“Practical Planning” was this year’ theme for the seventh annual Planning Institute, hosted by the University’s department of Urban and Regional Planning. Planning practitioners, citizen planners and students attended the conference that ran from Wednesday, March 1, through Friday, March 3, at the Levis Faculty Center, said Pattsie Petrie, coordinator of the Professional Education and Outreach programs that sponsored the event.

“The institute is designed so it’s a neat, integrated balance of academics, cutting-edge issues and research,” Petrie said. “We integrate practitioners, citizen planners and integrate students who have done research. We had that balance this year.”

About 150-175 people were involved with the Institute, said Chris Silver, head of the department of Urban and Regional Planning. There were 90-paid registrants from Chicago and around the state, 30-35 presenters, and 30-40 students. Students put in volunteer time instead of paying the registration fee.

“From our standpoint it was very successful,” Silver said, “from both the number of the people who participated and the quality of the presentations.”

The conference kicked off last Wednesday evening with the opening lecture at Buell Hall Atrium, given by Gary Hack, the dean of University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. The featured speaker Thursday night was Michael Pyatok, a nationally known architect and professor of architecture at Arizona State University and University of Washington, Seattle, famous for his designs of affordable housing.

“It was excellent to have everyone exposed to that,” Petrie said.

Both Hack and Pyatok’s lectures were open to the public and drew a full crowd. Other featured speakers included Greg LeRoy, founder and director of Good Jobs First and author of “The Great American’s Job Scam,” and Macon Cowles, environmentalist attorney who worked on the Exxon case, and chair of the planning commission in Boulder, Colo. Part of Cowles’ talk was about a book club he established for his planning commission, that because of popularity, eventually expanded to the county of Boulder’s commission. Cowles left a 15-page book list for attendees of his lecture.

“The speakers were terribly exciting,” Petrie said. Besides featured lecturers, the Institute included various sessions on topics such as disaster planning, current practical planning issues, environmental issues and housing, according to the Institute’s Web site (http://www.urban.uiuc.edu/ce/).

The Illinois Waste Management and Resource Center presented “Green Schools, Green Communities, Biodiesel,” Thursday morning. This was the first time the center was involved with the conference and the session had a good turnout, said George Vander Velde, director of the center.

Velde, along with Tim Lindsey, manager of the Pollution Prevention Program, and Carol Knepp, education specialist, talked about programs the center is working on, such as their strategy in gaining acceptance of new technology for bettering the environment and greening schools.

“One of the emphases we had was on municipalities,” Velde said. “A large number of attendees were officials from municipalities. We focused on services we provide to municipalities in the area of pollution prevention.”

The presentation also discussed biodiesel, which is diesel fuel created from agricultural products, said Velde. Currently the center is examining waste greases and oils and working with material from food serving facilities on campus. They plan to take the waste grease and produce diesel fuel.

“It was a great experience and good opportunity for us to meet a number of folks we’ll have follow up conversations with,” Velde said. “That happened already so that was excellent.”

Two sessions that hit home at the University were “Pedestrian Sting Operation” and “Pedestrian Planning: From Audit to Action,” co-sponsored by the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District. These sessions discussed research from the Redman Police Department in West Virginia about designing pedestrian crossing intersections and the psychology of how to make people and drivers follow them, said Petrie. These sessions included a “walkabout” part where the participants, including people in wheelchairs and a blind person, walked the campus streets from every perspective.

“(They) learned a lot about what’s missing in design,” Petrie said.

Another exhibit the conference offered were demonstration trailers for universal designs from Iowa State University. The trailers were parked on Gregory Street next to the Levis Center so any one could stop by to tour the bathroom and kitchen setups.

“The point of the universal design is that anybody no matter what your physical abilities or challenges are, you can get to any part of a building,” Petrie said.

The trailers were part of the session called “Housing for Baby Boomers: Aging in Place,” which discussed ways to prevent baby boomers from having to rely on assisted living or nursing homes. The kitchen and bathroom designs had sinks with levers to lower or raise, toilets with leverage, lower cooking tops and cupboards for easy access, all to help people stay independent as they grow older.

“If we think through design and social policy, we can enable people to age in place,” Petrie said.

Sessions dealing with a variety of other topics were presented throughout the conference, with much help from students from the department of Urban and Regional Planning.

Donovan Finn, post doctorate student in Urban Planning, moderated two sessions by introducing presenters and coordinating question and answer sessions. He attended a few other sessions and also listened to Pyatok’s lecture.

“It’s a good way for people who weren’t familiar with (these topics) to see current work being done,” Finn said.

Silver didn’t see much change in the past conferences, except for the higher level of student involvement.

“There was a lot more (students) this year,” Silver said. “Students from other places on campus (as well). I see this as two days where students can really see what planning’s all about.”