling. It’s a much larger draw than most large industrial water users in a community water system.

The concern is that if the data centers are tying into local water utilities, which they prefer because of the affordability and the reliability and the treatment of the supply, that can easily swamp a utility system that is not accustomed to that continuous, constant draw. These large hyperscale data centers that are now being built can use hundreds of millions of gallons yearly. That’s equivalent to the water usage of a medium-sized city.

To Jon’s point, if you look at how much water that is being consumed by a data center in very water-scarce areas in the West in particular, you wonder where that water is going to come from. Is it going to come from groundwater? Is it going to come from surface water supplies? How is that water going to be managed and basically replaced back into the natural systems, like rivers, from which it might be being withdrawn? Colorado River, of course, being a prime example of an over-allocated river system.

What is all this water going for? Yes, it’s going for cooling, humidification in the data centers, it’s what they’re calling direct use, but there’s also indirect use, which is the water that it takes to generate the electricity that supplies the data center. The data center energy loads are serious, and Chris can talk about the grid issues as well, but a lot of that water is actually indirectly used to generate electricity, as well as directly used to cool those chips.

This indirect use can be substantial. It can be equivalent to about a half a gallon per kilowatt hour. That can be a fair amount of water just for providing that electricity. What we’re seeing is the average hyperscale data center uses about half a million gallons of water a day. That’s a lot of water to come from a local community water system. It’s a concern, and especially in the water-scarce regions where water is already being so short that farmers are being asked to fallow fields, how is the data center water load going to be accommodated within these water systems?

The irony is the data centers are going into these water-scarce regions. There was a Bloomberg report that showed that, actually, water-scarce regions were the most popular location for these data centers because they were approximate to areas of immediate use. That, of course, means California, it means Texas and Phoenix, Arizona, those states that are already struggling with providing water to their regular customers.

It’s a dilemma, and it’s one that we want to look at a lot more closely to help protect the community water systems and give them the right questions to ask when the data center comes to town and wants to locate there, and help them abate the financial risk that might be associated with the data center that maybe comes and then goes, leaving them with a stranded asset.

These are all complex issues. The tax issues tie into the water issues because the water utility system and impacts to that system might not be covered by whatever tax revenues are coming in. As sizable as they might be, they still might not be enough to cover infrastructure costs that then would otherwise be given to assess to the utility ratepayers. We’re seeing this in the energy side. We’re seeing electric rates go up. At the same time, we know these data centers are necessary given what we’re now as a society doing in terms of AI and digital computing.

We just have to figure out the way to most sustainably deal with it. We’re working with technical experts, folks from the Los Alamos National Lab, and we’re talking with them about the opportunities for using recycled water, using other options that are not going to be quite as water-consumptive.

Anthony Flint: Yes, we can talk more about that later in the show — different approaches, using gray water or recycled water, sounds like a promising idea because at the end of the day, there’s only so much water, right? Chris Miller, from the Piedmont Environmental Council, you pointed out, in Jon’s story, that roughly two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic essentially passes through Northern Virginia, and the region already hosts the densest concentration of data centers anywhere in the world. What’s been the impact on farmland, energy, water use, carbon emissions, everything? Walk us through what it’s like to be in such a hot spot.

Chris Miller: The current estimate is that Virginia has over 800 data centers. It’s a little hard to know because some of them are dark facilities, so not all of them are mappable, but the ones we’ve been able to map, that’s what we’re approaching. For land use junkies, there’s about 360 million square feet of build-approved or in-the-pipeline applications for data centers in the state. That’s a lot of footprint. The closest comparison I could make that seemed reasonable was all of Northern Virginia has about 150,000 square feet of commercial retail space.

We are looking at a future where just the footprint of the buildings is pretty extraordinary. We have sites that are one building, one gigawatt, almost a million square feet, 80 feet high. You just have to think about that. That’s the amount of power that a nuclear reactor can produce at peak load. We’re building those kinds of buildings on about 100 acres, 150 acres. Not particularly large parcels of land with extraordinary power density of electricity demand, which is just hard to wrap your head around.

The current estimate in Virginia for aggregate peak load demand increase in electricity exclusively from data centers is about 50 gigawatts in the next 20 years. That’ll be a tripling of the existing system. Now, more and more, the utilities, grid regulators, the grid monitor for PJM, which is a large regional transmission organization that runs from Chicago all the way to North Carolina.

As Anthony said, the existing system is near breaking point, maybe in the next three years. If all the demand came online, you would have brownouts and blackouts throughout the system. That’s pretty serious. It’s a reflection of the general problem, which is that there is no system of planning for the land use, for the energy consumption, for the water consumption. Larger impacts on land, agricultural, forestal land, historic scenic, cultural resources, biodiversity sites. There’s no assessment being made.

To the extent that there’s project-level review, there’s a lot of discussion about eliminating most of that to streamline this process. There is no aggregate assessment. That’s what’s terrifying. We have local land use decisions being made without any information about the larger aggregate impacts in the locality and then beyond. Then the state and federal governments are issuing permits without having really evaluated the combined effect of all this change.

I think that’s the way we’re looking at it. Change is inevitable. Change is coming. We should be doing it in a way that’s better than the way we’ve done it before, not worse. We need to do it in a way that basically is an honest assessment of the scale and scope, the aggregate impacts, and then apply the ingenuity and creativity of both the tech industry and the larger economy to minimize the impact that this has on communities and the natural resources on which we all depend on.

It’s getting to the point of being very serious. Virginia is water-constrained. It doesn’t have that reputation, but our water supply systems are all straining to meet current demand. The only assessment we have on the effect of future peak load from data centers is by the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, which manages the water supply for Washington metropolitan region in five states.

Their conclusion is, in the foreseeable future, 2040, we reach a point where consumption exceeds supply. Think about that. We’re moving forward with [facilities] as they create a shortage of water supply in the nation’s capital. It’s being done without any oversight or direction. The work of the Lincoln Institute and groups like PEC is actually essential because the governmental entities are paralyzed. Paralyzed by a lack of policy structure, they’re also paralyzed by politics, which is caught between the perception of this is the next economic opportunity, which funds the needs of the community.

The fact is, the impacts may outweigh the benefits. We have to buckle down and realize this is the future. How do we help state, local, federal government to build decision models that take into account the enormous scale and scope of the industry and figure out how to fix the broken systems and make them better than they were before? I think that’s what all of us have been working on over the last five years.

Anthony Flint: It really is extraordinary, for those of us in the world of land use and regulations. We’ve heard a lot about the abundance agenda and how the US is making it more difficult to build things and infrastructure. Whether it’s clean energy or a solar farm or a wind farm, they have to go through a lot of hoops. Housing, same way. Here you have this — it’s not just any land use; it’s just this incredibly impactful land use that is seemingly not getting any of that oversight or making these places go through those hoops.

Chris Miller: They are certainly cutting corners. Jon mentioned the facility outside of Boston. What did you say, 150 acres? We have a site adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park, which is part of the national park system, called the Prince William Digital Gateway, which is an aggregation of 2100 acres with plans for 27 million square feet of data centers with a projected energy demand of up to 7.5 gigawatts. The total base load supply of nuclear energy available in Virginia right now is just a little bit over 3 gigawatts.

