We're headed to New Orleans for the American Planning Association National Conference April 10-13, as a co-sponsor of the Delta Urbanism symposium, on coastal cities confronting the inevitable impacts of climate change. More than half of the U.S. population lives in the 673 coastal counties, a number that has continued to increase throughout the past two decades, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In China, the world's most populous nation, 60 percent of the country's 1.2 billion people live in coastal provinces. The same holds true in other countries, as people migrate to coastal and delta regions for economic opportunity, access to transportation and recreation, and the amenity of water. The migration from inland to coastal and delta regions is occurring at a time of great change and uncertainty -- concerns about energy security, the threat of climate change, sea level rise, and severe weather events, economic restructuring, aging and inadequate infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
As part of the Delta Urbanism symposium, on Sunday April 11 from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., Armando Carbonell, chairman of the Department of Planning and Urban Form, will moderate “Case Studies of Asian Deltas,” (S484) where experts will discuss challenges and solutions to planning and development in river deltas in Asia. The speakers include Christopher Silver, FAICP, dean, College of Design, Construction and Planning, and professor of urban and regional planning, University of Florida; Lingqian Hu, senior regional planner at Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), specialist in transportation and land use planning, project manager of the Compass Blueprint regional planning program, and formerly associated with the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, who will present a Tsinghua University paper, “Climate Change and Urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta”; and He Canfei, professor at Peking University in Beijing, specializing in industrial geography and planning, and associate director of the Lincoln Institute-Peking University Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, in Beijing.
Also as part of the symposium, the Lincoln Institute will sponsor “Reducing Climate Impacts in Developing Nations” (S573), in recognition of how urbanization in delta regions and the impacts of climate change are likely to impact primarily marginalized populations. Speakers include Bhuiyan Monwar Alam, assistant professor of planning in the Department of. Geography and Planning at the University of Toledo; David M. Siegel, FAICP, principal with Otak Inc., a planning and community design firm , and specialist in land use, transportation, growth management, community visioning, public facility, development, and infrastructure; Marni Cappe, principal at M Cappe Consulting, focusing on urban policy and local governance issues, and president of the Canadian Institute of Planners; and Douglas J. Meffert, the Eugenie Schwartz Professor of River & Coastal Studies at Tulane University, deputy director for policy at the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, and director of Tulane’s RiverSphere, a new initiative fostering green jobs in renewable energy through testing and development of hydrokinetic energy systems in the Mississippi River. Meffert, a recent fellow at the Lincoln Institute, presented on reslience and vulnerable populations at the World Urban Forum last month in Rio de Janeiro.
In addition, there is the traditional Big City Planners session, based on the annual fall gathering of city planners from the largest 30 U.S. cities in Cambridge, with partners the APA and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. "Big-City Planning Directors Talk About Immigration and Housing Trends" (S466), from 4 to 5:15 p.m. Sunday April 11, will be moderated by Carbonell and William R. Klein, director of APA's Research and Advisory Services. This session features Dowell Myers, professor of Urban Planning and Demography at the University of Southern California, a specialist on demographic change and implications for planning and housing, immigrant integration and assimilation, and advisor to the Census Bureau; Richard Barth, executive director for the New York City Department of City Planning, coordinator for the city’s expanded inclusionary housing program, five-borough economic development strategy and neighborhood preservation program, and zoning plans to encourage appropriate new housing in emerging and built-up neighborhoods; and S. Gail Goldberg, AICP, director of the Los Angeles City Planning Department, and coordinator of major updates to community plans, transit-oriented district plans and several master plans, as well as a streamlined development process in L.A.