The Edward J. Blakely Center for Sustainable Suburban Development’s planning process featured several events to help define its mission. The first two events were breakfasts with Inland community leaders to gain their input on the region’s problems, and how the Center might deal with them. The last was an academic conference in February, 2003 to define its academic mission and how that might be accomplished.

The breakfasts were held in November, 2002 and January, 2003. The November meeting included city council members, planning commission members and city staff from around the region. The attendees focused on city’s fiscal problems as the core issue for regional development.

The second breakfast brought in leaders from the business community, environmental groups, Native American communities, public safety officials and others. Their concerns covered a broader range of issues, such as transportation, air quality, land use, education and water. The Center then issued an update on its status.

• See report on first breakfast
• See January 2003 update

The academic conference brought in speakers from around the country to talk about various issues related to suburban growth and, specifically, the Inland region. The schedule (link is webFebsked.doc) featured 30 speakers (link is webFebsked.doc) on six panels. Major speakers were former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, Myron Orfield, author of American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality, and the Center’s namesake, Edward J. Blakely.

Copies of some presentations are available on the web through the links below. Copies of the full proceedings on videotape (six cassettes) and of Dr. Blakely’s speech are available by contacting the Center office.

Presentations:

• Mark Baldassare – The PPIC Statewide Survey: Lessons Learned on Growth and Land Use
• Henry Cisneros – Communities for Californians in the New Century: Challenges and Opportunities
• Scott Coltrane – Latino families and family dynamics
• Reid Ewing – Measuring Sprawl and Its Impacts
• William Jury – The UCR Environmental Initiative and Inland Southern California
• John Landis – Looking Back, Planning Forward: Managing 100 Years of Prospective Growth in the Inland Empire
• Joel Martin/Katherine Spilde – Tribal Sovereignty, Economic Development and Cultural Production
• Samuel Myers – Economic Development and Suburban Sprawl: Race and Ethnicity
• Max Neiman -- Perception Is Everything: The Effect Of Municipal Neighbors And Interjurisdictional Competition On Local Policies To Entice And Retain Economic Development
• Paul Ong – Poor Neighborhoods Analysis
• Myron Orfield – California Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability in California
• Rutherford Platt – Towards a more Humane Metropolis: People And Nature In The 21st Century City