HUD, DOT, and EPA Form Partnership to Forward Sustainable Communities

Unprecedented partnership indicates a new activism regarding issues important to the landscape architecture profession. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Transportation (DOT), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have announced a new partnership to help American families in all communities—rural, suburban, and urban—gain better access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and a healthy environment. “This is an even stronger indication that the new administration and these agencies are serious about issues that are important to the landscape architecture profession,” said ASLA Executive Vice President and CEO Nancy Somerville. At a meeting of the Smart Growth Partners hosted by the EPA on June 17, Marcia Mulkey, acting associate administrator of the EPA’s Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovations, portrayed the partnership as evidence of the administration’s commitment “to active governing around the issues of smart growth and sustainability.” Earlier this year, HUD and DOT announced an unprecedented agreement to implement joint housing and transportation initiatives. With EPA joining the partnership, the three agencies will work together to ensure that these housing and transportation goals are met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change. DOT, HUD, and EPA have created a high-level interagency partnership to better coordinate federal transportation, environmental protection, and housing investments and to identify strategies that: provide more transportation choices promote equitable, affordable housing increase economic competitiveness support existing communities leverage federal investment enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe, and walkable neighborhoods—rural, urban, or suburban Among the HUD/DOT/EPA partnership’s goals: enhance integrated planning and investment provide a vision for sustainable growth redefine housing affordability and make it transparent redevelop underused sites develop livability measures and tools align HUD, DOT, and EPA programs undertake joint research, data collection, and outreach Find a more detailed announcement online at http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot8009.htm.

ASLA Annual Meeting: Register Today!

Join us in Chicago, September 18–21, for the ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo. Both the website and the print brochure you will receive in early June contain all the info you need to register for the meeting, plan your travel, and book your hotel room.

The theme of our meeting is Beyond Sustainability: Regenerating Places and People. We’ve been anticipating public sentiment to turn to the need for sustaining the planet for many years. As landscape architects, we must go beyond and aspire to adopt practices that not only sustain but regenerate our ecosystems and restore diminishing biohabitats.

Programming is crafted around our theme to challenge and inspire the more than 5,000 attendees who will gather in Chicago. This meeting offers more than 125 sessions—a record in the history of ASLA—from which we may choose to earn more than 21 Professional Development Hours.

While the economic downturn has delayed our vision of green infrastructure, signs of optimism are emerging daily. The education session schedule is replete with programs on how firms are coping—and even thriving: from marketing strategies to direction on where to find new clients and projects to how to track stimulus funding opportunities. The

ASLA EXPO—the largest product display in the industry—will feature nearly 400 exhibitors, many of whom will be new to our show. We’ll recognize current and future leaders of the profession with honors and awards. And we’ll connect with our colleagues from across the country and around the world at special events throughout the weekend.

Every effort has been made to reduce costs as much as possible.

Register early and save significantly on registration rates. Ticket prices for the LARE workshops, tours, and field sessions are less expensive than last year. Air or train fare to Chicago is affordable from any point in the country. And our hotel room rates are extremely competitive. All of this is tax deductible for the individual or business, to the extent allowed by law.

The first 300 full registrants will receive a free ASLA shirt (up to $34 value), and all full registrants for the meeting will receive a complimentary one-year digital subscription to

Landscape Architecture magazine.

Join us in Chicago as we learn to go beyond sustainability to regenerate places and people.
See you in September!

Angela Dye, FASLA

ASLA President

INASLA Annual Meeting Key Note Speaker Announced!

Kaid Benfield is director of NRDC's smart growth and transportation program, which supports innovative solutions to sprawl and automobile dependence. Kaid is a founder and former vice chair of Smart Growth America, a national coalition working on smarter land development policy. His numerous publications include Solving Sprawl (2001) and Once There Were Greenfields (1999), NRDC's definitive books about smart growth and sprawl. He has also led NRDC's land program and its forestry and agriculture projects, and served as NRDC's legal affairs coordinator. He is a graduate of Emory University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Visit his blog and see what he has to say! http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/