Kristina Ford is one of America's best known urban planners and a prolific writer on the subject of planning. She served as the Executive Director of the New Orleans Planning Commission from 1992 to 2000 and was a powerful voice in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Joe Brown is the Chief Innovation Officer at AECOM, has led the Urban Land Institute Advisory Task Force and helped write the first plan to rebuild New Orleans.

The speakers used the rebuilding of New Orleans as a case study to shed light on universal challenges of the planning process. In Kristina’s latest book, The Trouble with City Planning, she addresses such crucial issues as: How can the knowledge and needs of citizen stakeholders more directly inform city plans? How can planning balance visioning with daily decision making? When and why does city planning thwart economic development? How can the planning process levy better checks and balances on developers, politicians and the public?