Hi everyone, welcome back to our podcast, this is Zeyu. Today’s episode features Ryan Maye Handy, a policy analyst and planner at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
I met Ryan at World Water Week in 2023 when I attended her workshop on exploratory scenario planning. I had a lot of fun participating in this session on the future of agriculture for rural, small and lower-income communities facing water crises in the US, and I learned a lot from working with other participants through their contributions and perspectives. While I found her workshop on scenario planning very engaging and informative, I found her journey from journalism to where she is now fascinating. I couldn’t help but want to learn more about why she decided to make the switch, and how she managed to do so.
In this episode, we explore the journey of Ryan, a former newspaper journalist who transitioned to urban planning. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Ryan covered environmental and political issues in Texas and Colorado before shifting her focus to urban planning. Her transition was influenced by her reporting on climate crises, notably Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Witnessing the rebuilding in flood-prone areas underscored the impacts of planning decisions on community resilience and fueled her desire to influence urban development directly.
Her work in scenario planning involves engaging communities to envision and strategize for future challenges, ensuring inclusivity and local relevance. She highlights the challenges of public participation in planning, emphasizing the need for innovative engagement methods to include diverse voices. Technology plays a role in this effort, offering tools for virtual collaboration, but accessibility remains a key issue, especially in underserved areas.
We hope you find her story intriguing as well, and if you want to learn more about her work and participatory scenario planning, please find the links below provided by Ryan herself to help you further explore these topics mentioned during our conversation. Finally, Click here to subscribe to our Substack email list.
More Resources
Resilient Communities and Watersheds: Exploratory Scenario Planning
Sowing Seeds: How Scenario Planning Can Help Agricultural Communities Plan for a Resilient Future
