Modeled on the national Mayors’ Institute on City Design, the New Jersey Institute provides a multi-day retreat for six mayors and a resource team of design and planning professionals. The mayors present planning and design issues that each community is facing, and then participate in a wide-ranging discussion. While addressing the specific concerns raised by the mayors, the resource team members also describe in broader terms how they have approached similar problems. Using examples from other communities, the mayors and resource team members learn from each other.

The Institute offers public officials the rare opportunity to discuss a design issue facing their community with a group of peers and some of the most respected designers and planners in the country. These institutes focus particular attention on the relationship between community planning, design, smart growth and public health, and how better design and development can create more livable, less auto-dependent communities. Experts in urban design, architecture, conservation, ecology, real estate development, transportation planning and other complementary fields participate in the Institute discussions, providing presentations and analyses of how alternative development patterns impact the future of communities.

This Institute was held at the Arts Council of Princeton on January 29 – 30, 2009. Each case study engaged the resource team and the mayors to think broadly about the future of their communities; in all cases, redevelopment played an important role in the mayors’ visions for their towns.