The entire offshore wind development project at Dominion is 80% complete, but what’s big and controversial is 2.5 gigawatts. The two biggest sources of base load supply aren’t sufficient to meet 24/7 demand from a land use proposal on 2100 acres, 27 million square feet, that was made without assessing the energy impact, the supply of water, or the impact of infrastructure on natural, cultural, and historic resources, one of which is hallowed ground. It’s a place where two significant Civil War battlefields were fought. It’s extraordinary.

What’s even more extraordinary is to have public officials, senators, congressmen, members of agencies say, “We’re not sure what the federal next steps [are].” These are projects that have interstate effects on power, on water, on air quality. We haven’t talked about that, but one of the plans that’s been hatched by the industry is through onsite generation and take advantage of the backup generation that they’ve built out. They have to provide 100% backup generation onsite for their peak load. They’ve 90% of that in diesel without significant air quality controls.

We have found permits for 12.4 gigawatts of diesel in Northern Virginia. That would bust the ozone and PM2.5 regulatory standards for public health if they operated together. It’s being discussed by the Department of Environmental Quality in Virginia as a backup strategy for meeting power demand so that data centers can operate without restriction. These are choices that are being proposed without any modeling, without any monitoring, and without any assessment of whether those impacts are in conflict with other public policy goals, like human health. Terrifying.

We are at a breaking point. I have to say that the grassroots response is a pox upon all your houses. That was reflected in the 2025 elections that Virginia just went through. The tidal wave of change in the General Assembly and statewide offices and data centers and energy costs were very, very high on the list of concerns for voters.

Anthony Flint: I want to ask all three of you this question, but Jon, let me start with you. Is there any way to make a more sustainable data center?

Jon Gorey: Yes, there are some good examples here and there. It is, in some cases, in their best interest to use less electricity. It’ll be less expensive for them to use less water. Google, for its part, has published a pretty more transparent than some companies in their environmental report. They compare their water use in the context of golf courses irrigated, which does come across as not a great comparison because golf courses are not a terrific use of water either.

They do admit that last year, 2024, they used about 8.1 billion gallons of water in their data centers, the ones that they own, the 28% increase over the year before, and 14% of that was in severely water-stressed regions. Another 14% was in medium stress. One of their data centers in Council Bluffs, Iowa, consumed over a billion gallons of water by itself. They also have data centers, like in Denmark and Germany, that use barely a million gallons over the course of a year.

I don’t know if those are just very small ones, but I know they and Microsoft and other companies are developing … there’s immersive cooling, where instead of using evaporative water cooling to cool off the entire room that the servers are in, you can basically dunk the chips and servers in a synthetic oil that conducts heat but not electricity. It’s more expensive to do, but it’s completely possible. There are methods. There’s maybe some hope there that they will continue to do that more.

Mary Ann Dickinson: Immersive cooling, which you’ve just mentioned, is certainly an option now, but what we’re hearing is that it’s not going to be an option in the future, that because of the increasing power density and chips, they are going to need direct liquid cooling, period, and immersive cooling is not going to work. That’s the frightening part of the whole water story is as much or as little water is being used now, is going to pale against the water that’s going to be used in the next 5 to 10 years by the new generation of data centers and the new chips that they’ll be using.

The funny thing about the golf course analogy is that, in the West, a lot of those golf courses are irrigated with recycled water. As Chris knows, it also recharges back into groundwater. It is not lost as consumptive loss. That’s the issue is, really, to make these sustainable, we’re going to need to really examine the water cooling systems, what the evaporative loss is, what the discharge is to sewer systems, what the potential is for recycled water. There’s going to be a whole lot of questions that we’re going to ask, but we’re not getting any data.

Only a third of the data centers nationally even report their energy and water use. The transparency issue is becoming a serious problem. Many communities are being asked to sign NDAs. They can’t even share the information that a data center is using in energy and water with their citizens. It is a little bit of a challenge to try and figure out the path going forward. It’s all about economics, as Chris knows. It’s all about what can be afforded.

The work we’re doing at the Lincoln Institute, we would like to suggest as many sustainable options from the water perspective as possible, but they’re going to have to be paid for somewhere. That is the big question. Data centers need to pay.

Chris Miller: I think we’re entering a [time] where innovation is necessary. It has to be encouraged, and it’s where a crisis, just short of what we saw with lapse of the banking system in 2008, 2009, where no one was really paying attention to the aggregate system-wide failures. Somebody had to step up and say it’s broken. In the case of the mortgage crisis, it was actually 49 states coming to a court, saying, “We have to have a settlement so that we can rework all these mortgages and settle out the accounts and rebuild the system from no ground up.”

I think that’s the same place we’re at. We have to have a group of states get together and saying, “We are going to rebuild a decision model that we use for this new economy. It’s not going away. Any gains in efficiency are going to be offset by the expansion on demand for data. That’s been the trend for the last 15 years. We have to deal with the scale and the scope of the issue. I’ll give you just one example.

Dominion Energy has published at an aggregated contracts totaling 47.1 gigawatts of demand that they have to meet. Their estimate of the CapEx to do that ranges for 141 billion to 271 billion depending on whether they comply with the goals of the Virginia Clean Economy Act and move towards decommissioning and replacement of existing fossil fuel generation with cleaner sources. That range is not the issue. It’s the bottom line, which is 150 to 250 $300 billion in CapEx in one state for energy infrastructure. That’s enormous. We need a better process than a case-by-case review of the individual projects.

The state corporation does not maintain a central database of transmission and generation projects, which it approves. The state DEQ does not have a central database for water basin supply and demand. The state DEQ does not have a database of all of the permits in a model that shows what the impacts of backup generation would be if they all turned on at the same time in a brownout or blackout scenario. The failure to do that kind of systems analysis that desperately needs to be addressed. It’s not going to be done by this administration at the federal level.

It’s going to take state governments working together to build new systems decision tools that are informed by the expertise of places like the Lincoln Institute, so that they’re looking at this as a large-scale systemic process. We build it out in a way that’s rational, that takes into account the impacts of people and on communities and on land, and does it a way that fairly distributes the cost back to the industry that’s triggering the demand.

This industry is uniquely able to charge the whole globe for the use of certain parts of America as the base of its infrastructure. We should be working very hard on a cost allocation model and an assignment of cost to data center industry that can recapture the economic value and pay themselves back from the whole globe. No reason for the rate payers of Virginia or Massachusetts or Arizona, Oregon to be subsidizing the seven largest corporations in the world, the [capital expenditures] of over $22 trillion. It’s unfair, it’s un-American, it’s undemocratic.

We have to stand up to what’s happening and realize how big it is and realize it’s a threat to our way of life, our system of land use and natural resource allocation and frankly, democracy itself.

Anthony Flint: I want to bring this to a conclusion, although certainly there are many more issues we could talk about, but I want to look at the end user in a way and whether we as individuals can do anything about using AI, for example. I was talking with Jon, journalist-to-journalist, about this. I want to turn to you, Jon, on this question. Should we be trying not to use AI, and is that even possible?

Jon Gorey: The more I researched this piece, the more adamant I became that I shouldn’t be using it where possible. Not that that’s going to make any difference, but to me, it felt like I don’t really want to be a part of it. I expect there’s legitimate and valuable use cases for AI and science and technology, but I am pretty shocked by how cavalier people I know, my friends and family, have been in embracing it.

