Cities in Conversation: The Mayors' Institute in Los Angeles

CITIES IN CONVERSATION: THE MAYORS’ INSTITUTE IN LOS ANGELES

BY WELLINGTON “DUKE” REITER, FAIA

Quality design is not a casual amenity but an essential ingredient of the most vibrant cities. To avoid sprawling patterns of development, enhance commercial densities, and improve the overall life of a city’s residents, design is key.

From August 6 to 8, 2010, the Mayors’ Institute on City Design convened in Los

Angeles for the first time in the program’s 24-year history—just four months after its first New York City Institute. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa welcomed fellow mayors from Albuquerque, NM; Long Beach, CA; Omaha, NE; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; Stockton, CA; and Hilo, HI, for three days of intense discussion that is sure to impact the future of these cities in both the short- and long-term.

These impassioned leaders brought with them design challenges facing their constituents and presented them to participants at the Institute. Mayors then collaborated with a carefully selected resource team of design professionals to apply best thinking toward possible solutions.

As has come to be the norm at all Mayors’ Institute sessions, the dialogue was frank, assumptions were challenged, and the excitement, palpable. Both sides learned from each other, and teams produced alternatives for important sites that would

have taken months or years to come to light in a more conventional public forum.

While the specifics for each city’s challenges and solutions were detailed and plentiful, this 47th national Mayors’ Institute also highlighted several overall key concepts.

POSTCARDS FROM HOME The Mayors’ Institute reminds us that arguably no other elected official is more intimately involved in sculpting the physical environments that shape us than a mayor.

When mayors speak of their cities, they demonstrate a lived understanding of a place, its history, and, of course, their constituents.

The cases mayors bring to the Mayors’ Institute are not abstract or statistical.

They are richly textured descriptions of home. When Mayor William Kenoi of Hilo lit up the room with his heartfelt connection to the landscape of his community,

Illustrations by Julia Ames

The Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors and the American Architectural Foundation. Since 1986, the Mayors’ Institute has helped transform communities through design by preparing more than 850 mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities.

Additional support for the MICD session in Los Angeles was underwritten through generous grants from Target and the Coca-Cola Company.

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describing it as a truly “spiritual place,” he spoke for everyone in attendance.

Mayors could imagine their own respective cities and the people who give them a unique sense of being. Such authenticity is a hallmark of the Mayors’ Institute and a necessary cornerstone for responsive and responsible design.

PATIENT URGENCY Major urban development projects have their own timeframe, one that may not align with a mayor’s tenure in office. This generates a sense of urgency. Mayors must balance their desire to leave the built environment better than they found it with the realization that the city is a project in a perpetual state of becoming.

The resource team frequently made the case for an “evolutionary approach” to cities by which current mayors establish the vision and momentum for projects but also make provisions for opportunities that can reveal themselves over time.

These mayors plant that initial seed. Such an approach makes sense when faced, especially, with a challenging economy.

LEVERAGING EXISTING ASSETS Unlike in Dubai and across China, where cities are being created on raw sites seemingly overnight, all of the projects presented by the mayors required nuanced attention to existing urban conditions. Quite often such attention means investing in deteriorating neighborhoods, streets, and buildings or imagining the civic potential of former industrial locations.

For example, everyone at the Mayors’ Institute was dazzled by the almost cathedrallike properties of a machine shop in a former rail yard that Mayor Richard Berry of Albuquerque presented. The spatial drama and open-ended potential of the building waits to be realized, and, as a former builder himself, Mayor Berry knows that his city has a diamond in the rough.

Similarly, the “Bringing Back Broadway” initiative in Los Angeles seeks to capitalize on one of the greatest—and most underutilized—collections of early 20th-century commercial buildings and theaters in the country. Mayor Villaraigosa’s administration is setting in motion a strategic approach to historic preservation, zoning, public transportation, the arts, and the incorporation of a vibrant immigrant retail community to revitalize an area once considered the “Wall Street of the West.”

In these and other examples, the historical legacies of cities are cultural assets that can serve as the foundations for building unique urban experiences. The resource team encouraged the mayors to maximize the potential of these treasures by viewing them within the greater context of their urban systems.

GETTING AROUND Inevitably, discussions of each city and project revolved, at some point, around the automobile. Frequent references to parking issues became something of a rite of passage for each project under consideration. Smartly, the resource team included experts who could address the realities of traffic management and, perhaps more importantly, the myths surrounding this and other assumed “requirements” of the contemporary city.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams, representing a city known for its public transportation and bicycle culture, was intent on leveraging Portland’s very popular light rail system in the course of advancing a new development proposal. Likewise, Mayor Ralph Becker of Salt Lake City is betting on the continued success of its light rail system and imagines an intermodal transit station as the gateway to a city of the future. The sharing of such comparable case studies adds value to the Mayors’ Institute by providing mayors with precedents to inform their decisions.

