Last week we attended the Mayor’s Institute on City Design’s 20th Anniversary celebration here in DC. Though larger in scope than most of the initiatives we cover in this section, it was so cool we couldn’t resist.
Here’s how it works: 8 mayors, each with their own community’s city design dilemma – think waterfront redevelopment, downtown revitalization or transportation planning – meet together with 8 expert designers for 2.5 days to hash out specific strategies and overarching planning principals for the mayors’ cities.
The mayors learn what to look for in city plans and work towards in an overall city design, becoming, as the Institute had hoped, the chief urban designers of their cities. Without this sort of training, ‘we don’t know,’ as Trenton, NJ’s mayor Doug Palmer put it, highlighting an interesting dynamic: Mayors and other civic leaders often come from lives in business or law and are faced with far-reaching decisions on planning, architecture, economics and more. To lead and administer productively, our officials need some instruction– specialized, specific and expert training like that provided by the Institute.
We think there are many parts of civic leadership that would be well served by this model of training. And we think city design is a great place to start. Time and money spent to create well-designed cities is a long-term investment in property values and residents. As the Institute’s founder Mayor Joseph Riley, Jr. of Charleston told us, investing in good city design is one thing mayors can do for every citizen and guest of the community.
The Institute is a powerful partnership program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Architectural Foundation, and the United States Conference of Mayors. Check them out here.
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