LAI KeyNotes: July 2008

HOW DO YOU FIND OUT ABOUT A CANADIAN AWARD WINNING REGIONAL GROWTH PLAN?

Registration form coming soon!

Yonge-Dundas Square

A simple answer – come to the LAI Toronto Land Economics Weekend, Oct. 23-25, 2008.

On the Friday evening of the weekend we will be having a presentation of the Ontario Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe – the 110 municipalities in the mega-region surrounding Toronto. This Plan has won a number of awards including the prestigious APA Daniel Burnham Award – the first time the award went to a plan outside the United States and the Canadian Institute of Planners’ Award For Planning Excellence.

As described by the APA, the Growth Plan is ‘an innovative plan that is built on a number of core elements:

A 1.8 million acre Greenbelt protected from urbanization,
An emphasis on mixed use development,
Ensuring that 40 percent of new development in existing communities is infill,
Transit friendly downtowns,
Establishing minimum density levels for new suburban development, and
Provincial legislation that requires municipalities to conform to the Plan’s policies.’

For more information on the Growth Plan go to www.placestogrow.ca or for an academic commentary go to www.wz.uni.lodz.pl/ersa/abstr/amborski_p.pdf . But remember you need to come to the October LAI Weekend to get the real story.

On Friday morning of the Weekend we will be touring the downtown Toronto campus of the University of Toronto, Canada’s largest university with an enrollment of some 60,000 students on three campuses. One of our members Elizabeth Sisam, U. of T.’s Assistant Vice-President of Campus and Facilities Planning, will be leading the tour. She is responsible for campus planning centering around how to accommodate the ongoing need for new facilities in an urban area that includes low rise residential neighbourhoods. Go to www.utoronto.ca for general information but again a tour in the colourful Canadian fall beats virtual every time!

Lunch on Friday will feature speakers from the MARS centre, a downtown non-profit innovation centre ( www.marsdd.com) and from Waterfront Toronto (www.waterfronttoronto.ca) as well as a tour of Toronto’s Times Square – Dundas Square. The tour will be led by the City Councilor for the area.

In the afternoon we will ‘get down to street level’ and visit the west downtown area which is the arts and entertainment hub of Toronto. We will end up at the Distillery District (www.thedistillerydistrict.com) a pedestrian friendly collection of renovated 175 year old former distillery buildings. Our reception and the Growth Plan presentation will be in one of the art galleries (www.artagallery.ca) in the District.

More on our events for Saturday in the next issue. Visit our web site – www.lai-simcoe.org – for the Weekend’s program.

Letter from the President

Les Pollock

Recently I gave a speech on "community branding" to a meeting of urban planners. I suggested that "branding" is the symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to an entity or product, and indicated that its purpose is to provide a way of articulating the orientation and qualities of that entity or product.

Reflecting on this definition and purpose, it seems that we might want to give some consideration to the Lambda Alpha "brand", and its utility to the organization and its members.

What is the brand of our organization? What does it stand for, and why is it useful to us? I believe that the LAI brand defines how the organization is perceived by others and, by reference, how its membership is perceived. The symbolic value of the organization, or its "brand", lies in its elected, honorary status which signifies that its members are among the most knowledgeable and skilled practitioners of our respective professions. However, the extent of our "brand" penetration is limited in that the awareness of LAI as an organization is limited.

Therefore, enhancing the value and utility of our membership requires us to expand brand exposure. We need to increase the local and international awareness of the organization. How do we do this? How do we create brand awareness? One approach is to elevate awareness of LAI at home, through announcements of meetings, prudent expansion of the membership, and invitations to guests to join in our discussions. Other ways might include joining with similar, highly regarded organizations to jointly sponsor events and publications. In some communities our chapters sponsor awards which are covered in the local and professional media. Others hold special meetings or render community assistance which garners recognition for the organization and enhances our "brand".

Why is this important? Why should we work to "brand" LAI? Simply put, because we have an important role and message to provide in terms of the insights that LAI's land economics leadership can provide within our communities to advance the practice and assist businesses and communities in acting to improve the local quality of life. A well recognized LAI brand can provide that recognition. Our goal should be that when we place the LAI imprimatur on a meeting or community assistance session it is considered as truly expert opinion useful to the community. It makes our work worthwhile, recognizes the worth of our insights, and brings continued honor to our members and organization.