10,000 STEPS PER DAY Intuitively, we all understand that creating a well-designed city is a worthy ambition.

Dr. Richard Jackson of UCLA’s School of Public Health took that concept further, convincingly arguing that our health depends on it. Buttressed by considerable statistical evidence, he made an airtight case for the benefits of the walkable city.

As his presentation at the Mayors’ Institute made abundantly clear, inhospitable streets, dispersed housing, and dependence on mechanical conveyances are diminishing the health and quality of life of citizens.

Rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes, Dr. Jackson argued, are in part a function of our daily routines, which are heavily influenced by our physical environment.

For example, while diet might be a personal choice, it is also influenced by the accessibility of a quality grocery store in one’s neighborhood. The decision of a housing developer not to pursue a grocery store might be influenced by zoning regulations that unintentionally eliminate incentives to promote density. Being aware of these interrelated issues is essential.

HOPE AMIDST ECONOMIC CHALLENGES To be a mayor is necessarily to be hopeful. Among the participants at the Mayors’ Institute, that optimism and genuine desire to improve their communities was on full display. But so too was a strong undercurrent of uncertainty regarding the national and global economies, both of which are impacting local situations in the US in unprecedented ways.

While many of the plans and projects were compelling, so too were the backdrops against which they were being proposed. In Stockton, for example, a warehouse district redevelopment initiative to complement a recently opened marina was a logical next step for a city trying to reconnect with its waterfront. But Mayor Ann Johnston, with a keen desire

Attendees of the Mayors’ Institute in Los Angeles.

Front Row, (Left to Right) Sarah Bookwalter, Meetings and Events Manager, AAF; Radhika C. Mohan, Program Manager, MICD; Story K. Bellows, Director, MICD; Mami Hara, Principal, Wallace Roberts & Todd; Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Los Angeles, California; Mayor Bob Foster, Long Beach, California; Mary Margaret Jones, President & Senior Principal, Hargreaves Associates; Mayor Jim Suttle, Omaha, Nebraska; Theodore C. Landsmark, President, Boston Architectural College; Dana Bourland, VP of Green Initiatives, Enterprise Community Partners; Mayor Ann Johnston, Stockton, California Back Row, (Left to Right) Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director, USCM; Mayor Ralph Becker, Salt Lake City, Utah; Charlie Sutlive, Government Relations Director, the Coca-Cola Company; Ron Bogle, Hon. AIA, President and CEO, AAF; Randy Manthey, Regional Development Manager, Target; Scott Jordan-Denny, Group Manager of Architecture, Target; Wellington “Duke” Reiter, Principal, Urban Instruments, Inc.; Debra Campbell, Planning Director, Charlotte, North Carolina; Mayor Richard J. Berry, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Chris B. Leinberger, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Mayor William P. Kenoi, County of Hawaii, Hawaii; Nicholas Foster, Deputy Director, MICD; Jeffrey Tumlin, Principal, Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates; Tom McClimon, Managing Director, USCM; Jason Schupbach, Director of Design, NEA

to pursue equity for the neighborhoods surrounding the site, stressed the challenges of moving forward with such a project in a city facing a 22% unemployment rate.

Mayor Bob Foster of Long Beach presented a town center idea as a response to the needs of a moderate-income community surrounding a concentration of nearly cleared blocks. He was quick to add that while an existing auto parts store would typically not be part of such a program, the fact that such a business represented a sign of economic vitality and employment all but demanded that it be included in the project.

The resource team agreed and reiterated the notion of gradual urban evolution, especially in such a fragile environment.

Mayor Jim Suttle of Omaha, determined to address a 30% unemployment rate on the north side of his city, proposed an expansive project to reverse the exodus of light manufacturing to the suburbs and beyond. Noting that some 35 past planning studies were gathering dust in city hall, he voiced his determination to get something done, beginning with a detailed inventory of the array of assets between the airport and downtown. Mayors’ Institute participants were impressed by

his ambition and the potential in Omaha, and the discussion revealed an even more expansive set of possibilities.

The mayors who came to the Mayors’ Institute in Los Angeles said they were returning home with a raised degree of confidence about how to approach the complexities of urban planning, development, and transportation, as well as a heightened appreciation for the potential value of civic spaces. As they discovered, being the de facto “planner-in-chief” for their cities might be one of the most satisfying aspects of what is surely one of the most important jobs in America.

Wellington “Duke” Reiter, FAIA, is an architect, urban designer, and academic administrator. He is the founding principal of Urban Instruments, Inc., a design firm dedicated to works in the public realm.

His professional work began with the 1984 World’s Exposition in New Orleans.

Since then, his architectural commissions have included projects at MIT, the DeCordova Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, as well as projects for numerous corporate and private clients.