The Downtown Mobile Alliance will unveil a new brand at its annual luncheon on Sept. 25, and it has invited a keynote speaker known for questioning how American cities finance themselves.
The luncheon is at The Battle House Renaissance Mobile Hotel & Spa.
The Keynote
Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, will deliver the keynote address.
Marohn is a civil engineer and land use planner whose organization argues that the standard American development pattern — wide roads, separated uses, heavy infrastructure serving low-density development — produces municipal obligations that the resulting tax base cannot cover over the long term.
The Strong Towns counterargument favors incremental, densely built, mixed-use development of the kind that historically characterized downtowns, on the grounds that it generates more value per acre and requires less public infrastructure to serve.
For an organization whose entire mandate is a historic downtown, that is a keynote with a direct application rather than a general-interest speech.
A New Brand at 20 Years
The alliance will unveil what it calls “a fresh look for our organization and our vision for downtown as we celebrate 20 years of operation.”
The luncheon will also celebrate the progress the organization has made and consider what comes next.
Twenty years is a meaningful interval for a downtown organization. The Downtown Mobile Alliance has operated across a period that included a recession, substantial private investment in the urban core, and the arrival and departure of multiple redevelopment approaches. A rebrand at that mark is usually less about design than about restating what the organization is now for.
Tickets
- Members: $85
- Nonmembers: $100
Details
- What: Downtown Mobile Alliance Annual Luncheon
- When: Sept. 25
- Where: The Battle House Renaissance Mobile Hotel & Spa
- Keynote: Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns