PLUS News & Events - 2007

Fall

PLUS Department Chair Jane Brooks receives honor

Department Chair Jane Brooks has been named one of New Orleans women of the year by New Orleans CityBusiness.  The honor, which will be shared with Rachel Kincaid (chief of staff and assistant to the chancellor at UNO) and others, will be formally celebrated on November 16, at the Sheraton Hotel in New Orleans.  Since Katrina, Brooks has played an active role in the rehabilitative planning efforts in New Orleans.  Click here for the full story. 

PLUS students invited to help rebuild area house

Planning and Urban Studies Students are invited to participate in this years Rebuild Together project on the first two Saturdays in October, Oct. 6 & 13 2007. The workday lasts from 8 AM to 4:30 PM.  Volunteers will work to repair a home on N. Prieur for a well deserving homeowner.  Regardless of your skill level, your participation is welcomed.  All tools and equipment will be on site as well as refreshments.  To sign up, for additional questions or to catch a ride, please email bess_renfrow@yahoo.com.  A flier can be downloaded here. 

2007 Louisiana APA conference comes to New Orleans

This year’s 2007 American Planning Association conference for Louisiana was held in New Orleans from Sept 19th - 22nd at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter.  The conference was titled, “Beyond Recovery – Reinventing Planning in Louisiana.”  The conference featured a panoply of professional planners and recovery experts from the region and beyond.  An electronic program can be found here.    

Below (from left): department chair Jane Brooks moderates the “Urban Main Streets” workshop session; professor, LA-APA president, and conference host Steve Villavaso conducts a session titled “Planning Law”; professor Marla Nelson hosts the last session of the conference titled “Planning ُُEthics”. 

Dr. John Renne publishes chapter in book, continues research

Dr. John L. Renne wrote "Chapter 4: Transit-Oriented Development: Measuring Benefits, Analyzing Trends, and Evaluating Policy in New Jersey" in Reaction and Reform in New Jersey, edited by Michael P. Riccards and published by the Hall Institute of Public Policy in New Jersey, 2007.  Dr. Renne is also working on several other projects.  One of them involves utilizing a traffic modeling program known as TRANSIMS to help model evacuation strategies for New Orleans; LSU, Dr. Patrick Haughey and Wendell Dufour are also contributors to the project.  Lastly, Dr. Renne is partnering with Dr. Isabelle Maret to improve pedestrian and bicycle conditions in Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish in coordination with the RPC.  The team is currently studying the most dangerous corridors in the city and ultimately will develop a manual for pedestrian and bicycle improvement strategies. 

UNO's Department of Planning and Urban Studies (PLUS) assists with Rockefeller fellowship selection

Department Chair Jane Brooks and Marla Nelson are working with the University of Pennsylvania through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in support of the Rockefeller Foundation Redevelopment Fellowship Program in New Orleans.  Phillip Williams is the local program coordinator and is housed in PLUS.  Click here to read the full story. 

UNO's Department of Planning and Urban Studies welcomes new and old faces

PLUS would like to welcome several new and not so new faces to its faculty and staff.  Willard Fields joins us as the Director for the Center for Urban and Public Affairs. As well as serving as the Director of Research for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, he is also a former alum of UNO. Giovanni Graziosi comes to UNO from Rutgers University; he will be teaching GIS and information technology courses. Lastly, Phillip Williams, local Coordinator for the Rockefeller Foundation Redevelopment Fellowship Program is also welcomed. Phillip comes to UNO from George Washington University where he was the senior secretary for the Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology.  For more details, click here.

Spring

Help Rebuild New Orleans with Americorps

Americorps is looking for motivated individuals to help New Orleans recover by either rebuilding homes or working in local public elementary schools as tutors.  Workers are entitled to a number of benefits from Americorps including child care, health insurance, a monthly allowance, and an education bonus.  To learn more, download the flyer here. 

Nick Spitzer, host of American Routes, wins Guggenheim Fellowship

University of New Orleans professor Nick Spitzer, host of American Public Media's New Orleans-based music program, American Routes, has won a Guggenheim Fellowship to continue his studies and writing about Louisiana Creole Culture. Spitzer, who is also professor of folklore and cultural conservation in the planning department at the University of New Orleans, is among 189 artists, scholars and scientists selected from almost 2,800 applicants.

Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees, which includes six members who are themselves past Fellows of the Foundation—Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles Ryskamp, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Edward Hirsch. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

In a time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program has assumed a greatly increased importance, and the Foundation is
successfully raising funds to enable the appointment of a larger number of Fellows each year.  Scores of Nobel, Pulitzer and other prize winners appear on the roll of Fellows, which includes Aaron
Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Linus Pauling and Eudora Welty.

Planners Network 2007 Conference | University of New Orleans | May 30 - June 2; Race, Class and Community Recovery: From the Neighborhood to the Nation and Beyond

The Department of Planning and Urban Studies is hosting the Planners Network 2007 Conference at the University of New Orleans. Planners Network is an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic, and environmental planning in urban and rural areas, who promote fundamental change in our political and economic systems. The Conference will bring together 250-300 planning professionals, academics, and students from across North America to confront issues of race, class, and injustice, while seeking to learn from the work of community-based organizations, local planners, and individuals impacted by Katrina.

