A MONTHLY BULLETIN FROM APA FLORIDA

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APRIL 28, 2010

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GUIDE TO FEDERAL PROGRAMS FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
If you attended the APA Conference in New Orleans, you heard a lot about the new DOT/HUD/EPA/ Partnership for Sustainable Communities.  These three agencies have pledged to ensure that housing and transportation goals are met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change.  As part of this effort, they recently released Leveraging the Partnership: DOT, HUD and EPA Programs for Sustainable Communities.  This guide to Federal programs is intended to help communities identify resources available to support their efforts to promote livable and sustainable communities.  You can download the guide at  
http://www.epa.gov/dced/pdf/partnership/2010_04_leveraging_the_partnership.pdf .

REGISTRATION REQUIRED TO APPLY FOR HUD SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES PLANNING GRANTS
If your community is interested in applying to HUD's Sustainable Communities Planning Grants Program, you must notify HUD  no later than May 14, 2010 of your intention to apply.  To do so,  call the HUD NOFA Information Center at 1-800-HUD-8929.  The NOFA Information Center will ask for your organization name and address, contact name, email, and telephone number, including area code.  For more information, go to http://www.hud.gov/offices/adm/grants/nofa10/sustaincomm.cfm .

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FTA UNVEILS NEW TRANSIT-ORIENTED ACTION GUIDE
The Federal Transit Administration has unveiled a new Mixed-Income Transit-Oriented Development (MITOD) Action Guide created by the Center for Transit-Oriented Development. The guide comes in the form of a website and can be accessed at www.fta.dot.gov/livability/mitod or directly at mitod.org.  The guide's multi-step process leads users through an analytical framework that assists them in identifying current issues, key opportunities, and appropriate strategies that could be addressed in regular planning processes or specific station area plans.  The goal  is to help practitioners identify the most appropriate and effective planning tools for achieving MITOD in their transit station area, and ultimately to facilitate the development of mixed-income communities.

WALKABLE URBAN THROUGHFARES: A CONTEXT SENSITIVE APPROACH
A new guide for walkable urban thoroughfares jointly created by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) was published this month as an official ITE Recommended Practice.  Titled Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach,  the manual provides welcome relief from conventional design guidelines that prescribe wider lanes and faster speeds to move more automobile traffic, with almost no regard for the environment created for pedestrians or the ability of the street to support sidewalk commerce such as sidewalk cafes and storefront businesses. As a recommended practice, it now carries the weight of ITE approval and can be used to find flexibility to create more context-sensitive streets within the parameters set by manuals such as the ''green book'' from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Engineers. City officials, planners, advocates and others who want to use the manual to make their streets more pedestrian- and business-friendly can download it at http://www.ite.org/emodules/scriptcontent/Orders/ProductDetail.cfm?pc=RP-036A-E .  A hard copy of the manual can also be purchased from the ITE website.   

A TRANSIT-ORIENTED FUTURE FOR CONNECTICUT'S CAPITAL REGION
If the metro Hartford region's 29 towns follow current laws and build 80 percent of their housing as single-family homes away from bus or rail, transportation emissions could climb 22 percent by 2020. If they instead turn to transit-oriented-development in key corridors, emissions would rise just 11 percent. By focusing growth near present and proposed transit - the latter including the New Britain-Hartford Busway and New Haven-Hartford-Springfield commuter rail, says the tri-state (CT, NJ, NY) Regional Plan Association (RPA) in a new report, the region would also meet the increasingly evident demographic demand. Over the next few decades, the region will see about 30,000 additional households with occupants at least 55 years of age, while the number of younger households will decline by some 11,000.   Read the report at http://www.rpa.org/pdf/20100317-RPA-Report-Growing-Economy.pdf .

