Midwest Summit on the Sustainable Redevelopment of Brownfields

Emulating Natural Systems
Jim Patchett, Conservation Design Forum

Designing Sustainable Human Environments
Doug Farr, Farr Associates

Sustainability Plenary: The State of the Practice
Interactive plenary to generate a quick snapshot of the level of knowledge of sustainability principles and practices, the current level of sustainable practice in brownfield projects, and the perceived barriers to implementing sustainable practices.
Questions:

1. What do you (we) know about sustainability?
2. What sustainable principles does your project currently incorporate?
3. What barriers to sustainable development do you perceive in your project?

Case Studies of Sustainable Brownfield Redevelopments In Process

IA. District:
IB. Corridor:
IC. Neighborhood:

Lunch speaker topic:

An urbanism framework for change

Afternoon Breakout - Sustainable Site Planning Principles
Sustainable site planning often adopts an integrated approach to design that strikes an optimal balance between competing uses for land. This is in contrast to an engineered approach that optimizes the response to one or two issues often ignoring other concerns entirely. In this session, participants will learn how to strike an optimal balance of key environmental criteria at different levels of development density.

Each speaker will address the following environmental criteria:
1. Pedestrian connectivity and mobility choice
2. Storm water quality and groundwater recharge
3. Energy consumption and production
4. Impervious ground cover and parking ratios
5. Urban heat island effects
6. Public lighting and night sky preservation

Hands-on Site Planning Workshop: Introductory PowerPoint
This session will offer three alternative planning sites: District, Corridor and Neighborhood. This session will introduce all three problems and illustrations of the deliverables that must be produced by the group by the end of the session.

This introductory session defines the problem(s) to be taken up in the charrette and the expectations about what is to be produced and by when by each of the charrette table groups.

Big Questions to be addressed
1. District: Deciding the future land uses in the district-
2. Corridor: Deciding the future land uses in the corridor
3. Neighborhood: How to heal the Neighborhood

Charrette begins, break into groups
In this session the participants will be organized into tables of 8 to 12 participants each assigned to a facilitator and one of the three project sites. It is expected that the following deliverables will be produced by 5pm:

Analytical - 30 minutes
1. Pedestrian zones and linkage analysis (barrier streets, public transit)
2. Storm water and drainage diagram
3. Characterization of adjacent land uses and assets

Design - 90 minutes
1. Propose site plans for Brownfields site
2. Propose street sections
3. Implementation champions and barriers

Note: coffee and light snacks available on demand

Hands-on Building Design Workshop: Introductory PowerPoint
This session will offer two alternative building design sites: Rehabilitation and New Construction. This introductory session will introduce discussion problems and illustrations of the deliverables that must be produced by the table groups by the end of the session.

Note: coffee and light snacks available on demand

Overcoming Barriers to Sustainable Development #3:
Making Project Champions
In this session, conference participants identify specific sustainable development strategies that they intend to adopt into their projects.

It is expected that this session will involve a lot of discussion about the barriers to implementing sustainable development practices.