Online Webinar

High oil and natural gas prices over the last decade, combined with new technology have ignited a fossil fuel boom across the West. Drilling for oil and natural gas is a high-impact economic activity. Today’s unconventional oil development and its effects differ in important ways from oil booms of the past. This webinar charts the new “unconventional” fossil fuel boom, tracking production, employment, and fiscal trends in an effort to better understand the pressures boomtowns face and to identify best practices for benefiting from these new unconventional fossil fuel plays.

Design guidelines are an innovative tool for controlling strip development and helping to maintain community character. This session will present case studies of design guidelines being used to control strip development in Kittery and Scarborough, Maine, Salem, New Hampshire, and Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It will illustrate how design guidelines were prepared and implemented and how they have influenced new development.

What happens when a group of six planning consultants decides to create a new consulting firm during the latest Great Recession? Hear how this group of one-time sole proprietor planning consultants chose to join forces and start a new consulting firm as the market contracted….and they succeeded. What did it take? What lessons did they learn? What tools and strategies worked best? How did sole proprietors, used to being leaders themselves, adjust to the new normal of being part of a six-person firm? Learn how to succeed and what it takes to move forward in today’s market.

 MAPS 3 is a 10-year program designed to improve the quality of life in Oklahoma City through the construction of eight projects funded by a limited term, one-cent sales tax initiative that began in April 2010. Russell Claus, Director of Planning for the City of Oklahoma City, and Cathy O’Connor, President of The Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City, will discuss the history of the MAPS initiatives, private investment that has occurred as a result, and ongoing planning for leveraging private investment from MAPS 3 projects.

Real progress will occur with a paradigm shift if generations work together and cultural imperatives are addressed. This session will highlight both research and on-the-ground experience in multi-generational planning.