Urban Forum Tackles Transportation issues

UW Tacoma Urban Studies Forum will feature Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution

The Puget Sound region is no stranger to transportation headaches. Recent Federal transportation reforms provide an interesting moment to rethink and reimagine policy formulation and performance measurement between federal, state and local governments.

Participants representing the four-county Puget Sound Region, UWT Urban Studies faculty, students, staff, and national transportation experts will explore the trends, challenges, and new possibilities associated with urban transportation policy coordination and institutional leadership both here in the Puget Sound Region and across the United States. 

This year’s Urban Studies Forum at the University of Washington Tacoma on Thursday, February 7, will look at these issues from a variety of perspectives. The goal of this one-day event is to stimulate fresh conversations about national, state and regional challenges in transportation investments, with special attention paid to how these investments can better support emerging economic trends in the overall metropolitan region.

The forum is free and open to the public, but registration is required. More information and registration is available at tacoma.uw.edu/event/urban.

The topics of the forum will include the relationship between transportation policies, infrastructure investments, and the Puget Sound region’s emerging metropolitan economy and looking at alternative approaches and strategies to intergovernmental transportation coordination, leadership, and especially investments based on the experience of other metropolitan regions in the USA.

Robert Puentes, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program initiative, will give the keynote address. The Initiative was established to address the pressing transportation and infrastructure challenges facing cities and suburbs in the United States and abroad. Prior to joining Brookings, Puentes was the director of infrastructure programs at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Virginia where he served on the Alumni Advisory Board, and is an affiliated professor with Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.

The Urban Studies Program at the University of Washington Tacoma has held an “urban forum” on issues of critical importance to the broader community every year since 2010.

Transportation for the Next Economy
February 7, 2013
8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
William W. Philip Hall, UW Tacoma