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APA Conference 2013: Invigorating Sessions and Audiences

This last Sunday (April 14th) I blew through Chicago to attend the American Planning Association’s big annual conference. I had the privilege of being on two panels, one of which was organized by John Beutler from Calthorpe Associates and also featured that rock star Jeff Tumlin. This session was about why job location is important to regional planning and what we can do to make more pedestrian/transit friendly employment districts. I talked about why employment locations matter and why regions should work to prevent employment sprawl. John gave a very clever presentation demonstrating how things would look if we treated pedestrians like cars, i.e., privileging the pedestrian and subjecting the cars to all of the absurd things we make pedestrians  do to walk from point A to point B. Can you imagine that? Jeff then showed that if you can’t take the jobs to the transit, companies can provide their own transit. He used the company Genentech and its South San Francisco campus as a really excellent example. Overall, I ended the hour feeling that we did a good job of “making the case” and the audience seemed really engaged.

My other session, organized by David Dixon from Goody Clancy and Kaid Benfield from the Natural Resources Defense Council, addressed the issue of planning for smart growth in low income communities. I won’t summarize the content because Jared Green provides an excellent recap on The Dirt (be sure to check the post out). However, beyond the excellent content, I was very impressed by the diversity of the audience. There were many more young people of color in this session than I’ve seen in practically any conference session I’ve ever been to. It was thrilling to see the next generation of planners vote with their feet for equitable planning by showing up in such large numbers for this session! Keep it up!

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