By any measure, Ivy Vann, AICP, CNU-A, has taken an unconventional path into planning. A graduate of Harvard College (A.B., 1980) and Antioch University (M.Ed., 2003), Vann didn’t begin her professional planning career until later in life. But her decades-spanning curiosity about how communities grow, and how they sometimes fail, has made her one of New Hampshire’s most outspoken advocates for human-scaled, mixed-use development.

Vann’s first exposure to planning came not in an office, but in a newsroom. In the early 1980s, while working as a reporter in New Hampshire, she began noticing local towns “zoning themselves out of existence.” Though she lacked the vocabulary for it then, she could see the consequences of exclusionary zoning in sprawling, single-use patterns that hollowed out traditional village life. That realization planted the seed for what would become her life’s work.

Today, Vann describes her mission as “re-legalizing all the ways we used to build places.” She is a passionate champion for mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods that offer a range of housing choices. Her advocacy during her tenure as a state representative helped shape statewide zoning reforms. They may have been small steps, but were meaningful in a region where, as she notes, “every zoning change gets voted on at town meeting.”

Her late entry into the field wasn’t without challenges. “As an older woman, my own town officials tended to regard me as a bored housewife meddling in things she didn’t understand,” she recalls. Yet Vann’s persistence, combined with her sharp wit and educator’s patience, won her respect in local and state planning circles. “My resemblance to your favorite high school history teacher,” she jokes, “has generally been an asset.”

Vann’s professional network reflects her collaborative spirit. She credits R. John Anderson for encouraging her to pursue both development and planning, and she remains deeply connected to the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) community that first welcomed her. Mentorship has come full circle. Vann regularly counsels younger women entering the field, especially those starting out as planning clerks.

She’s also encouraged by a new spirit of reflection within the profession itself. “In the last five or six years,” Vann notes, “there’s been an admission that planning professionals made some really big mistakes: single-family residential zoning, use-based zoning, minimum square footages for lots and houses.” For her, that reckoning represents progress: an acknowledgment that the systems planners built often excluded people and limited community resilience. Recognizing those errors, she believes, opens the door to creating more inclusive, adaptable places.

Beyond her projects, Vann’s voice reaches thousands through her active social media presence and through presentations at planning conferences nationwide. She also moderates a 10,000-member Facebook group focused on infill development, helping others navigate the complexities of reforming local land-use codes.

Reflecting on her career, Vann finds satisfaction in tangible results: “When I get really depressed about what I’ve accomplished, I go look at a neighborhood that I wrote the code for and see that it is good.” Her advice to new planners is simple but profound: “Work to be empathetic and not impatient with NIMBYs.”

Education: A.B Harvard College 1980, M.Ed Antioch University 2003

APA Divisions: New Urbanism Division, Small Town and Rural Planning Division, Women and Planning Division

States Worked: New Hampshire

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