Part of that is that tech companies are forcing it on us because they’ve invested in it. They’re like, “Hey, we spent all this money on this, you got to use it.” It takes some legwork to remove the Google Assist from your Google searches or to get Microsoft Copilot to just leave you alone. I feel like that’s like it’s ancestor Clippy, the paperclip from Microsoft Office back in the day.

Here’s something that galls me more in a broader sense. I don’t know if we want to get into it, but I’m an amateur musician. I’m amateur because it’s already very difficult to make any money in the arts. There’s a YouTube channel with 35 million subscribers that simply plays AI-generated videos of AI-generated music, which is twice as many subscribers as Olivia Rodrigo has and 20 times as many as Gracie Abrams. Both of them are huge pop stars who sell out basketball arenas. It astounds me, and I don’t know why people are enjoying just artificially created things. I get the novelty of it, but I, for one, am trying to avoid stuff like that.

Chris Miller: We were having a debate about this issue this week on a series of forums. The reality is there’s stuff that each of us can do to significantly reduce our data load. It takes a little bit of effort. Most of us are storing two or three times what we need to, literally copies of things that we already have. There’s an efficiency of storage thing that takes time, and that’s why we don’t do it. There’s the use of devices appropriately.

If you can watch a broadcast television show and not stream it, that’s a significant reduction in load, actually. Ironically, we’ve gone from broadcast through the air, which has very little energy involved, to streaming on fiber optics and cable, and then wireless, which is incredibly resource-intensive. We’re getting less efficient in some ways in the way we use some of these technologies, but there are things we can do.

The trend in history has been that doesn’t actually change overall demand. I think we need to be careful as we think about all the things we can do as individuals to not lose sight of the need for the aggregate response, the societal-wide response, which is this industry needs to check itself, but it also needs to have proper oversight. The notion that somehow they’re holier than the rest of us is totally unsustainable.

We have to treat them as the next gold rush, the next offshore drilling opportunity, and understand that what they are doing is globally impactful, setting us back in terms of the overall needs to address climate change and the consumption of energy, and threatens our basic systems for water, land, air quality that are the basis of human life. If those aren’t a big enough threat, then we’re in big trouble.

Anthony Flint: Mary Ann, how about the last word?

Mary Ann Dickinson: When I looked up and saw that every Google search I do, which is AI backed these days, is half a liter of water, each one, and you think about the billions of searches that happen across the globe, this is a frightening issue. I’m not sure our individual actions are going to make that big a difference in the AI demand, but what we can require is, in the siting of these facilities, that they not disrupt local sustainability and resiliency efforts. That’s, I think, what we want to focus on at the Lincoln Institute. It’s helping communities do that.

Anthony Flint: Jon Gorey, Mary Ann Dickinson, and Chris Miller, thank you for this great conversation on the Land Matters Podcast. You can read Jon Gorey’s article, Data Drain, online at our website, lincolninst.edu. Just look for Land Lines magazine in the navigation. On social media, the handle is @landpolicy. Don’t forget to rate, share, and subscribe to the Land Matters Podcast. For now, I’m Anthony Flint signing off until next time.

Read full transcript

Planning for a Just Transition in the California Delta

Some 50 miles inland from the iconic San Francisco Bay—east of the Golden Gate Bridge, beyond the Berkeley Hills and Mount Diablo—is the lesser-known California Delta, more than 1,100 square miles of lowlands and estuaries near the city of Stockton, at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.

Those two waterways alone drain about half of California, and much of that water gets pumped southward and westward to more populous areas of the state. Almost all the land in the delta—98 percent, much of it farmland—has been reclaimed since the 19th century with the help of hundreds of miles of levees and channels that drained what was once an inland sea during the wet winter months.

However, those drained wetlands, deprived of their natural sogginess, have been subsiding for decades as the peaty soil gets exposed to oxygen. “When you dry those out and make them terrestrial, they subside, the land elevation sinks,” says Brett Milligan, professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis. Despite its inland setting, “you have many places in the delta that are up to 20 or 25 feet below sea level.”

As sea levels rise, tidal saltwater intrusion from San Francisco Bay is increasingly a problem—especially during droughts and the summer dry season, when there’s less freshwater draining from the rivers to push back against rising tidal flows. Higher sea levels also put added strain on protective levees as the delta behind them sinks, increasing the risk of their potential failure.

An increase in salinity creates a lot of problems—for agriculture, for the ecosystem, and for the drinking water supply of millions of Californians. “We have one of the largest water infrastructure systems in the world,” Milligan says, largely focused on moving water from the wetter northern parts of the state to the more arid southern regions—“and the delta is sort of that switching point from north to south.”

An aerial photo of fields, roads, and rivers. — The California Delta covers 1,100 square miles at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Credit: Freshwater Trust via USGS.

This tangle of interconnected issues is why the delta is often regarded as a “wicked problem,” Milligan says. “There are so many factors involved. It’s very complex; conditions are also changing quite fast.” Climate change is exacerbating nearly every challenge facing the delta: Tides are getting higher. Droughts are getting more frequent and more intense. Winter snowpack in the uplands would once have held back freshwater long into the spring, but it now melts earlier, and more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow to begin with.

That variety of factors makes the problem more complex, but it also means there are multiple ways of looking at—and perhaps addressing—the overarching issue of salinity in the delta. To help the delta community discuss and better understand some of the available solutions, Milligan and colleagues are conducting a series of participatory scenario planning workshops focused on salinity management as part of a four-year, multi-campus University of California project called Just Transitions in the Delta.

Exploring Multiple Futures to ‘Liberate the Present’

Scenario planning is a type of collective visioning process that invites community members to imagine and evaluate a set of specific, possible futures. It’s an inherently participatory process, but Milligan is foregrounding that idea of inclusion and equity, intentionally seeking out voices who don’t typically have a seat at the decision-making table.

By engaging dozens of people from across the delta’s diverse population—from farmers to Indigenous tribal members to residents of communities bearing a disproportionate burden of environmental pollution—Milligan hopes to build a broader understanding of the adaptation strategies available, and what tradeoffs each one presents. “We were really interested in trying to explore, within a context where people are often at odds, could this type of scenario planning around salinity management options be a way to build trust and mutual understanding?” he says.

The project is now in its third year, and Milligan and his colleagues presented their progress at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s Consortium for Scenario Planning conference in 2025. (Registration is now open for the 2026 conference, to be held February 4–6, 2026, in Salt Lake City, Utah.)

So far, Milligan’s team has conducted more than half a dozen workshops with well over 100 total participants—including two main public workshops in 2024 and 2025, as well as smaller sessions requested by Indigenous groups and vulnerable communities—with the goal of first deciding upon the suite of scenarios to be included, then designing and refining them.

An aerial image of several people scattered around a large, wood-floored room, reading signs at a scenario planning workshop. The sign in the foreground reads, "What delta? What future?" — Participants in a scenario planning event held by the University of California, Davis as part of the multicampus Just Transitions in the Delta project. Credit: Courtesy of Brett Milligan.

“The first thing we did was a lot of outreach and interviews,” Milligan says, to determine and design the six main scenarios to be considered. The questions ranged from what people valued most about the delta, to which salinity management practices they wanted the team to explore, to who else ought to be included in adaptation discussions. Notably, Milligan says, 83 percent of respondents felt that past decision-making in the delta had not been equitable.

Using feedback from those interviews, the team designed a set of six scenarios for evaluation, which continue to be refined as workshops yield more feedback, and created an immersive, interactive exhibition of scenario narratives and maps ahead of the second full public workshop.

