Mayors Seek Planning Help
Eight mayors from cities across the South are in New Orleans today and Friday (April 22â“23) to discuss planning and urban issues in a workshop sponsored by the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center.
The center, part of the Tulane School of Architecture, is hosting the Southern Regional Session of the Mayors' Institute on City Design. The event brings mayors and nationally recognized design professionals together to share information. Among the experts attending are architects, developers, engineers, preservationists and landscape architects.
Grover E. Mouton, director of the center and adjunct associate professor in the School of Architecture, was awarded a $50,000 grant to host the session, with additional support by the Historic New Orleans Collection.
Mayors attending the institute represent Fayetteville and Pine Bluff, Ark.; Edmond, Okla.; Sunrise, Fla.; Decatur, Ala.; Monroe, La.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Gulfport, Miss. Each mayor will have an opportunity to present a design and planning challenge faced by the town or city.
Design and development experts will analyze each mayor's presented project and provide immediate feedback and potential design solutions.
Victor Henderson Ashe, former mayor of Knoxville, Tenn., and former U.S. ambassador to Poland, will deliver the keynote address. As mayor of Knoxville, Ashe initiated a program called "Penny for the Parks" to create a trust fund for city parks, greenways and historic preservation.
More than 50 mayors have attended Mayors' Institute on City Design (MICD) sessions hosted at Tulane. Mouton has a long history with the MICD, a forum funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the American Architectural Foundation. He worked with the NEA in the early 1990s to create the regional MICD sessions, allowing the program to focus not only on large cities, but on those smaller cities that have fewer resources to fund planning and design.
