Midwest Mayors to Pgh. for City Planning Session

Carnegie Mellon University’s Remaking Cities Institute hosts the Mayors Institute on City Design Thursday and Friday.

RCI Executive Director Don Carter says the conference gathers the mayors with eight local and national experts in fields like preservation architecture and urban design. He says the idea is for the mayors to ask questions specific to their city’s problems of blighted properties and vacant land.

He says the mayors hail from smaller Midwestern cities that are losing population and jobs, and they could learn something from Pittsburgh.

“They go back with a great understanding of the design issues and a direction for the project they’ve brought to the table,” says Carter.

“It’s almost universally widely accepted as a way for mayors to jumpstart projects or at least gain a better understanding of what the issues are.”

Carter says his institute will use information gleaned from this symposium to support its ongoing research of city redevelopment.