Thoughts on Equity and Dramatic Change

After being treated to a tour of Cleveland’s neighborhoods, conference participants will return to the Hyatt for a conference opener from Randall McShepard, the Co-Founder and Chairman of PolicyBridge.  Clevelanders will recognize Mr. McShepard from his myriad roles in the community, and it’s from his perspective as a fierce advocate for better public education, better community engagement in governmental decisions, and better urban policy that he has been asked to set the tone for the conference.  Specifically, he will talk about the urgent decisions that our cities are making today, and how they can be better informed by a perspective of creating equity, of preparing to share the hoped-for benefits of our revitalization with all the city’s residents.

You can check out recent PolicyBridge reports (including the most recent “Building a Better Bridge” brief, which might give some hint into what we can expect at the conference) here, and read his bio after the jump.

Session on Racial Dialogue in the Green Economy

A troubled history of segregation and racial inequity still underlies many of the challenges our cities face, and honest dialogue about these issues must inform the solutions we implement.  With that in mind, Pittsburghers Fred Brown of the Kingsley Association and Pat Clark of Jackson/Clark Partners have prepared a session for the conference on the racial reconciliation process they’ve developed to aide the revitalization of a community in their city:

The Larimer neighborhood of Pittsburgh has some of the highest levels of vacant land and abandoned property in the city.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Larimer is also home to a challenged resident population, including high percentages of single women-headed households and former prisoners.

Book Your Hotel Room

The 3rd Annual GLUE conference is being held primarily at the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at the Arcade.  The very minute you receive an email confirming your registration, please book your room at the special reduced rate of $105.00.  If you’ve already received a confirmation email, and are traveling from outside of Cleveland, please click here to reserve a hotel room.

Advocacy Strategies Session Announced

As we start to round out the conference programming, we’ll be posting periodically about the speakers and session who will be guiding us through our three days in Cleveland.

GLUE will be pleased to announce that Laura Englehart, Special Projects Coordinator from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown‘s office, and Alaina Gilchrist of the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, will be giving an unusual joint presentation on Issues-Based Advocacy at the Urban Labs Conference.  They’ll use the (still evolving) story of the Community Regeneration, Sustainability, and Innovation Act–of which Sen. Brown is a sponsor and around which MVOC has been a leading organizer and supporter–to discuss using advocacy for the passage of a specific piece of legislation.  This narrative will cover building support at the grassroots level and through coalitions, how to approach and build partnerships with your elected officials around an idea or bill, and how to help your Congressmen and women leverage your support for greater support in D.C.  GLUE believes that having these representatives of two different pieces in the legislative puzzle presenting together will allow us all a glimpse into how policy change really happens.

Registration Update

Just two weeks after registration opened, we have a total of 39 participants, representing nine different cities!  The registrations show that we are once again going to have an amazing crowd of thinkers and do-ers in a range of sectors: artists, writers, sustainability mavens, urban planners, and policy wonks will all be present and accounted for.  If you haven’t yet, don’t risk losing your seat: register now!

Registration is Open!

The race is on!  The Urban Laboratories Conference is limited to 100 participants, and we want YOU.  Registration is now open, so please register soon to ensure you have a spot.  We can’t wait to see some familiar GLUE faces and meet a whole new crop of GLUEsters.  Let the idea-sharing begin.

Why Cleveland?

Because of people like this.

Why Urban Laboratories?

The theme of this year’s conference, “Great Lakes Cities: Urban Laboratories,” was chosen to reflect members’ interest in demonstrating that the cities of the Rust Belt have become ground zero for rethinking what cities can be.  The vacant land of our cities has become room for new types of urban farms, the neighborhood associations venues for real advocacy, the building stock are places to experiment with creative reuse, and the small businesses a sea change in economic development.  In Great Lakes cities, people are committed to a new urban vision of equity and sustainability, and GLUE’s members want to share in the experiments of that new vision.

Save the Date

Now that GLUE is almost three years old, we’re starting to feel like a precocious toddler: always asking questions, crawling around exploring things, and providing family a reason to get together and watch us get cake on our face.  Only in this case, “family” refers to the mega-regional family of thinkers and do-ers who are changing our Great Lakes cities, and “watch us get cake on our face” means, “share ideas and best practices for reinventing our Rust Belt homes.”  Make sense?

It will, at GLUE’s 3rd annual conference, which will be held this July 15 through July 17, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Save the date, and look for more information in the coming days.