Delaware Walk & Bike Summit set for March 21

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control’s Division of Parks and Recreation and its partners announce that Heels & Wheels: Delaware Walk & Bike Summit will take place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Friday, March 21, at the University of Delaware's Clayton Hall in Newark. The summit, designed to bring walkers, hikers, runners, bicycle and mountain bike riders together for an educational conference, is free, and registration is now open.

Keynote speaker will be Dan Burden, a leading national expert on planning sustainable communities for walking and bicycling. Burden, executive director of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, has spent more than 35 years getting the world “back on its feet,” by helping 3,500 communities. Burden’s efforts have not only earned him the first-ever lifetime achievement award issued by the New Partners for Smart Growth and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, but in 2001, he was named by Time Magazine as “one of the six most important civic innovators in the world.”

The Heels & Wheels Summit is a collaboration of the Delaware Recreation & Parks Society, DNREC’s Division of Parks and Recreation, Delaware Department of Transportation Planning, the Delaware Bicycle Council, the Dover/Kent County Metropolitan Planning Organization,  the Wilmington Area Planning Council, and Nemours Health and Prevention Services.

To register and review the summit program, go to www.wilmapco.org/heelsandwheels.