LAI KeyNotes: March 2007

Spring Land Economics Weekend in Dublin, Ireland
Wednesday, May 30 through Saturday, June 2, 2007
Register Now!

There Are Still Registrations Available for the Spring Land Economics Weekend!
We didn’t mean to scare you. The only “sold out” part of the Weekend is the dinner in Dublin at Malahide Castle on 30 May. This is the first of the Weekend events. The castle has limited space for dining and arrangements for an excellent alternative dinner location has been made for those not accommodated at the castle. Naturally registration fees will be adjusted accordingly.
However, the balance of the Land Economics Weekend is not sold out--yet. The group will tour Dublin on Thursday, 31 May and then will travel by motor coach to Belfast on Friday. The Belfast tour will include a visit to the Titanic Historic District where the S.S. Titanic was built. This is now the largest redevelopment site in Europe.
These visits to Dublin and Belfast promise a wealth of information about this dynamic country, not to mention good comradeship with fellow LAI members and their guests.
We have only 20 spaces left for the Weekend. So please register as soon as possible to guarantee your attendance for what promises to be a stellar Lambda Alpha event!

The whole of Ireland has arrived at an economic crossroads, from which there seems to be no turning back. Under sustained pressure not only from the United Kingdom government but also from the many well-wishers in the United States, the sectarian, division between the Catholic Republic of Ireland and the still largely Protestant province of Northern Ireland (otherwise known as Ulster) is disappearing. This is on the back of the realisation that in an ever more competitive world there are profound economic benefits in the whole or Ireland working together.

Malahide Castle

The Republic has seen a huge renaissance over the last decade, such that not only has inward investment been high but there has been significant net immigration to the country. Arguably the best has already been seen, but the Republic continues to enjoy high growth.

By contrast Ulster, so long plagued by security concerns, has only now begun to catch up with the south as the politicians of all hues have slowly learnt to trust each other. Belfast, Ulster’s capital, is now in a buoyant state, already having seen major urban rejuvenation and with much more in train over the coming years.

Spencer Dock

For visitors to Ireland, both north and south, 2007 will be a great time to see the impact of the growing cross-border linkages, strongly fostered by business and academe on both sides of the border. The Republic is having to learn how to manage success by keeping up the momentum of the last decade, while in the north the transition within Belfast is one of the most striking current examples of urban regeneration in the western world.

Titanic Quarter

LAI’s Irish Weekend will give ample opportunity to see all the changes in train and to meet a wide range of the most influential people on both sides of the border driving the changes. Dublin’s recent success is palpable, while the work in hand in Belfast, the subject of a day trip, should certainly impress. For those looking at investment opportunities in Ireland, there will be much over which to ponder.

All in all, the Irish Weekend will be an exciting occasion, full of interesting things to see and hear. For those who can spare a little more time, the Irish countryside, regardless of the border, is beautiful to behold, while travel around the whole island is easy. And for those tempted to include England, Scotland and Wales on their itinerary, these are but a short hop by air across the Irish Sea.

Dr. Karen Sieracki

LAI member Agenda for the Dublin Land Economics Weekend (pdf)
Registration form for the Dublin Land Economics Weekend (pdf)
Registration form for the Dublin Land Economics Weekend (doc

Letter from the President

Dr. James A. Fawcett

I was invited last week to join the conference call of the LAI Public Relations Committee, headed by Helen Sause, International Scribe. What an interesting and enlightening conversation! In addition to Helen and me, we had on the line David Jarette (Sacramento), Jay Lindgren (Minnesota), John Griffin (Boston), Michael Stepner (San Diego) and Michele Meng representing the International office. Our conversation revolved around the theme that Helen has addressed in her column this month: often LAI hides its light under a bushel. We occasionally need to remind ourselves that we are some of the best informed members of our communities on matters of land use. While we're all doing good work in our professional lives, we also contribute to our communities through Lambda Alpha. The LAI Public Relations Committee is exploring ideas that we can all pursue to get the word out about our members' activities both individually and through our chapters.