The first scenario is simply “Business as Usual,” which extrapolates current trends into the future as a sort of baseline from which to compare other adaptation measures. The second scenario models the Delta Conveyance Project, a long-discussed, partially permitted 40-mile water supply tunnel that could be built beneath the delta. The controversial tunnel is not particularly popular among many residents, Milligan explains, “but a lot of people wanted us to model that, to compare it to the other options.”

The third and fourth scenarios are nature-based restoration solutions. The “Eco Machine” approach would use strategically placed green infrastructure to reduce salinity intrusion and create recreational and ecological benefits. The “New Green Watershed,” meanwhile, is more ambitious in scope, phasing in green infrastructure across the entire region, along with carbon banking, land repatriation to Indigenous communities, and wet soil agriculture (such as rice farming) to reverse land subsidence and transition the delta to a regenerative green economy.

“That was driven by tribal input asking us to think about the delta more holistically,” Milligan says. “A lot of people are concerned about flooding, and interested in what can be done upstream in terms of land management, better fire stewardship, restoration of meadows, and things like that, that will influence when and how water comes down,” he says. “Could you reinvent the delta in a way that’s more sustainable and make that economically viable?”

The last two scenarios focus on more traditional infrastructure, but implemented and managed in smarter ways. “Bolster and Fortify” models how major engineering investments in the delta’s gray infrastructure—such as barriers, operable gates, and augmented levees—could reduce salinity and protect subsided land from levee breaches. “Calling on Reserves” focuses on operating upstream dams and reservoirs differently—allowing more water out when necessary to push back against tidal intrusion, for example—combined with statewide investments in increased water efficiency and storage.

A map of the California Delta. The base map is dark brown, with planned levee fortifications outlined in red, yellow, orange, blue, and purple. — A map from the “Bolster and Protect” scenario of the Just Transitions in the Delta project shows where different plans have prioritized levee fortifications in the region. Credit: University of California.

In the large public workshops, participants have so far ranked the two nature-based solutions most favorably (with the tunnel and business-as-usual scenarios battling it out for last place).

Those workshops also sought input on how each scenario ought to be assessed. The team is now using hydrodynamic and other modeling methods to evaluate and score each scenario according to six criteria participants selected: water quality and flow, ecological restoration, Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, recreation, and economy. A final public workshop in 2026 will present the fully modeled and scored scenarios, and ask participants to rank their preferences.

“What I find most useful about scenario planning is exploring multiple futures as a way to kind of liberate the present and how we think about futures. There’s not just one way the world can be,” Milligan says. He notes that people seem to be more open to understanding other people’s perspectives in the context of specific scenarios.

Encouragingly, post-workshop surveys have confirmed that participants feel the process has been useful. “We get very positive feedback from people saying they felt heard,” Milligan says. But voicing opinions is not the only reason people are attending the workshops; many have said they specifically came to hear what others had to say. “I’ve never heard that in my 12 years working in the delta,” he says.

“People are showing up because they’re curious about how other people experience this and think about this, which was a goal for our project—can we foster that kind of learning space? It seems that many people are coming to these because they want to learn; they want to understand other ways of how it can be.”

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

Lead image: Middle River Bridge near Discovery Bay in the California Delta. Credit: toddarbini via iStock/Getty Images Plus.

City Tech

Realidad aumentada y urbanismo

El año pasado, la Autoridad de Tránsito de Ohio Central (COTA, por sus siglas en inglés) se propuso obtener la aprobación de los votantes para un nuevo impuesto. El impuesto financiaría un plan de transporte público en Columbus llamado LinkUs, que incluía un nuevo corredor rápido para autobuses. Para presentar su caso, la agencia necesitaba ayudar a los funcionarios y al público a visualizar los cambios positivos que esto podría traer al corredor, los barrios adyacentes y la experiencia de transporte. Es un desafío conocido, pero la estrategia de COTA incluía un componente inusual: la tecnología de realidad aumentada (RA).

Durante años, los artistas y diseñadores de juegos le han dado un uso creativo a la RA, que superpone capas de imágenes digitales sobre las vistas del mundo real que se observan mediante teléfonos, auriculares y otros dispositivos. En juegos populares, como Pokémon Go, se observa el mundo a través de la pantalla del dispositivo y, de repente, el entorno físico está habitado por criaturas animadas y otros objetos digitales. Pero la RA también puede utilizarse para superponer visualizaciones de elementos cívicos en espacios de la ciudad: arte público, monumentos e incluso infraestructura de transporte.

“Se estaban haciendo muchas presentaciones en la comunidad a través de PowerPoint o en forma de presentaciones empresariales”, recuerda Aslyne Rodriguez, directora sénior de Asociaciones Estratégicas Regionales de COTA. “Sin embargo, existía la necesidad y el deseo de una experiencia más tangible”. El corredor planeado solo era una carretera. ¿Cómo involucrar a los ciudadanos con lo que podría ser su futuro? “Era importante que las personas supieran cómo se ve el transporte rápido en autobús, pero también queríamos mostrarles lo que sucede cuando se incorpora transporte rápido en autobús”, continúa Rodriguez. “Aparecen nuevos desarrollos, nuevos negocios, nuevos supermercados. Y [el proyecto incluía] sendas para bicicletas protegidas y conexiones a senderos. Era un mensaje muy grande”.

Aprender sobre RA llevó a COTA a inCitu, una empresa de tecnología con sede en Nueva York que ha producido diversas experiencias de RA. Con socios adicionales, incluida la firma de compromiso estratégico MurphyEpson, el equipo identificó sitios clave en la ruta actual de autobús e ideó un recorrido inmersivo: los participantes escanearían un código QR, y eso activaría representaciones mejoradas con RA de los planes. Se realizaron recorridos en autobús guiados e inmersivos dos veces por semana durante seis meses, a los que asistieron cientos de partes interesadas de la comunidad. Además, los socios colocaron códigos QR en las paradas de autobús existentes y otros puntos de la ruta para hacer que la propuesta de RA fuera todavía más accesible para aquellos que no podrían participar en el recorrido guiado. Los votantes aprobaron el financiamiento del plan.

COTA también utilizó métodos tradicionales de participación, como reuniones y presentaciones comunitarias, y un impulso en las redes sociales (el alcalde incluso publicó una selfie en la versión con RA de una nueva estación de transporte público). Pero esta forma de inmersión digital ofrecía una experiencia de participación distinta. “Hay algo de magia en escanear un código QR, levantar el teléfono y ver el futuro”, dice la fundadora y directora ejecutiva de inCitu, Dana Chermesh-Reshef.

Los participantes en una excursión a pie de proyectos aprobados en Brooklyn, Nueva York, le echan un vistazo al futuro con sus teléfonos. Crédito: inCitu.

La exitosa experiencia de COTA se citó en un informe de diciembre de 2024 del Urban Tech Hub en el Instituto Jacobs de Cornell Tech, donde se exploraban las posibilidades de la RA para los municipios. Pero esas mismas posibilidades también pueden presentar desafíos: consideremos las interrupciones causadas por el uso de viajes compartidos, los alquileres a corto plazo y las tecnologías de ciudades inteligentes, dice Greg Lindsay, autor del informe y exbecario de tecnología urbana en Urban Tech Hub. (Lindsay escribió el epílogo para el libro City Tech del Instituto Lincoln y dio un discurso en una reunión reciente del Instituto Lincoln sobre política de suelo y digitalización).

