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| navigate: home: magazine: spring 2002: article | |
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Conference explores smart growth strategies By Deborah A. Benedetti | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nearly 1,000 people from 40 states, Canada, Australia and Ireland met in San Diego, Calif., to discuss strategies for developing and sustaining livable communities during the conference on New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities. Penn State partnered with the Local Government Commission (LGC) to sponsor the conference. LGC is a California-based nonprofit organization devoted to helping local officials address community problems and maximize community resources. Participating Penn State units were the College of Arts and Architecture, the College of Health and Human Development and Continuing Education’s Conferences and Institutes. Donald Leslie, associate dean for undergraduate studies and outreach in the College of Arts and Architecture, presented opening remarks to the sold-out audience. He said, “It was an absolutely wonderful conference. The content was so energetic and so relevant to what’s important in America today — creating healthy, safe and livable communities.” Leslie endorsed this second conference on smart growth issues, organized by Conferences and Institutes and the Local Government Commission, as well as the first conference, Redefining Community: A Smart Growth Approach to Street and Neighborhood Design, Crime Prevention and Public Health and Safety, held in San Diego in January 2001. “So many different disciplines have a piece of this complex concept of smart growth,” Leslie said. “This issue is also very timely. Professionals from many areas are trying to figure out how to create livable communities. The conference demonstrated the potential for public and private partnerships to design, operate and maintain cities and urban environments.” Planning for smart growth encompasses traffic, air quality, open space, public health, crime and public safety, community economic viability, water quality and environmental issues and other issues. Participants at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference represented the many disciplines, organizations and businesses interested in building livable communities, including elected officials, law enforcement and crime prevention professionals, transportations officials, public health professionals, architects, land developers, landscape architects, planners, educators, youth leaders, park and recreation personnel, urban designers, realtors, public works staff, senior citizen advocates, bicycle advocates and pedestrian advocates. Both smart growth conferences have generated ideas for future conferences and programs, Leslie said. “The market for exchanging ideas on building and sustaining livable communities is national,” Leslie said. He is continuing to work with Penn State Continuing Education to plan future programs for locations on the East Coast. Leslie envisions the University taking the lead in forming an umbrella of smart growth programs through partnerships and collaborations with University and external groups. One new Penn State project, the Arts and Health Outreach Initiative (see story), will be part of this effort. Dr. Patricia A. Book, associate vice president for outreach and executive director of the Division of Continuing Education, said, “Penn State’s sponsorship of the smart growth conferences demonstrates our commitment to helping the nation address this complex societal concern. Developing livable and healthy communities, while preserving open space for future generations, is crucial to quality-of-life issues.” Dr. Fred W. Vondracek, associate dean for undergraduate studies and outreach in the College of Health and Human Development, also is an advocate for Penn State’s emphasis on issues related to smart growth. “Many of our faculty members are actively involved in research that has a direct impact on the viability of communities,” Vondracek said. “They are contributing new knowledge about children, youth and family issues, health and nutrition issues, recreation needs and much more.” Continuing Education’s Conferences and Institutes planned and organized both conferences with the Local Government Commission. Mark Bernhard, senior conference planner with Conferences and Institutes, worked with Al Zelinka, an urban planner in California, to create the concept for the first conference and helped establish Penn State’s partnership with the Local Government Commission. “Our partnership with Penn State has been particularly rewarding,” Judy Corbett, founder and executive director of the Local Government Commission, said. “Conference attendees have rated the multidisciplinary focus of these past two conferences as the aspect that they appreciated the most.” Corbett is internationally recognized for her expertise in resource-efficient land use and has lectured and written extensively on land use and building design issues. The conference featured an opening keynote address by Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “The environmental challenges we face in the 21st Century, in many ways, are entirely different than those we have dealt with in the past,” Whitman said. “While we used to spend so much time focusing on immediate problems, we now have the opportunity to plan for the future. Addressing new environmental challenges requires us to manage all of our resources better — economic, social and environmental — and manage them for the long term. “That is why smart growth is so important. It is critical to economic growth, the development of healthy communities and the protection of our environment, all at the same time. Smart growth — the ability to create a sustainable society where we can reach all of these goals simultaneously — really comes down to one thing: quality of life,” she said. Whitman also talked about legislation President George W. Bush signed in January, the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, that will enable EPA to help states and local communities clean up and reclaim many of the brownfields located throughout the country. She emphasized EPA’s willingness to work in partnership with governments, corporations, planners and preservationists to achieve smarter growth across the nation through EPA’s Smart Growth Network. EPA also has established a National Award for Smart Growth Achievement to annually recognize communities and leaders who demonstrate innovation and success in applying smart growth principles. The first awards will be presented in 2003. Other conference speakers included:
Bernhard noted the conference also featured participation by 25 youth delegates from cities nationwide. The delegates, ages 16 to 18, were nominated by their communities. The goal of involving young people in the conference was to engage them in policymaking with adults. As part of their participation in the New Partners for Smart Growth conference, youth delegates conducted a survey of their peers, interviewed a policymaker in their area and attended an orientation session prior to the conference. During the conference, they attended sessions and shared information about their communities and their peers’ ideas for building better communities. One youth delegate was chosen by the group to speak during a conference session. They will report on their conference experiences and smart growth ideas to community groups. The Local Government Commission initiated the project, with financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Alliance Healthcare Foundation and several cities. The California Center for Civic Participation and Youth Development organized this component of the conference. The conference also featured three-hour intensive implementation workshops, which provided participants with tools for building safe, healthy and livable communities, Bernhard explained. In addition, participants had opportunities to attend tours of model smart growth projects in San Diego. Bernhard said this second conference included speakers from many disciplines, as well as new partners interested in supporting smart growth, including AARP and AFL-CIO. Penn State and the Local Government Commission were the primary conference organizers. More than 100 organizations also were sponsors and supporters of the conference, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Smart Growth Network, California Department of Transportation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Federal Highway Administration’s TCSP Program, National Association of Realtors and U.S. EPA’s Region IX. A third smart growth conference is planned for 2003, possibly in the Midwest. “We’ve created a very successful partnership with the Local Government Commission for developing conferences about smart growth,” Bernhard said. “This partnership is helping us focus attention on the importance of smart growth strategies to make better communities.” An outreach program of the College of Arts and Architecture, College of Health and Human Development and Conferences and Institutes, with the Local Government Commission | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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