Mary Newsom, associate director of urban and regional affairs at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, will moderate a panel of local experts Thursday at AARP’s “Making a More Livable Mecklenburg Summit.”
Speakers will include Charlotte City Manager Ron Carlee and Mayor Patsy Kinsey.
The event will explore Charlotte’s evolution into a larger city and how its ever-increasing aging population will affect transportation, mobility and housing.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Queens University Athletic Center on Tyvola Road in Charlotte. To register, click here, or call 1-877-926-8300. A networking breakfast will begin at 8 a.m.
Carlee will speak at 9:30 a.m., and Kinsey will speak at 12:15 p.m.
Newsom will moderate a panel discussion at 10 a.m. among:
- Jim Prosser, executive director of the Centralina Council of Governments, which is engaged in a 14-county regional community planning process called CONNECT; (To learn more about CONNECT, see our previous articles.)
- Heidi Pruess, Mecklenburg County’s environmental policy administrator and a lead coordinator of the Mecklenburg Livable Communities Plan, a joint initiative under way among Mecklenburg County, the City of Charlotte, the six other municipalities in the county, and Foundation for the Carolinas;
- Dan Gallagher, transportation planning manager with the Charlotte Department of Transportation; and
- Ed McKinney, assistant planning director, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department.