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Events

Resources

8th Annual Southwestern Pennsylvania Smart Growth Conference

Final Week for Early Registration Discount!

Friday, May 16
Omni William Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh
8:30 am - 3:30 pm (continental breakfast and lunch included)
Keynote speaker: Christopher Leinberger, Metropolitan Land Strategist & Developer
Cost: Early Registration: $30. After May 1: $40 (free to elected officials)
Register online at www.sustainablepittsburgh.org
For more information call 412-258-6642 or emailinfo@sustainablepittsburgh.org

This conference, designed for communities in the region that desire to accelerate their redevelopment, will be rich in content, featuring tools, case studies, and technical assistance opportunities. A window of opportunity is growing for communities that are prepared to foster smart growth in step with the shift in the development market that is now occurring. Renewed interest in urban and core communities by developers and investors spells opportunity for restoring prosperity. This shift is fueled by demographic, economic, and cultural trends that are serving to revalue our core communities. Want to be better prepared to seize this market interest? This Smart Growth conference will help communities better understand the changing market, appreciate how to capitalize on their assets, comprehend what needs to done to participate in the market-based renaissance, and engage in a network to pursue mutual interests. Our region's sustainable growth depends on it.

More information below.

Resources Continued

Equal Pay Rally

Friday, April 25
Noon
Market Square, Downtown
Hosted by Women and Girls Foundation - wgfpa.org

Southwestern Pennsylvania has one of the most dramatic gender wage gaps in the country.
• Nationally, women make 80 cents for every dollar that a man earns.
• In Pennsylvania, women earn 73 cents per dollar.
• In southwestern Pennsylvania, women earn only 69 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
Have your voice heard.

Environmental Charter School Open House

Open House Dates:
Monday, April 28, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Saturday, May 10, 10:00 am - Noon
Tuesday, May 13, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
www.environmentalcharterschool.org

Learn about and visit the newly approved Environmental Charter School at Frick Park. The school will begin with grades K-3 in September 2008 and ultimately grow by one grade a year to grade 8. Volunteer members of the Parent/Community Task Force invite you to take a tour, ask questions, fill out an interest form for your childs enrollment. Children welcome.

Lecture 4: Judy Wicks, “Local Living Economies: Green Fair and Fun”

Tuesday, April 29
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Connan Room, University Center, Carnegie Mellon University
Free to the public
More information: cmu.publiclectures@gmail.com

The Local Living Economies and Urban Farming lecture series concludes with Judy Wicks, founder of Philadelphia's Sustainable Business Network, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE, www.livingeconomies.org), and the White Dog Café. Wicks is probably best known for establishing The White Dog Cafe on the first floor of her Philadelphia home in 1983. As the restaurant grew, so did her notion that the strength of her business relied upon the quality and sustainability of its locally grown ingredients. Envisioning how strengthening relationships among independent, community-rooted enterprises could inspire broad and profound cultural change, Wicks joined the Social Venture Network and co-founded the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) in 2001. She is currently writing a book about the White Dog Café and local living economies called Good Morning, Beautiful Business.

Affordable Housing Forum - Register Now

May 13 - 14, 2008
Affordable Housing Forum
Pittsburgh Hilton, Downtown
www.marcnahro.org

The Affordable Housing Forum is designed to provide participants with an understanding of the key elements of the development process and cutting edge techniques to revitalize and manage your assets. Panelists in our opening session focus on evaluating your current portfolio and assets, maximizing internal strengths and partnership opportunities, as well as engaging community stakeholders in assessing growth and development opportunities.

Concurrently scheduled are two workshop series: the first track, designed for novice community developers, will focus on identifying and analyzing opportunities, the development process, financing options, and roles of housing authorities. The second session is for experienced developers and managers seeking public housing revitalization strategies, approaches to serving an aging demographic, and redeveloping or preventing foreclosures. Click here to see the agenda.

Great Outdoors Week Kickoff

Wednesday, May 14
11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Market Square, Downtown

Stop by the kickoff and get a sneak peek at all of the fun events happening during Great Outdoors Week, which begins Friday, May 16 and ends Sunday, May 25. Try out the climbing wall, test out a kayak (safely on land!), listen to music from WYEP, and meet outdoors groups that can help you get outside. Stop by for giveaways and enter to win some great raffle prizes!

Great Outdoors Week serves to introduce and engage residents of Southwestern Pennsylvania in the many outdoor recreation opportunities available in Southwestern PA. Various events are scheduled around the region during this week, including five signature events. Individuals from all skill levels and backgrounds are invited to participate. For a full listing of activities, visit www.greatoutdoorsweek.org.