Many chapters are engaged in important civic efforts to educate the public about our professions and also to take advantage of the prominence and experience of LAI members. For example, the Ely Chapter has undertaken a major project to educate the citizens of Chicago about the importance of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, the first comprehensive city plan in the United States. Daniel H. Burnham, its author, had overseen construction of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1894 and was instrumental in bringing rationality to city growth and evolution (see Devil in the White City). The Ely Chapter will be a major player in the centennial celebration of that plan. Phoenix has determined to make a student chapter at Arizona State University a major focus of the chapter, helping students find their way in our land use professions. Memphis has done a similar job with students at the University of Memphis. For the past three years, Los Angeles has organized public lectures on the development process at California State University, Northridge, lectures that have become so popular with students, faculty and the public that the 33,000-student university is now having trouble finding a room that will accommodate all the attendees. These civic projects all contribute to Richard T. Ely's notion that “the law of society is service.” Service to the community in this respect contributes both to the enhancement of public understanding of the complexities of land use but also to establishing Lambda Alpha as an insightful voice in helping communities make good decisions about land and its uses.

The Public Relations Committee is developing ideas that can help all our chapters enhance their community contributions but one of the critical means of doing that is for our chapters to recruit the up-coming movers and shakers in our cities. While we have no intention of becoming another ULI, we also need to bring into our counsels the best folks that we can recruit. After all, we're the experts in this field, but we're not the only experts-let's find and recruit the others. We also need to grow the Society in my view to about 5,000 members so that we will have sufficient clout to be seen as a major player in urban affairs. I know this is a challenge but some of the very brightest men and women around are members of LAI. So, I challenge each of us to find and invite to membership two new members during the coming year who can make a valuable contribution to our work. We're doing a great job and with your help, we can do even more.

Hiding the LAI light under a bushel basket

Dear Colleagues: How often when Lambda Alpha International is mentioned; the answer is "What's Lambda Alpha?" President Fawcett made building an informed membership one of his primary goals. This involves encouraging the LAI chapters to become LAI ambassadors and the chapters to be even better known in their communities.

The Publications and Communications Committee of the LAI Board has attempted to share the LAI "light" through KeyNotes. Not everyone navigates the web page even as simple as it is and there is so much going on in all our lives that stopping to check www.lai.org often doesn't get done. I wonder if KeyNotes was printed out locally and copies available when members come to events, if this would develop some interest in LAI news. The chapters can help by providing information your scribe with information on your speakers, the way you do things so they model interesting activities triggering ideas for others. Simple things like how to place press releases, topics that will attract media attention, how you recruit new members, how many people do you invite in each year, what they know about LAI so they can reach out to others, etc.

Part of the difficulty in LAI outreach and "shinning its light" may be the mistaken concept that it is the same as the Urban Land Institute. When I first heard of LAI, and after I was informed that wasn't a secret society that was my first question. What's the difference? At that time I belonged to ULI but I quickly came to appreciate the differences in LAI. The ULI scale of everything it does, from training to conferences is huge and it's hard to find the opportunity to delve into some of the everyday nitty gritty local real state issues. The LAI membership was a wealth of diverse professions, including everyone who touched a development from the gleam in a developer's eye to the ribbon cutting completion ceremony. These were all represented in my chapter. This included title company representatives, bankers, developers, public land use staff, builders and so on, all came to lunch and one could chat with them or hear a topic that touched on some local development issue that addressed something I was working on. Not to knock ULI in any way, it is a great organization but simply serves a different purpose.

So we need to be ready with the answer when someone says "what's LAI" And as time goes on, by working together, the LAI chapters will become well known and the question becomes "how can I get an invitation to become a LAI member" In the next few months the Publication/Communication Committee will be working to see how telling the value of LAI can be easier.

Hope to see you in Ireland, this Land Economics Weekend promises to provide many insights into this swiftly developing country.