Dan Burden, an expert on walkable cities, bicycling and
pedestrian facilities, is set to visit the county on Tuesday for a
tour and to speak before citizens and officials.
Dan Burden, an expert on walkable cities, bicycling and pedestrian facilities, is set to visit the county on Tuesday for a tour and to speak before citizens and officials.
Burden, who co-founded the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and has worked with about 3,000 communities on facilitating smart-growth planning, will visit Hollister and San Benito County on Tuesday. He will take a tour of the city and county before a talk at Hollister City Hall, scheduled for 5 p.m.
The event is sponsored by Community Vision for San Benito County, the Hollister Free Lance and Weekend Pinnacle, the City of Hollister, and San Benito County.
Burden is a former National Geographic photographer who spent a career at the Florida Department of Transportation as the nation’s first state bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. For about the past 30 years, he has focused on helping to build cities through such vehicles as street design, traffic calming, living streets, public safety, bicycling and greenways in what the institute describes as a holistic vision.
Gavilan College Trustee Tony Ruiz, who helped to bring Burden here, said the visitor would speak in a fashion that is “custom-designed” for this area.
Local officials will provide Burden beforehand with data on San Benito County, including studies by the Council for San Benito County Governments and the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments, Ruiz said, stressing how Burden might touch on such areas as impact fees, the “village concept,” downtown, growth and economic sustainability, school facilities and job creation.
“We’re trying to make this a custom presentation,” Ruiz said.
Some of Burden’s accomplishments include the following:
– In 2001, “Time Magazine” named Burden as “One of the Sixth Most Important Civic Innovators in the World.”
– In 2001, the Transportation Research Board (National Academy of Sciences) chose him to its Distinguished Lecturer on rebuilding transportation around walkability.
– In 2005, Burden joined Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin – an urgan design and planning firm in Orlando where he learned a lot about consulting and business.
– In 2009, Burden co-founded WALC with Sarah Bowman. Its focus is to train citizens and leaders in walkable, sustainable communities, according to the WALC website.
For more, go to www.walklive.org.
