About the Event


This new and exciting conference will build on the success of the first New Partners for Smart Growth conference, held January 2002 in San Diego--a unique national, multidisciplinary event that "sold out" with nearly 1,000 people in attendance from forty states and six countries.

The 2nd Annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference in New Orleans will focus on forming new networks and creating new levels of understanding among multiple smart-growth interests. The conference will provide education and resources, as well as cutting-edge implementation tools, and should result in new partnerships for making tomorrow's communities better places to live. Opportunities for collaboration are growing out of the challenges and opportunities emerging in the 21st century--the New Economy and the unique urban geography it is creating, the demographic tilt of aging baby boomers and their housing and transportation needs, continued population growth and demands for more affordable housing, the public health impacts resulting from communities designed without opportunities to engage in physical activity, and the recent and continued threats to our national security and the safety of our communities.

At the January 2003 conference, we will work to eliminate single-sector "silo thinking" and break down the language barriers that make it difficult for various professions and interests to communicate with each other.

Join us in New Orleans to help us create solutions that not only cross professional disciplines and sectors, but integrate policies from the federal and state levels to the region, city, and neighborhood. Together we can achieve our goal of creating safer, healthier, and more livable communities for all.

“Frederick Law Olmsted profoundly understood that the places he designed were for human well-being: cultural, physical, and social. He instinctively knew that landscape architects must contribute as much as any architect, engineer, planner, politician, or physician--sometimes more--to the health and vitality of place making. It defines the essence of Smart Growth even today. One hundred years later, ASLA's co-sponsorship of the 2nd Annual New Partners conference serves as a continued commitment to the advancement of Olmsted's visionary leadership.”     —Paul Morris, 2003 President of the ASLA

Who Will Benefit


The conference will draw an audience of many different disciplines that will benefit from developing partnerships based on the goal of implementing smart growth and "livable communities" principles to improving the public health, safety, and quality of life for all community residents.

These disciplines include:

• local elected officials
• city and county staff
• developers and realtors
• transportation professionals and traffic engineers
• planners
• architects
• landscape architects
• public health professionals and health advocates
• crime prevention professionals
• urban designers
• parks and recreation professionals
• public works professionals
• advocates for older adults
• affordable housing and social equity advocates
• bicycle and pedestrian advocates
• youth leaders
• educators
• environmentalists
• all others who seek practical, holistic, community-based strategies for rehumanizing the places where we live, work, and play

“The content and theme of this conference: smart growth, housing, transportation, asset management, economic development, safety, healthy/liveable communities--that's what landscape architects do. No landscape architect should miss this important conference.”     —Don Leslie, Associate Dean, The Pennsylvania State University, Past President, ASLA

Conference Organizers

The Local Government Commission (LGC) The LGC is an award-winning, twenty-two-year-old nonprofit membership organization of forward-thinking, locally elected officials, city and county staff, and other interested individuals. The LGC helps local officials address the problems facing their communities and maximize their civic, environmental, and economic resources. The Ahwahnee Principles for Livable Communities, developed in 1991 by the LGC, helped pave the way for the smart-growth movement. For a copy of the Ahwahnee Principles, click here. (Please note: This file is a PDF file. For more information about PDF files or to download a free copy of the Acrobat Reader software, click here.)

Penn State The core mission of The Pennsylvania State University is teaching, research, and public service. Making the University’s intellectual and physical resources available for the common good has been a Penn State tradition for nearly 150 years. Today, Penn State Outreach constitutes the largest, most diversified outreach effort in American higher education. Penn State Outreach programs serve more than five million people from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, all fifty states, and eighty countries around the world.