HOW TO DESIGN COMMUNITIES TO SUPPORT GOOD HEALTH 
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), created with input from ASLA, illustrates the importance of considering public-health factors, such as physical activity, respiratory and mental health, water quality, social equity, healthy aging, and social capital, when creating the built environment.   The report is the latest product of CDC's Healthy Community Design Initiative, aimed at combating soaring rates of asthma, diabetes, and obesity by improving the way communities are designed.  The report includes case studies that illustrate best practices in healthy community design, and it recommends action steps to advance healthy community design principles.  You can download the report at http://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/publications/CDCExpertWorkshopReport_FINAL.pdf .

CLIMATE CHANGE INDICATORS IN THE UNITED STATES
EPA's Climate Change Indicators in the United States report will help readers interpret a set of important indicators to better understand climate change. The report presents 24 indicators, each describing trends related to the causes and effects of climate change. It focuses primarily on the United States, but in some cases global trends are presented to provide context or a basis for comparison.  Examples of climate change indicators include temperature, precipitation, sea level, and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. 
EPA will use these indicators to collect data and generate analyses to monitor the effects/impacts of climate change in the United States, assist decision-makers on how to best use policymaking and program resources to respond to climate change, and assist EPA and its constituents in evaluating the success of their climate change efforts.  Download the report at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators.html .

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 NEW WEB PORTAL TO HELP RENEWABLE -ENERGY RESEACHERS SHARE KNOWLEDGE
 A team of Florida State University information experts has built a new Web portal that could modernize how researchers in the increasingly important field of sustainable energy share their work. The new Renewable Energy Research Portal will also serve as a model for a state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure offering a more sophisticated way to use the Internet to efficiently seek out and disseminate scientific research. Featuring searchable databases of researchers, projects, articles and events, it helps people find and share specific information quickly.  To look at the website, go to http://energyportal.cci.fsu.edu/index.html .

NEW VIDEO ON AMENDMENT 4
Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy (the "Vote NO on Amendment 4" campaign) last week released a second web-video focusing on St. Pete Beach, the small Florida town that adopted a local version of Amendment 4 in 2006 to disastrous consequences. The first web video was released on March 10, 2010. If you are interested in viewing either of these videos, go to www.florida2010.org.

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April 29, 2010.  The FPZA Central Florida Chapter and AECOM will host the Regional Transit Forum 2010 in Orlando.  Contact Tara Lyons at tara.lyons@aecom.com or 407-843-6552 for details.

May 3-5, 2010.  The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will host regional workshops on Opportunities for Local Governments in Imperiled Species Conservation in Bartow, Naples and Stuart.  Contact Tera Meeks at Tera.Meeks@MyFWC.com or call 850-410-0656 x17326 for details.

May 6, 2010.  The Florida Bar City County and Local Government Law Section will host a Land Use Seminar in St. Pete Beach.  Go to
http://www.floridabar.org/FBWEB/CLEReg.nsf/0/13EB51749AFD0A05852576CC00487A14?OpenDocument for details.

May 11, 2010.  The Florida Bicycle Association will hold its 2010 ProBike/ProWalk Conference in Lakeland. Watch www.floridabicycle.org for upcoming details. 

May 23 - 28, 2010.  The 24th Annual Governor's Hurricane Conference will be held in Fort Lauderdale. More than 30 hours of AICP CM credit are pending.  Go to http://flghc.org/ for details and registration.

June 9-12, 2010.    The Annual FPZA Conference will be held in Sarasota.  More than 16 AICP CM credits are pending.  Go to http://fpza.org/main/page_conference.html for details and registration.

June 22-23, 2010.  DCA will hold its annual Growth Management Implementation Workshop in Lake Buena Vista. Go to http://www.cmc-associates.com/2010-growth.html for details and registration.

June 23, 2010.  The Responsible Hospitality Institute's Sociable City Forum will be held at the Rosen College of Hospitality Management in Orlando.  The forum is a unique one day event for state and local leaders to share strategies on how to plan, manage and police hospitality zones in downtown districts.  Details and registration can be found at http://www.rhievents.org/forum/FL/index.html

July 21-23, 2010.  The Florida Chamber will hold the 24th Annual Environmental Permitting Summer School in Marco Island.  Go to http://www.floridaenet.com/ for more information.

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