April 2010 Newsletter
Check out the Rose Center's fourth issue of its quarterly e-newsletter. Highlights include:
A Letter from the Executive Director
Last month, world urban leaders converged on Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations World Urban Forum. The gathering, in its 5th iteration, brings together national government leaders, mayors, diplomats, members of national, regional and international associations of local governments, non-governmental and community organizations, professionals, academics, grassroots women's organizations, youth and slum-dweller groups as partners to discuss a variety of topics related to improving the world’s cities. At the Urban Forum, UN-HABITAT issued a report, State of the World Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide, that declared, among other findings, that no country has ever achieved sustained economic growth and rapid social development without urbanization.
Of course, from the highly urbanized perspective of the United States, this makes sense: cities have generated growth because their high concentration of people creates markets for goods, services and ideas, resulting in economic efficiencies and agglomerations that create synergies. But we are also intimately familiar with what can go wrong when we allow our metropolises to suffer decades of underinvestment in physical and social infrastructure and lose population, jobs and market share. At the ULI Daniel Rose Center, we’re bullish about cities but we know that cities must change, grow, strive and innovate to keep up with their principal competitors—other cities.
Last month, I heard from one of this year’s 16 Daniel Rose Fellows in Public Leadership that our Fellowship program represents the only travel budget to leave his city this year. Tim Campbell recently published a column on Citiwire explaining that inter-city study trips by civic leaders are “keys to economic success and urban reforms,” rather than the “junkets” they are sometimes dismissed as. Campbell neatly outlines the very reasons why we’re committed to investing in the Daniel Rose Fellows, why we bring them to see other excellent urban projects, why we want them to meet civic leaders and development entrepreneurs who successfully implemented them, and why we encourage them to “kick the tires” to see what makes these projects really work. We remain committed to this place-based, peer-to-peer learning as we work with the 2009-2010 class of Daniel Rose Fellows, and look towards selecting next year’s class of fellows.
Learn more about the 5th World Urban Forum.
Read the Tim Campbell column
Jess Zimbabwe, AIA, AICP, LEED-AP
Executive Director
Daniel Rose Fellows Tackle Challenging Corridors in Their Cities
The 2009-2010 class of Daniel Rose Fellows in Public Leadership each led three-day Advisory Service Panels in their cities during February and March 2010. Although the cities were selected to participate in the fellowship before they identified land use issues to explore during the year-long program, each of this year’s cities are addressing challenging corridor-scale planning and development strategies.
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Nashville: February 8-11, 2010
ULI Expert Panelists:
- Mike Higbee, Strategic Capital Partners (Chair)
- Carlton Brown, Full Spectrum New York
- Nando Micale, Wallace Roberts and Todd
- Rick Reinhard, Downtown District of Columbia BID
- Christopher Stienon, Urban Matrix
- Richard Ward, Zimmer Companies
See the description of the Nashville case study. |
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Phoenix: February 16-19, 2010
ULI Expert Panelists:
- Davis Leininger, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (Chair)
- Mami Hara, Wallace Roberts and Todd
- Aaron Sussman, City of Sacramento planning Department
- Kathleen Rose, Rose and Associates
- Mark Shapiro, Mithun
See the description of the Phoenix case study.
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Minneapolis: February 22-25, 2010
ULI Expert Panelists:
- Abe Farkas, ECO Northwest (Chair)
- Frank L. Fuller, Field Paoli Architects
- Mike Maxwell, Maxwell and Partners
- Pamela Minnich, Minich Strategic Services
See the description of the Minneapolis case study.
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Philadelphia: March 8-11, 2010
ULI Expert Panelists:
- Michael Banner, Los Angeles LDC, Inc. (Chair)
- Gary Altergott, Morris Architects
- Carol Truppi, Independent Contractor
- Tom Flynn, City of Charlotte Economic Development Department
- Marisa Gaither Flowers, Green Door Advisors
- Gerry Tully, Psomas
See the description of the Philadelphia case study. |
ULI Rose Center Co-Hosts Forum on Cities Recovering Green
In January, the ULI Rose Center and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) jointly hosted a forum in Washington, D.C., titled “Recovering Green." The event brought together city mayors, developers and architects to discuss how cities can still achieve their green goals and the best ways for localities to move forward in the current economic conditions.
"A lot of the tough decisions have been passed down to cities," said Ken Rosenfeld, policy director for the National League of Cities. "In the coming years, city incomes are going to continue to decline. The deficit is very real and now we have to find ways out of it."
