New Partners for Smart Growth conference brings together elected officials, planners, engineers and advocates

Last week elected officials, urban designers and planners, engineers that influence the transportation sector and advocates from around the country came to San Diego to exchange ideas and learn ways on how to transform our communities into one that is environmentally sustainable, equitable from a transportation perspective, and economically resilient.

The New Partners for Smart Growth Conference was packed full of plenaries, breakouts, implementation workshops, specialized trainings, peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and coordinated networking activities.

Held at the Sheraton Hotel on Harbor Island, the location was one of the most convenient to all modes of transportation and the ride along the Harbor Drive bike path to the conference was beautiful and rewarding. The conference had a strong contingent from San Diego County including representatives from Caltrans, the County, local universities, planning groups, and non-profits who advocate on behalf of a wide variety of issues that impact the transportation sector.

The workshops I attended focused on issues dealing with environmental justice and integrating best practices from a variety of inter-related disciplines into a cohesive system that would address systemic problems that we currently face. Because the transportation budget had just been released, the overall mood at the conference was that of concern over the stripping away of dedicated funding for bicycling and walking. Despite that feeling, the information exchanged was valuable, timely and inspiring.

One of the workshops I attended featured Adam Ortiz the former Mayor of Edmonston, Maryland. He talked about some of the challenges he faced as Mayor and how he was able to overcome them. One of his many successes was transforming one of the city’s streets from this:

To this:

Another inspirational speaker who was both transformative in his work and inspiring as a speaker was the current Oklahoma City Mayor, Mick Cornett, who spoke at the Kickoff Plenary and is currently serving his third term and transforming the city into one of the most livable cities in the country. Cornett made a very strong case for the economic benefits resulting from transforming Oklahoma City into a more livable, bikeable and walkable city. Through a series of tax initiatives, Cornett was able to fix Oklahoma City’s downtown schools, upgrade their transit service, promote active and healthy living amongst his constituents and most recently, institute Capital improvements which included new bicycle infrastructure, 400 miles of new sidewalks, a streetcar system and much more as mentioned in this pitch to the voting demographic that approved the sales tax initiative:

The collective knowledge that resulted from the conference was both timely and relevant and I hope that many of the region’s attendees will now be able to implement some of these best practices in our own communities as we move forward.