See the conference website for more information: http://www.pn2007.org/

ECORISE March 7 – 9, 2006

Professor Maret is serving on the Steering Committee planning a forum on The Emergency-forum of City Officials on Rebuilding Infrastructure for a Sustainable Environment (ECORISE) to be held in New Orleans March 7-9.  

The University of New Orleans, Tulane University, The Urban Infrastructure Institute at the Polytechnic University, New York, the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris, the Ecole des Ingénieurs de la Ville de Paris, and the French and US Associations of Mayors will host a Colloquium focusing on the challenging tasks of disaster impact mitigation and recovery management after a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina.  This forum will bring together the Mayors and the major stakeholders of cities that have experienced and/or have to face the challenges of post-disaster recovery, including policy makers of  local, state and federal governments, public and private infrastructure agencies, the business community, insurance industry, representatives of the civil society, university faculty members, international experts, and others in order to assess current recovery strategies, to discuss real life observations on the economical and socio-cultural revitalization of the city, to develop guiding principles for establishing the level of disaster resiliency of the flood control systems and critical city infrastructures that would be acceptable to the city stakeholders.

The long-term goal of this Colloquium is to establish a Government – Industry – University cooperation for monitoring the recovery process and evaluating its social, economical, ecological, and operational impacts on the revitalization of city neighborhoods and communities.

The Colloquium is also expected to further the dialogue among French and American cities on the critical issues of sustainable urban development which was initiated in 2004 under the auspices of the Association des Maires de Grandes Villes de France (AMGVF), Cités Unies France, the National League of Cities, and the Association of Sister Cities with the support of the Urban Infrastructure Institute at the Polytechnic University, New York.

http://uuc1.poly.edu/ecorise.html

Urban Development and Sustainability: The New Orleans Reconstruction Case Study

Isabelle Maret is a recognized leader in cutting edge research on viable development and inclusion of risk assessment in land use planning. Using Geographic Information  Systems (GIS), she builds databases and analysis for sustainable rebuilding of the city of New Orleans. Professor Maret is currently working on a funded project in collaboration with the scientific and technique mission of the French Embassy to help develop a viable rebuilding process for New Orleans. This project involves research on sustainable development of urban systems as well as training and international networking.

Professor Maret, with assistance from UNO Transportation Center Director Jim Amdal, recently hosted a group of 35 French scholars from the Institut Supérieur d’Ingénierie et de Gestion de l’Environnement School (ISIGE) (Paris). The researchers met with key stakeholders from the New Orleans community and will be working on a report for the French Embassy on urban systems and viable risks management.

MRCI and NPWI Conduct Intermodal Connections Analysis 

The Mississippi River Corridor Initiative and the National Ports and Waterways Institute have contracted with the Louisiana Department of Transportation to conduct a comparative analysis of Louisiana's intermodal connections. The report will examine rail and intermodal connections at the five Louisiana deepwater ports as well as selected competing East and Gulf coast container ports. The study will expand upon previous research included in the NPWI's recommendations to the 1995 Statewide Intermodal Plan.

National Conference on Disaster Planning for the Carless Society - February 8 & 9, 2007

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita revealed how vulnerable carless residents are in emergency situations.  Evacuation plans in most major cities across America fail to adequately take into account the needs of the elderly,   disabled, and transit dependent populations. Hosted by the UNO Transportation Center, the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission, and the Regional Transit Authority, this conference brings together government officials, professionals, and experts to discuss how we can better prepare for those that are in most need. For more information, visit: www.carlessevacuation.org

Sustainability and the Recovery of New Orleans Public Forum - January 29, 2007

On January 29, 2007 the UNO Transportation Center and PLUS, in partnership with the Prevention Research Center at Tulane hosted a public forum on Sustainability and the Recovery of New Orleans. Dr. John L. Renne, Assistant Professor and Associate Director of UNO's Transportation Center hosted the event, which featured: Edward Blakely, Ph.D., Executive Director of Recovery for the City of New Orleans and Visiting Professor in Planning at UNO; Peter Newman, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University; Timothy Beatley, Ph.D., Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia; and Darius Sollohub, AIA, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Infrastructure Program in the New Jersey School of Architecture at NJIT. Topics related to the redevelopment of New Orleans such as: solar and wind power, urbanism, sustainable food systems, transportation, redevelopment of various neighborhoods and crime were some of the many subjects discussed. A detailed article regarding the event can be found here.

Sustainability forum flier (includes speakers' bios)

Click here to download a video of the lecture (137MB)

Edward Blakely

Peter Newman

Timothy Beatley

Darius Sollohub

National Conference on Disaster Planning for the Carless Society - February 8 & 9, 2007

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita revealed how vulnerable carless residents are in emergency situations.  Evacuation plans in most major cities across America fail to adequately take into account the needs of the elderly,   disabled, and transit dependent populations. Hosted by the UNO Transportation Center, the New Orleans Regional Planning Commission, and the Regional Transit Authority, this conference brings together government officials, professionals, and experts to discuss how we can better prepare for those that are in most need. For more information, visit: www.carlessevacuation.org

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