Envisioning the City

The Mayors' Institute on City Design offers a crash course in solving urban problems

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Beverly O'Neill, mayor of Long Beach, Calif., is looking for advice.

Her city, hard hit by the loss of 45,000 jobs as the result of a military base closing, is in the midst of a comeback. A massive waterfront renovation, a new aquarium, and a bustling pedestrian strip have brought the downtown back to life.

But there are still problems -- how to make the rest of the downtown area as attractive as the rebuilt sections, and what to do with an ailing shopping mall filled with empty stores?

O'Neill has come to the right place. She is one of eight mayors who participated April 26-27 in the Mayors' Institute on City Design, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and hosted by the Graduate School of Design (GSD).

The Institute is the brainchild of Joseph P. Riley Jr., five-term mayor of Charleston, S.C., who realized that mayors have a tremendous opportunity to influence the built environment, but at the same time are very much in need of expert advice.

Riley envisioned an intensive workshop event at which mayors could outline pressing problems and get feedback from a panel of urban designers, architects, and real estate developers, as well as from their fellow mayors.

In 1985, he took his idea to the NEA, which helped get the Institute off the ground and continues to fund its activities. Held originally at the University of Virginia, the Institute has since moved to Harvard.

In the nine and a half years the Institute has been operating, a total of 288 mayors have participated, and their experience has had a profound effect on the environments they govern.

"I could take you to cities all over the country and show you things that have happened as a result of the Mayors' Institute," Riley said.

For some cities, participating in the Institute has become a traditional part of each new mayor's education. Mayors also have the option of going back to the Institute's resource staff for help or consulting with the Institute's extensive alumni network.

One measure of the high regard in which the Institute is held is that last year Mayor Ron Norick of Oklahoma City chose to attend even though the bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal building had occurred just days before. Norick decided that thinking about how to deal with the physical aftermath of the tragedy would ultimately be the best thing for the city.

Another reason the Institute is effective is that it is definitely not business as usual.

As Alex Krieger, professor in practice of urban design and the director of the Institute, explains, the sessions are "outside of the mayors' normal experience and away from the pressures of budgets, working with advisers, getting elected. It's an opportunity to be in a comfortable setting and reflect on city planning and on the physical consequences of their actions."

This type of interaction is typified by the suggestions that O'Neill received in response to her presentation of Long Beach's development problems.

One member of the resource team, David Lee, adjunct professor of urban planning and design, urged O'Neill to think small.

"Sometimes you just need a very small, understated intervention," Lee said. "I think what you need here is a piece of open space, a place with grass and trees where people can sit and eat their lunch."

Lee used the example of Boston's Commonwealth Avenue, just one block over from Newbury Street's upscale shops, and suggested that Long Beach might adopt a similar arrangement.

Robert Gibbs, a specialist in retail development and new town planning, disagreed. "I don't want to sound like I'm against green, but research shows that people won't be pulled in because they see a tree. They'll be pulled in because they see retail space."

Philip Bredesen, mayor of Nashville Tenn., had yet another point of view. "It looks like there's already an enormous amount of new investment to draw people downtown. My concern is whether the city is large enough to support more development."

These contradictory responses might seem to confuse the issue further, but Christine Saum, the Institute's executive director, does not see it that way.

"Experience has shown that the nature of the issue presented is less important to the overall learning experience than the discussion it generates. A design issue should be seen not as a specific puzzle that must be solved, but a prism through which to examine recurring themes," she said.

But the Institute's participants often address specific issues as well, and often end up urging a particular solution to a problem. Mayor Bredesen, for example, presented the issue of where to build the new Nashville central library -- in the crowded downtown area or across the Cumberland River, where building sites are easier to find.

Despite the fact that it would be easier to locate the library in the less populous area across the river, the panel of mayors and resource people were unanimous in recommending a downtown site as this would make the library a focal point in the renovation of the downtown area.

Riley, who participates in the Institute sessions as a resource person, believes that whether the lessons are general or specific, mayors are ideally equipped to understand and absorb them.

"Mayors are smart, and they're quick studies, or else they wouldn't have gotten elected. They also have innately good instincts about their cities, but not a lot of self-confidence in their ability to make the right decisions. What the Institute does for them is help them ask the right questions. They can't become great urban designers in a few days, but they can become better clients, and demand better service," he said.

Riley also points out that when mayors sign off on plans for major building projects, the stakes can be very high, even though they may not realize it at the time.

"Mayors spend so much time and energy on things like budget debates that have little lasting impact and so little time on issues of physical development, which may affect the city 50 or 100 years into the future," he said.