Agenda

Historic preservation is about more than saving old buildings. It is a way to strengthen neighborhoods, preserve community identity, and guide thoughtful growth. Join architect Carter Quina, architect Scott Sallis, and preservation contractor Nannette Chandler for a discussion on how communities can protect their historic character while planning for the future. Drawing on decades of experience, the panelists will explore the role of preservation policies, architectural review boards, community advocacy, and adaptive reuse in shaping resilient neighborhoods. Attendees will also hear about innovative, citizen-led efforts such as the Pensacola Preservation Guild, which aims to bring residents together to help save historic properties through shared investment and community action.

Small and mid-sized cities like Kevin Blanchard’s hometown of Lafayette often struggle to reinvest and rebuild older parts of town, like a Downtown. In Lafayette, they’ve had success over the decades when they lean into their unique culture; and they’ve fallen to pieces when they adopt the tactics and language of the current day, which has devolved into public planning by Facebook comments. Downtowns across the country struggled with the big, scary changes to their development patterns after World War II. They’ve all had to get better at persuading the larger community about what their downtowns need to thrive. They work out their differences face-to-face with a shared set of values and culture. They have had decades of good, healthy arguments. The world is changing again, and it’s easy to see how society is struggling to have the right conversations. Blanchard posits that Downtowns are a good place for communities to start having these tougher conversations, because they’ve got decades of practice.

What does it actually take to move a community from good intentions to lasting, systems-level change? In this session, you'll hear the story behind C.O.R.E. — Communities of Excellence and Resilience — what sets it apart from other approaches, and what it looks like in practice. Through real examples from communities already on the journey, you'll see what becomes possible when cross-sector leaders build shared direction, deepen community understanding, and put coordinated plans into action. Whether you're just starting out or looking to deepen your work, leave with both inspiration and a roadmap for your own community.

The urban renaissance has reached Pensacola’s historic downtown, offering opportunities and lessons for a Strong Towns approach to city-building. Join local resident Christian Wagley for a walking tour through the heart of downtown and its mix of old and new.

Along the way we’ll learn about steps taken to revitalize the area, including reduced parking requirements and public space improvements, and discuss the opportunity for further improvement as Pensacola embarks on comprehensive code reform. We’ll also hear some local history from the site of one of the earliest European settlements in North America.

Space for this tour is limited, so RSVP using this link!

We all have ideas about how to improve the places we love. But how can we overcome the skepticism, obstruction, and indifference that so often stand in the way of them becoming reality?

In this hands-on workshop, attendees will be equipped with a repeatable 7-step step process to turn ideas into pilots, programs, and permanence - and then unleashed to put theory into practice by building placemaking pilots within the conference environs!

You won't want to miss this informative and fun session that will help you bring your best ideas to life.

When anyone can generate an image in seconds, what happens to the artists who give a community its visual voice? Daniela de Castro of Daniela de Castro Studio, and Kristen Regan, Professor of Photography at Pensacola State College, dig into what our community stands to gain, what it risks losing, and how creatives can shape the way these tools get used.

Advocates may want to find the phone number or email address of their city councilor, or see who serves on their Planning and Zoning Commission in order to effect positive change. But that information alone is not always sufficient for those engaged in long-term strategic local governance and reform. It is also important to see this information in one place and to visualize the relationships among municipal employees, department heads, elected officials, and appointed citizens.

This is the practice of power mapping, which Strong Towns Steubenville—a three-year-old Local Conversation (LC) of Strong Towns—has used to better understand local government and advocate for transparency and good governance in a Rust Belt city along the Ohio River. This workshop will describe the history of Strong Towns Steubenville’s power-mapping exercises, explain how its map was created using open-source software, and demonstrate how the LC has used it. Attendees are strongly encouraged to bring a laptop and an optical mouse so they can begin building the basic framework of a power map for the municipality of their choice during the session.