Attendees heard case studies from the mayors of Des Moines, Iowa; New Bedford, Massachusetts, Southfield, Michigan; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, along with planning discussions on development and infrastructure before breaking out into small group discussions. Each group developed one-page action plans about what could be done with zoning and building codes, public/private partnerships and inter-jurisdictional challenges to help growing cities implement development projects in the spirit of environmental sustainability.
"As a mayor I am always looking to how we can add value; however, I constantly see how change is really hard," stated T.M. Franklin Cownie, Mayor of Des Moines. "It it is important that we always look how to keep the private sector involved and what incentives can we work with in this economy. You got to get the private sector energized through incentives and tax breaks."
Read the full post about the Recovering Green Forum at ULI’s The Ground Floor blog.
Daniel Rose Fellows Meet with ULI Experts and Hear from Mayor Daley in Chicago
In December 2009, the 2009-2010 class of Daniel Rose Fellows travelled to Chicago to work with a faculty panel of noted ULI experts to discuss their land use challenges and to learn best practices and policies from other parts of the country. In addition, the fellows were led on a brisk, wintry walking tour of the historic Michigan Avenue streetwall by Lee Bey, Executive Director of the Chicago Central Area Committee.
The teams from Nashville, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Phoenix each presented the land use issue that their team is focusing on for the year of the Daniel Rose Fellowship. Several noted urban experts also presented on their work to share best practices with the Fellows. Presentations covered infrastructure investments to promote development, the design of the public realm, public/private partnerships, and financing tools for urban revitalization.
Faculty Experts from the 2009 Daniel Rose Fellowship Chicago Retreat:
- Dena Belzer, Strategic Economics
- Debra Campbell, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission
- Robert T. Dunphy, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Urban Land Institute
- Mark Falcone, Continuum Partners
- Alexander Garvin, Alex Garvin & Associates
- Bill Hudnut, Senior Fellow Emeritus, Urban Land Institute
- Michael Kelly, New York City Housing Authority
- Christopher W. Kurz, Linden Associates, Inc.
- Ellen McCarthy, Arent Fox LLP
- Mott Smith, Civic Enterprise
On the last day of their retreat, the fellows heard from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley who explained the value of an international approach to economic development, especially in the context of today’s challenging economy. He proposed that each city should work to identify its unique reason for existing and thriving into the future.
Listen to a podcast of Mayor Daley’s remarks.
2009 Shaw Forum Report Published – Maximizing the Neighborhood Stabilization Program Opportunity
The ninth annual ULI Shaw Forum, co-hosted by the ULI Rose Center & the ULI Terwilliger Center, and generously supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the late Charlie Shaw, took place on October 14, 2009. More than 25 hand-selected public and private sector leaders from across the country gathered at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles to kick off the forum, entitled Maximizing the Neighborhood Stabilization Program Opportunity.
Read More
Download the Report
Meet the Rose Center’s Newest Employee
Gideon Berger was named Director of the Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use in February 2010. Before joining ULI, Gideon was a senior city planner for the City of Denver, where he focused on projects at the nexus between land use and transportation. Gideon managed the Living Streets Initiative—an interdisciplinary, multi-sector regional coalition to promote policies that support multimodal transportation, placemaking, economic development, public health and environmental sustainability—as well as community plans for neighborhoods expecting new rail transit stations. Prior to working for the City of Denver, Gideon was a transit oriented development (TOD) planner from 2006-08 for the Denver Regional Transportation District’s (RTD) FasTracks Program, a $7 billion regional rail transit capital project including six new corridors and more than 50 new stations.
Gideon’s previous professional experience includes eight years in public affairs communication in Washington, D.C. He earned a Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Communication from American University in Washington, D.C Gideon has been an adjunct planning professor at the University of Colorado Denver, and has published articles on planning in the journal The Next American City, National Journal magazine, The Hill newspaper and Planetizen website. He is a certified planner by the AICP.
Upcoming Workshop on Using Public-Private Partnerships to Create Value-Added Conversions
The Great Recession has accelerated an already existing trend toward public private partnerships, which have become inherent to the more economically and physically complex, contemporary style of development. And yet, as important as public partnerships have become in contemporary development financing, frequently opportunities are missed and deals badly made because the state of the art for formulating and executing public private partnerships is still relatively new and evolving.
April 30, 2010 1:30 PM Eastern
Register now or learn more about this webinar
ULI’s Summer Real Estate School Qualifies for AICP Continuing Education Credits
ULI’s Real Estate School will be held June 2-14 in Washington, DC. These workshops are led by industry experts and will take you through the basics and advanced elements of real estate development and finance. Whether you are looking to better understand the development process or take your skills to the next level, Real Estate School can help you set yourself apart from the competition.
Register or learn more about the the Real Estate School