The conference begins with the premise that the world is at a crossroads. We have a choice: cities can continue to grow haphazardly, without regard to human social needs and environmental consequences, or we can embrace a sustainable and equitable process that builds community, enhances quality of life, and creates safe and prosperous neighborhoods. We are convinced that in the future, the cities that utilize the social capital-building potential of their public spaces to the fullest will be the ones with the most dynamic local economies. The Future of Places will survey the field, and map out a path to a more people-centered urban development model for the globalized future.

Habitat III, the third United Nations (UN) conference to be held on Human Settlements, will bring together actors from across the globe, including local governments, national governments, the private sector, international organizations, and many others. This gathering, the largest of its kind in the world, will build on the first Habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976 and the Habitat II conference in Istanbul in 1996. The conference will re-evaluate the Habitat agenda and look at the role of UN-Habitat and sustainable urban development in the upcoming decade. It is therefore vital that the dialogue that will influence the Habitat III outcomes—and thus the future global urban agenda—commences today.

As many of you already know, the timing of the launch of this conference series is particularly exciting as, just three weeks ago, we announced the formation of the Placemaking Leadership Council, which will meet for the first time this April in Detroit to begin developing a global agenda around Placemaking in cities. To ensure a diverse, multifaceted group of attendees for The Future of Places conference in June, each of the three organizing partners for that event will be bringing a delegation of leaders from their respective realm of expertise. As such, PPS will be selecting members from the Leadership Council to attend the Future of Places conference.

This allows us to form a truly international Council by providing those who cannot travel to Detroit in April with an equally exciting opportunity to gather with peers for the discussion of the transformative agendas that are at the heart of this evolving movement. While the Detroit meeting will lay the groundwork for the Council’s future work, the role that Council members will play at The Future of Places conference will be critical in expanding the understanding of that work on the global stage. Due to this unique perspective, we will be looking for delegates with experience working internationally, and particularly in the cities of the developing world—people with a passion for addressing human, social, and community needs in ways that transform long-struggling areas into sustainable neighborhoods defined around vital, welcoming, and affirming public spaces.

If you believe that you would be a good fit for the Placemaking Leadership Council, and you are interested in attending either or both of the meetings in Detroit and Stockholm, we encourage you to review the criteria for joining the Leadership Council. Once you are up to speed on the agendas and criteria, you can then click here to tell us why you feel you’d be good addition to the Placemaking Leadership Council between now and April 1st, 2013. (Please note that, if you have already filled out this form, you do not need to do so again.)

If you want to stay up to date with news about the Stockholm conference, you can follow @FutureofPlaces on Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you. Perhaps we will see you soon, in Stockholm!

This grant will enable us and our partners at Livability Solutions to offer FREE technical assistance to communities that have set goals for achieving improved livability, smart growth, or sustainability, but have run into barriers in achieving these goals. You can read more about the opportunity and see the application on the Livability Solutions website.

Interested in applying, but have questions? We’re pleased to announce an upcoming webinar that will provide a forum where you can get answers. From Smart Growth America’s blog:

Upcoming webinar on Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities
Want to learn about all the available resources under the Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program? Confused on what types of tools are being offered and the deadlines for each? Join the EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities and the four nonprofits providing technical assistance for a webinar on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 2:00 PM EST. The webinar will explain the programs, their processes and timeline. Participation is free, but advance registration is required: click here to register.

We look forward to answering your questions!

Are you running into barriers in achieving these goals?

Applications for free technical assistance are now available on the Livability Solutions website!

PPS is excited to announce that applications for free technical assistance to address this challenge are now available on the Livability Solutions website. We will be offering this technical assistance with our partners at Livability Solutions thanks to a grant from the EPA Office of Sustainable Communities’ Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program.

We are looking for applications from communities with a strong interest in and commitment to livability, smart growth, and sustainability principles, but who face a significant challenge or barrier to moving forward. This targeted technical assistance will provide selected communities with tools and improved capacity to achieve the livability, smart growth, and sustainability goals they have set, and engage them with a network of other communities working toward similar goals and facing similar challenges.

We will be working with our partners at Livability Solutions to lead one- and two-day workshops to assist selected communities in implementing sustainable and smart growth development and programs. We’ll be using time-honored approaches — such as our Power of 10 method of inventorying and mapping a community’s place-based assets — as well as innovative new strategies for transportation and land-use planning that create better places, such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing and Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index. With our unique suite of tools, we can help communities through the process of implementing better places to live that are also more sustainable. For more information on this technical assistance, and instructions for how to apply, please see the Livability Solutions website. For inquiries, contact livabilitysolutions@pps.org.

