View from one of the scenic highways in Alpine County, California.

Alpine County, California, spreads across 725 square miles of the Sierra Nevada but, by population, is the smallest county in California. According to Planning Director Brian Peters, only 1,200 residents live in the county, which is located south of Lake Tahoe. About 96 percent of the land area is publicly owned and managed by either the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or the State of California. The entire county is unincorporated.

The primary challenge for planning in Alpine County is similar to that facing many places across the country, particularly the West: getting people to appreciate the need for some type of land use control and working to gain acceptance for planning. As Peters explains, the county is fairly conservative and most residents "don't like government regulation." California requires zoning regulation so the decision to have zoning is not a local one. Peters believes, however, that his office has been successful over the years at gaining acceptance for planning and coming up with regulatory tools that fit the community.

One planning challenge is the department's efforts to update an ordinance in place since 1967 that protects views from designated scenic highways in the county. The revisions, which would establish basic development guidelines, a more defined review process, and include assurances that development would not be prohibited, won approval from the Planning Commission after two years of public discussion -- but stalled when sent to the County Board of Supervisors over objections that they infringed too much on private property rights. The revisions are now back on the Planning Commission's agenda for additional work.

A mix of new single-family and high rise multi-family housing in Nashville, Tennessee; Nashville residents record the highest per capita daily commuter travel distance at 37.7 miles per day.

Nashville is home to Titan Stadium, The Grand Old Opry, Vanderbilt University, and the recently refurbished 1897 replica of the Parthenon.

For Rick Bernhardt, Executive Director of Planning for Nashville and Davidson County, the biggest challenge for the whole community is to come to grips with the "realization that urban design is important." He explains that this isn't just an acknowledgement of the value of zoning or recognition of the tenets of "new urbanism," but a broader recognition that the "interplay of all of these actions are what builds a community."

From this perspective, planners in Nashville have become more involved in "planning side visioning that is three dimensional to see how projects relate to each other." Good planning and good results in Nashville is understood to be "more than just the numbers."

Nashville faces other challenges. Bernhardt notes that Nashville residents record the highest per capita daily commuter travel distance at 37.7 miles per day. The city and county developed historically in a low-density way and extensive roadway development has made it easier for people to commute longer distances. A political maxim in Tennessee might read, "there's always a road solution."

Since the 1980's, yet another circumferential highway has been in the planning stages to loop around Nashville, with about one-third of the southern section complete. While city planners oppose continued work on this highway, it was revisited recently as a project for state and federal funding. Bernhardt believes there are transportation and land use limits and the likely price tag of 1.7 to 1.9 billion dollars for completion of the highway will prove too much, even for Tennessee. He thinks the 13 county area surrounding Nashville will eventually come up with a regional transportation solution.

Flagler Street in New Smyrna Beach, Florida: home to surfers, and small retail establishments (as in this converted house).

New Smyrna Beach, Florida,is a beach community of20,000 fulltime residents. This number swells during the winter season, buoyed by the regular infusion of "snowbirds" from the north country and regional events like NASCAR speed weeks and "Biketoberfest" in nearby Daytona. Development Services Director Thomas Harowski compares New Smyrna Beach favorably to older New Jersey shore communities where weekly rental accommodations of small houses, apartments, and time-share condominiums prevail over transient hotel and motel visits.

While the average age of New Smyrna Beach residents is over fifty, the city is not sleepy. It has doubled in size through voluntary annexation during the last five years, and population growth has been one to three percent annually. There is a history of support for maintaining neighborhoods and greenbelts and for the acquisition of environmentally critical properties.

Harowksi notes that the goal of planners is to "keep pace without being continuously overwhelmed by current planning demand." The key challenge is to accommodate the new development that is inevitable while, at the same time, protecting and preserving the community assets that have made New Smyrna Beach attractive. Indeed, the city recently adopted as its motto: "Keep the charm."

Another challenge Director Harowski points to is the increasingly "law-driven" nature of planning in Florida. The city's state-mandated comprehensive plan "has legal status" so "lawyers are working the document." Harowski also observes that planning has become much more process-oriented ("how did you do?") instead of results-oriented ("what did you accomplish?").