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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 Mayors’ 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 and public health, and how better design and development can create healthy, livable communities. Experts in public health participate in the Institute discussions, providing presentations and analyses of how alternative development patterns impact the health of communities.

This N.J. Mayors’ Institute program was held at Princeton University on June 14th – 16th, 2006. Mayors from urban, suburban and rural communities in Northern, Central and Southern New Jersey focused particular attention on how better design can promote both smart growth and healthy communities. Each case study engaged the resource team and the other mayors to think broadly about how to create mixed-use, livable districts that could create a new or enhance an existing downtown or a special place. In all cases, redevelopment played an important role in emphasizing the opportunities for pedestrian activity and a more healthy lifestyle