Today, as planners, we are constantly inundated with new ideas and theories, and nowhere can this become more of a reality than a planning conference in Las Vegas. This year's national APA Conference is being held between the Paris and Bally's casinos, quintessential locations for gambling, shopping, dining, nightlife, and, well, apparently planning conferences. Where else can conference sessions be held in banquet halls decorated like extravagant French parlors?
As a recent graduate of a planning program and a new practicing planner with Solimar, I found myself caught somewhere between wanting to ingest everything I can about planning and going into Spring Break mode and imbibing in a literal sense. But who says you can't be a professional planner and still have fun in Vegas?
My old classmates, planning grad students who are generally good natured, remarked after their forays that the strip was "exhausting," "awful," and "it embodies everything I love to hate about cities." After less than 24 hours in Sin City — not to be confused with a more beloved impetus for modern planning tools, Sims City — they were all "over it." But despite sensory overload, they still managed to learn how not to let their own cherished neighborhoods become epicenters of all things undesirable.
But along with these complaints, there were also planning buzzwords like "champion projects," "green infrastructure," and "urban agriculture." I ran into a colleague who is a civil engineer who admitted to coming to the conference primarily to become well-versed in planner-ease so that he could connect with clients who find sustainable development desirable. It seems as if modern planning concepts have become less cliché and more mainstream. Even cities in the Rustbelt are confronting their demons by planning for a shrinking population in a sustainable manner, rather than fighting the tides of change, by incorporating ideas like, well, green infrastructure and urban agriculture.
In Vegas, climate change was not the featured topic. Rather, urban revitalization and how to incorporate green infrastructure or open space into urban centers was debated and discussed. I learned how energy codes are becoming stand-alone guidance documents for cities looking to reduce carbon emissions and improve prosperity and quality of life instead of being referenced in general plans per the State of California mandate.
During two sessions, I learned more about my new urban neighbor on the West Coast, L.A., than I had in the 10 months since I'd moved to Ventura. Downtown L.A. is getting a facelift thanks to city planners like Jane Blumenfeld who have orchestrated the adoption of implementation tools like the adaptive reuse ordinance.
Another city that had a strong presence at the conference was my hometown of Atlanta. Not only is Atlanta now hip, it also has a green thumb. As projects come online like the Beltline, the City will be prepared to take on a growing population that desires housing choices like mixed-income downtown condos and apartments near transit and green space, instead of the typical single-family house on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs.
But the question remains: Who will pay for these improvements to our beloved urban centers? Obviously, someone has to pay for the regeneration of decaying urban corridors, the improvement of transit corridors, and retrofitting the suburbs to be more like our cities. But that's where we as planners come into play, aiding in public-private partnerships that can leverage the resources necessary to carry out the ideas and theories that we all are willing to travel to Las Vegas to hear. So I say come join us in Las Vegas, where "transect" is not a four-letter word, at least for a few more days.
– Jessica Daniels