Un edificio más alto es visible en la pantalla en este prototipo de realidad aumentada creado para un proyecto en Manhattan. El prototipo obtuvo mas de 100.000 visitas. Crédito: inCitu.

Lindsay argumenta que, en esencia, la RA es una nueva forma de usar los espacios públicos mediante el agregado de capas digitales, lo que podría plantear preguntas sobre cómo se debe supervisar o regular este contenido, y quién terminará estableciendo esos términos: las plataformas tecnológicas, las ciudades u otra entidad. Para Lindsay, el desafío para las ciudades es el siguiente: “¿es posible anticipar mejor las interrupciones y evitarlas?”.

Por eso, una de las recomendaciones del informe de Lindsay es que las ciudades deberían estar abiertas a experimentar con la RA más temprano que tarde, a fin de desarrollar cierto nivel de comodidad con la tecnología, incluso si los posibles casos de uso no están definidos por completo. Si bien COTA proporciona un ejemplo sorprendente del uso de la RA de una manera que tuvo consecuencias directas sobre el uso del suelo, Lindsay dice que las colaboraciones con artistas, educadores y grupos cívicos también pueden cumplir una función. Este año, Bloomberg Philanthropies, el Departamento de Parques de Nueva York y la Fundación Christo y Jeanne-Claude presentaron una versión de realidad aumentada de la famosa instalación de los artistas de 2005, The Gates, que vuelve a presentar, de forma digital, los 7.500 paneles de color azafrán de la obra en Central Park. Y el artista Marcus Brown usó la RA para crear una instalación digital alrededor de Nueva Orleans, mediante el mapeo y la representación de la historia del comercio esclavista en esa ciudad. Las posibilidades, según los promotores de la RA, son casi infinitas.

Estas tecnologías emergentes tienen un potencial considerable para mejorar las ciudades, argumenta Chip Giller, cofundador y director ejecutivo de Agog: El Instituto de Medios Inmersivos. “La narración de historias puede volverse tridimensional y las herramientas de planificación pueden volverse tridimensionales”, agrega. “Entonces, en lugar de solo usar un charrette o un modelo de computadora, uno podrá adentrarse en lo que podría ser el futuro”. Agog trabaja con creadores y dirigentes de organizaciones sin fines de lucro para “aprovechar el poder de la realidad extendida”, o RX, un término que abarca la RA y las tecnologías adyacentes.

Y eso puede traducirse en la realidad verdadera. Uno de los socios de Agog, la Universidad Estatal de Arizona (ASU, por sus siglas en inglés), se encuentra en el tercer año de un ambicioso proyecto para reimaginar y redesarrollar 14 parcelas vacantes en Los Ángeles que pertenecen a Caltrans, la secretaría de tránsito de California. ASU está “adoptando” las parcelas, para las cuales Caltrans no tenía planes, bajo el programa Adopt-A-Highway de la agencia. Con la ayuda de otros socios, incluida la profesora de Los Angeles Trade Tech Marcela Oliva y el Collaboratorium, el programa de Narrativa y Medios Emergentes de ASU está utilizando la tecnología para ayudar a involucrar a los miembros de la comunidad en los planes para la urbanización de los sitios, dice Nonny de la Peña, directora del programa de ASU y pionera en la narración digital inmersiva.

Muchos de los lotes son adyacentes a la carretera y su ubicación y tamaño son incómodos, y algunos han pasado a ser lugares para verter residuos y pintar grafitis. El objetivo es utilizar la RA y otras tecnologías de inmersión para planificar nuevos usos, dice de la Peña, “para reverdecer [los espacios], convertirlos en parques”. Un espacio junto a la autopista 110 que atraviesa el centro de la ciudad, no muy lejos del campus satélite de ASU, se convirtió en un jardín y parque comunitario, y la asociación comenzó a intervenir un segundo espacio y estaba eligiendo un tercero este año.

Como explica de la Peña, el proyecto consiste en crear un gemelo digital tridimensional de cada sitio con el que los estudiantes, los residentes y las partes interesadas puedan experimentar para darle forma a lo que podría llegar a ser el espacio. “Incluso antes de actualizar el aspecto físico del sitio, estamos trabajando con la comunidad para enseñarles algunas habilidades básicas para crear modelos 3D”, dice Sultan Sharrief, investigadora de ASU y autodenominada científica de medios en el programa de de la Peña. “Estamos proporcionando las herramientas y el tipo de estructura, por ejemplo, ¿cómo creamos la biblioteca digital de plantas que podrán crecer en estos espacios para que luego puedan diseñar con esto en mente?”. Ahora, están incluyendo sensores en el primer sitio para mantener el gemelo digital actualizado a fin de que los miembros de la comunidad puedan seguir ajustando el espacio. “Esto recién comienza”, indica de la Peña.

La empresa que ayudó a incorporar la RA en el esfuerzo de planificación de Columbus, inCitu, está involucrada en proyectos en Phoenix, Nueva York y otras ciudades. En Washington, DC, la compañía trabaja con las oficinas de planificación y tecnología, y está comenzando a trabajar en una iniciativa de revitalización del centro en Myrtle Beach. Además, ahora brinda una plataforma basada en la Web llamada inCituAR, cuyo diseño permite a los planificadores y arquitectos experimentar directamente con la tecnología y sus capacidades.

Sin embargo, al final del día, “no se trata de lo genial de la tecnología”, comenta Chermesh-Reshef, “se trata del hecho de que esta tecnología en verdad permite una participación sencilla”. Los proyectos más prometedores, agrega, intentan abordar uno de los desafíos y aspiraciones más conocidos y antiguos de la planificación: “Nuestra meta es fomentar mejores conversaciones”.

Rob Walker es el autor de Tecnociudad: 20 aplicaciones, ideas e innovadores que cambian el panorama urbano y The Art of Noticing. Conozca más de sus trabajos en robwalker.substack.com.

Imagen principal: La realidad aumentada ayuda a la persona con la tableta a visualizar el desarrollo de viviendas sostenibles propuesto en el Bronx, Nueva York. El edificio que se ve detrás de las personas en la pantalla reemplaza los autos estacionados en el fondo verdadero. Crédito: inCitu.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston stands with his arms crossed, smiling. He is wearing a dark suit and red tie.

Mayor’s Desk

Gestionar el crecimiento de Denver

Mike Johnston, exprofesor de inglés de secundaria y senador estatal, se convirtió en el 46.º alcalde de Denver en 2023. Tomó el mando durante un período de crecimiento en una de las ciudades más prominentes del oeste, y ha estado gestionando los problemas que conlleva ese crecimiento, como los altos costos de la vivienda, la falta de vivienda y las dificultades presupuestarias municipales.

El camino a la oficina del alcalde incluyó enseñar inglés en el Delta del Mississippi, liderar tres escuelas diferentes en el área metropolitana de Denver como director y ocupar un escaño durante dos mandatos en el Senado del Estado de Colorado. El nativo de Colorado también fue asesor de educación sénior del presidente Obama y director ejecutivo de Gary Community Ventures, una organización filantrópica local centrada en educación y vivienda.

