BROADCASTS.com

b'One of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., Bend, Oregon has doubled in population over the past two decades. Still, it has at least some intelligent thinking about growth. Tom Hickmann, Bend Oregon\\u2019s director of engineering and infrastructure planning, shares the fast-growing city\\u2019s somewhat unique approach to city planning, and discusses Oregon\\u2019s requirement that cities accommodate growth. According to Tom, cities get challenged if they have a \\u201cpattern and practice of rejecting growth.\\u201d Tom shares the newest infrastructure planning tool, genetic algorithms, explaining how it allows cities to plan better and grow more efficiently. Planners can put the values of the environmental, development, engineering and general residential communities into this planning model to guide a community\\u2019s decisions. Co-host Dave Gardner wonders if unaffordable housing might ultimately influence couples to limit the number of children they conceive. The GrowthBusters team also shares some of their own methods of shrinking their footprints \\u2013 related to showers, wardrobe and coffee. Explore these issues at http://www.growthbusters.org'