Les Pollock
LAI President
lpollock@camiros.com

Helen Sause

Editor’s Column

Dear Colleagues,

Have you been paying attention to
"Administrative Matters"? I want to mention
a couple of the reasons administrative
issues are important to every chapter and
encourage us to work on ways to make
administrative issues routine so that a change
in officers doesn't cause a lot of drama or
even when we seek someone to serve as
an officer.

The Past:

We are an international organization that has emerged from a loose federation of several chapters that made their own rules and customs.
We all have much in common: we are volunteers, we are busy people at the peak of our professional lives, we are accustomed to running our chapters pretty much as we please, there's more but you get the drift.

The Present:

Now, as LAI grows our chapters can rely on the national office to provide overall support and conforming our operational activities into a more uniform framework results in even greater benefits. These include:

Membership billing with follow up collection procedures—as past president I remember this was a huge time consuming pain.
The web page with its announcements and information so we can learn from each other as well as obtain information about the entire international membership.
Our twice a year Land Economics Weekends, where we spend time in information sharing as well as organizational matters and to have an insider's look with tours of the community in which we are meeting.
Working toward a uniform time to change officers so we are all operating on the same schedule.
Engaging Chapter Administrators who can do the routine work of the chapters, thus freeing up our officers from routine issues such as meeting notices, and a 1,000 other tasks necessary to make the Chapter run smoothly. Most chapters that now have administrators express the finding that the contract/salary cost is defrayed by the greater effectiveness of the chapter's operation. Any President that has had to have their secretary (or someone else) serve in the administrator's capacity will surely agree with this!
And a plug for the KeyNotes—we benefit from sharing our good ideas with each other in our newsletter, as well as pre- and post information on the organizational meetings. Anyone who was in Phoenix must have felt a little twinge of satisfaction when the media was blasting the news that Phoenix was testing its light rail—and I for one said smugly "oh it's a fine system—LAI previewed it last May".

So I commend to you the goal of all chapters operating as a member of a cohesive organization, with uniform office terms and change of officers, breaking the mold and hiring someone as chapter administrator (believe me this knowledgeable person makes transition a snap!) and participating in the national support such as the billing system, sharing info in KeyNotes and attending the national meetings will strengthen LAI tenfold.

I look forward to all Chapters moving into this national framework and appreciating how "Administrative Matters"!

‘Till next time.

Helen Sause
International LAI Editor
helensause@alamedanet.net

Featured Article:
Lambda Alpha International is now registered with the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) as a Certification Maintenance Provider (CM Provider).

Starting in 2008 all professional planners who are members of American Planning Association’s professional institute, the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), are required to engage in mandatory continuing education. Continuing education activities, to be approved by APA, may include the following:

            Conference sessions
            Workshops (including mobile workshops)
            Lectures
            Symposia
            Keynote speeches
            Roundtable discussions

Many of Lambda Alpha International activities fall into one of these catagories. In order to participate in the AICP’s continuing education program and expand our outreach toward professional organization related to land economics Lambda Alpha International is now registered with the American Planning Association, as a Certification Maintenance Provider for members of the American Institute of Certified Planners. Our educational programs (including the Land Economics Weekends, and Lecture Series, Seminars, Speakers at luncheons and similar activities offered by various LAI chapters) could qualify as events providing credits toward mandatory continued education for AICP members.

This program has a dual benefit for LAI:

Our members who are also members of the American Institute of Certified Plannerswould receive CM credit as a part of their mandatory continued education program by attending our approved programs.

As an outreach program, our approved activities will be listed on AICP’s calendar of CM events, reaching some16,000 professional planners whose interest are in concert with LAI philosophy. We anticipate some Land Economics-related professionals who are not LAI members would attend certain of our activities and become familiar with our organization.

Fereydoon Ghaffari is our designated coordinator of the program. We encourage all chapters to submit their activities for registration with AICP to Fereydoon. Please direct all questions or requests for clarification to him at FG@GhaffariAssociates.com. The information required for registration of events with APA includes:

            Name of Activity
            Start Date and Time/End Date and Time
            Location (city, state, country)
            Topic
            Short (2-3 sentences) Description of Activity
            Instructors’ Name and Professional Affiliation (up to 3)
            Instructors’ Biographies and notable achievements that indicate
            required level of expertise