This year’s APA national conference in Boston got off to a promising start as far as sustainability interests are concerned. At the first regular session on sustainability (“Planners’ Role in Sustainability (S801)” featuring former Seattle planning director Gary Lawrence) so many people showed up that convention center staff had to move everyone out and reconfigure the room without tables. Even then, it was standing-room only with over 200 people.
It’s quite a change from just a few years ago. APA-SCP had its beginnings at the 2007 conference in Philadelphia, when a sign-up sheet for a new sustainability division was passed around the scant number of sessions (I remember counting fewer than seven) on energy, climate, or environment. Today the conference program boasts over 40 such sessions, workshops, and more, and APA leadership is actively pushing sustainability initiatives and communication.
Since APA-SCP’s official launch at last year’s conference in New Orleans, we’ve built relationships with APA leadership, grown our membership on LinkedIn and our mailing list, and generally set up the infrastructure needed to get to work on all the projects we want to do. We have two main goals at this year’s conference: showcase at our Monday reception what we really stand for when we say want real, robust sustainability in planning practice; and evolve our internal operations to the next step so we can fully engage planners and communities with this work.
All that’s missing is YOU! Contact us at apascp {at} gmail {dot} com to find out how you can get involved.
APA-SCD 