KNIGHT PROGRAM 2005 CHARRETTE WILL FOCUS ON
CITY OF DULUTH IN JULY 2005

February 28, 2005  The Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami School of Architecture has chosen Duluth as its charrette city for 2005. The charrette team—Knight Program Fellows, UM School of Architecture faculty, and graduate students in the Suburb and Town Design Program—will travel to Duluth July 13-18, 2005 to conduct the charrette.

The charrette, an intensive public design workshop, will focus on several aspects related to revitalization in the east downtown and adjacent Hillside/Waterfront areas of Duluth. The city is facing the challenges of bringing back the focus of development— housing, jobs, and commerce—to the core area of the city.

Duluth is at a crossroads in its transition from a declining, rustbelt community to one with a lively, diverse economy and a commitment to its urban wilderness character. Duluth is the fourth largest city in Minnesota, with a population of 86,000. It is a center of bulk shipping—the city’s past was tied to its location as a shipping and railroad center, but as these methods of transportation declined, so too did Duluth. The city experienced the closure of many factories following World War II and continuing through the 1980s. The city has, since the early 1980s, balanced the loss of manufacturing jobs with the growth of health care, tourism, and retail. Today Duluth is a regional center, but problems created during the decades of decline continue to present challenges. Among the problems are widespread poverty and a lack of development in the urban core and adjacent residential neighborhoods.

“Duluth has begun to successfully confront the challenge of moving from a largely industrial economy to a more diversified economic base. Part of the challenge when communities go through such dramatic changes is to develop design, policy, and management approaches that preserve what citizens love most about their city’s character and its past while enabling new development to sensitively blend in and enhance the community’s character and sense of place,” says Charles C. Bohl, director of the Knight Program. “Duluth’s special character and sense of place will only increase in importance as the city’s primary assets in the future as it works to attract entrepreneurial people who are looking for livable communities to live, work, raise families, and base their businesses. The downtown represents the natural focus for these efforts and for the charrette. It is the heart of the community, it belongs to everyone in Duluth, and it is the place that people coming from outside the community first encounter; the downtown is Duluth’s public face to the world. ”

Bohl notes that the Knight Program chose Duluth as the charrette site for a variety of reasons. “We’re going to Duluth because we think the city is ready to have a public dialog about the future of the city, and ready to work together and act on the plans, proposals, and recommendations that this intensive community design workshop will generate.”

The charrette is co-sponsored by the City of Duluth and Duluth Local Initiatives Support Corporation (Duluth LISC).

Duluth was selected as the charrette site through a competitive process. “We are pleased to have been selected and look forward to a productive and thought-provoking public process. I have confidence that the charrette will result in many benefits for the city in the years to come,” notes Duluth Mayor Herb Bergson.

About Charrettes
A charrette is a community-wide design process in which members of the public are invited to meet with urban designers, planners, and other specialists and are encouraged to participate in workshop sessions and share their opinions and ideas for the future development and refinement of their community—it is essentially a combination of an urban design studio and a town meeting in which the full spectrum of community problems, opportunities, and future alternatives are studied and debated. The goal is to create a plan that is practical and achieves consensus.

During the charrette, the 30-member charrette team will work with business professionals, local officials, city staff, local organizations, clubs, groups, churches, and residents from the city and surrounding area. The Duluth community will be invited to share opinions and ideas for the future development of the city.  Neighborhood residents, property owners, and other stakeholders will be invited to specific sessions, and all of the discussions will be open to the public. Ideas for new development and for improving existing neighborhoods will be drawn by the Knight Program team so participants can review and critique them, refining a community-driven vision for their neighborhood

About the Knight Program and the Charrette Team

The charrette will be led by this year’s Knight Program Fellows—an interdisciplinary group of 13 community development professionals from around the country who bring a range of expertise including community development, planning, housing, real estate development, arts management, transportation, architecture, and historic preservation. The design team will be comprised of graduate students enrolled in the Suburb and Town Design Program at the UM School of Architecture. Two Knight Fellows will play major roles in coordinating the event and serving as community liaisons – Tom Cotruvo, executive director of the Duluth Economic Development Authority and a 2004-05 Knight Program Fellow and Pam Kramer, program director of Duluth LISC and a 2003-04 Knight Program Fellow. The overall effort will be headed by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture and principal in the firm Duany Plater-Zyberk, which has created plans for more than 200 communities worldwide. Plater-Zyberk is one of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a reform movement based on the principles of traditional urbanism that advocates the planning and design of great urban neighborhoods that are walkable, diverse, and economically sustainable, with shopping, civic institutions, parks, and jobs within easy access of residents.

The Duluth charrette will be the fourth charrette conducted by the Knight Program in Community Building; previous charrettes were held in Macon, GA, San Jose, CA, and Coatesville, PA. For more information about Duluth’s involvement in the charrette, contact Jeff Papas, communications manager for Duluth, at (218) 730-5211 or jpapas@ci.duluth.mn.us. For more information about the Knight Program in Community Building, go to www.arc.miami.edu/knight. The Knight Program is funded by a grant from the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation. The Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities.

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