Enjoy complimentary lunch provided at the Saenger Theatre while Chuck Marohn presents Strong Towns 101: Why are so many cities and towns across North America going broke? Our roads are deteriorating. Our governments are in debt. No matter how much we increase them, our taxes aren’t enough to fix it all. And no one seems to be able to agree on how we got here—much less how to change the course. This isn’t just about numbers on a budget. This is about the fate of the communities we love most, and the real people that live there. This is about how to give our citizens, today and tomorrow, a chance at the future they deserve. If we want American cities to be strong and resilient, we need to change everything about the way we plan and build our places. In this core Strong Towns presentation, Charles Marohn will explain, in plain language, how so many American cities have found themselves in decline after decades of “growth.” And then he’ll show you a revolutionary way forward that could create enduring prosperity—if we just have the courage to change our minds. If you’re new to the Strong Towns movement or you’ve never seen our core presentation, you might want to join this session.

This Mayor’s Panel will feature Greenville, South Carolina, Mayor Knox White; Pensacola, Florida, Mayor D.C. Reeves; Panama City, Florida, Mayor Allan Branch; and Sweet Springs, Missouri, Mayor Richard Clemens. More details coming soon!

In this interactive masterclass, Evan Snow, Co-Founder of Zero Empty Spaces, will share how vacant and underutilized commercial spaces can be reimagined as civic assets that support artists, entrepreneurs, property owners, downtowns, and broader community life. Drawing from Zero Empty Spaces’ experience opening 34 formerly vacant spaces across 5 states and welcoming more than 900 artists into the program, Evan will walk attendees through the origin story, the “why” behind the work, and the practical strategies that have allowed the model to scale from a single vacant storefront in Fort Lauderdale into a replicable creative placemaking initiative.

The session will focus on how communities can move beyond simply talking about vacancy and begin identifying actionable pathways for activating empty or underused spaces. Attendees will learn how to think through space readiness, stakeholder alignment, property owner engagement, interim use, local artist and entrepreneur demand, and the broader civic benefits that can come from creating low-barrier access to space.

To make the session more practical and locally relevant, attendees may also be invited to submit real vacancy or underutilized space challenges in advance using this link. Evan will review selected submissions and use one or two examples during the session as live case studies, helping participants think through potential activation strategies, stakeholder alignment, and next steps. This will allow the audience to learn from an actual city, town, district, or organizational challenge while giving the featured example a high-level advisory-style review.

Breakout 10 coming soon!

In this walking tour, local historian Joe Vinson will lead participants through Plaza Ferdinand, Historic Pensacola Village, and back around to Palafox Street, sharing selected stories of interest and a brief narrative of the city's storied past. You'll be surprised how much history is hiding in plain view within only a mile or so!

Space for this tour is limited, so RSVP using this link!

What happens to people after they're in a car crash? How does a crash impact your community beyond the immediate crash scene and what can you do to mitigate these consequences? Join Matt Schaeffer, a trauma surgeon from St. Louis, in this interactive session to learn how victims of trauma are assessed and treated, as well as some ideas to prevent the symptoms and outcomes of dangerous design.

The people pushing your city to do better are your most valuable allies.

Public officials and civic leaders can easily come to see local advocates as adversaries: the people filling the council chambers, sending emails, asking uncomfortable questions, and demanding change. But those same residents bring deep local knowledge, committed networks, and the persistence to move difficult work forward.

Mary Kate Norton has spent years working on the outside of local government, organizing residents to win major changes in housing and transportation in Lexington, Kentucky. Today, she coaches grassroots leaders across the Strong Towns movement as they work to make their communities safer, more livable, and more responsive to local needs. Drawing on that experience, Mary Kate will show how inside-outside partnerships can help local leaders turn shared priorities into action.

Participants will learn how to identify areas of genuine common interest, build partnerships around a shared vision, and build trust by following through on commitments. The people closest to your community's problems are already working on solutions. Are you treating them like obstacles or partners?

Whether you’re a business owner, an aspiring entrepreneur, or a city official, outdated rules and processes may be holding back your city’s potential. In many communities, opening something as simple as a neighborhood storefront means untangling complex zoning, confusing paperwork, and thousands of dollars in permit fees before the doors even open. It doesn't have to be that way.

