New Partners for Smart Growth
February 2-4, 2017 • St. Louis, Missouri
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Interactive Features

Home Interactive Features
Parklets 5.0
Friday Fab Lab
Walkability Pays Session
National Healthy Communities Platform
Parklets 5.0

What Are Parklets?

Parklets are small urban parks, often created by replacing parking spots with sod, planters, trees, benches, café tables with chairs – maybe even artwork or bicycle parking. You will find several parklet installations at the conference to illustrate just what you can do in an 8’ x 20’ space. Learn what organizations are doing to enliven their communities and be inspired by simple ideas to increase the communal and vegetated spaces in our city’s streetscapes.

Parklet Benefits Brochure

Experience the Gateway to Trails and Forests!

Organizations: Nature Explore, U.S. Forest Service, Arbor Day Foundation, and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation

Our trails and forests lead to great adventure and discovery, and with help from the Smart Growth community we hope to continue to protect and share them with our next generation of environmental stewards. Nature Explore Classrooms serve as gateways to connect even our youngest children with nature. We then encourage inspired families to ultimately visit our parks, trails, and national forests.

Come and release your inner child in our parklet! Build a fort from your childhood, play a musical instrument, and explore all the creative things you can do with natural items. Discover a connection to Mark Twain National Forest and rekindle your passion for these national treasures.

This parklet produced in close partnership between the U.S. Forest Service, Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation, working together to get families outdoors.

Smart Growth Will Protect our Trees and Prairies!

Organizations: Forest Releaf of Missouri, U.S. Forest Service, and ASLA Student Chapter at Washington University in St. Louis

The rich, native forests and grasslands around St. Louis – like those in and around your own community – hold tremendous value worth protecting. These landscapes define the places we call home. They call out to us to slow down and may stop us in our tracks and take our breath away. Research finds that trees and grasslands improve the air we breathe and the water we drink; they cool us in summer and slow the winds of winter; and reduce our stress levels to such a degree that they may literally improve our productivity and save our lives. In a partnership between Forest ReLeaf of Missouri, the U.S. Forest Service, and the ASLA Student Chapter at Washington University this unique parklet does all of the above. Please stop by for a dose of nature during your busy days at the conference.

Healthy Food, Urban Agriculture, and Pollinator Habitat

Organizations: PlaceMatters, PGAV Planners, SWT Design, Knox College Office of Sustainability, and Urban Harvest STL 

The local food movement aims to connect food producers and food consumers in the same geographic region in order to develop more self-reliant and resilient food networks; improve local economies; and have a positive impact on health and communities. PlaceMatters, PGAV Planners, SWT Design, Knox College Office of Sustainability, and Urban Harvest STL have all teamed together to create this fun, informative, and nutritious parklet! This parklet will feature a small greenhouse, plants for eating and plants that attract pollinators, places to sit, and a bike equipped with a smoothie making apparatus. While pedaling away to make your smoothie, or waiting for your buddy to make one for the two of you, there’s information to read about the local food/placemaking movement and how pollinators play a large role in the urban environment.

Creating Energy and Excitement in PLAYces

Organizations: Kaboom, Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection

Energy is something that we use and create daily. When we take the opportunity to exert energy at public spaces like bus stops, health clinics, sidewalks, streetscapes, we are able to transform places of potential frustration into moments of joy. While interacting in this PLAYce, full of Rigamajg parts and KaBOOM! pieces, ask yourself “How complete are our public spaces if we don’t use them to their full potential?” and  “Is there a way to capture the energy we exude to power the things we need like cell phones and tablets?”  In this parklet installation, we will demonstrate how innovative places that put kids first in public space design not only create sustainable, equitable cities that provide kids with opportunities to play, but also encourage design creativity using elements of energy, art, music, nature, and more. Come play with us!

The Learning Lab

Organizations: WALC Institute, Placematters

There are many types of parklets… from temporary or pop-up parklets, to long-term installations, from seating to play structures and anything else you can imagine. The Learning Lab is a “parklet on parklets” that will explore the different ways communities can repurpose a space mostly relegated to private vehicle storage to something that can help revitalize and humanize the streetscape. Learn about many of the creative uses of these spaces, and witness on-screen images and videos of inspiring parklets around North America. Sample materials for pop-up design will also be at the parklet so that visitors can experiment with their different uses.

Taking it to the Streets – Good Planning + Driverless

Organization: GreaterPlaces

This parklet ponders what needs to happen to combine livable, healthy & sustainable community design with smart city technology & driverless vehicles.

