New Plazas Symposium, October 19-21, 2001
(Santa Fe, New Mexico)
Click here for New Plazas
website
The New Plazas
Symposium was co-organized by Knight Fellow Ken Hughes, the state planner for
the State of New Mexico. The Symposium explored the potential to reuse, revalue,
and reintroduce plazas as the premier community gathering places for
communities. Speakers explored the potential for reinvestment in plazas to act
as a catalyst for community revitalization as well as the gathering place for
entirely new communities, the subject of Ken Hughes’ Knight fellowship research.
In his role as state planner, Hughes has been providing funding for
revitalization projects involving plazas, and plans to continue his research in
the years ahead. The symposium followed the receipt by the New Mexico Chapter of
the American Planning Association of a National Planning Landmark Award for the
Laws of the Indies (the document that guided the planning and design of Spanish
colonial cities throughout the world, particularly in the Americas), as manifest
in the existing plazas of New Mexico.
Speakers at the
Symposium included two faculty members from the University of Miami School of
Architecture who are experts in the history and urban design of plazas: Jaime
Correa, who serves as the Knight Professor in Community Building, and
Jean-François Lejeune, Professor in the Suburb and Town Design Program. Other
speakers included Stefanos Polyzoides, Mayor John Hooker, University of New
Mexico professors Chris Wilson, Chris Callot, and Harrison Higgins (now with the
University of Florida in Gainesville).
The event was
documented on the Internet by Knight Fellow Peter Musty, and led into the second
Council of the New Urbanism held over the following three days. The Council
included presentations, discussions and critiques on twelve cutting edge
projects exemplifying the principles of smart growth, New Urbanism and
sustainable development. This was the second in a new series of symposia that
the Knight Program helps support through publication of a report based on the
material presented at the Councils.
