Events

Below are upcoming events related to Community Progress and our work. For past events, click here.

Category: Other Event

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12th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference
February 7-9, 2013 Kansas City, MO

The 12th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth: Building Safe, Healthy, Equitable, and Livable Communities will build on the first eleven highly successful conferences in this series, which collectively brought together an audience of nearly 16,500 people from across the U.S. and several other countries. This conference is unique in that it focuses on a multi-disciplinary approach to implementing smart growth principles to help build safer, healthier, more economically viable, transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly communities across the nation. Community Progress staff will be presenting in a number of sessions that address the challenges of vacant and abandoned properties in communities. See below for details.

Community Progress Staff Sessions

Cities and Regions in Transition: Accentuating Assets, and Repositioning Economies for a More Prosperous Future    

Thursday, February 7  from 8:30 - 10am

The speakers will address such topics as the role of anchor institutions in reviving local economies, worker-owned cooperatives, and neighborhood-based strategies that address widespread vacancy and abandonment. 

Moderator: Salin Geevarghese, Senior Advisor, Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Speakers:  Tamar Shapiro, President and CEO, Center for Community Progress;  Dane Walling, Mayor, City of Flint, MI;  Benjamin Kennedy, Community Development Program Officer, Kresge Foundation; and India Lee Pierce, Program Director for Neighborhoods, Cleveland Foundation

Land Banking: Pathways Toward Sustainable Urban, Suburban and Rural Land Reclamation

Thursday, February 7 from 10:30am - noon.

Using recent land banking breakthroughs in Kansas City, Missouri and the state of Georgia as a backdrop, this session will delve into land banking as an effective strategy for urban, suburban and rural land preservation and reclamation. 

Moderator: Kim Graziani, Vice President of Capacity Building, Center for Community Progress

Speakers: Julie Porter from KC LISC; Mayor James from KCMO; and Chris Norman from Fulton County/Atlanta Land Bank Authority.

Innovative Municipal approaches to Equitable Reinvestment and Revitalization

Friday, February 8 from 10 - 11:30am

This interactive discussion among some of the country’s most thoughtful and innovative problem-solvers will explore how code enforcement departments, the courts and redevelopment authorities are working together to hold negligent property owners accountable, eliminate blight, and drive development opportunities in disinvested neighborhoods.

Moderator: Nicole Heyman, JD, LLM, Vice President and Director of New Orleans Vacant Properties Initiative, Center for Community Progress

Speakers: Jeff Hebert, Executive Director, New Orleans Redevelopment Authority; Michael Braverman, JD, Deputy Commissioner, Housing Authority of Baltimore City, MD; and Judge Ray Pianka, Cleveland Municipal Housing Court

For more sessions, click here.