Design Alabama: Annual Mayor’s Summit

Celebrating 19 Years of the Alabama Mayors Design Summit

This year marks the 19th anniversary of the DesignAlabama Mayors Design Summit, and I am honored to facilitate this transformative event for the 11th consecutive year. Over the past two decades, this summit has become a vital platform for fostering design excellence and empowering Alabama’s mayors to become advocates for good design in their communities.

What is the Mayors Design Summit?

The Alabama Mayors Design Summit is a two-day event designed to bring together five mayors from across the stateand a team of six design professionals to address pressing design and planning challenges in their communities. Through collaboration, brainstorming, and hands-on charrettes, the summit generates actionable ideas that mayors can take back to their cities to promote place-based economic development and community building.

How It Works

• Presenting Challenges: Each mayor gives a 10-minute presentation about their city’s design challenge, supported by maps, photographs, and other materials.

• Collaborative Brainstorming: In a roundtable environment, mayors and design professionals engage in a charrette to explore innovative, achievable solutions tailored to each community.

• Building Momentum: The summit equips mayors with strategies, ideas, and connections to implement meaningful change in their cities.

The Impact

Through this summit, Alabama’s leaders gain tools to become champions of design excellence, catalyzing growth and revitalization in communities statewide. Past participants have returned to their cities with actionable plans that address downtown revitalization, public spaces, infrastructure challenges, and more. The summit has consistently proven that design and collaboration are powerful drivers of community transformation.

Why It Matters

As a long-time facilitator, I’ve witnessed how this summit inspires mayors to embrace the role of design in economic development and placemaking. By empowering local leaders, we’re not only addressing immediate challenges but also cultivating a culture of thoughtful, sustainable development across Alabama.

Here’s to 19 years of progress, innovation, and collaboration—and to the many communities that have been positively impacted along the way.

Apply Now

If you’re a mayor in Alabama with a design challenge, apply to join the 19th Alabama Mayors Design Summit and be part of a legacy of transformative leadership. Together, we can continue to build places that matter.