About New Partners for Smart Growth

[en español]
New Partners for Smart Growth on the Pacific Coast,
San Diego, February 2-4, 2012

About the Event

After celebrating its 10th anniversary in Charlotte, the New Partners Conference begins its second decade by heading west, back where it started—San Diego, California.
The eighth-largest city in the United States, San Diego is one of the most livable and sustainable major metropolitan areas in the nation. An innovative pioneer in the smart growth movement, the San Diego region provides inspiring models for creating transit-oriented, compact development; transforming downtowns and ethnically diverse, older neighborhoods; designing walkable, mixed-use urban villages; and fostering the emergence of leading high-tech, telecommunications, and clean-tech businesses.

San Diego Seaport Village photoSurf, Sunshine and Smart Growth: From its mile-high mountains to pristine beaches, eco-friendly San Diego is an international city, blending Pacific Rim and Latin American connections, renowned for its idyllic climate, and home to such world-class destinations as San Diego Zoo, the historic Gaslamp Quarter, SeaWorld, Legoland and Balboa Park—the largest urban cultural park in the U.S.

San Diego has used smart growth principles to create a vibrant, sustainable community by implementing a program of transit-oriented development that addresses wetlands restoration, transportation planning, urban growth and hillside preservation; guiding infill redevelopment in the Downtown and waterfront district to create housing and jobs while removing blight; and conserving resources through renewable sources of energy, efficient building design and integrated land-use planning.

Today, we are faced with economic, environmental, and social challenges that will define our generation, shape our future, and test our resilience as neighborhoods, cities, and a nation. Join leaders from across the U.S. as we tackle these challenges head-on and demonstrate smart growth solutions that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create a more resilient economy, assure a healthy population, foster more equitable development, and expand transportation and housing options for all Americans.

Working Together

A significant factor in this event’s tremendous success is its appeal to so many different disciplines. The conference will draw a national audience of local elected officials and city and county staff; state and federal agency leaders; professionals in planning, transportation, public health, landscape architecture, architecture, parks and recreation, public works and crime prevention; realtors, developers, builders and bankers; advocates for equity and environmental justice, youth, older adults, and walking and biking; labor representatives; school leaders and staff; environmentalists; and all others committed to building safer, healthier and more livable communities everywhere.

The Program

The program will span three full days with optional pre-conference events scheduled for Wednesday, February 1st and Sunday February 5th. The main program will kick off on Thursday morning, February 2, and continue through Saturday afternoon. The schedule includes a dynamic mix of plenaries, breakouts, implementation workshops, specialized trainings, peer-to-peer learning opportunities, and coordinated networking activities. It will also feature exciting tours of local model projects in and around the San Diego region.

There will be something for everybody, from veteran experts to smart-growth novices, with 100 sessions and workshops to choose from. Learn from hundreds of speakers who cross disciplines to share insights, valuable tools and strategies for making smart growth a success in your community. The program will be infused with sessions and case studies focusing on important equity and environmental justice issues.

Conference History

By bringing together so many different thinkers, practitioners, activists, community leaders and elected officials from an ever-evolving and expanding spectrum of disciplines and innovative perspectives, New Partners has guided a strong and diverse movement grounded in the values of sustainable communities for over a decade.
The origins of this conference can be traced to late 1995 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first launched its Smart Growth Program. As part of this effort, the EPA sought to organize a national conference that would focus on environmentally sensitive growth and development.

San Diego Downtown park photoIn December 1997, the EPA, together with the Urban Land Institute, co-sponsored the first “Partners for Smart Growth” conference. Conferences followed in Austin in 1998, then San Diego and finally, in Atlanta. The LGC participated in the San Diego conference, organizing a third day focused on smart growth in the Western States.

The LGC began organizing conferences on “livable communities” somewhat earlier, producing five installments of its highly successful “Putting Our Communities Back on Their Feet Conference” on the East and West Coasts in the mid-to-late 1990s.

In 2001, the LGC partnered with the Centers for Disease Control, the California Department of Transportation and Penn State University to produce a “first of its kind” national, multidisciplinary event titled “Redesigning Community: A Smart Growth Approach to Street and Neighborhood Design, Crime Prevention, and Public Health and Safety” in San Diego.

Immediately following that event, the EPA approached the LGC about merging their collective efforts. Addressing the key issues on the table, the appropriately titled “New Partners for Smart Growth” multidisciplinary conference has now made memorable stops in San Diego, New Orleans, Portland, Miami, Denver, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Albuquerque, Seattle and Charlotte—building momentum and attracting new supporters every year.

Over the past decade, the basic principles of smart growth have not changed, but the realization of their importance continues to grow as more civic leaders, professionals, and interest groups recognize smart growth as a solution to the challenges in their communities. Thanks to a trail blazed by determined and visionary pioneers, smart growth is now widely and rightfully understood as a necessary, if not sufficient, way of addressing many of the most difficult economic, environmental, and social challenges we face today in communities across the country.

The enduring strength of the New Partners conference comes from the diversity of participants who cross disciplinary lines to share experiences, insights, inspiration, valuable implementation tools and strategies.  The 2012 event will continue this exciting trend and welcomes even more new partners who recognize smart growth as a viable solution to the problems they encounter in their professions.

Check out our 10th-anniversary commemorative booklet from the 2011 conference.

With the critical challenges that lie ahead, there are more reasons than ever to join hands with new partners and work toward our common goal of creating safe, healthy, equitable, economically vibrant, and livable communities for all.