Sessions examined how politics and policies shaped communities in Montgomery County
SILVER SPRING, MD –The Montgomery County Planning Department, part of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, held its final 2014-2015 Winter Speakers Series event on March 11, concluding a well-attended sequence of evening presentations on influential planning practices.
“We are still grappling with issues of growth in the County,” says Planning Director Gwen Wright. “This series both traced the evolution of our policies affecting development and examined the challenges we still face in creating great urban, suburban and rural communities.”
Titled “A Once and Future County: Lessons On How Planning Politics Shaped Montgomery County,” the five-session series was hosted by Royce Hanson, former Chair of the County’s Planning Board. Topics reflected the subject of Hanson’s soon-to-be published book: Suburb: Planning Politics and the Public Interest in Montgomery County.
“Royce Hanson has helped us understand the forces that have influenced our community’s development,” says Casey Anderson, Chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board. “He has identified both the common themes and the changing elements of our land use politics, and I think this perspective will help us make better choices in the future.”
The first session of the Winter Speakers Series, “Planners, Politicians and How Montgomery County Got This Way,” was held on November 12, 2014. It focused on the County’s development from the end of the First World War to the present day, and examined the struggle for influence by developers and residents within the planning process.
The second session on December 10, 2014, titled “Retrofitting the Suburbs: From Friendship Heights to White Flint,” traced the evolution of strategic land use decisions in key areas of the County.
Session three on January 14, 2015, “Trials and Errors of Corridor Cities Planning,” discussed the planning politics and development in the Rockville-Gaithersburg area; the challenges of a new town in Germantown; and the problems associated with the planning and development of Clarksburg.
Session four on February 11, “Creating and Sustaining the County’s Agricultural Reserve,” traced the 30-year effort to protect the rural landscape of upper Montgomery County from development. It discussed the challenges that were overcome to establish the Agricultural Reserve in 1980 and sustain a working landscape against efforts to compromise its integrity.
On March 11, the final session, “Hunting the Snark: Growth Policy and the Public Interest,” evaluated the effects of the 40-year evolution of County growth policy on development patterns. It explained the institutional structure of planning in Montgomery County for effective and democratically accountable land use policy.
Each 90-minute event was held at the Planning Department headquarters (8787 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, Md.) and was free to the public. The sessions were streamed online and can be viewed at: montgomeryplanning.org/onceandfuture
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