Session Proposals
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LAND USE INSTITUTE
19th Annual Land Use Conference
“The New American Landscape”
Denver, Colorado, March 4 & 5, 2010
PREAMBLE ON THE THEME: THE NEW AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
Peak Oil, Climate Change, economic turmoil, increasing ethnic diversity, robust population growth and shifting market preferences are brewing a genesis of the most significant change to our human settlements in half a century. What will be the character of this emerging new landscape? How will we safely get there: Regulation? Market preferences? Voluntary collaboration? Affirmative action? How can we shape the new emerging landscape so that we can flourish physically, emotionally and spiritually? What tools and practices are no longer working (or never did) and what will replace them? Growth management, traditional zoning, hybrid codes, regional planning, citizen wikis, blogs and tweets?
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Priority will be given to sessions that respond to the theme and supporting tracks:
1. Rural (including small towns, agriculture, public lands)
- Is there a possible future rural economy?
- Public lands debate: moving beyond the current false base lines
- Is there a role for traditional towns and villages? Are we wasting money and resources rebuilding places like Greenburg, KS? Or do such places represent our future?
- Possible sessions:
- The Buffalo Commons revisited
- Attaining sustainability in rural communities
- Residential Energy Codes and zoning and engaging urban ideas in rural America
- Application of urban, high intensity challenges to rural communities
- Agriculturally centered new towns centered on a local food economy
- Reforming America’s industrialized food system
2. Suburban (most of the stuff we have built since WWII outside urban cores)
- Do suburbs have a future? This could be in the form of a rousing debate.
- Possible sessions:
- How does a community learn over time? (like a learning building)
- Suburban typologies: streetcar, post WWII, modern, 21st century
- Whither “edge cities”?
- The future of the shopping center
- Housing: will homes be abandoned, retrofitted into apartments, or retrofitted into a suburban agricultural paradise?
3. Urban (traditional central cities, urban infill)
- What kind of urbanity do people want? Debate on shape of American urbanity: density, green urbanism, transit oriented development, transportation.
- Possible sessions
- New urbanism
- True urbanism
- Stimulus spending
- Federal initiatives
- TOD vs. the Transit oriented city
- Post carbon cities
- Urban agriculture
- Transportation infrastructure—rail, bus, bicycle, pedestrian
- Economic development
- Special districts
- Impact fees and housing
Additionally, we are particularly interested in sessions that accomplish any or all of the following:
- thought provoking
- forward thinking
- explore current trends
- synthesize information from various disciplines
- are accompanied by written papers or articles
- suggest real world solutions and practical implementation steps
We discourage panels comprising single firms.
Please click on the link that best suits your Session Proposal:
Conference proposals are no longer being accepted.