A
workshop on the planning and design of small cities and towns will be held at
the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
“The
Built Environment: Planning and Design in Small Cities and Towns” will be held
Tuesday and Wednesday, April 15-16, at the Dreyfus University Center at
UW-Stevens Point. The free event is intended for city planners and officials,
architects, designers, transportation officials and interested citizens.
“The
workshop focuses on the planning and designing small cities and towns as viable
and sustainable places to live,” said Bob Wolensky, a professor emeritus of
sociology at UW-Stevens Point and a co-director of the Center for the Small
City at the university. "The conference is a continuation of the Center
for the Small City's emphasis on the social, civic and environmental
development of small communities."
Keynote
speaker Duane Thorbeck will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday. He is the founder and
director of the Center for Rural Design at the University of Minnesota. On
Wednesday, the featured speaker will be Thomas Fisher at 12:45 p.m. Fisher is a
professor of architecture and dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of
Design.
Six
panel sessions on Wednesday will include presentations by various speakers with
planning and design expertise. Former Stevens Point planner Bill Burke from
Lansing, Iowa, will examine the history of the downtown Stevens Point mall and
address new trends in downtown planning. Portage County Planning and Zoning
Director Jeff Schuler and Stevens Point Community Development Director Michael
Ostrowski will also speak.
The
workshop is co-sponsored by the Center for the Small City, Center of Land Use
Planning, Division of Interior Architecture, Department of Geography and
Geology, and the colleges of Letters and Science, Professional Studies and
Natural Resources at UW-Stevens Point.
A full
conference program is at www.uwsp.edu/cols-ap/smallcity.
For more information, contact Wolensky at rwolensky@uwsp.edu
or Professor Ed Miller at emiller@uwsp.edu.