Project will plot future growth of Southern Maryland

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

This three-county regional event, which starts at 1:30 p.m. June 15, will feature a keynote address by The Washington Post’s Roger K. Lewis. Since 1984, his award-winning column on architecture and urban design, ‘‘Shaping the City,” has appeared weekly and biweekly in the Post.

He is a practicing architect and a professor of architecture at the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, which he helped to start.

His numerous articles on architecture, planning and urban design, historic preservation, housing, zoning and public policy affecting the built environment appear regularly in national journals, periodicals, anthologies and encyclopedias.

His ‘‘Shaping the City” cartoons, in addition to appearing in books and other regional and national publications, have been the subject of several exhibitions, including one at The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

The afternoon sessions, to be held at the Somerset Gymnasium Athletic Arena at St. Mary’s College in St. Mary’s City, will focus on the implications of growth and the implementation of a common vision.

The event will also include a report on the results of an invitation-only growth-visioning exercise to be held earlier that morning.

A total of 160 individuals — including elected officials, government staff and community, civic and business leaders from throughout Southern Maryland — will participate in that exercise, using blocks to represent the increment of new homes and jobs projected to come to the three-county region by 2030.

Invitees from across Southern Maryland were selected by the Southern Maryland Reality Check Plus organizing committee to represent all interests throughout Charles, St. Mary’s and Calvert counties.

The cost of attending the public afternoon sessions is $15 per person.

Interested attendees can register by calling 800-321-5011.

Alternatively, registration is available via fax or mail; go to www.realitycheckmaryland.org⁄southern_region.php (see the ‘‘Event Information” page) for more detailed instructions.

The fee will be waived for individuals for whom cost prevents their attendance. Call 410-889-4112 for more information.

The event is one of four regional Reality Check Plus exercises that will take place in May and June on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland, Central Maryland (Baltimore⁄Washington Corridor) and Southern Maryland.

The results from each regional event will provide the basis for a statewide vision for growth, and a subsequent report will compare this vision with existing development trends and identify the implications of current patterns of development.

Led statewide by the Urban Land Institute’s Baltimore District Council, the University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, and 1000 Friends of Maryland, Reality Check Plus will bring together a diverse group of organizations and various stakeholders, including politicians, developers, environmentalists, and business and civic leaders to consider Maryland’s future growth.

A coalition of more than 100 sponsors and supporting organizations is guiding this effort, including the Home Builders Association of Maryland, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, St. Mary’s College, Marrick Properties, the Maryland chapter of the American Planning Association, the Maryland Center for Agro-Ecology, the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Interfaith Housing Alliance, among others.

A number of other jurisdictions around the country have already launched local or regional visioning exercises — including the Salt Lake City region, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif., Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington, D.C.

What distinguishes Reality Check Plus from previous visioning exercises in Maryland is that it is privately led, statewide and action-oriented, according to a press release from the project’s organizers.