The 2007 Great Places Forum Symposium was an invitational working “think tank”—run concurrently with the Mayors’ Institute of City Design hosted by the University of Washington—held on July 19-21, 2007 in a variety of extraordinary venues around Seattle, including the new Olympic Sculpture Park, the Bell Harbor International Conference Center, the expanded Seattle Art Museum, and Seattle City Hall.  In a concurrent session held at the Paccar Pavilion at the Olympic Sculpture Park, mayors, experts and University of Washington faculty gathered to talk about specific issues revolving around city design.

The Symposium brought together 60 industry leaders from the fields of urban planning, municipal government, environmental studies, architecture, real estate development, international sustainability, and community organizing to celebrate and advocate the role of placemaking in the vitality of our downtowns and suburbs, rural landscapes and villages.  

At the symposium, participants engaged in facilitated discussion and heard provocative presentations by local visionaries Denis Hayes (Bullitt Foundation,) Mimi Gates (Seattle Art Museum,) Gene Duvernoy (Cascade Land Conservancy,) and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.  They produced and signed the “Declaration of Great Places”, a document articulating the importance of great places and identification of the components that make a place great.