Tom Daniels, Professor of Urban Planning at U Penn, author of When Citya nd Country Collide and manager of a large farm preservation program in Lancaster County PA was kick-off speaker. He believes in selective sacrifice of farmland, if the greater development good is being served, but is emphatic about the need to protect local food production. He also is a globalist, saying that we in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are competing with metro areas in the US and elsewhere for desirable residents, businesses and investment. So he sees growth management as an inevitable consequence of population growth, which itself is also a good thing.
He talked about agriculture as an industry which has needs to be balanced with the other groups in a region: the public, the building industry, politicians and landowners.
For Tom, 'Smart Growth' is about economic growth ("we all benefit from growth") and environmental protection, (anti-sprawl) plus affordable and efficient public services. He did not talk about how we all suffer from growth.
Key ideas for growth management that I heard in Tom's talk were:
- agricultural zoning is imperative
- urban growth boundaries, non-negotiable, are imperative
- purchase of conservation easements keeps land in production, not paved over, financed through taxes, bond issues, etc.

Conservation easements are an investment in 'green' infrastructure, just as bridges, roads, schools, etc. are investments in the built infrastructure.
He said it has worked in Lancaster county, there is peace with the building industry, but was not clear on what will happen in say 20 years when there is no more land to build on.
He did not address how to avoid 'gentrification' where farmland is bought by affluent citydwellers who do the minimum to qualify for farm status and get a tax break. He was not able to envision a world where growth is not the norm, ie a steady state economy.