Planning for resiliency and climate change will be among the key topics addressed at the 10th annual Louisiana Smart Growth Summit, which will be held Nov. 3-4 at the Manship Theatre at the Shaw Center for the Arts in downtown Baton Rouge.
The summit, which attracts planners, developers and public policy experts from around the state, will also focus on transportation systems, new approaches to housing policy, developing healthy communities and sustainable infrastructure.
In celebration of its 10th summit, the Center for Planning Excellence, which puts on the event, is narrowing the focus slightly from previous years. The summit will have fewer breakout sessions each day but a strong array of guest speakers.
“We want to focus on the big ideas and the big speakers so we will not have as many sessions,” CPEX Executive Director Boo Thomas says.
This year’s guest speakers include: Ron Sims, a social justice advocate and former deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Chris Leinberger, president of LOCUS, a project of Smart Growth America, and a promoter of walkable urbanism; climate change expert Peter Calthorpe, who co-authored the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan; and Portland, Oregon-based planner John Fregonese, who also co-authored the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan and created the FuturEBR master plan.
The summit’s keynote speaker will be announced next week.
In the decade since the first Louisiana Smart Growth Summit, Baton Rouge has undergone tremendous growth, and Thomas says good planning is one of the reasons the city’s transformation has been so positive. She points to downtown and its redevelopment as a live-work-play destination as the single-biggest example of how smart growth makes a difference.
“Who would have predicted what has happened downtown,” she says. “That has led to so many other initiatives—like conversations about the rail (between New Orleans and Baton Rouge), the emphasis on complete streets, and the small towns across Louisiana that are all beginning to come to the summit. It has given them a whole new way to look at how they build their roads and their coastal communities.”
Get more details on the Louisiana Smart Growth Summit and get tickets to attend.
—Stephanie Riegel
