About Urban Lexis

Urban Lexis is an initiative of the American Planning Association's International Division, created as an online glossary resource to define and contextualize planning terminology. 

The purpose of this project is to bridge the knowledge gap and foster knowledge sharing among planners, planning educators, students, and community members. 

The target audience of Urban Lexis are:

• Planners seeking to broaden their knowledge of planning disciplines beyond their primary focus areas.

• Students interested in exploring various planning fields.

• Community members who want to deepen their understanding of urban planning to enhance their capabilities and contribute to their communities.

Background

Urban Lexis builds on the foundation of the 2021 Planifiquemos project, an initiative of the International Division aimed at collecting and defining urban planning terms in plain English, with translations into Spanish. It also draws inspiration from the 2023 English-Japanese planning term dictionary project developed by the APA's Japan-U.S. Collaboration Interest Group.

The concept for Urban Lexis first emerged in the spring of 2024 and was shared with some APA International Division members. The charter members of Urban Lexis are:

Irayda Ruiz Bode, FAICP

Aline Estefam

Daniel Garwood, AICP

Keiko Murayama, AICP, AIA, LEED BD&C

Dimitra Pyrialakou, Ph.D. 

Margarita Saldaña

Krishna K. Shrivastava, AICP

Victor Vergara 

Jing Zhang, AICP 

As of October 9, the Urban Lexis has not been officially launched.