Tag: Conferences

How can state departments of transportation (DOTs) cut costs while creating better transportation choices and creating quality jobs?

That’s what Smart Growth America’s Vice President Roger Millar will discuss at this year’s Good Jobs Green Jobs conference, on April 16, 2013 in Washington D.C. Joining Millar for a panel discussion called “Not Your Father’s DOT” will be Eric Sundquist, Managing Director, Smart State Transportation Initiative and Douglas Shinkle, Senior Policy Specialist, National Conference of State Legislatures.

Many state DOTs face falling revenues but rising demand for services. In response to these challenges, DOTs across the country are changing the way they do business. Agencies are taking new approaches to transportation that fit the unique demands of their states and that provide greater benefits at less cost. They are improving existing services in the short term and planning effectively for the long term. They are adopting innovative yet pragmatic reforms. They are reevaluating and retooling traditional practices to ensure that those practices continue to provide users with a robust, economically beneficial transportation network.

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Members of the Local Leaders Council and Smart Growth America staff. Top row, from left: Bill Fulton, Mayor Madeline Rogero, Mayor John Engen, Mayor Ken Moore, County Board Member Chris Zimmerman, Vice-Mayor Anu Natarajan and Jessica Holmberg. Bottom row, from left: Neha Bhatt, Councilmember Dave Richins, Mayor Rick Danner, and Mayor Scott Avedesian.

Smart Growth America’s Local Leaders Council was in Kansas City last week to collaborate, learn, and present solutions at the 12th annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference.

Over 1,100 people convened in Kansas City for the conference, including city planners, elected officials, bloggers, community leaders, health experts, and business people. Attendees traded ideas and stories, presented questions and solutions, and found new allies.

Next week, the 12th annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference kicks off in America’s heartland—Kansas City, Missouri. The three-day conference will explore sensible strategies for helping communities arcoss the country create healthy, convenient, equitable and livable cities and towns for all. This year, the conference will include over 90 sessions and close to 400 total speakers across multiple disciplines including elected officials, state and federal agency leaders; professionals in planning and transportation; realtors, developers and many others committed to building sustainable communities nationwide.

Smart Growth America’s staff will among the many speakers talking about best practices in implementing smart growth strategies – covering everything from local policies to federal legislation about Complete Streets, public transportation, economic development, effective communications and more. Join us at one of our several sessions.

We’re doing a special blog series highlighting some of Smart Growth America’s favorite accomplishments from 2012. This is the eighth of twelve installments.

In 2012, we joined together with colleagues and allies to learn from one another and work together on our common goals.

At the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, we talked about area-wide planning, the transportation debate in Congress, infill development in small cities, implementing Complete Streets, progressive trends in state transportation policy, how to turn transit-oriented development in to economic prosperity, and how to create political support for smart growth projects.

Water.

What’s the first thing you think of when you read that word? If you answered, “jobs,” you’re probably here at the Urban Water Sustainability Leadership Conference here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Green for All, just released Water Works: Rebuilding infrastructure, creating jobs, greening the environment. “No group has the potential to hire more people,” Ms. Ellis-Lamkins told the audience of utility managers, engineers, planners and advocates. Energy efficiency may be the focus of green jobs in Washington, D.C., but green energy “has nothing on job numbers” compared to green water infrastructure. According to the new report, adequate investment in green water infrastructure over the next five years could generate $265.6 billion in economic activity and create close to 1.9 million jobs.

“San Diego light rail station.” Photo by EPA Smart Growth via Flickr.

Save the date! Join smart growth leaders from across the country for the 11th annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, to be held from February 2-4, 2012 in San Diego, California.

New Partners for Smart Growth is a national, multi-disciplinary smart growth conference presented by the Local Government Commission. In these tough economic times when communities everywhere are struggling for fiscal survival, this timely conference will identify innovative ways to finance smart growth, explore creative techniques for reducing infrastructure and service costs, and provide concrete ideas for employing smart growth as a tool for community economic vitality.

Investing in and reusing vacant properties can catalyze long-term, sustainable revitalization in a community. Focusing on the multiple benefits these projects bring to neighborhoods and local economies, the Center for Community Progress’ Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference kicked off this week in Cleveland, Ohio. The annual conference brings together a diversity of leaders working on community development issues to make our neighborhoods stronger and healthier.