Stevenson Munro, USM nursing major from Portland, is frustrated about the lack of public transportation in the city. “Portland is … just the right size, everything is mostly within walking distance. But the public transportation is so bad that you need to have a car.”
Munro spent two months in London and was amazed by the quality of public transport. “This is not about luxury, it is about quality of life. I am sick of traffic in this town and I am sick of seeing neighborhoods being destroyed for the parking spaces.”
The latest sustainability event titled “Using Sustainability as a Tool for Responsible Decision Making” tried to address issues like the one Munro raised.
“The goal of this conference,” explained Elizabeth Trice, who helped organize the event, “is to give information to the community about the basic concepts of sustainable development, how other communities have incorporated them into their planning process and how to apply these concepts in original context.”
During the day-long conference, speakers lectured on the complex relationships between land use, transportation, health, education and economic growth. Planning board members, city councilors, transportation professionals, planners, developers, and other leaders and professionals who affect land use were encouraged to attend the conference, but ordinary residents showed interest as well.
“I have recently bought a house and I am very interested in housing in general,” said Holly Elkins, artist and massage therapist from Kittery. “It is so difficult to buy a house nowadays, especially on coastal Maine, I would like to be on a planning board one day in order to more actively get involved in the development of my town, and this event is a wonderful chance for preparation.”
The conference took place on Thursday, April 8, in Luther Bonney Auditorium on the Portland Campus. It was sponsored by USM’s Convocation on Environmental Sustainability, the Muskie School of Public Service, and the City of Portland.
Introduction to Sustainable Development was made by Richard Barringer, a Research Professor at the Muskie School of Public Service and Director of the EPA/New England Environmental Finance Center followed by the keynote speech on “Strategies used by other Communities” by Mark B. Lapping, a professor of Public Policy and Management in the Muskie School of Public Service. Later, Bruce Hyman, a Senior Planner for Wilbur Smith Associates, an engineering and planning firm in Portland, talked about the current strategy to combine land use conditions with transportation funds.
“The public first needs to be educated in order to get active,” said Elkins, “and conferences like that is where you can get the right information.”
Nino Kemoklidze can be contacted at [email protected]