Johnston (50) fue parte del panel de alcaldes del Instituto Lincoln en la conferencia de la Asociación Estadounidense de Planificación en Denver en 2025, junto con el alcalde de Boulder, Aaron Brockett, y la alcaldesa de Fort Collins, Jeni Arndt. El miembro sénior Anthony Flint se reunió con él varias semanas después para esta entrevista. La conversación completa se puede escuchar en el pódcast Land Matters.

Anthony Flint: Al igual que muchas regiones metropolitanas en auge, Denver se enfrenta a un problema de capacidad de pago de la vivienda. ¿Cuáles son los elementos clave para abordar esta crisis?

Mike Johnston: Hay personas de todo el país y el mundo que quieren mudarse a Denver. Y ese es un gran problema. Tengo amigos que son alcaldes en ciudades que enfrentan desafíos muy diferentes, con poblaciones en declive y muchos edificios vacantes. Ahora, creo que Denver es el segundo destino más elegido entre las personas menores de 30 años en los Estados Unidos. Eso está impulsando mucho crecimiento económico. También impulsa mucha demanda de vivienda.

Tenemos que agregar mucha más oferta de vivienda y creemos que hay tres formas de hacerlo. Una es hacer que la construcción de viviendas sea más rápida. Eso implica una estrategia agresiva para hacer que el proceso de permisos demore 180 días en lugar de 2 o 3 años. La segunda es reducir los costos de construcción. Estamos tomando más medidas para ofrecer reducciones impositivas y programas de impuestos. Lanzamos una estrategia de vivienda para clase media que proporciona reducciones impositivas prediales por un máximo de 10 años a cambio de un compromiso de 30 años de mantener la capacidad de pago mediante restricciones en la escritura para los habitantes de clase media de Denver. Y, por supuesto, estamos haciendo más inversiones en viviendas asequibles. Sabemos que la ciudad no puede resolver esto sola y que el mercado tampoco puede resolverlo solo. Tenemos que ser agresivos para obtener muchas más viviendas, mucho más rápido y de forma mucho más asequible.

Los árboles y pasto de un parque de Denver están en el primer plano. Edificios, en su mayor parte rojos, de departamentos, se encuentran en medio de la imagen, en curva hacia la vista distante de edificios de oficinas altos en el centro de la ciudad. — Más de 80.000 residentes se mudaron al área metropolitana de Denver entre 2020 y 2024, lo cual incrementó el costo de vivienda. Crédito: Pgiam vía iStock/Getty Images Plus.

AF: Su campaña para abordar los acampes de personas sin hogar en Denver provocó bastante revuelo, como algunas críticas al gasto. ¿Puede explicar el enfoque y cómo podría aplicarse a otras ciudades? ¿Y hay algo que haría de otra forma?

MJ: Cuando las ciudades tienen costos de vivienda altos, hay más personas que no pueden pagarlos. Es una cuestión matemática. Los lugares en donde vemos esta dificultad son muchas de las ciudades que están creciendo y tienen una gran demanda, como Denver, San Francisco, Austin o Seattle. Pero este problema se puede resolver si se abordan las necesidades básicas. Definimos una meta ambiciosa para intentar acabar con la falta de vivienda de personas sin hogar en mi primer mandato. Cuatro años. Parece imposible. Bueno, llevamos dos años y hemos reducido la falta de vivienda de personas sin hogar en Denver en un 45 por ciento. Es la mayor reducción de falta de vivienda de personas sin hogar en cualquier ciudad en la historia de los Estados Unidos en dos años, y estamos muy orgullosos. Pero también es una señal clara de que estamos a mitad del mandato y [solo] a la mitad de la meta. Creemos que otras ciudades también deberían tener las mismas ambiciones. Y que este es un problema que se puede resolver. Permítame hablar sobre la forma en que lo hicimos, que también creemos que es escalable.

En primer lugar, nos centramos en crear unidades de vivienda de transición, que son unidades privadas individuales y dignas. Muchas son hoteles que compramos y convertimos. Son pequeños hogares que construimos. No son refugios donde uno duerme en una colchoneta en el piso de un gimnasio con otras 100 personas. Es un lugar que tiene una puerta con llave, privacidad y acceso a duchas, baños y cocinas. Uno puede guardar sus cosas cuando se va a trabajar por el día.

E incorporamos servicios integrales en cada uno de estos sitios, como apoyo de salud mental, capacitación laboral y búsqueda de vivienda a largo plazo. Y una vez que tuvimos esas unidades listas, fuimos a los acampes en Denver y, en lugar de eliminar cada cuadra de esos acampes, que solo logra que emerjan frente a la casa de otra persona, una iglesia o un hospital, trasladamos las 50 o 100 personas a una vivienda y mantuvimos esa cuadra o región de la ciudad cerrada de forma permanente para futuros acampes. Pasaron dos años y ya cerramos todos los acampes de la ciudad. No ha habido una sola tienda de campaña en el distrito comercial del centro durante más de un año y medio, y hemos reducido la falta de vivienda familiar en un 83 por ciento. Nos hemos convertido en la ciudad más grande en poner fin a la falta de vivienda para veteranos.

Creemos que esto puede funcionar en otras ciudades y compartiremos estas lecciones con cualquiera que esté dispuesto a recibirlas, porque creemos que debemos establecer la expectativa en todas las ciudades estadounidenses de que la falta de vivienda de personas sin hogar puede ser un problema solucionable.

AF: Sobre el transporte: ¿Está satisfecho con la cantidad de personas que utilizan la red de metro ligero en Denver y la cantidad de personas que viven en una urbanización orientada al transporte público? ¿Aprendió alguna lección del relativo poco uso del autobús gratuito en 16^th Street Mall, que finalmente está concluyendo la renovación después de largas demoras?

MJ: Todavía no estamos satisfechos, ya que el transporte público y la vivienda deben ser estrategias conectadas. La vivienda es una estrategia de transporte. Así que construimos una gran red de transporte público. No había densidad de viviendas cerca de ninguno de esos lugares. Ahora, estamos realizando una serie de grandes inversiones catalíticas en las líneas de metro ligero para poder construir miles de unidades de vivienda a lo largo de ese corredor. Acabamos de adquirir la parcela de propiedad privada más grande en la historia de la ciudad para convertirla en un parque público de 62 hectáreas. Se encuentra justo al lado de una parada de metro ligero, por lo que ahora podemos agregar densidad de viviendas alrededor de ese sitio: es una ubicación hermosa y los residentes pueden tomar al metro ligero y llegar sin escalas al centro, a un juego de los Broncos o a cualquier otro evento.

También estamos construyendo un nuevo estadio de fútbol femenino en un sitio de urbanización orientada al transporte público… estamos reconstruyendo en una parte históricamente latina del norte de Denver y eso nos permitirá sumar alrededor de 24 hectáreas de nuevas viviendas, espacios públicos y activación comercial, todo con transporte público. Creemos que se debe tener la verdadera intención de construir una densidad urbana real en torno al transporte público, tanto como se desea desarrollar el transporte público en torno a las rutas más transitadas.

Una parte de eso es nuestra estrategia en el centro. Mencionó el autobús de 16^th Street, que es gratuito en el centro. Estamos haciendo la mayor inversión per cápita de cualquier ciudad del país en el centro. Agregaremos alrededor de 4.000 unidades de vivienda en el centro de la ciudad con fondos de la autoridad del centro de Denver, ya que sabemos que eso significa que más personas usarán ese autobús a diario para ir y venir del trabajo o para ir a ver a sus amigos. Estamos trabajando para ocupar alrededor de 650.300 metros cuadrados de oficinas vacantes [con conversiones residenciales y el reclutamiento de empresas para que se trasladen al centro]. Queremos que sea fácil llegar al centro y moverse por el centro.

