America 2050

Baltimore, Maryland is the site of this year's Northeast Climate and Competitiveness Summit on Friday, February 29th at the historic Tremont Grand Hotel. The Summit brings together over 100 civic, business, and government leaders of the 12 Northeast states and District of Columbia to develop a shared action agenda for economic competitiveness, quality of life, and sustainability in the Northeast Megaregion.

This year's Summit will include keynote addresses by Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. The Summit is sponsored by Regional Plan Association and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and co-sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Committee, Select Greater Philadelphia, The Chesapeake Crescent Initiative and the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at University of Maryland.

Download the Agenda and Overview

Click here to read about last year's Summit, including presentation and summary notes.

Click here for directions to Tremont Grand Hotel

Regional Plan Association and the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program hosted a luncheon forum on February 20 in New York featuring former U.K. Department of Transport Official Oliver Jones (top left) to speak on transportation reform in the U.K. The luncheon was supported by the Surdna Foundation and JPMorgan Chase.

Jones led the team that wrote the Eddington Transport Study--an independent review for the British Government chaired by Sir Rod Eddington (former British Airways CEO), which made the case for tying transportation funding and decisions to economic performance objectives. The study led sweeping reforms to the Department of Transport in the U.K. and a reorganization of the Department of Transport from modally-focused departments (aka dept. of roads, rail, aviation, etc.) to objective-driven departments focusing on cities, intercity travel, and global trade, to name a few.

Oliver Jones' visit coincided with the release of the final report of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission recently and the start of discussions in the U.S. about the next surface transportation legislation at the expiration of the current bill at the end of FY 2009. Jones was joined in New York by panelists (2nd from left to far right): Richard Ravitch, principal of Ravitch Rice and Company, Astrid Glynn, Commissioner of New York State Department of Transportation, Frank McArdle, Commissioner on the National Policy and Revenue Study Commission, Emil Frankel, Director of Transportation Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and Robert Puentes, Fellow at Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

Download Oliver Jones' PowerPoint.