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| History of the Institute
The Mayors' Institute on City Design was initially proposed in 1985 by Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. of Charleston, South Carolina, in a letter to Jaquelin T. Robertson, Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, following a symposium there on design and politics. In his letter, Mayor Riley wrote:
"I have often said that I am the chief urban designer of my city.
By that I mean that because of my position as mayor, I have many
opportunities to affect development. Most large development plans
come through my office. Either the general support of the mayor is
needed, or specific approvals, variances, etc. are required. I am
often called on to be pro-active, seeking and encouraging certain
development. With many of these projects, there are opportunities to
make them better for the city or to allow them to be ordinary--or
worse. This is true for most mayors. A city's mayor has great
opportunities to affect the quality of development there. The more
sensitive the mayor is to good urban design, to issues of
livability, scale, diversity, etc., the more willing and able he or
she will be to help develop higher quality. If we could institute a
program aimed at increasing mayors' sophistication and interest in
urban design, we could have a substantial impact on the quality of
development in American cities."
Robertson submitted the proposal to Adele Chatfield-Taylor, then Director of the National Endowment for the Arts' Design Program. On October 23-25, 1986, the first Mayors' Institute on City Design was hosted at the University of Virginia. The energizing effect of bringing mayors and designers together in an intimate setting, apart from the day-to-day concerns of running a city, was immediately evident. Demand for similar workshops led to annual Institute sessions at the University of Virginia.
In 1990, the NEA expanded the MICD by adding four additional Institutes each year to reach a wider range of cities. Long-term partnerships were formed with the University of Minnesota, the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tulane University, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Over the past twenty years, the MICD has collaborated with 18 university partners to offer regional sessions throughout the nation.
In 1998, the NEA established a formal partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors to create a permanent program office for the Mayors' Institute. To manage the program, the NEA chose the American Architectural Foundation through a national selection process. Today, these three organizations continue as partners for the MICD.
Mayors who have attended credit the experience as transforming the way they look at their cities. As one alumnus, U.S. Representative Jim Marshall, former mayor of Macon, GA, said, "I was a new mayor who inherited a plan to replace our main street with a 45-mph throughway. I knew in my gut this was wrong, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. Thanks to what I learned at the Institute, I could get away with saying 'over my dead body.' But for the Mayors' Institute, I doubt we could have ended up saving those four city blocks."
Over the Institute's 20-year history, more than 700 mayors and 500 design professionals have participated. The program has been recognized for its contributions with the Presidential Award for Design Excellence, a Progressive Architecture Award from Architecture magazine, and an Institute Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.
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