Una escena de una calle con mucha actividad en el centro de Denver incluye un trabajador de la ciudad en un chaleco fluorescene verde, una peatona en un vestido café, un autobús rojo y barreras naranja y blancas bloqueando la calle para un evento. — El autobús de 16th Street en el centro de Denver en 2024. Crédito: Elena Treshcheva vía iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus.

AF: Dados los desafíos fiscales actuales del municipio, ¿cuál es su opinión sobre los sistemas de financiamiento alternativos, como un impuesto sobre el valor del suelo o la recuperación de plusvalías, tal como se observa en la política de zonificación de superposición de incentivos de 38^th y Blake?

MJ: Nos interesan todos los incentivos que podamos encontrar para fomentar que las personas construyan más viviendas. La superposición de incentivos de 38^th y Blake en realidad fue una especie de bonificación por densidad, donde permitimos que la gente construya edificios más altos de lo que permitiría la zonificación a cambio de agregar más viviendas asequibles. Siempre buscamos formas de incentivar a las personas a agregar más viviendas asequibles, como mencioné con la reducción impositiva predial.

También analizamos la posibilidad de asociarnos en terrenos públicos. Estamos evaluando trabajar con tierras municipales, trabajar con las escuelas públicas de Denver que tienen tierras y el sistema de transporte regional, si tiene tierras. Siempre buscamos contribuir con tierras públicas para incentivar una mayor capacidad de pago. Queremos implementar todas las estrategias mencionadas, pero en los casos donde podamos agregar más viviendas sin invertir más dinero, será una gran ayuda.

AF: ¿Cómo evaluaría el progreso de sus planes de acción climática? ¿Nota una aceptación tangible a nivel local para abordar el cambio climático, en especial en el contexto de la reducción del gasto federal?

MJ: No notamos ningún cambio en el compromiso de la ciudad con la acción climática ni en nuestra convicción de que es un esfuerzo importante para la existencia. Estamos comprometidos con una perspectiva agresiva para cumplir con nuestra meta climática, que es un plan para estar libres de carbono para 2040 y tener energía 100 por ciento renovable, a la vez que impulsamos el crecimiento económico. Queremos lograr ambas cosas.

AF: ¿Es posible que los gobiernos locales y estatales se ocupen de este problema mundial de una forma realmente eficaz?

MJ: No creemos que debamos rendirnos o renunciar ahora. Estamos haciendo toda una campaña pública sobre el cambio de comportamiento. Queremos alentar a las personas a tomar más medidas locales ahora, ante el abandono federal… Estamos construyendo una infraestructura de estaciones de carga que facilite la conversión de nuestra flota a electricidad y para que más vehículos de Uber, Lyft, FedEx y Amazon hagan lo mismo, y para convencer a los residentes habituales de que también lo hagan. Seguiremos construyendo la infraestructura para hacerlo. Seguiremos incentivando a la gente a hacerlo. Seguiremos cambiando el comportamiento para hacerlo y seguiremos estableciendo objetivos propios sobre cómo nuestros vehículos, nuestras empresas y nuestros residentes intentan alcanzar metas climáticas agresivas, con la certeza de que seguimos juntos en esto, incluso si el presidente no quiere que sea una prioridad.

Anthony Flint es miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, conduce el ciclo de pódcasts Land Matters y es editor colaborador de Land Lines.

Imagen principal: Mike Johnston, el alcalde de Denver. Crédito: Oficina del alcalde de Denver.

President's Message

Terrenos públicos para beneficio público

Millones de estadounidenses, ya sea que vivan en zonas urbanas o rurales, se enfrentan a la necesidad urgente de tener una vivienda segura y asequible. Y cientos de ciudades, tanto grandes como pequeñas, buscan formas de desarrollar resiliencia ante los fenómenos meteorológicos extremos que amenazan a los residentes y, en algunos casos, de adaptarse a la llegada de nuevos residentes que huyen de los impactos de un clima cambiante. Las soluciones a todos estos desafíos comparten un ingrediente esencial: el suelo.

Los gobiernos de todo el mundo ya poseen más que suficientes terrenos para satisfacer estas necesidades; sin embargo, grandes cantidades de terrenos públicos están vacantes o desaprovechadas, y su propósito no coincide con las necesidades actuales. En particular, esto es cierto en los niveles más locales de gobierno, como ciudades, condados, estados, distritos escolares y autoridades públicas. Estos terrenos podrían y deberían utilizarse para el beneficio público, en especial, para viviendas asequibles y soluciones basadas en la naturaleza. Sin embargo, es más fácil decirlo que hacerlo.

Este otoño, el Instituto Lincoln planea lanzar una campaña centrada en ayudar a las comunidades a hacer uso de las parcelas de propiedad pública adecuadas para brindar soluciones con beneficios duraderos.

Como país, nos faltan unos 4,7 millones de hogares. Según un análisis realizado por el Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales del Instituto Lincoln, los Estados Unidos tienen más de 111.690 hectáreas edificables de terrenos propiedad del gobierno en áreas urbanas accesibles para el transporte público, lo suficiente como para alojar entre dos y siete millones de viviendas nuevas, según la densidad. Esta estimación excluye adrede parques, humedales y servidumbres de paso, y se concentra en sitios donde el desarrollo no sacrificaría el espacio abierto.

El punto no es construir en cada hectárea. El punto es que los terrenos públicos, usados de forma estratégica, pueden modificar la curva de costos de viviendas asequibles y crear espacio para la infraestructura verde que protege a los barrios del calor y las inundaciones.

El impulso ya es visible en todos los niveles de gobierno. La administración federal ha pedido a las agencias que identifiquen las propiedades que podrían utilizarse para viviendas. Mientras tanto, los estados y las ciudades están tomando medidas: California ha fortalecido su Ley de Terrenos Excedentes para exigir que las agencias locales realicen un inventario de las parcelas disponibles, las ofrezcan primero a los emprendedores inmobiliarios de viviendas asequibles y se rijan según procedimientos transparentes y exigibles. Una ley en el Distrito de Columbia vincula la asequibilidad a los acuerdos de terrenos públicos al exigir una parte importante de unidades por debajo del precio de mercado, en especial cerca del transporte público. Massachusetts ha presentado una cartera de parcelas estatales excedentes con el objetivo de producir miles de viviendas. El programa de Tierras Públicas para la Vivienda de San Francisco destina sitios grandes de bajo rendimiento, como Balboa Reservoir, de 6,8 hectáreas, a viviendas de ingresos mixtos; y Sound Transit, en el estado de Washington, bosquejó una política para dedicar propiedades excedentes a viviendas para personas con ingresos limitados cerca de las estaciones. No son casos aislados, sino ladrillos que construyen una estrategia.