This assistance is funded by US EPA’s Office of Sustainable Communities under their Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program. The Building Blocks program funds quick, targeted assistance to communities that face common development problems. Three other nonprofit organizations have received competitively awarded grants under this program this year to help communities get the kinds of development they want –Cascade Land Conservancy, Global Green USA, and Smart Growth America.

Our partners in this project are the members of Livability Solutions, a coalition helping communities succeed:

• The Center for Neighborhood Technology
• Reconnecting America
• The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute
• National Center for Biking & Walking
• The Local Government Commission
• The National Charrette Institute
• The Congress for New Urbanism
• Paul Dreher of the Newport City Renaissance Corporation
• Leigh Lane of the Center for Transportation and the Environment (CTE) at NC State University
• The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership

For more information on PPS’s other technical assistance and training programs, visit our website.

At PPS, we think Placemaking is the nexus between sustainability and livability: by making our communities more livable, and more about places, we also are doing the right thing for the planet. Placemaking provides concrete actions and results that boost broader sustainability goals such as smart growth, walkability, public transportation, local food, and bikes, yet brings it home for people in tangible, positive ways.  Creating lively town centers and neighborhoods that enhance pride of place and promote local economic development is critical to improving local quality of life as well as quality of the environment.

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What’s “Sustainable”? By Dave Stauffer

Dave Stauffer

If your commission is like the one in my town, more developers and applicants are loading their project designs with features intended to impress you because they’re “sustainable.” But ask them what they mean by sustainable and you’re likely to get responses ranging from a blank look to a treatise on every person’s obligation to help save the planet.

The most common definition seems to be that offered by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development’s 1987 Brundtland Report, stating that sustainable development “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

The International Institute for Sustainable Development quotes the U.N. definition and adds, “The concept of sustainable development … helps us understand ourselves and our world. The problems we face are complex and serious — and we can’t address them in the same way we created them. But we can address them.”

According to the contributors to Wikipedia, “Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for future generations.”

Others reach back in history to cite, for example, the “Great Law of the Iroquois” American Indian tribe, which supposedly commanded sustainability by declaring, “In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation.”

For the past few years, as chairman of a regional business group, the Yellowstone Business Partnership, whose below-the-logo tag-line is “Advancing Sustainable Enterprise,” I’ve read and heard a lot about sustainability and sustainable development. Among my conclusions:

• We’re a long way, in consensus and time, from universal agreement on a definition of sustainability.

• It’s nice, but not crucial, that we agree on a definition.

• What is crucial is that we who are asked to weigh claims of sustainability come up with a practical definition that we can use day-to-day to make the decisions that come before us.

That’s no simple task. Opinions on a project’s sustainability will often range widely among commissioners. Moreover, assessing a project’s attributes will seldom be a matter of black or white, but rather a frustrating gray. But gray terms are nothing new for us; we toil in a realm of squishy definitions. What’s the pay range, for example, of a “well-paying job”? What project attributes constitute “responsible” development?

We shouldn’t — and in my opinion can’t — shy away from our own determination of whether project features really are sustainable.

How might we do that?

• Make developers or applicants do the heavy lifting. When they tout their project’s sustainability, ask how they define that term. Then ask them to explain how their sustainable features meet that definition. Don’t settle for generalities: get names of processes, materials, and methods. Also be sure to ask what additional up-front amount they’re spending, beyond regulatory requirements, to achieve long-run sustainability.

• Give an “A” for effort. Sustainability means different things to different people, has no widely accepted metrics, and — truth to tell — few projects that come before us can be called sustainable. So (without ignoring any stated requirements for project approval) cut some slack for applicants who show you they’ve made a commendable effort to fashion a project that conserves resources, respects its surroundings, and is built to last.

• Devise and think through your own list of sustainable project features. My current list (always subject to change) includes attributes of:

-Scale — a good fit with neighbors, neither ramshackle nor grandiose.

-Access and mobility — it’s easy to get into, out of, and around in.

-Consumption & waste — efforts to minimize are evident and effective.

-Re-use — makes use of recycled building materials when feasible.

-Location & siting — makes the most of orientation to sun, topography, wind, natural and man-made infrastructure.

-Absence — preserves open space and is no larger than necessary for its functions.

Stay flexible in defining sustainability. There’s nothing wrong with a changing concept of what sustainability is or how a project achieves it; sustainability as its own field of study is far from mature. As you review more applications that claim sustainability, stay open to refining your own criteria.

Given the state of our world today, especially our accelerating depletion of natural resources and rising costs of man-made resources, sustainability is certain to gain ever-increasing attention. It may be hard to define, but it’s vitally important to our communities.