Register now for the 2012 NJ Historic Preservation Conference "Sustaining the Past - Inventing the Future" on Thursday, June 7th at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ.  The full day conference includes 16 educational sessions and field workshops on preservation, sustainable design, archaeology, historic site stewardship, state parks, historic roads, and much more.

Join PlanSmart NJ, APA-NJ and The Sustainability Institute for our first Policy Briefing exploring the changing landscape of DEP Water Quality Management Planning in NJ. Hear speakers representing different perspectives discuss the opportunities and challenges they face.

This session will explore promising efforts to mobilize and innovate Federal solutions to aging issues cross-agency and intra-agency such as: creating a single agency entry point, providing a forum for dialogue or serving as a repository for policy and programs related to aging.

The presentations will include the development history of the Borough, the architectural history, the successful efforts to preserve the greenbelt and a discussion of other unique land use issues the Borough has faced in the last 20 years. Highlights will include access to a famous New Deal art mural by Ben Shahn in the school building that depicts the founding of the Borough on three large panels as well as a discussion of one of the earliest experiments in ecologically aware affordable housing, the Roosevelt Senior Citizens' Housing, which set out to incorporate energy-efficiency within traditional designs.

Planners and design professionals can substantially reduce future incidents of crime in their communities.  This session will present the practice of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as a method for using good design and land use planning to reduce fear and crime.  Presenters will include representatives from the law enforcement, architecture, and planning communities with experience and knowledge to explain how to understand and use CPTED in the field.

The purpose of the webinar will be to orient planners to the issues of environmental justice as they relate specifically to freight operations and freight infrastructure, including air and sea ports, railroads, intermodal facilities, inland warehouse and distribution centers, and the roads and bridges that serve them. To help planners understand and address community concerns, presenters will discuss the origins and current status of federal environmental justice policy and offer infrastructure case studies from the Chicago area and Southern California.

The National Capital Planning Commission, the federal government’s regional planning agency, in conjunction with federal and local partners is developing a bold new vision for Southwest Washington. Learn how NCPC and the city proposes to transform a staid mid-century federal office precinct - merely steps from the National Mall - into a vibrant livable community and showcase of sustainability.

While communities are well attuned to the diversification and globalization of U.S. cities and towns, how they can respond to these trends in practice is less well understood. This forum will present an overview of some key concepts, trends and issues to consider when planning in immigrant and multi-ethnic contexts.

State Senator and Mayor of Union City Brian P. Stack will lead a two-hour tour on the planning, development, and cultural activities of Union City.

 The purpose of this session is to present how many communities are rethinking their long-term development policies that may once have embraced low-density, suburban development to incorporate more new urbanism principles such as a focus on infill development over greenfield development; a desire to create walkable neighborhoods with access to local businesses; and an understanding that high-density development is not the “plague” on society that some of the public may once have believed. 

This session highlights many of the conditions (with emphasis on market analysis and urban design) that lead to viable town centers, primarily through case study of town centers across the country. Case studies of public/private partnerships will also be provided. The success of the town center strategy, which focuses on the creation of great places to create value premiums, has broad implications for planning, since it has provided market validation of a number of planning and urban design principles. That these successes have occurred, often in the absence of regional policies that support placemaking, could point to a broader cultural shift and future support for place-friendly policies.

Looking to take action over the next 3-12 months to make real changes to your business/building appearance that will increase commerce and property value? Wanting to enhance the perception of your district in the short term by taking direct actions to turn tough places into bright spots of positive economic and social activity? Want to do this all without spending a ton of money while building partnerships and more buy-in for your district and its businesses?

For decades, the waterfronts of our port cities were the drivers of regional economic development. But as markets changed in the mid-Twentieth Century, these areas in many cities became derelict eyesores, economic black holes that sucked the energy out of these once-thriving urban centers. Over the past few decades, however, new approaches to the function and utility of urban waterfronts have given these districts a new vitality and vibrancy. This webinar will present the waterfront redevelopment stories of three small cities: Portland, Maine; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and Burlington, Vermont. It will highlight the economic, social, and environmental forces at play as these cities work to redefine themselves.

Bus Rapid Transit – or BRT – is bus service that includes enhanced travel ways, stations and equipment. BRT offers passengers faster, more reliable service than traditional bus service. It does so by providing more frequent service and reducing traffic delays by giving BRT vehicles priority over general traffic. This type of service can be implemented faster less expensively than rail transit while still offering many of the same attributes and benefits as rail transit. Because the public is relatively unfamiliar with BRT, public education and marketing are very important to the success of this type of service. 

This webcast will examine several trends gaining traction with transit and paratransit agencies as well as with governmental agencies that focus on senior needs. Case studies will be presented from rural, suburban, and urban communities, including one of the first suburban NORCs (naturally-occurring retirement community) in the nation.

 This webinar will address the creation and adoption of a GBESE which, like all Master Plan Elements, is intended to guide land-use decisions and provides the basis for ordinances addressing sustainability and land use issues. Representatives from the planning community, including the acclaimed Sustainable JerseyTM certification program, will discuss the program’s GBESE tool for certification, how to introduce sustainability concepts into local planning documents, and will highlight some examples from high performing sustainability plans.

The Car Future Group will conduct an interactive session about how trends in vehicle design and technology will play out on the roadways and policy context of the future. We will present important information about the future of cars design: Shape, weight, size, fuel types and degrees of automation. We will then discuss the future of our infrastructure and how the new vehicles will be used, exploring issues such as roadway and lane design, pricing, insurance and public policy. The audience will see that we are facing a future characterized by opposing trends, and not monolithic solutions. 

The NJDEP Waiver Rule allows the NJDEP Commissioner to grant exemptions to certain environmental regulations enforced by NJDEP. Hear speakers representing different perspectives discuss the implications and opportunities of this rule.