This year’s Regional Assembly, Big Plans • Bold Innovations • Bright Future, will bring together local and international civic leaders to explore strategies for the tri-state area and examine how world cities are confronting vital public-policy questions. Keynote speakers and panelists will address planning as it confronts funding constraints, climate disruptions and increased energy costs.
In preparing for introduction of street car service along Columbia Pike, Arlington County is completing a new planning effort for existing multi-family communities. Increasing rents are already pricing out lower-income residents, and those pressures are expected to accelerate with the higher gas prices, highway congestion and that make living in transit communities so attractive.Â
Is land use costing you your health? Learn about designing healthy communities and your role in local government. Key topics including health and the built environment, physical activity options, access to healthy foods, air quality, traffic-related crashes and more!
Explore how incentives are created for sustainability. Who creates them? Who gets them? At what level do they work best, and what has been most effective over time? Experts discuss both the tools and the underlying policy objectives. Hear about incentives, such as surcharges, fees, and tax reductions, and learn how they have been implemented. Speakers assess how they have fared in different locations. Learn what can be applied to your circumstances.
Over the last several decades, urban sprawl, white flight, land use regulations, and consolidation and concentration in the food retail sector have created grocery gaps in urban and rural communities. As a result, many communities lack access to healthy and affordable food. One community solution is healthy food retailing through existing outlets.Â
This National Academies of Sciences study produced a comprehensive, concise guide for public decision makers and land use planners on the impacts land use design and policies and regulations on freight movements within urban areas. The guidebook is written in a jargon-free manner and explains why it is important for local elected and appointed officials to understand how goods move within their urban area, why efficient movement is critical to their community’s urban quality of life, how land use codes, policies and regulation impact urban goods movement.Â
Many historic neighborhoods have experienced teardowns and the rebuilding of monster homes or other buildings that undermine sound planning. For historic and conservation districts this is a pressing issue. Learn how communities have developed codes, guidelines, and community visioning programs that respond to these incompatible developments. As communities grow and change, explore how historic preservation can be successfully linked to new development.