County sustainability series expands on infrastructure, takes aim at finances

The Hamilton County Planning Partnership held the second installment of its four-seminar series, Sustainable Hamilton County this November, at the offices of process management consulting firm TechSolve. The focus of this second event, “Trends that are Changing our Communities,” built off the series’ first seminar, “The Built Environment: Retrofitting Cities, Communities and Neighborhoods.””It is important to acknowledge that ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ or any other variation of the term is used so indiscriminately that it has lost meaning,” says Catalina Landivar, senior planner at the Planning Partnership. “We are talking about reinventing our communities, reaching a balance, using our resources in an efficient way and providing and maintaining a[n excellent] quality of life for all residents.”The Nov. 19 event featured presentations by experts in housing trends, the relationship between the physical environment and public health, and panel discussions on the relationship between these topics and infrastructure that supports multiple modes of transportation. Attendee Mike Lemon said he appreciated the seminars’ proactive approach to redefining the community. “We can’t be “waiting for superman” to fix our problems,” he said. “[We] need to reverse the trend of ‘designing out’ healthy lifestyles.”The third seminar in the four-part Sustainable Hamilton County series is scheduled for Jan. 21 at the University of Cincinnati’s Tangeman University Center. Its focal theme, “Fiscal Sustainability and Quality of Life in our Communities,” will expand even further the concept of sustainable planning in the Greater Cincinnati area, says Landivar.”All those topics center on people,” she says. “Putting it in other words, what do we want our communities to look like? What are trends telling us about our own situation and what can we do about it? How can we pay for the type of community we want?”The Jan. 21 seminar will be followed by a final session, “Sustainable Hamilton County: We Can Do It!” which is scheduled to take place March 11 at Xavier University. For more information on the Sustainable Hamilton County seminar series, visit the Hamilton County Planning Partnership’s website.  Writer: Matt Cunningham