Highlights:

• Welcoming luncheon with Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo (invited) and Presentation on the Blueprint Project by SACOG Executive Director Marty Tuttle.

• Mobile Workshop Friday afternoon of new downtown housing by John Dangberg, CADA, and a presentation by the Millennia Associates of the Railyards and tour of the Sacramento Terminal Central Shops.

• Foundation KeyNote dinner Friday evening. KeyNote speaker - Bob Smiley, professor and emeritus dean, Graduate School of Management, University of California at Davis on the Economics of the California Wine Industry. KeyNote speaker sponsored by LAI Land Economics Foundation.

• Napa Valley tour beginning Saturday afternoon featuring Copia – American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, a tour and wine tasting at the Regusci Winery, and before dinner we will have a wine and cheese reception followed by dinner at the acclaimed Ristorante Tra Vigne in St. Helena.

Read More about the weekend....

[Click Here] to register for the Sacramento-Napa Weekend Experience Online

or [Click Here] to register by mail

Larry Lund at Chautauqua, NY

The Sacramento Weekend Experience is quickly coming up, so it is time to register. The Sacramento Chapter has a great program including plenty of opportunity to sample the grapes in Napa Valley. The Hyatt Regency, our host hotel, is across from the Capital allowing for easy sightings of the Governor as well as providing an outstanding room rate for the Weekend event. Our special rate of $99 a night single or double is only good until October 25, so reserve now!

The accompany photo to this months article has me sitting on the veranda of the Athenaeum Hotel at the Chautauqua Institution. After visiting Richard T. Ely's birthplace in Fredonia, NY last month, we drove to Chautauqua, NY about thirty miles away.

Chautauqua has a very special place in the history of Ely. Not only did he find it a place to relax from his teaching at Johns Hopkins University, but as a place to write. Chautauqua, founded under a Methodist influence, it is now an ecumenical institution. It was founded in 1874 and by 1880 it gained a national reputation for the open discussion of political ideas, international relations, literature and science. Ely joined the Chautauqua in 1884 continuing for seven years. The Chautauqua Press was responsible for many of Ely's major works including Introduction to Political Economy, which was the top selling book nationally before Samuelson's book on economics that so many of us are more familiar.

During my brief visit, I had an opportunity to examine the Chautauqua archives and found several articles by Ely from early newspapers and I look forward to the opportunity of going back and spending more time, possibly taking classes and looking into the rich legacy that Ely left. I also want to take more time comparing the development of this very special place from a planning perspective. Across the lake from the Institution is another religious community designed by Frederic Law Olmsted -- Point Chautauqua. In today's vernacular I found these two contemporary communities a wonderful contrast between New Urbanism and Naturalism.

On the evening of November 17, the Chicago Ely Chapter continues to honor the spirit of open investigation of ideas fostered at Chautauqua by conducting one of their semi-annual "Chautauqua" events. This session will be on the economics of historic preservation.

One of the great pleasures for me of being a member of Lambda Alpha is getting to know people from different parts of the country. A few weeks ago a special housing conference brought Lambda Alpha members, Tara Clifford from Baltimore, Helen Sause - president of the Golden Gate San Francisco Chapter, and Elizabeth Morris from San Diego to Chicago. We were able to find some free time and talk about the Chicago's experiment in transforming public housing.

On October 20th, I will be the guest of the George Washington Chapter at their initiation banquet dinner where I look forward to sharing the spirit of Lambda Alpha with our new members.

I hope that the new members of the George Washington Chapter as well as all our members worldwide, take advantage of our Weekend Experiences and share the spirit of our organization to both learn and develop friendships that will help all of us create a better environment.

See you in Sacramento!

Editor's Column

As we approach the national elections, it is notable to remind ourselves that presidents rarely have a major impact on the state of the economy. Presidential terms fall within typical real estate cycles. Some presidents, like Reagan and Clinton, were blessed with rising economies while others like Sr. Bush and Carter were cursed by downturns of the cycle on their watch.

This election is no different than any others, except for one exception: The exception is that the economy is going through a severe structural change in its employment composition. During the last few years we have seen a remarkable "wringing out" of capitalistic excess in terms of spending on wages in America.

Outsourcing is a drop in the bucket compared to the efficiencies that have evolved in the economy and particularly the manufacturing sector in the past decade. Companies have invested heavily in new capital equipment and have also gradually developed changes in methodology that have allowed them to dramatically increase levels of production without increasing employment, or, even with fewer employees. Our productivity is rising and that is good, but it has meant hardships for wage earners.

Most of these hardships have hit hardest in the rustbelt, those states that once dominated the major labor-intensive industries. Those jobs have moved southward to union-free, warm weather states below the Mason-Dixon Line.

The president is not to blame because our jobs have not been bouncing back at a 2,000,000+ annual rate as they have after past recessions. Service and retail jobs are expanding as usual, but the once-heart of the economy - the manufacturing sector-is not bouncing back nor will it.

In the past five years, this nation has lost 2,900,000 manufacturing jobs. On a net gain basis, total wage and salary jobs have expanded by 2,042,000. In other words, we have gained almost 5,000,000 jobs in industries other than manufacturing. And that's good, but the odds of manufacturing regaining is 2,042,000 lost jobs is rather poor, to say the least.

For that reason, we can anticipate that no matter who is president that our economy will not bounce back to the good old recovery days. The only reasons why our economy is growing is that the construction industry continues to boom and our national population continues to grow. If it were not for those two factors, our economy would be in the doldrums indefinitely. May the best man win.