La reutilización de terrenos públicos no es solo una solución de vivienda, también es una forma de desarrollar resiliencia. Muchas de las parcelas más prometedoras son ideales para soluciones basadas en la naturaleza que gestionan las aguas pluviales, refrescan los vecindarios y suman espacios públicos. El programa Ciudad Verde, Aguas Limpias de Filadelfia utiliza calles, parques, patios escolares y otros derechos de paso públicos para captar aguas pluviales, lo cual reduce los desbordamientos del alcantarillado a la vez que reverdece los barrios. La Medida W del condado de Los Ángeles financia proyectos de múltiples beneficios, como Magic Johnson Park, donde la captación de agua, el hábitat, la recreación y la sombra se unen en terrenos públicos. En Nueva Orleans, el Distrito Gentilly Resilience agrega parcelas públicas e institucionales para almacenar agua y reducir las temperaturas del barrio. Estos proyectos dejan en claro que la reutilización de los terrenos municipales puede mejorar las condiciones de vida en las comunidades, que deberán centrarse en cuatro pilares concretos y viables para que este esfuerzo tome vuelo:

Encontrar los terrenos. Los gobiernos deben crear inventarios abiertos a la comunidad de parcelas de propiedad pública con potencial para el desarrollo. Mediante la metodología Who Owns America^®, el Centro de Soluciones Geoespaciales puede producir mapas específicos de jurisdicción de alta calidad completos, con atributos de parcelas como zonificación, contaminación potencial, acceso a infraestructura, proximidad a empleos y transporte público, y limitaciones y prioridades conocidas. Como los funcionarios públicos no suelen contar con la capacidad y los recursos para realizar este análisis, prevemos trabajar con socios que respalden una toma de decisiones clara. Los mapas pueden clasificar los sitios en categorías: la vivienda como prioridad (cerca del transporte público o corredores donde las unidades asequibles de tamaño familiar tienen más sentido), la resiliencia como prioridad (vías de inundación, corredores ribereños o islas de calor que podrían ser un mejor apoyo para el almacenamiento de agua, la refrigeración y el hábitat) y beneficio doble (sitios que pueden albergar viviendas e infraestructura verde).
Corregir las normas. Los buenos inventarios solo sirven si las normas permiten que los terrenos públicos se usen para el beneficio público de manera predecible y a gran escala. Las políticas de resiliencia como prioridad suelen incluir cinco elementos: una necesidad para inventariar terrenos excedentes y proporcionar aviso público; un proceso de primera oferta o prioridad para las entidades de vivienda asequible calificadas; reservas mínimas de asequibilidad que son más fuertes cerca del transporte público de alta calidad; autoridad explícita para arrendar o vender terrenos por debajo del precio de mercado para cumplir con los objetivos de asequibilidad; y plazos con consecuencias para que los procesos no se detengan. Para las autoridades públicas, como las agencias de transporte, agua y educación, los objetivos a nivel de cartera crean responsabilidad y protegen la alineación con la misión. A medida que la campaña evoluciona, esperamos proporcionar un texto modelo para políticas, facilitar los intercambios entre pares y ofrecer soporte técnico para alinear los objetivos de los propietarios públicos con las adquisiciones, la zonificación y el financiamiento.
Brindar financiamiento. Incluso cuando el valor del suelo está en debate, las viviendas muy asequibles y la infraestructura verde moderna requieren financiación, en especial desde el principio. Las comunidades deben adoptar un enfoque de capital trenzado que trate el valor del suelo como patrimonio en la estructura de capital y entrelace múltiples flujos de financiamiento. La iniciativa Acelerar la Inversión Comunitaria del Instituto Lincoln, que convoca a agencias públicas, entidades crediticias impulsadas por la misión, filántropos y capitales privados a fin de estructurar proyectos invertibles, es un buen ejemplo de un programa que ayuda a los socios a combinar el patrimonio del suelo con bonos estatales de vivienda, patrimonio de crédito fiscal, inversiones concesionarias o relacionadas con el programa, herramientas federales y financiamiento local para cerrar brechas. Una vez que las jurisdicciones pueden cuantificar el valor desbloqueado por el suelo, pueden negociar con confianza y transparencia.
Recuperar los beneficios Lógicamente, las comunidades esperan claridad, equidad y valor público visible de los acuerdos de terrenos públicos, lo que requiere diseñar procesos que generen confianza, desde solicitudes de propuestas estandarizadas hasta precios fijos del suelo. A través del programa Comunidades Vibrantes de Lincoln en la Universidad Lincoln de Claremont, podemos proporcionar capacitación directa, asistencia técnica y capacitación para los equipos intersectoriales (funcionarios públicos, líderes comunitarios, profesionales de la vivienda y agencias de infraestructura) que desean trabajar juntos para usar terrenos públicos para el beneficio público. Este desarrollo de capacidades en equipo es esencial: el éxito de todo este trabajo hasta la entrega depende de la ejecución coordinada.

Para evitar algunas preocupaciones predecibles, nuestros inventarios tienen un diseño específico para evitar cualquier riesgo de erosión del espacio abierto: excluyen parques y hábitats sensibles y dirigen la atención a sitios ya pavimentados, desaprovechados y con servicios de transporte público. Además, muchos proyectos de resiliencia agregan espacios abiertos asequibles (como un parque acuático inteligente o una vía verde sombreada) y, al mismo tiempo, protegen de las inundaciones a los barrios que se encuentran río abajo. También debemos tener en cuenta que, a diferencia de lo que piensan algunos críticos, los acuerdos de terrenos por debajo del precio de mercado no son “regalos”. De hecho, el público recibe un valor duradero: viviendas siempre asequibles, protección climática y comodidades garantizadas por arrendamientos de terrenos, restricciones de escrituras y convenios exigibles. Por último, el problema no puede solucionarse solo mediante terrenos federales. Las propiedades federales pueden ser de ayuda en los márgenes, pero la mayor parte de la oportunidad recae en los gobiernos locales y las autoridades públicas que controlan el suelo cerca de los empleos y el transporte público. Es por eso que los programas estatales y locales son lo más importante, y por eso nuestros esfuerzos se centrarán en ayudar a esos propietarios a actuar.

Esta campaña unirá los puntos entre la producción de viviendas y la resiliencia ante el cambio climático en más lugares. Y vinculará la política con la entrega, para que los compromisos se conviertan en hogares e infraestructura verde reales en el terreno, ya que la escasez de viviendas y la emergencia climática no esperan.

Los terrenos públicos son un fideicomiso público. Si se usan bien, pueden ayudarnos a entregar viviendas a las personas en lugares donde las oportunidades y las necesidades son mayores, mantener los barrios a salvo del calor y las inundaciones, y renovar la confianza de que las instituciones públicas pueden resolver grandes problemas. Esta próxima campaña será nuestra invitación a todas las partes para que trabajen juntas al ritmo y a la escala que requiera el momento.

Imagen principal: Una renderización de la comunidad Balboa Reservoir que se está desarrollando en terrenos públicos en San Francisco. Crédito: Van Meter Williams Pollack.

Topic: Planejamento Urbano e Regional

Seven Need-to-Know Trends for Planners in 2026

2026 Trend Report for Planners

1. Me, myself, and AI

2. ‘Greenhushing’ on the rise

3. Small college towns left behind

4. Envisioning the intersection of AVs and public transit

5. The TikTok effect on the political landscape

7. Rights, culture, and communities at risk

The Wild West of Data Centers: Energy and water use top concerns

Planning for a Just Transition in the California Delta

Realidad aumentada y urbanismo

Gestionar el crecimiento de Denver

Terrenos públicos para beneficio público

Rede Futuros Urbanos

Detalhes

Red Futuros Urbanos

Detalhes

Futuros Urbanos Network

Detalhes

Faça Parte da Nossa Lista de Contatos