1986
After getting advice at a 2004 MICD session on the design challenge of the abandoned Bethlehem Steel site, Mayor John Callahan led the redevelopment of the site as SteelStacks, a 9.5-acre arts and cultural campus. Photo by Mark Demko
In January 1985, then-Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, South Carolina, wrote a letter to Jaquelin Robertson, the University of Virginia's chair of architecture, suggesting that an institute be created in which mayors would meet with prominent designers to discuss design challenges facing their cities. Subsequently, the two men visited Adele Chatfield Taylor, Design director at the NEA, and the NEA's Mayors' Institute on City Design (MICD) was born. On October 23, 1986, the first Mayors' Institute on City Design was hosted at the University of Virginia.
MICD hosts six to eight sessions annually. Each two-and-one-half-day session on city design is organized around presentations and roundtable discussions and limited to fewer than 20 persons—half mayors and half a resource team made up of outstanding urban design and development professionals. At each meeting, participating mayors present design issues currently facing their cities, such as waterfront redevelopment, downtown revitalization, neighborhood revenue, and new public buildings such as sports or arts facilities. Following each presentation, mayors and designers identify issues, offer suggestions, and discuss alternative paths toward a solution.
Mayor Riley has noted about MICD: “Mayors come to the institute as regular people, but I promise you, they leave as zealous apostles of good urban design.”
Over the institute's history, more than 1,200 mayors from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, and more than 700 design professionals have participated. Mayors who have attended credit the experience as transforming the way they look at their cities. As one alumnus, Mayor William A. Johnson, Jr., of Rochester, New York, said, "In more than 33 years of professional experience, no program or learning experience has been more beneficial to me than this one." MICD has also been recognized with a number of awards, including a Presidential Award for Design Excellence in 2000, a Progressive Architecture award from Architecture magazine in 1997, and an Institute Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1992. The NEA currently partners with the United States Conference of Mayors on MICD.