Last week, quite out of the blue, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from the City of Miami inviting me to what sounds like will be THE most interesting public policy forum I've attended since returning to South Florida from DC four years ago.
I spoke to Geraldine Guerra at the City of Miami on Friday afternoon to confirm her receipt of my email RSVP, and she mentioned that as of then, she thinks they'll get about 200 or so folks Friday morning.
One of the scheduled expert guest for Mr. Burdett is architect Bernard Zyscovich, someone who I'm pretty familiar with, as I've seen him in action a couple of times in in Hollywood at public forums and city council meetings, as a result of his deep involvement with the Johnson Street redevelopment project.
I attended the lengthy public meeting where the various proposals were made with films, videos and moc-ups, and I was immediately behind his Marriot Hotel project from the beginning because it respected the scale of the neighborhood it was becoming a part of.
That Johnson Street project is close to my heart because when my family moved to South Florida in 1968, when I was seven years-old, it was the place that we spent the most amount of time together at, other than perhaps Greynolds Park.
That was especially the case once the weather turned cooler, and we'd have breakfast at one of the many little restaurants, as we still do today once in a while.
That was before there was a place as nice as Hurricane Alley up there now.
I still recall what The Broadwalk looked like back then, when there were ground trampolines and miniature golf north of Johnson Street, but there weren't any public restroom facilities south of it.
Now that was a real example of genius public administration at work!
By the way, if you're not already familiar with it, see http://www.iconeye.com/
It's amazing. And http://readingt.readingcities.com/index.php in particular, per Ricky Burdett, the speaker, Can Cities Promote Social Justice While Saving The World’s Environment? which is the July 30th post.
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DawnTown '07
A New Dawn for Downtown Miami
You are cordially invited to a free public lecture by Ricky Burdett
- Director of the Urban Age project at the London School of Economics
- Director of the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale
-Chief Architecture Advisor for the London 2012 Olympics
"The Future Shape of Cities"Friday, December 7, 200710 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.Miami Dade College, Chapman Conference CenterEntrance on N.E. Fourth Street between Second Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard
* Complimentary Parking (present invitation to the attendant)
Featuring responses from:
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk Dean, University of Miami School of Architecture
Bernard Zyscovich Principal, Zyscovich Architecture and Planning
Andres Viglucci Pulitzer Prize-winning urban affairs writer, The Miami Herald
R.S.V.P. to Geraldine Guerra at 305-237-3222 or e-mail "gguerra@mdc.edu" FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://www.southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/