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Detroit is an ideal setting for a four-day conference focused "on the policies, designs and emerging approaches that create great places," as the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) describes its annual event.
"The Transforming City" is the theme drawing about 1,500 professionals to sessions that start Wednesday morning at sites around Grand Circus Park and the Madison Avenue district downtown.
"Detroit is chosen because it’s one of the most intriguing cities in the world," says Detroit architect Mark Nickita, co-chair of the host committee. "After many years of challenges, setbacks, bankruptcy and corruption, it’s clearly on the way toward a reinvention."
The gathering's website casts Detroit as a living laboratory of urban innovation:
Detroit and its residents have endured the trauma of transformation from an industrial economy to the information age. They have confronted social, political, and economic challenges familiar to many other urban areas, only at a scale and complexity beyond what most could imagine.
Now, Detroiters are emerging from that experience as pioneers of innovation at every level from neighborhood to region. What better place for planners, designers and policymakers to gather, to learn, to share, to celebrate what this work-in-progress is producing?
CNU, a Chicago-based nonprofit, has about 2,600 members "working to build vibrant communities where people have diverse choices for how they live, work, and get around," the group says. Three mantras are "lean urbanism," "walkable cities" and "non-motorized transportation."
Maurice Cox, planning and development director for Detroit, is among featured speakers.
Local speakers this week include Eric Larson, Downtown Detroit Partnership chief executive; Maurice Cox, Detroit planning and development director; Rodrick Miller, head of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp.; Jim Tischler, community policy director in the governor's office and four University of Michigan scholars. Among visiting presenters are New York City's parks commissioner, former U.S. mayors, a past New York City transportation commissioner, globally known architects and planners, authors and nonprofit leaders.
In addition to dozens of presentations and panel discussions, its 24th gathering (#CNU24) features neighborhood visits for registered participants.
Destinations include Corktown, Cody Rouge, Grandmont Rosedale, Midtown, the North End and Oakland Avenue Urban Farm and BanglaTown (straddling Detroit and Hamtramck). here's also a two-hour architectural walking tour of downtown, a look at renovations to the 1926 Wurlitzer Building and a four-mile run on city streets and a two-hour Saturday morning bike tour from The Fillmore to Eastern Market.
A four-hour Detroit Music Experience tour reaches far beyond the Motown History Museum to include the former Paradise Valley area, United Sound Systems, other Detroit landmarks and sites in Hamtramck and Highland Park. Local novelist and art critic Lynn Crawford leads a three-hour Creating Art in Detroit tour of galleries, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit and the African Bead Gallery.
Pashon Murray of Detroit Dirt will talk about her composting venture.
On Friday night, attendees are invited to a limited-seating "Deep Dive Detroit Dinner" in Midtown, billed as offering "robust conversation about the city over dinner at the Urban Consulate."
Local community planner Lauren Hood will lead the discussion over a Creole meal prepared by Ederique Goudia, a Detroit chef with Louisiana roots. "Engage in an open dialog about where Detroit is, how we got here and where we're going," says a Facebook page for the $75 event.
During official sessions, more than two dozen local presenters will share Detroit's successes and goals with the influerntial visitors. These are among speakers, presenters and tour hosts:
- Kent Anderson, Detroit architect
- Ashley Atkinson, co-director of Keep Growing Detroit
- Daniel Carmody, Eastern Market Corp. president
- Mark Covington, chair of the Georgia Street Community Collective
- Maurice Cox, Detroit planning and development director
- Lynn Crawford, writter and founding board member of MOCAD
- Devita Davison, FoodLab Detroit marketing and communications director
- Ashley Flintoff, WSU planner and master's degree candidate in urban planning
- John Gallagher, author and Detroit Free Press reporter since 1987
- Carleton Gholz, music historian and executive director of Detroit Sound Conservancy
- Garlin Gilchrist, Detroit deputy technology director for civic community engagement
- Anika Goss-Foster, Detroit Future City executive director
- Michael Johnson. princiapl urban designer at SmithGroupJJR, a downtown architectural, engineering and planning firm
- Eric Larson, Downtown Detroit Partnership chief executive
- Neil McEachern, retired Detroit Public Schools principal living in Lafayette Park
- Tom Milano, director of the Jefferson-Chalmers Community Food System
- Rodrick Miller, Detroit Economic Growth Corp. president and chief executive
- Daniel J, Monahan, principal of The Monahan Co., and Eastpointe builder
- Dorian Moore, an architect who's vice president of Archive Design Studio in Detroit
- Sue Mosey, executive director of Midtown Detroit, Inc.
- Pashon Murray, owner and co-founder of Detroit Dirt, a Southwest Detroit composting business
- Mark Nickita, president of Archive D.S. in Detroit
- Lisa Nuszkowski, executive director of Detroit Bike Share for the Downtown Detroit Partnership
- Dara O'Byrne, deputy director of Detroit Future City, a land use and policy organization
- Edward Orlowski, associate professor of architecture at Lawrence Institute of Technology in Southfield
- Lawrence aWilliamson, Midtown Detroit, Inc. real estate manager
Related coverage:
Mark Nickita: Urban Designers to See a City 'Clearly on the Way Toward a Reinvention,' June 7
