Staff Reports
Columbus will be a featured destination for about 25 conference-goers at the Congress for the New Urbanism event in Louisville, Kentucky next week.
As a part of the international gathering in Louisville from June 12 through 15, conference-goers have been offered the chance for an all-day bus tour of Columbus the day before the conference begins, said Lisa Schamess, communications manager for the Congress, which is based in Washington D.C.
The tour is being coordinated through the Columbus Visitors Center and will feature architectural highlights of the city and a chance for conference-goers to experience what makes Columbus unique, Schamess said.
The annual Congress attracts more than 1,500 planners, architects, landscape architects, environmental consultants, engineers, city officials and real estate developers from nearly every state in the United States and from dozens of countries around the world, Schamess said. The gathering offers an opportunity to exchange ideas, explore neighborhoods, engage with residents and learn in the field of urban development.
Each year, with the selected location, the Congress reaches out to local partners to give those attending the conference a sense of place and to honor the context where the conference is happening, Schamess said.
This year, the selection of Columbus for a tour opportunity was an obvious opportunity, she said.
“Our organization is about quality human orientation with architecture, and Columbus’ architectural heritage is an example of something so rare, so we tend to know where it is,” she said.
Schamess believes conference attendees will be attracted to Columbus’ architectural beauty, which is valued a great deal, but also to how architecture plays into how local residents live and get around the city, she said.
The recent deaths of two of the architects championing mid-Century Modernism, I.M. Pei and Kevin Roche, whose work is on display in Columbus, make the tour even more poignant, she said.
The tour will be for a full day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and will also be a chance for people from around the country attending the conference to meet each other while touring Columbus, Schamess said.
In addition to the Columbus tour, a tour is also being offered of New Albany’s innovative transportation improvements for placemaking.
Among the conference sessions in Louisville will be “Designing the Healthy City of the Future,” “Compassion to the Core: Toward a More Human City,” and “Building Together: Urbanism as an Engine for Resilient, Fair Communities.”
The conference is also exploring “How Cities are Curbing their Parking,” and exploring Louisville’s Legacy Projects.
A special Congress for New Urbanism design team of architects, planners, retail experts and transportation experts worked to create improvement strategies for four locations in Louisville and will give their recommendations during the conference.
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To learn more about the Congress for the New Urbanism, visit cnu.org.
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