National Building Museum President Addresses Nation's Mayors
On January 17, 2009 the U.S. Conference of Mayors convened in Washington, D.C. to discuss progress in our cities and towns. Executive Director and President of the National Building Museum Chase W. Rynd addressed the leaders during the closing ceremony. His remarks focused on the many opportunities for development across America but the need for sound planning, sustainable design, and public awareness:
1909—100 years ago—something extraordinary happened in Chicago, Illinois. Like many things in America during that period, it was innovative, progressive, and shaped this country for the next century. Each of you has been impacted by it, and every resident in your community has experienced its profound effects on their health, vitality, and economic welfare.
What was this remarkable invention? It was a city plan. Specifically, it was the Daniel Burnham Plan for Chicago, which launched the American planning movement. It changed history and established a framework for our cities and towns to adapt to the tremendous growth of the twentieth century. It infused American urban planning with strategic thinking about regional resources, metropolitan transportation, civic and public space, and economic development. It was about building a great American city which could thrive—culturally, socially, and financially—in the modern age.
And here we are 100 years later with the mayors of our cities appropriately convening at the National Building Museum, the American institution devoted to achievements in building and planning. You are here during one of the most pivotal eras in American history and are being called upon by your country to once again make monumental change so that we can thrive in the next hundred years.
How do we do this? How do we transform into environmentally sustainable cities? How do we revolutionize our transportation systems? How do we reengineer our cities’ energy, water, communications, and waste systems for a century when cities will swell to house more than 90% of the American population? How do we renovate our public buildings—schools, museums, courthouses—so that intellectual reform can really happen? How do we do this to assure that each citizens’ quality of life increases and we can perform and compete anew?
This Museum doesn’t have all of these answers yet, but together we know that each of you do. Remarkable things are happening across this country. In Mayor Shirley Franklin’s Atlanta, Georgia, the city has repurposed a brown field site as a thriving, mixed-use community. Mayor Sam Adams’s commitment to Portland, Oregon’s public transportation has resulted in a city with one of the highest rates of non-automobile travel in the country. In San Francisco, citizens now recycle 70 percent of their waste under Mayor Gavin Newsom’s leadership. In Mayor Charmaine Tavares’s Maui, the small community of Hali’maile will thrive using the sun and wind of Hawaii.
And here at home, our own Mayor Fenty—with the extraordinary leadership of people like Harriett Tregoning and Councilmember Wells—is reinvigorating and greening our nation’s capital. These projects and dozens more ranging from Stella, Missouri and Seattle, Washington to Starkville, Mississippi and Davis, California inspired the National Building Museum to open a new exhibition titled Green Community to show the public—and our policy makers—that sustainable change is underway.
It is important to note that some of the most exciting progress in community development has been made through public-private partnerships. The Home Depot Foundation, for example, is investing more than 400 million dollars over the next ten years toward building sustainable, affordable communities around the country. As one of their sustainability partners, the Museum recognizes The Home Depot Foundation’s commitment to these issues as essential to our future.
Our cities are poised for a new plan—a new strategy. Let’s rebuild and start history again. Share your city’s stories, plans, and experiences with the National Building Museum; and in turn, through our programming, we can showcase this transformation to a country eager to build our new American future.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are 1,200 such cities in the country today. Each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the mayor. For more information, please visit www.usmayors.org.
