Kaid
Benfield, Special Counsel for Urban Solutions at the Natural Resources Defense
Council in Washington, D.C. , and
author of People Habitat (Island Press, January 6 2014) , will be the
featured speaker at the Albany Roundtable’s Annual Meeting on Wednesday, June
11, 2014.
The event is open to the public, and will be held at the National
Register-listed University Club of
Albany, 141 Washington Avenue at Dove Street. The meeting will take place from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m., and will feature a
social hour with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, a short update on the Albany
Roundtable Civic Luncheon Series, the presentation of the Good Patroon Award,
the presentation of the Albany Roundtable Scholarship, and a talk and book
signing by the Visiting Speaker. Tickets
are $35 and may be purchased online .
Corporate sponsors for the event are: the Capital District
Transportation Committee, the Center for Economic Growth, and the
Capital District Regional Planning Commission, with additional support from
Empire State Future. The
Capital District Transportation
Authority is providing advertising partnership.
Benfield is also an adjunct professor at the
George Washington University School of Law; co-founder, LEED for Neighborhood
Development rating system; co-founder, Smart Growth America coalition; author
of several books on smart growth and sprawl, and a regular contributor to the
websites The Atlantic Cities, the Sustainable Cities Collective, and NRDC’s
Switchboard. He was selected as one of the world’s “top urban thinkers” on the
city planning website Planetizen and one of “the most influential people in
sustainable planning and development” by the Partnership for Sustainable
Communities.
According to Hon. John O. Norquist, President, Congress for the New
Urbanism; mayor of Milwaukee, 1988-2004; author, The Wealth of Cities, and 2012 Roundtable Visiting Speaker, “Kaid Benfield, an environmentalist who loves cities,
exposes the phoniness of claiming ‘green’ status for buildings that can only be
reached by car. If you love cities, you'll love Kaid's book.”
At the evening reception, the Albany Roundtable will present
its Good Patroon Award to Hon. John J. McEneny for his career in public service including nearly 2 decades in the New
York State Assembly, his work as Historian of Albany County and his continued
commitment to community leadership. The Good Patroon Award was
established by the Albany Roundtable in 1988 to recognize outstanding
contributions to the community by institutions and individuals.
The Albany Roundtable will also present a $1,000 scholarship to
Cara Waterson, a senior at Albany High School, for
demonstrated civic leadership.
“The Albany Roundtable has embraced the
concepts of smart growth, New Urbanism and sustainability since it was founded
in 1979,” said Chris Hawver, president of the all-volunteer 501c3 corporation. “We
are fortunate to have the ability to see the juxtaposition of two different
environmental systems in the city of Albany: the
3,200-acre Albany Pine Bush Preserve on the western fringe of the city and the
People Habitat elsewhere. In People Habitat, Kaid Benfield notes that
like the natural environment, the ‘built environment created by us humans
should achieve harmony among its various parts and with the larger world upon
which it depends.’ We’re looking forward to hearing about steps we can take to
achieve this balance.”
The Albany
Roundtable’s previous Visiting Speakers have included Jeff Speck (Walkable City); John Norquist (CEO,
Congress for the New Urbanism); Janet Flammang (The Taste for Civilization); Colin Beavan (No Impact Man), Jaime Correa (planner, architect and professor at
the University of Miami); Stan Eckstut (NYC architect, Battery City Project);
Tony Hiss (Project for Public Spaces); Robert McNulty (Partners for
Livable Places); Paul Pritchard (National Parks and Conservation Association);
Richard Bradley (proponent of Downtown business districts); Ray Oldenburg (The Great Good Place); James Howard
Kunstler (author and new urbanist); Jane Holtz Kay (architecture critic,
author of Asphalt Nation); Joseph
P. Riley (Mayor, Charleston, South Carolina); Richard Reinhart (Buffalo
Place); and others.
Tickets for the reception must be purchased by Friday, June 6. For more information, visit www.albanyroundtable.com, email albanyroundtable@yahoo.com or
call The University Club at 518-463-1151.