Cities Work, a nonprofit initiative from the Institute for Justice, partners with cities across the country to remove regulatory hurdles to entrepreneurship. This hands-on working session will pull from nationwide best practices to equip entrepreneurs and city staff with the tools to examine their city's outdated rules and strategies to change them. Participants will walk away with tools for decoding their regulatory landscape, engaging decisionmakers, and executing changes to make a small-business ready city!

Every city has people who see what others miss. They notice the broken sidewalk, the empty building, the bad process, the missed opportunity. They are often persistent, sometimes annoying, and usually ahead of the room. Allan Branch knows because he was one of them before he became mayor of Panama City, FL.

This talk is about how citizens can push local government in a way that actually works, and how elected officials should learn to recognize those people not as problems, but as assets.

Supporting local businesses takes more than celebrating grand openings. It means understanding the challenges businesses face and finding practical ways to come alongside them. The session will introduce the Main Street framework as a flexible model for community revitalization and demonstrate how its principles can be applied whether or not a formal Main Street program exists. Using real examples from Orlando’s Main Street districts, the session will explore how communities have addressed challenges ranging from construction and parking to disaster recovery, business education, storytelling, and supporting businesses throughout their life cycles. Participants will leave with practical strategies for identifying opportunities, engaging stakeholders, and turning community challenges into actionable solutions.

The strength of a community’s workforce is one of the clearest indicators of its future vitality. But the demographics behind America’s workforce are changing quickly. An aging population, declining birth rates and shifting migration patterns are reshaping the talent available to communities and the employers that depend on it. At the same time, AI and emerging technologies are changing the work itself, creating new urgency around the skills we develop, the people we bring into the workforce and our ability to upskill and reskill the talent we already have. Using demographic and workforce data, Kara Bloomberg will explore what these shifts mean for communities and why talent can no longer be viewed simply as an employer or workforce development issue. Building sustainable talent pipelines requires an ecosystem approach that connects education, government, economic development and private employers around a shared understanding of where jobs, skills and people are headed. Attendees will leave with a new way to think about talent as critical community infrastructure and the role each of us can play in building a workforce that supports economic growth and long-term community vitality.

This session explores how the principles of New Urbanism can shape healthier, more connected, and more resilient communities. Through the lenses of walkability, mixed-use development, diverse housing options, connected streets, accessible public spaces, human-scaled design, and environmental stewardship, participants will examine how the built environment influences physical health, social connection, belonging, safety, economic opportunity, and everyday quality of life.

Northwest Arkansas has undergone one of the most remarkable active transportation and outdoor-recreation transformations in the country. In just over two decades, the region has evolved from having a modest trail system into more than 200 miles of paved trails and 500 miles of soft-surface trails that now anchor a globally recognized cycling destination. This session offers an inside look at the history, planning, partnerships, and on-the-ground work that shaped that growth including the vision that positioned trails as essential infrastructure rather than amenities.

Attendees will explore how this initial vision and sustained investment have strengthened social connection by creating shared public spaces, expanded access to outdoor recreation for families and youth, and fostering a culture of active living. We’ll examine the economic impact of trail-based tourism, talent attraction, and business development, as well as the wellness benefits tied to daily movement, mental health, and community vibrancy. The session also highlights the environmental gains achieved through thoughtful design, conservation-minded construction, and long-term stewardship of natural landscapes.

Finally, we’ll address the challenges that come with rapid growth from balancing land use and neighborhood concerns to maintaining quality, sustainability, and equitable access as demand accelerates. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how Northwest Arkansas built a trail-centered identity and what it takes to replicate that success.

We all want to live in a place where the transportation system serves residents.The costs of the North American transportation system are too high—and not just in money, but in time, safety, and quality of life. No one should have to live in a community where transportation gets worse while costing more. It’s unwise and unfair to be wasting precious time and resources on something this bad. Chuck Marohn will explain why the conventional approach to traffic engineering is making people less safe, bankrupting towns and cities, destroying the fabric of communities, and actually worsening the problems (like congestion) engineers set out to solve. Chuck will also cover how transportation can be fixed—and why fixing it will involve not just engineers, but local residents and officials who have become effective and empowered advocates, connected with others to make real change.