Submission Deadline

December 11, 2020 4:00 PM PST

Planning North of Normal

CALL FOR PROGRAM PROPOSALS

The Planning Institute of British Columbia (PIBC) 2021 Annual Conference - planning North of Normal - is being held June 15 to 18, 2021 at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre in Whitehorse Yukon.

In anticipation of this great event, we are pleased to invite you to submit your proposal for inclusion in the program for the PIBC 2021 Annual Conference - planning North of Normal.

PLANNING FOR COVID-19

While we are hoping to host you in person in Whitehorse next year, we need to plan with the ever-changing COVID-19 situation in mind. If there are ongoing travel restrictions or restrictions on gathering size, we may need to move the conference online or use a hybrid model where some people attend in person and some join online. We need to be flexible in our planning of this conference. In spring 2021, we will assess the situation and decide if the conference will be online, a hybrid or in-person. We will let speakers and attendees know as soon as possible if they will be able to travel to Whitehorse to attend in person.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Physical distancing, the closure of public buildings and local businesses, the climate crisis and Black Lives Matter protests; people's ability to operate, communicate, and go about their daily lives have been disrupted in 2020. The evolving response to this new reality has significantly changed most of our relationships within Yukon and BC communities and with our neighbours.

To mitigate social, environmental, and economic fallout, it is more important now than ever for industry, communities, First Nations, and governments to come together to ensure that planning and community-building continue to protect the land, support livelihoods, and strengthen our connections to one another and the places we live.

This conference is about planning North of Normal; it’s about planning in wilderness communities, story-telling, First Nations-led planning, and building healthy communities.

WHO WILL BE THERE?

Typically, professionals from across BC, the Yukon and beyond attend the annual PIBC conference. Attendees work in many diverse fields of planning including land use, policy, development, housing, agriculture, urban design, environment, GIS and technology, natural resources, small towns and big cities. It is the perfect opportunity to network, learn, exchange knowledge, information, and ideas to advance the practice of planning.

PROGRAM FOCUS

Presenters are asked to submit proposals for presentations or workshops about planning North of Normal. 2020 was a year that brought a global pandemic, record wildfires in California and the Arctic Circle, and renewed calls to address systemic racism. We are living in a strange “new normal” and as planners we know that we need to adapt in order to survive/thrive under these new conditions. The evolving response to COVID-19 has significantly changed how people are interacting on a neighbourhood, community, territorial, provincial, and national scale. As northerners, we have often found unusual ways to tackle our problems and at this conference we want to focus on planning that is North of Normal via the following five themes:

Theme #1 - Planning for the New Normal

We want to explore planning North of Normal. This could include pandemic-related planning, climate change, disaster-preparedness, innovation; anything that touches on navigating uncertainty and the rapidly evolving world. Possible topics are:

• Managing natural disasters, floods and fires
• Post-pandemic planning
• Climate change
• Innovation and new ways of planning

Theme #2 - Living with Nature

We want to explore topics that reflect issues related to human impacts on nature. The connection to nature is a cultural value that is shared between those of settler origins and the indigenous groups. Possible topics are:

• Regional, rural and small-town planning
• Living with wildlife
• Green infrastructure, technology and design
• Planning for parks and trails and understanding the impacts of recreation
• Protecting and restoring ecosystem values
• Land development and neighbourhood planning in the north

Theme #3 - Planning Stories

Tell us a story; we want to know about creativity, success and failure. We want to know about the interesting characters, the nail-biting, the high-fives and the train wrecks. Possible topics are:

• Success, failure and lessons learned
• Planning and relationships
• Innovative and creative plans and processes
• Public engagement done right, done wrong, done online, or done in new ways

Theme #4 - First Nations Planning

Yukon has eleven self-governing First Nations and each one has been undertaking different types of planning at different scales. We want this conference to showcase the types of planning projects and processes that First Nations in Yukon, British Columbia and across the north are working on. Possible topics are:

• Connection to the land
• Non-western land management and pre-colonial practices
• Planning for modern subsistence harvesting
• Comprehensive Community Plans
• Planning under Yukon Final Land Claims Agreements – Local Area Plans and Regional Planning
• Land Claim Implementation in BC and Yukon
• First Nations-led development in small and medium sized communities
• Indigenous planning processes and practices

Theme #5 - Building Healthy Communities

This is a subject area that crosses a variety of boundaries and there is a need to make sure that it is appropriately addressed in terms of our responsibilities as professional planners. Possible topics are:

• Approaches to reinforce a common and sustain civic engagement to address inequities in the outreach process during an unprecedented period of physical and social distancing
• Reconciliation and social justice
• Reflections on the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
• Creative solutions to housing and homelessness
• Where are the gaps and who is really being left behind in our planning processes and policies when the plan is implemented?
• Neighbourhood gentrification/displacement
• Aging in place and planning for kids and youth

MAKING A PROPOSAL

Don't miss the opportunity to be a part of the PIBC 2021 Annual Conference - planning North of Normal. Sign up and submit a program proposal today! 

You will need to start by creating an account for your proposal submission. This will allow you to log back in and make changes once you have submitted your complete proposal. In addition to creating your account, you will need:

• Names, contact, and biographical details for each presenter/participant in your proposed program element
• A draft title for your proposal
• A brief comprehensive description of your proposed program element (50 words max), a long description of your proposed program element (250 words max) as well as information on key learning outcomes & how it fits the themes and vision of the conference

Start by clicking the Submit Proposal button at the bottom of this page, then click on Need to create an account? near the bottom of the pop-up window that appears. You will enter an email address and password to create an account, then you can proceed to submit your proposal.

If you have already created an account and made a submission, you can login use your existing email and password.

Please note, you cannot save a partially completed proposal submission. If you exit part way through, you will need to start your submission all over again.