Join us to discuss the politics of highway removal at SPUR Oakland 6/13/17 6PM!
Since I-980 made the Congress for New Urbanism’s Freeways Without Futures List in January, ConnectOakland has been working with CNU to support highway removal advocates and advance the discussion of urban highways nationwide. We joined CNU for their 25th annual conference in Seattle to contribute a panel called A Future Without Urban Freeways. Now we are pleased to welcome CNU to Oakland for a multi-day series of sessions to develop material to help grassroots groups nationwide combat unjust, dangerous, and unsustainable urban highways. Please help us welcome CNU to the Town with a free event next Tuesday, June 13th at SPUR Oakland. The conversation will focus on the politics of highway removal and will feature:
Panelists:
John Norquist
John O. Norquist is the John M DeGrove Fellow at Florida Atlantic University, adjunct professor at the DePaul University Real Estate Program and an associate fellow of the R Street Institute.
John served as mayor of Milwaukee, Wis., from 1988 to 2004, a period during which the city experienced a decline in poverty and a boom in new downtown housing, and became a leading center of education and welfare reform. He oversaw a revision of the city’s zoning code and reoriented development around walkable streets and public amenities, such as the city’s 3.1-mile Riverwalk. He was named Public Official of the Year by Governing magazine and in 2008, received the Bacon Prize, named for visionary Philadelphia planner Ed Bacon. He also chaired the National League of Cities Task Force on Federal Policy and Family Poverty and served on the Amtrak Reform Council.
He is president emeritus of the Congress for the New Urbanism, where he served as president and CEO from 2004 to 2014. At CNU, he championed plans to replace freeways with boulevards and led the Live/Work/Walk initiative which looks to remove federal housing finance rules that serve as obstacles to development of more mixed use urban projects. John is also the author of The Wealth of Cities, and has taught courses in urban policy and planning at the University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and at Marquette University.
Ian Lockwood
Ian Lockwood, P.E. is a recognized national leader in sustainable transportation policy and urban design. As a former partner in the Orlando-based Glatting Jackson (which later became AECOM), Ian led a wide variety of transportation projects aimed at making communities more walkable, bikable and transit-friendly. He also served as the City Transportation Planner for the City of West Palm Beach, where he transformed state arterial roads, local roads, and the City’s approach to parking to help the city overcome its blighted condition and evolve into an economically and socially successful city. Ian’s current work includes walkability projects, restoring one-way streets to two-way, taming arterials, shared spaces, policy reform, and designing main streets, campuses, and downtowns. Ian has guest lectured at several universities and is occasionally interviewed on National Public Radio. In 2011, Ian was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University during which he studied the links between transportation, land use, and successful outcomes for communities at all scales. For fun, Ian enjoys photography, cartooning, and road cycling.
Matt Nichols
Matt Nichols was selected by Mayor Libby Schaaf to serves as the Oakland Mayor’s Office’s first-ever Policy Director for Infrastructure & Transportation. For two decades, Matt has been a leader in sustainable transportation policies and projects implementation in the Bay Area and has a proven track record in major fundraising, Safe Routes to Schools, transit oriented development, disability access, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, transit pass programs and innovative parking management. He served as Principal Transportation Planner for the City of Berkeley for 13 years and as the Sustainable Transportation Program Director for the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign in the U.S.
He served on the Board of Directors of Urban Ecology and City CarShare. Matt earned a Masters in Urban Planning from UCLA, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and African Studies from UCLA. Matt is deeply committed to integrating social, economic and environmental goals into public policy, and has worked on numerous transportation justice projects. A native of Sacramento, California, Matt does not own a car and lives with his wife and two teenage sons in south Berkeley at the corner of two Bicycle Boulevards, four AC Transit lines and a BART Station.
SPUR Oakland is located at
1544 Broadway
Oakland, CA 94612
The panel will start at 6PM on 6/13/17. See you there!