NEW: Symposium Celebrates Providence Renaissance This Weekend

NEW: Symposium Celebrates Providence Renaissance This Weekend

Providence marked the 30th anniversary of the Capital Center Commission today, with over 200 attending gathering to listen to the architects, planners, developers, lawyers and politicians who led the city’s last major comprehensive urban design project.

Make No Little Plans: A Symposium on Visions for the City of Providence is a three-day gathering taking place all weekend in the city. Providence Preservation Society Executive Director James Hall called one the preservation movement to have both memory and imagination.

An Exciting Time For Providence

"This is an exciting time for Providence and for the Providence Preservation Society,” he said. “As people who care deeply about our city, we realize that change of this magnitude, although exciting, must be made with care and consideration. The Providence Preservation Society, as a result of its long service to Providence, has a unique point of view and commitment to the stewardship of this great city.

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Hall continued: “The preservation movement today must not only have a memory; it must have imagination. Preservationists should lead prudent, sensitive planning to engender diverse, active, 'green,' and unexpected cities. When we plan for new parts of the city, it's our obligation to be as good - elegant, scaled, livable - as the city we inherited. Creating, or curating, great cities requires planning that is at once deliberate and bold."

One of the members of the panel, Joseph DiStefano, Partner, Adler Pollock & Sheehan P.C., said the newly established 195 Commission would benefit from an outside voice.

“One of the greatest assets we had in developing the Capital Center Commission plan was the assistance of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, an internationally acclaimed architectural and planning firm, to help us set development guidelines. I believe the I-195 Commission would benefit greatly from a similar association,” he said.

The second day of the Symposium takes place tomorrow, Saturday, September 17, opening at 9:30 am with a welcome address from Mayor Taveras. The nominee chairman of the new I-195 Commission, Colin Kane, will introduce keynote speaker Kathryn Madden, principal of Madden Design Group of Boston and urban design critic at the Harvard School of Design. Madden will speak on planning and economic development opportunities and challenges for the I-195 land.