New Partners conference draws largest crowd

The fifth annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Denver at the end of January drew the largest crowd ever for this event by a considerable margin, according to Michele Kelso Warren of the Local Government Commission (LGC) in Sacramento, California. More than 1,200 people attended, about 300 above recent years. The previous high was 970 in 2002. New Partners for Smart Growth, managed jointly by LGC and Penn State, is the premier conference on smart growth in the US. The conference always draws a lot of planners, but this year unusually high numbers of public health professionals, private sector developers, and elected officials helped to boost attendance, Warren says. For the first time, an HMO, Kaiser Permanente, was a sponsor, and a track of sessions was geared to public health. About 10 percent of attendees were in a public health field. The conference also featured a wealth of sessions on form-based codes and other implementation issues, led by top experts in overcoming barriers to smart growth. LGC recognizes that form-based codes are a hot topic in both the public and private sectors, with more developers accepting smart growth as a best practice, Warren says. “They want to do it more, but communities are standing in their way,” she continues. The Denver locale also allowed for some interesting project tours. The conference was located in a revitaling downtown, and new urban projects like Stapleton, Belmar, Bradburn, Highlands Garden Village, and Englewood Town Center offered on-site examples of built communities with top-notch planning.