Kudos and criticism were wielded by the nearly 1,500 surveyed urban planners and architects who spent up to four days in Detroit in June at the 24th Annual Congress for the New Urbanism conference.
Many of the positive comments from the participants from 43 states and 28 countries centered around downtown’s walkability — a fairly new compliment for the city of automobiles.
- “I think the downtown location was used very strategically and made you go out and walk the downtown neighborhood, which was a very pleasant experience,” said an attendee in the CNU survey.
- “I loved the distributed out-in-the-city venues in Detroit rather than the typical ‘convention center’ model,” another participant said.
- “I enjoyed being able to walk from venue to venue. That was a great experience for urbanists. The overall event should be a precedent for the future of conferences all around. It was really cool to walk around and see the city on the way to the lectures and tours,” another said.
To read more of this story, visit http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20160711/NEWS/160719961/urbanism-conference-attendees-praise-downtown-detroits-walkability
