By Jesse Wendover
January 22, 2007

Twenty years ago, Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. awoke one morning and realized he was the chief urban designer of his city, or so the story goes. He promptly wrote a letter to Jaquelin Robertson, then Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, proposing the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) - a program that would bring mayors together with design and development experts to discuss the most challenging urban design projects facing their cities. Robertson brought the idea to Adele Chatfield-Taylor, then Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts, and MICD was born.

Twenty years later, in essentially the same format proposed by Riley, MICD is going strong - hosting seven to eight sessions and reaching at least fifty cities each year. In fact, MICD has graduated over 700 mayors and over 500 design and development professionals in its twenty year history.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, the MICD hosted a public lecture and panel discussion at the National Building Museum December 13. Moderated by Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker magazine, the discussion centered around the impact of politics on city design and the future of urban development in America’s cities. Mayors present were: Conference of Mayors President Trenton (NJ) Mayor Douglas Palmer; Charleston (SC) Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr.; Providence (RI) Mayor David Cicilline; and Des Moines (IA) Mayor T.M. Franklin Cownie.

Download a free audio recording of the MICD 20th Anniversary lecture from Architecture Radio: http://www.architecture-radio.org/