Mayor Smith Goes to Poland to Aid in Urban Development

May 4, 2007

Meridian Mayor John Robert Smith will spend the next week in Poland as part of a delegation hosted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), which has been invited to the European country to assist mayors there in crafting development plans for urban areas.

Mayor Smith, one of only three U.S. mayors invited to make the trip, was selected because of his successes in downtown revitalization and his commitment to historic preservation. The delegation is being led by Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, and also includes Mayor Dannel Malloy of Stamford, Connecticut.

Under the auspices of the Mayors Institute of City Design, sessions to be held in Warsaw will include presentations from the mayors, plus architects and other experts drawn from the American Architectural Foundation. The meetings will open with an introduction from Tom Cochran, executive director of USCM, and Ronald Bogle, president and CEO of the American Architectural Foundation. Following remarks from U.S. Ambassador to Poland Victor Ashe and Hanna Gronkiewicz, president of Warsaw and president of the Union of Polish Metropolises, the keynote address will be given by Mayor Riley.

Mayor Smith will open a panel discussion on “Public and Cultural Facilities” with a presentation that will focus downtown initiatives including Union Station, the Central Fire Station, Dumont Plaza, the Arts District Parking Garage, the MSU Riley Education and Performing Arts Center and renovations under way at City Hall. Also participating in the panel will be Alex Garvin of Alex Garvin and Associates in New York and Dr. Ewa Grochowska of the Architecture and Planning Department in Warsaw. Moderator will be Wies’aw Bielawski, deputy mayor of Gdansk and the Union of Polish Metropolises.

Other sessions during the conference will include “Adaptive Re-Use and Economic Development of Industrial Buildings and Land” and “Preserving Historic Landscapes in the City.”

During their time in Warsaw, the U.S. delegation will visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum, industrial redevelopment sites, the Wawel Cathedral and St. Anne’s Cathedral. Ambassador Ashe, the former mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, will host a dinner for the group at the ambassador’s residence. The group will also travel to Krakow and will tour Auschwitz and Birkenau, two notorious concentration camps during World War II.

The USCM has a longstanding relationship with Poland’s mayors, who asked for U.S. expertise in developing urban centers undergoing explosive growth since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mayors there have expressed concern that unbridled construction and lack of architectural cohesion could hinder sustainable development in their cities.