8th Annual Southwestern Pennsylvania Smart Growth Conference

Revitalize the Region: Seize Market Interest to Redevelop Core Communities
Friday, May 16
Omni William Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh
8:30 am - 3:30 pm (continental breakfast and lunch included)
Keynote speaker: Christopher Leinberger, Metropolitan Land Strategist & Developer
Cost: Early Registration: $30. After May 1: $40 (free to elected officials)
Register online at www.sustainablepittsburgh.org For more information call 412-258-6642 or emailinfo@sustainablepittsburgh.org

Presented by:
Local Government Academy
Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development
Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development
Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County
Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission
Sustainable Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics

Sponsored by:
BNY Mellon
Babst, Calland, Clients, and Zomnir, P.C.
Bombardier
Building Owners and Managers Association - Pittsburgh
National Association of Industrial and Office Properties - Pittsburgh Chapter

For sponsorship and tabling opportunities call 412-258-6643.

This conference, designed for communities in the region that desire to accelerate their redevelopment, will be rich in content, featuring tools, case studies, and technical assistance opportunities. A window of opportunity is growing for communities that are prepared to foster smart growth in step with the shift in the development market that is now occurring. Renewed interest in urban and core communities by developers and investors spells opportunity for restoring prosperity. This shift is fueled by demographic, economic, and cultural trends that are serving to revalue our core communities. Want to be better prepared to seize this market interest? This Smart Growth conference will help communities better understand the changing market, appreciate how to capitalize on their assets, comprehend what needs to done to participate in the market-based renaissance, and engage in a network to pursue mutual interests. Our region's sustainable growth depends on it.

Conference Highlights:
Project Region: The new regional transportation and development plan, plots a new smart growth course for Southwestern Pennsylvania focused on restoring and reinvesting in the region’s existing communities. Learn how the Region's Plan is aligned with emerging market interest in reinforcing existing places and targeted corridors with a strong emphasis on preservation, maintenance and operation of existing infrastructure.

Deal Makers and Breakers: To fully benefit from the Region's Plan, it's incumbent on existing communities to understand what developers and investors are looking for when they scan a region for opportunity. In a unique undertaking, the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP) and the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University (CURP) have collaborated to investigate new approaches municipal officials can employ to help attract new development to their communities. Project leader, David Soule will engage conference participants in discovering what is takes to attract smart growth investment. Furthermore, a consultancy will be launched to work with communities around the region to take a proactive, aggressive stance to meet the complex needs of firms looking to start up operations, relocate, or add new facilities.

Window of Opportunity: Keynote, Christopher Leinberger (see below), will demonstrate the shifting market now brewing in favor of “walkable urbanism” -- downtown and suburban downtown revitalization, New Urbanism, transit-oriented development, green field mixed-use development (“lifestyle centers”), regional mall redevelopment, among others. He will review ways the real estate sector is re-tooling how it designs, plans, regulates and finances to serve these markets to formulate and implement the next American Dream. A panel of regional developers and government leaders will discuss the trend of revaluing urbanity now stirring in our SWPA and how to accelerate market readiness.

Zoning for Smart Growth: Too often zoning techniques that shaped the growth of the American suburb create barriers to meeting today's community visions for traditional types of development. Gregory Heller of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission will be on hand to explore new innovations in zoning that provide flexibility to respond to changes in private market demand. Learn from Gregory and local leaders how your community can be an early adopter and zone the way to seize market interest to redevelop core communities.

Keynote Speaker:
Christopher B. Leinberger is a metropolitan land use strategist, developer, teacher, consultant and author helping to make progressive development profitable. He is a founding partner of Arcadia Land Company, a real estate development firm serving to create walkable communities in harmony with nature.

Leinberger is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution focusing on research and practices to help transform traditional and suburban downtowns to places that provide “walkable urbanism." He is also a professor and director of the Graduate Real Estate Program at the University of Michigan which focuses on downtown and suburban town center revitalization, transit-oriented development, new urbanism, and conservation development.

In his recently released book, The Option of Urbanism, Leinberger reviews how Americans are voting with their feet to abandon strip malls and suburban sprawl, embracing instead a new type of community where they can live, work, shop, and play within easy walking distance. He explains why government policies have tilted the playing field toward one form of development over the last sixty years: the drivable suburb. Conversely, Leinberger shows how the American Dream is now shifting to include cities as well as suburbs and how the financial and real estate communities need to respond by building communities that are more environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable.

Leinberger has written award-winning articles for publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal and Urban Land magazine. He has been profiled by CNN, the Today Show, and National Public Radio.

