Commonwealth Association of Planners

The Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) Awards for Outstanding Planning Achievement in the Commonwealth seek to champion the best examples of planning practice in the Commonwealth. The Young planners essay competition has sought over many years to show case the innovation and solution focus of planners across the Commonwealth in the early stages of their professional lives.

The recovery of the tourism sector is vital to Fiji’s economic recovery following the pandemic, and planning will have a fundamental role to play in how that happens.

Over the past months, it has become increasingly clear that the decades of work done to move the dial toward greater gender equity have quickly reverted back due to a lack of effective action. How can we harness the lessons learned during and post pandemic recovery and plan for cities that continuously strive for gender equality and inclusivity?

While things are far from business as usual, planners around the world are beginning to think about what the world will look like in a post-pandemic future. The Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) and the Provincial and Territorial Institutes and Associations (PTIAs) have been leading the way by facilitating discussions, sharing resources, and disseminating information in order to support planners across the country as they transition into this new reality.

The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic required measures to be introduced through the Planning systems (each of the UK nations has its own system) to ensure that the planning system continues to function and to respond to urgent pressures.

“To inspire designers—too long the servants of producers—to better serve humanity as the ambassadors of the end-users: the citizens of the world.”   

~Montreal Design Declaration, 2017

In 2018, the Commonwealth Association of Planners reformed the Commonwealth Women in Planning Network to explore issues of gender in the built environment.  The first initiative of this Network was to develop a Manifesto.

CAP created its Awards to celebrate planning success. The inaugural Awards Ceremony was held in Cape Town, South Africa in October 2018 to coincide with the Planning Africa conference.