Practical AI for Community Development & Planning

Practical AI for Community Development & Planning: Tools, Tips, and Useful Everyday Applications

Generative AI is rapidly transforming how organizations communicate, plan, and engage. This webinar offers a practical introduction to generative AI for community development and planning professionals—regardless of prior experience with AI.

Participants will gain a clear understanding of what generative AI is (and isn’t), explore real-world examples of how it can support everyday tasks such as drafting content or creating visuals, and learn simple tools and prompt-writing strategies to help them get started or enhance their current skills. The session will emphasize the ethical and responsible use of AI, highlight both its opportunities and limitations, and stress the importance of keeping human judgment central to the AI conversation. Attendees will leave with practical ideas they can apply immediately in their work.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Define generative AI and identify at least two practical applications relevant to community development and/or planning work
• Describe the strengths and limitations of generative AI models
• Demonstrate how to write effective prompts for generating written or visual content

Speakers

• James Ladlee, State Program Leader, Emerging & Advanced Technology, Penn State Extension
• John Turack, Extension Program Specialist, Community & Economic Development, Penn State Extension

Group viewing brought to you by Lancaster County Planning.

Lancaster County Planning strives to provide educational opportunities for our planning partners – professional planners, municipalities, consultants, designers, engineers, local planning commissions, and interested citizens. In 2025, we will continue to provide an opportunity for our partners to join us at our office to view a mix of live and recorded webinars we have purchased or registered for from various sources on a variety of planning topics. Many of these programs will provide AICP CM and ASLA continuing education credits. Due to site license restrictions, we are not able to share our webinar access information with interested parties. For independent access, please contact the webinar provider directly.

For questions related to this event, please contact 717-299-8333 or email bGNwY2VkdWNhdGlvbiB8IGxhbmNhc3RlcmNvdW50eXBhICEgZ292.

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