OPENING SESSION
Panel discussion with several Mentimeter live polling questions to engage audience members. Twenty minutes of panelist presentations, followed by 25 minutes of facilitated discussion and 15 minutes of Q&A.
Equity and Climate Justice: Site Design and Planning Perspectives from Three N.C. Communities
How can we ensure that "equity" and "climate justice" are more than buzzwords in our design and planning work? In this session, a panel of practitioners and project teams will reflect on previous and ongoing work that centers equity and climate justice as driving principles. Panelists will share lessons learned and strategies for community relationships, professional collaborations, planning methodologies, and design and engagement approaches. The session will focus on site design, capacity-building, and park system planning projects from Raleigh, Kinston, and Asheville. Across these diverse communities and project types, landscape architects led processes that allowed communities to build their own vocabulary around equity and climate justice--and to drive how those principles were reflected in the final design or plan.
Panelists will reflect on best practices and lessons learned around topics including spatial equity, community engagement, anti-displacement strategies, design and public health, universal design, implementation and capacity-building strategies, and data-driven design and planning.
Brenna Laffey
Brenna’s experience and interests translate across multiple scales of intervention, from large-scale systems thinking, to placemaking and crafting thoughtful details. She believes that design at any scale can be a powerful medium in addressing complex issues and advocates for equitable, meaningful, and sustainable solutions for resilient communities. Brenna is experienced in project management, geospatial analysis, community engagement, and graphic communication. Brenna has experience as project manager for projects ranging from system-wide planning projects to site level design and documentation. Brenna is the project manager and consultant on the Asheville’s Parks and Recreation plan update with a focus on equity and justice.
Peter Wall
Peter is responsible for the oversight of the department's park management & design practices. Peter is a licensed landscape architect with over 20 years of experience in park planning and design, university campus development, and resort community planning and design. This expertise has been provided for clients that include a wide spectrum of municipal and county agencies, non-profits, community and neighborhood groups, and private sector development firms. He specializes in improving the public realm in Asheville with an emphasis on the relationship between places and the experiences people desire.
Anne Phillips. PhD
Anne leverages her background as a historian and professional planning experience to champion equitable approaches to transportation planning, public policy, and program management. In 2022, Anne founded Just Cities Collective, a consulting firm that specializes in fostering equitable practices in transportation planning. Before founding Just Cities Collective, Anne worked as a transportation planner for the City of Durham and the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization where she leveraged federal funds, developed policies, and designed engagement strategies to create a more equitable transportation system for the Triangle region. Anne was a 2022 National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) Transportation Justice Fellow.
Lindsey Naylor
Lindsey oversees design and planning projects at multiple scales, with a particular interest in public and community-driven projects that are rooted in place and authentic to local mores. Lindsey's interests include harnessing diverse and creative data inputs to drive equitable systems planning; communication and engagement techniques that demonstrably translate public input into design and planning proposals; the use of archival research and memories in cultural landscape preservation and site design; and the power of place attachment and community-building in resilience planning.
Emily McCoy
As a Principal Landscape Architect, Emily’s technical expertise and experience on complex projects allow her to be a valuable asset for project teams who are collaborating to create responsive, authentic, and inspiring places for people. With over 17 years of experience in the field, her joy and passion for working with teams and communities to create socially, economically, and environmentally high-performance landscapes are reflected in such award-winning projects as the US Coast Guard Headquarters, Washington, DC; Shield Ranch, Austin, Texas; Bartam’s Mile, Philadelphia, PA; and Shoemaker Green, Philadelphia, PA.