Conference support provided by:
The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
The Richard King Mellon Foundation

CERTIFYING SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS: A SMaRT WORKSHOP

A Champions for Sustainability Workshop
Friday, May 23
9:00 am - 3:30 pm
PPG Headquarters, One PPG Place, Third Floor, Room 3A (Downtown)
Fee: $100/Person for C4S and Sustainable Pittsburgh Members; $150 for non-members
Registration Deadline: May 16, 2008
Register online at www.C4SPgh.org/know.html
Contact: Matthew Mehalik at mmehalik@sustainablepittsburgh.org or 412-258-6644

Come to this workshop to learn about and to begin certifying your company’s products according to Sustainable Materials Rating Technology (SMaRT) consensus-based standards adopted through an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited process. This is the first offering of this workshop in Western Pennsylvania, and space is limited to the first 30 companies who register. This workshop provides companies with the needed guidance and background in four key areas:
• Product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
• Documentation of the absence of harmful chemicals
• Energy efficiency and baseline assessments
• Documentation of social equity indicators

You will learn how to:
• Wave money by examining new ways of making products using sustainable materials and reduced energy flows
• Improve its product-to-market time
• Respond to increasing demands for sustainable products
• Create new capacities for innovation and new markets

Registration Fee Includes Continental Breakfast and Lunch Buffet.

2008 International Urban Parks Conference

Body and Soul: Parks and the Health of Great Cities
September 21 - 23, 2008
Pittsburgh Hilton (Downtown)
2008 International
Early bird registration ends May 1
www.urbanparks08.org

The 2008 International Urban Parks Conference is a chance to learn from experts in the field, hear about cutting edge research and exceptional best practices, connect with colleagues around the globe, discover the latest in parks products and services and share one's own experience and knowledge.

Resources

Ethanol's Failed Promise

The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.

Downward Cycle

In the 20 years since Pennsylvania mandated curbside collection for municipalities of 5,000 or more, separating recyclables has become most people's front door to environmentalism: the most hands-on way we can save the planet. Yet for many of us it's the back door, too: a way to do good that's all too easy, and that leaves our massive consumption of resources all but unabated. . .Leading environmental thinkers say it's time to take a different approach to our economy -- which means cultivating an even more radical relationship to the resources we use. And even true believers like Rusty Chapman know their hands aren't all green.

More

Europe Turns to Coal Again, Raising Alarms on Climate

About 50 coal-fired power plants, like the one in Bergheim, Germany, are scheduled to begin operating in Europe in the next five years. At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth. And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

Collaborative effort aims to continue greening of Pittsburgh

The project, tentatively called Pittsburgh Green Innovators: Environmental Living, Learning and Earning Collaborative, would house an array of green-related activities, such as a training program for operating engineers and technicians who work on green buildings and systems, an incubator for green startup companies, a product demonstration and testing facility and an educational facility for K-12 students to learn about the environment, science, math, engineering and technology.

Hope builds for 'greener' skyline

Today, an array of politicians, business leaders, labor advocates and environmentalists say going green, besides saving the environment, would shape national and global economies for generations to come, assure national security and create a million jobs by 2020, including thousands in dying steel towns throughout the rust belt.

Baseball embraces spirit of Earth Day

At PNC Park, there are plenty of visible reminders about the club's green initiatives, including all those contour bottle receptacles throughout the ballpark with the "Let's Go Bucs. Let's Go Green" logo on the side to attract recyclers. There also is plenty to see on the club's Let's Go Green page on their official Web site, where a proclamation from the Pittsburgh City Council commends the Pirates "for being a leader in our city's charge to be the center of innovation, green initiatives and sustainable practices in the United States and around the world ..."

NYT - The Green Issue: Some Bold Steps to Make Your Carbon Footprint Smaller

Since the cheap-energy mind translates everything into money, its proxy, it prefers to put its faith in market-based solutions —- carbon taxes and pollution-trading schemes. If we could just get the incentives right, it believes, the economy will properly value everything that matters and nudge our self-interest down the proper channels. The best we can hope for is a greener version of the old invisible hand. Visible hands it has no use for.

Union negotiations leave Port Authority finances unsettled

Mr. Bland said while Act 44 provides a long-sought source of predictable funding, it wasn't designed to create a windfall for the state's 73 transit agencies. "Our state allocation for next year will be up about 1 percent, while health care costs alone will be going up 11 percent," he said. "We'll be paying health care for more folks [retirees] without being able to provide more service." He did not express concern about the county not making the first of its two subsidy payments for the 2007-08 fiscal year in March or about its intent not to make the second one next month. "The county has never said we won't get the money," Mr. Bland said, but it won't be paid until Mr. Onorato is satisfied that new labor agreements achieve the savings and efficiencies that he demands and bring the Port Authority's labor costs in line with peer agencies.

