Join us to welcome Norm Rice, Seattle’s esteemed mayor who presided over Seattle during its breakout “grunge” era, from 1990 to 1997.
Seattle’s first African American mayor and author of Gaining Public Trust: A Profile of Civic Engagement, Mr. Rice shares his faith in civic engagement as an engine for urban renaissance. Particularly instructive for students of Seattle history is his pioneering emphasis on the urban village concept. By recognizing people’s need to build community through parks and other green spaces, Mayor Rice transformed Seattle’s neighborhoods and reversed decades of economic decline in Seattle’s downtown, seeding the revitalization of South Lake Union and the growth of tech titans like Amazon. Although he lamented the “Seattle process,” the mayor successfully devised a collaborative approach encompassing diverse stakeholders, from grassroots activists to corporations – a politics that many yearn for today.
