WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS TRAINING SESSION

• How to design and lead a "bottom-up" comprehensive planning process for transforming a municipal government and its larger community to become an ‘eco-municipality' – a sustainable community led by APA's sustainability objectives which are practiced throughout the government and larger community.
• How to engage and involve the entire community – citizens, businesses, institutions, municipal departments and agencies – in defining a guiding vision and implementing actions to move toward sustainable practices.
• How to develop a comprehensive plan, master plan, or general plan that guides a community or region toward sustainability.
• How to bring key municipal tools, such as master plans, land use regulations, capital improvements planning, and municipal budgeting into alignment with sustainability objectives.
• An in-depth understanding of what sustainability means both at the global and local community level.
• An in-depth examination what it means to satisfy human and community needs within a sustainability context.
• How to present and communicate sustainability ideas and concepts to a variety of different audiences, plus tools and materials to accomplish this.

[20 AICP CM credits will be available].

Faculty: Sarah James & Torbjörn Lahti, planners and Co-Directors of the Institute for Eco-municipality Education & Assistance (IEMEA), and co-authors of The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities & Towns Can Change to Sustainable Practices (New Society Publishers, 2004, winner of the 2005 Planetizen Top Ten Book Award. Torbjörn Lahti is the founder of the Swedish eco-municipality movement, and he and Sarah James are co-founders of the U.S. eco-municipality movement. Between them, they have worked with over 150 municipalities in Sweden and the United States. Sarah James was also a co-author of APA's Planning for Sustainability Policy Guide and a member of the APA Sustainability Interest Group Coordinating Committee.
Ralph Willmer, AICP, Senior Planner for Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc.'s Planning Division and former Board member of the American Planning Association. One of his master plan projects recently won a Distinguished Project Award, and Ralph was recently inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

For more information and registration form, go to www.instituteforecomunicipalities.org/Events.html.
Program questions: email Sarah James at [email protected]
More about IEMEA: www.instituteforecomunicipalities.org