Reason Las Vegas!
Reason knows how to throw an urban policy conference.
The Dynamic Cities Conference is November 4-6 at the Mirage in Las Vegas, and it will feature convention center expert Heywood Sanders, urban critic Joel Kotkin, Logan Darrow Clements, who's behind the plan to protest Kelo v. New London by condemning Justice Souter's home and turning it into the Lost Liberty Hotel, columnist Christopher Hitchens, X Prize winner Burt Rutan, and a dozen or so editors, writers, and scholars from the Reason Foundation and Reason, the magazine. Comedian Drew Carey will speak at the opening reception.
The Reason Foundation is a libertarian think-tank, and the conference program begins with the question, "How do policies based on freedom and choice make a city great?" Here are some of the topics on the agenda:
- Misguided Megaprojects: Drawing lessons from downtown revitalization efforts, sports stadiums, and convention centers
- Command and Control. What happens when urban planners and meddlers ignore what people want and stifle innovation?
- Trains, Buses, and Automobiles: Are governments offering transit to accommodate people’s choices or control them?
- The City: The evolution of cities and meaning of urban life
- The Evolution and Economics of Gaming in Las Vegas…and throughout America
- Kelo Backlash: Public and political reaction to a devastating Supreme Court decision on property rights
- What can Las Vegas teach liberals and conservatives who fear and loathe it?
- Prague’s Dazzling Diversity: How Europe’s urban jewel is threatened most by its “protectors.”
- Rescuing Failed Urban Schools
It looks like it will be a terrific conference, full of ideas that need to make their way back to Tulsa. But, of course, that can only happen if someone goes out there from Tulsa to cover it. Between registration, hotel, and airfare, it would cost about $1,000 to go.
On a completely unrelated note, I just realized that when I reorganized my template a couple of weeks ago, I neglected to include the PayPal donation button, which looks like this:
It's up again as one of two ways -- advertising through BlogAds is another -- to support hosting and research expenses for this site.
Subscribe to this blog's feed:
This conference agenda looks as though it were written specifically for Tulsans.
It's almost as though our leaders have used these outlines, in a negative way, as a guide on how to sap the citizens.
I would donate $50 for a fund for you to attend.
Thanks, Jan! I'll take that as a pledge, and if other folks want to make pledges toward the trip, I'll keep a tally of pledges and PayPal donations, and let everyone know when the $1,000 is reached.
I didn't know that Woody was a "convention center expert". I recall getting a great tour of San Antonio's wacky civic creations from him back in the late 1980s when he was at Trinity. But I lost track of him as I gained gray over the last fifteen years. I'll have to read his report, even though I doubt that Valpo will build a convention center any time soon.