Conference Overview
This year's Smart Growth conference again incorporates an interactive participant engagement process to provide input to issues of importance to the future growth and development of our region. The focus is on revitalizing our core communities. Conference participants will identify a set of public policy solutions and collaborative actions to speed the development and redevelopment of these communities. In this context, the conference will also serve as an opportunity for public input to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission's updating of the long range transportation and development plan "Project Region."
Too many of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s oldest communities are facing revitalization challenges. Their former grandeur is fading to their detriment and at a cost to the surrounding regional community and economy. Increasingly, it’s apparent the future of city and suburb are joined at the hip. The challenges that hold back one community often are the same in communities across our region.
To open the conference and set the framework, keynote speaker, David Soule, former director of the Boston Metro Area Planning Council and author of “Overcoming Deal Breakers to Urban Redevelopment for Regional Prosperity” will address opportunities and reasons for a region to focus work to revitalize its existing communities as a strategic means to regional prosperity. He will we also introduce a new community self-assessment tool for economic development readiness.
This will be followed by reports by community leaders who hosted pre-conference forums held around the region to get a running start on identifying key policies and actions necessary to revitalize the region's core communities as regional economic assets. Conference participants will then vote in (using handheld keypads) to narrow the recommendations to a limited number of focused consensus priorities. After the conference, the network of forum and conference participants will be invited to re-engage to work collaboratively across communities and counties to advance the priority policy and solutions to Renew Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The pre-conference forums "town meetings" and the 2006 Smart Growth Conference will:
· Serve as an opportunity for public input to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission's updating of the long range transportation and development plan "Project Region."
· Consider community needs and identify common barriers as well as opportunities for sustainable redevelopment.
· Build on existing efforts to provide coordinated technical assistance to develop a resource network for sustainable redevelopment.
· Review a set of currently emerging state and regional policy options and assess their match to local needs.
· Enhance understanding of our communities’ interdependence.
· Demonstrate that the needs of individual communities are often mutually shared across the region.
· Identify one or two consensus policy solutions and actions to Renew Southwestern Pennsylvania and launch collaborations for their implementation.
As a community leader, your expertise and insight will be of great assistance in identifying practical solutions to re-position our communities on the path to renewed prosperity.
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Registration |
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Brochure (will open as a .pdf) |
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Speaker Biographies |
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Purchase a Table |
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