with Len Beyea, planner and engineer   (scroll down for Len’s bio)

4 Saturdays, 10:00 am – 12:15 pm    3/14, 4/11, 5/9 and 5/30

Aptos Public Library, 7695 Soquel Dr.

If you can’t make all the sessions, you can keep up by doing the reading.

The modern city has grown up during the era of the automobile, resulting in sprawling land use, paving over of up to 60% of urban space, loss of productive farm and range lands, forests, and wetlands, destruction of riparian habitats, and increased runoff and erosion; while within the urban spaces offering a lack of walkable neighborhoods and real centers of social and civic engagements, financially unsustainable infrastructure, traffic jams, and almost total dependence on private motorized transportation for shopping, school, work and basic services.

This workshop provides an overview of the current state of Santa Cruz County’s urbanized spaces and their unsustainable characteristics, introduces the principles of urban design for walkable neighborhoods and “new urbanism” that can bring our cities back into balance, gives participants an opportunity to visualize a transition to more sustainable and inviting spaces for various local neighborhoods where we live, work, and engage socially, and explores the concrete and specific changes that can help get us there.

Each session will include short readings to be completed before the following session and useful references.

Session 1: Where are we, how did we get here, and what’s possible for the future?

• Where are we?
• How did we get here?
• What makes cities work?
• What do you hate about where you live? What do you love?

Session 2: Fundamentals of Sustainable Cities

• What are the principles of New Urbanism?
• Benefits of the principles
• Real world examples of what works, and what doesn’t
• Envisioning transitions

Session 3: Applying the Principles to create Sustainable Urban Spaces

• Defining neighborhoods and defining urban centers
• Where do you see the most potential for change?
• Applying the principles – Using maps and data
• Presentations from small group exercises

Session 4: Implementation of the principles

• Policies that make cities more walkable and regenerative
• Policies that make town centers more vital and viable
• Applying the principles, part 2 – Using maps and data
• Presentations from small group exercises

Len Beyea, planner and engineer, earned a degree in Environmental Planning from UCSC in 1976, focusing on matching land use to carrying capacity, and secondarily on transportation and its relation to land use. Len spent over 30 years implementing sustainable building practices for commercial, institutional, and industrial facilities, primarily through retrofitting of existing buildings. He earned a variety of certifications in energy assessment, energy management, commissioning, high performance building design, and green buildings. He has been a presenter at 5 national conferences as well as several local professional organization meetings. He has maintained a continuous interest in land use planning and sustainability, and in the decision-making process in planning and design. He is trained as a facilitator for the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, has worked with community organizations, religious and interfaith groups, and prison inmates, and has a regular interview show on KSQD. He looks forward to discovering what workshop participants envision for Santa Cruz County.