Sustainable Solutions for the Region’s Businesses and Communities

Where can Western Pennsylvania’s businesses and communities go to find out how to save money by reducing their environmental footprints? Resources for becoming more sustainable in the way work gets done are available and growing.

Over the past three years Sustainable Pittsburgh’s Sustainable Business Solutions (SBS) and Sustainable Community Solutions (SCS) have provided expertise to client companies and communities in ways that have saved them money in their operations, conserved resources, and enhanced civic stewardship. SBS and SCS bring together a team of experts in a wide range of topics to conduct comprehensive sustainability assessments-—an integrated examination of the client’s energy, waste stream, storm water, transportation, landscape, management practices, policies, strategic assets, among other areas. The assessments have produced extensive savings due to efficiency improvements, with short payback periods. And the results have provided the catalyst for organizations to transition smoothly to more sustainable business practices—-finding a value-producing alignment among economic, equity, and environmental factors.

If you and your business or community would like to start benefiting from new sources of value associated with sustainable practices, contact Sustainable Pittsburgh at mmehalik@sustainablepittsburgh.org or by calling 412-258-6644.

Resurrecting Cities

These new cities, many of which are being built in parts of the world experiencing the most intense growth of urban populations - China, India, the Middle East - share a common element: they are all based on a systems-level approach to sustainability where cultural, environmental and economic values are being integrated into the very fabric of the community before a single stone is turned...What these few examples of new cities being built in various parts of the world reveal is that cities, if configured the right way, could become a truly sustainable habitat for humanity. By 2020, the UN projects that more than 5 billion people will be living in cities. As this rapid urbanization continues, especially in developing countries such as China and India, urban planners will need new models and new concepts to make cities more environmentally and economically sustainable.

Keep the green coat in a cool economy

"The flipside is that almost everything businesses can do to tackle climate change is good for short term profits. Though the temptation is to say you must worry about core business concerns, the great beauty of the environment is that it plays to that. [In a downturn] you want to hunker down and sweat your assets - that means getting the most out of every last kilowatt of power," he says. Joe Ippolito of Deloitte says that these factors, and competitive pressure, will keep companies focused on climate change. "We believe that sustainability as a concept is here to stay. In the medium term, sustainable practices will become a licence to operate rather than a competitive advantage. This will lead into a longer term decline in public interest, as sustainable risk management becomes the new hot topic.". . .A stronger force will be regulation. Governments around the world have plans to toughen environmental standards to cut greenhouse gases to the extent that scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Housing + Transportation Affordability Index

This is an innovative tool that measures the true affordability of housing. Planners, lenders, and most consumers traditionally measure housing affordability as 30 percent or less of income. The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index, in contrast, takes into account not just the cost of housing, but also the intrinsic value of place, as quantified through transportation costs.

City's new 'Green Team' to spruce up vacant lots

Ms. Graziani said the city hopes it can "green-up" some 100 sites in a year, many drawn from the demolition list. "You want to look for the low-hanging fruit," she said. "What are going to be the properties that are the most visible?" The high-tech end is the use of market data crunched by a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization called The Reinvestment Fund under a contract with the Urban Redevelopment Authority. The data is now being forged into maps that the administration hopes will help guide neighborhood development efforts. If the market data suggests that a vacant lot can best improve the neighborhood by being merged into adjacent woods, the Green Team can help that process along by planting trees. If, on the other hand, data suggests the parcel could be a "green node" around which construction could occur, the URA will try to make that happen, said Rob Stephany, the agency's interim executive director.

The U.S. must set an environmental example for others

"We've gotten this hopelessly wrong," said Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the authors of the Nature article. "If we approach this from reducing emissions we get nowhere. Driving Priuses may be good, but it's not going to accomplish what we need." Mr. Pielke and his colleagues argue that the best hope for salvation will be investment in new technologies -- and that's why I asked the climate deniers not to read this column, for it can sound a bit like President Bush's "solution."

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Sustainable Pittsburgh affects decision-making in the Pittsburgh Region to integrate economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality bringing sustainable solutions to communities and businesses.

Sustainable Pittsburgh benefits from support in 2008 from:

Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
Dollar Bank
The Heinz Endowments
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
Roy A. Hunt Foundation
Richard King Mellon Foundation
University of Pitsburgh


Special thanks to the SP Members

Sustainable Pittsburgh
425 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1335
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 258-6642
fax (412) 258-6645
E-mail SP