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The Bureau of Business Research (BBR) at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln presented to the City of Omaha a startling report, "Omaha Area Projections to 2050". The report states that in the projected time frame the Omaha area is expected to grow by 69%. By 2050, the Omaha metropolitan area could be host to a population of just under one million inhabitants.
In May, 2001, the Nebraska Environmental Trust Fund awarded the JCI a three-year grant, in partnership with the cities of Omaha, Lincoln, Council Bluffs, the Governor's Office and the Natural Resource Districts, to conduct educational programs and research activity about regional planning in an area within a sixty mile radius of Omaha. The work began in the summer, 2001, with an initial conference of communities and civic leaders within the Southeast region of Nebraska.
In an effort to reverse these current trends, the initial educational program informed and educated the principle regional constituencies and stakeholders of the concepts, tools, and the economic and community values which may lead to more effective behaviors and public policies for the management of growth and the preservation of regional ecosystems.
The second conference convened with a series of morning presentations that included a comparison of community comprehensive planning documents, a panel session on low density growth issues, and an update on the future of Omaha’s metropolitan growth. In the afternoon, conference participants met in small group sessions to consider growth alternatives and common interests of more than a million people in the 157 communities that live within a 60-mile radius of Omaha.
The Joslyn Castle Institute Sustainable Communities conducted its third conference, Flatwater Communities Conference in the Omaha-Lincoln-Council Bluffs metro region from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday, September 9, 2004, at the Scott Conference Center, 6450 Pine Street, Omaha, NE
The conference unveiled a plan (The Flatwater Metroplex Report.138 pages. PDF format) to manage the expected growth in the Omaha-Council Bluff-Lincoln metropolitan area. Cecil Steward, founder of the Joslyn Castle Institute for Sustainable Communities, has been examining the impact as the area within 60 miles of Omaha grows from 1.2 million today to 2 million in 2050.
This three year effort began the process of potential transition from independent, single domain strategies of community planning to a regional, development strategies.
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