New York City's open spaces and landscapes are the focus of the Historic Districts Council's 18th Annual Preservation Conference titled "The Great Outside: Preserving Public and Private Open Spaces. The conference will be held this weekend, March 2 - 4, 2012, and the slate of speakers is impressive: Charles A. Birnbaum, FASLA, FARR, and founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation; Thomas J. Campanella, associate professor of urban planning and design at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will address Moses-era parks; Alexandra Wolfe, preservationist at the Society for the Preservation of Long Island; Thomas Mellins, curator and architectural historian of mid-century public housing landscapes; and Evan Mason, independent scholar of New York City rear yards. As an aside, Campanella is the author of one of our favorite books, Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm (2003). Also Charles Birnbaum has written about Hideo Sasaki and the S