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Friday Fab Lab

Friday Fab Lab

An Interactive Open House of Tools for Community Design, Public Engagement and Decision Making
Friday, February 3 • 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
The interactive technology fair is always a hit, and this year we’re taking it up a notch. PlaceMatters will team up with a variety of tech innovators to offer the “Friday Fab Lab” – a dynamic, hands-on event that gives conference attendees the chance to see and explore the newest tools in planning and smart growth. With a focus on fabrication technology and the maker movement, the Fab Lab will showcase high-tech tools ranging from 3-D printers to drone technology and 360 degree virtual reality video. You’ll also see low-tech/high-touch tools like simple kits for protected bike lanes and DIY playgrounds, which can activate a space with minimal time and effort. We’ll share more details about stations and tools soon; in the meantime, check out the offerings from last year’s tech fair. If you are interested in participating in the exhibit space, contact Ken Snyder at ken@placematters.org.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Planning

These hyper-realistic tools allow participants to experience potential changes, rather than just seeing them. In addition, this exhibit will include a DIY 360 video set up and how you can create 360 videos similar to the New York Times VR videos made popular with their Sunday delivery of Google cardboard viewers. Learn how these tools can be used to explore streetscapes and learn about form and function..

Exhibitor: PlaceMatters
Location: Parklet on Urban Agriculture and Urban Pollinators

KaBOOM’s Imagination Playground

Imagination Playground™ provides an innovative play opportunity that can be instantly activated anywhere, anytime. The Imagination Playground™ kit can be used at schools, community centers, museums, public parks, street fairs, and even office settings.

Exhibitor: KaBOOM
Location: KaBOOM Parklet

3D-3D (3 Dimensional Drone Deliberated Design)

Learn how this drones can be used for creating a 3D scan of an existing landscape of buildings and trees and combined with 3D printing and smart tables to create photorealistic 3D models.

Exhibitor: Awesome Adventures
Location: Table

Pop-up Design In-a-Box

Low-tech tools can also be used to experiment with design solutions and enhancing public spaces. Check out these simple kits and learn how to design your own.

Exhibitor: PlaceMatters
Location: Table 2

Tactile Planning and Youth Engagement

Poster size aerial photos combined with laser cut fold-and-tape houses and buildings provide the medium for youth to think about form, function, and place in their community. This exhibit includes the materials used in a youth leadership program in a poor neighborhood of Denver to help kids learn about planning and design concepts affecting their community and how to get involved.

Exhibitor: Radian Inc.
Location: Table 3

Complete Streets Interactive Environment

Learn how mobile mapping tools and interactive visualization tools can be used for Transit Oriented Development, improving pedestrian walkability, or planning for sustainable cities and schools.

Exhibitor: Denver Shared Spaces
Location: Table 4

3D Printers and Laser Cutters for Planning and Stakeholder Engagement

How 3D models printed from 3D printers can be used for making great cities.

Exhibitor: TechShop. St Louis
Location: Table 5

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Walkability Pays Session

Walkability Pays: Making Smart Decisions about “Healthy” Investments

– Lawrence Frank, Ph.D., AICP, ASLA, President, Urban Design 4 Health, Inc., Professor, Schools of Community & Regional Planning and Population & Public Health, University of British Columbia
– Allen Brookes, Ph.D., Software Architect, U.S. EPA
Friday, February 3 • 12:15 – 1:15 PM

Missouri Room

Grab your lunch and come join other decision-makers wanting to know which investments can create the greatest economic, public-health and environmental benefits. This optional dynamic interactive lunchtime session will be held on Friday (2/2) from 12:15-1:15 PM.

This session will showcase a new software tool and database that measures the health benefits of alternative scenarios for land-use and transportation investments.

The National Environmental Database of built, natural and social environmental indicators was developed with funds provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The National Public Health Assessment Model, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, estimates changes in physical activity, cardiovascular disease and mental-health outcomes associated with different planning alternatives.

Examples from recent projects in Southern California initiated by the Southern California Association of Governments will help show how financial aspects of the health impacts of contrasting growth strategies can be measured.

Walkability Pays Flyer
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National Healthy Communities Platform

Beyond Healthcare Forum: Charting the National Healthy Communities Platform

– Moderator: Miguel Vazquez, Healthy Communities Urban and Regional Planner, Riverside University Health System, Public Health
– Paul Zykofsky, Associate Director, Local Government Commission
– Michael Osur, Deputy Director, Riverside University Health System, Public Health
– Elizabeth Baca, Senior Health Advisor, Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, CA
– Erik Calloway, Senior Planner, ChangeLab Solutions
– David Rouse, Managing Director of Research and Advisory Services, American Planning Association
– Katherine Robb, Policy Analyst, Environmental Health, Center for Public Health Policy, American Public Health Association
Saturday, February 4 • 11:00 AM – 1:30 PM

Room: Majestic H

For more than three decades, planning and health professionals have
been nurturing what we know today as the Healthy Communities Movement.
Within the past few years, these shared efforts have broadened to
connect traditional notions of healthcare into a broader vision of
more livable and equitable communities. But we sill need a
coordinated, national healthy communities strategy to make it a
reality.

Healthy-communities leaders – encompassing business and non-profit
organizations, government officials, professional associations,
foundations, academic experts and community advocates – gathered at
the New Partners conference for the “Beyond Healthcare Forum: Charting
the National Healthy Communities Platform” to begin developing that
strategy. Join us in the coming year to help shape the future of
healthy communities in America.

Read more and join this effort:  platformforhealth.rivcoph.org

Copyright © 2016 New Partners for Smart Growth