Pam did a great job of transcribing her notes from last week's conference.
I attended many of the same presentations and concur with her notes. (I
was too busy fretting over my own presentation on Citizen Participation in
Resource Planning that I didn't take good notes.) I can add a few
observations.
There were about 100 people in attendance, mostly city and county planners
and elected officials from Idaho, Washington, Montana and Oregon. We had
Moscow City Councilmembers Pam Palmer and Linda Pall as well as Latah
County Assistant Planner Tom Shauer represent the local governments. I
didn't see any Whitman County or Pullman City representatives.
There were also a large number of University faculty members from the
planning, architecture, and rural sociology/economics fields. (I didn't
get the jokes that came up from time to time about this or that architect).
As Pam illuminated in her notes, the conference was a very inspiring one
for those of us interested in seeing a people-based planning process
perpetuated on the Palouse (sorry, I couldn't stop). It was fun. I
participated in a planning excercise with the Mayor of Hamilton, MT and
several planners in which we constructed a model town out of construction
paper. We started by identifying environmentally sensitive areas BEFORE
building any houses and zoning any industry (imagine that).
There was a bit of herding among us Moscovites interested in seeing
something come out of this for Moscow. I am planning on inviting the
Moscow participants to a meeting to discuss the *What Next* question once I
get the participant list from Wendy McClure. On that note, Linda Pall was
talking with Randall Arendt (author of Rural by Design) about the
possibility of a presentation visit to Moscow in the Fall. Other events
this fall on related topics include the Tale of Two Cities conference and
the PCEI Annual Meeting.
Tom Lamar