Countywide : Three Receive Awards for Urban Planning

An anti-graffiti program in Anaheim, a Fountain Valley affordable-housing program and a UCI doctoral student were all given awards by an organization of professional urban planners.

The awards were announced this week by the California Chapter of the American Planning Assn.

“Put Your Mark on the World, Not on the Wall,” was recognized for its efforts to provide youths with alternatives to joining gangs. Anaheim was awarded the Education Project Award of Excellence for the anti-graffiti program, which sponsors poster, photography and T-shirt contests. Program officials say calls to the graffiti hot line are down 30% since the program started in 1989.

Fountain Valley received the Distinguished Leadership Merit Award for Heil Park, a 24-unit affordable housing project partially subsidized by the city.

The organization singled out the city for overcoming the not-in-my-back-yard syndrome.

The 1994 Academic Award was given to doctoral student Rachel Struglia for her paper, “Alternative Approaches to Urban Planning: Jane Jacobs and Feminist Urban Planners.”

The points raised in the UCI student’s paper “are salient to urban professionals today who constantly must seek to accommodate diverse viewpoints stemming from ethnicity, race and gender,” a spokesperson for the organization said.

A total of 24 awards were given this year. More than 60 programs, organizations and individuals were nominated for awards.