Beneath the Bright Lights, But Not Talking Energy

Are planners thinking about how their cities will adapt in the face of energy uncertainty? Author Daniel Lerch, who attended the APA conference to host a presentation on peak oil, surveyed the landscape of awareness. His results were "Disappointing, to be sure. Indeed, the whole conference was somewhat discouraging to me: a massive missed opportunity to address sustainable community planning in this most unsustainable of cities."

The bright side is that there seemed to be increased interest in considering this part of the future. Maybe the 2008 conference in Las Vegas will be seen as a last hurrah before the profession buckled down to the less glamorous task of planning within resource constraints.