Indiana Is Investing over $1.5 Billion in Quality of Place. Five Cities Are Coming Together to Learn What Makes It Last.
Harvard's Maurice Cox and rural design leader Courtney Spearman join the mayors of Columbus, Michigan City, Muncie, Rushville, and Terre Haute in Indiana's architecture town, October 8 to 10, to launch a two-year learning partnership through the Civic Design Institute
Columbus, Indiana — Since 2021, the State of Indiana and Lilly Endowment Inc. have committed $1.25 billion to local quality of place through the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI), and communities have matched it with local and private dollars. Recently, Lilly Endowment allocated nearly $400 million more for a statewide Community Parks Initiative, with planning grants now open to invited cities and towns. Communities across Indiana are asking the same question: which of these investments will still be paying off in 2036, and what makes the difference? Over three days, five Indiana communities will come to Columbus to start answering it together.
"Indiana has done the hard part, which is deciding to invest in place. Now, the even more difficult part is knowing, a decade from now, which of those investments created lasting cultural and economic value and why. None of us has that answer yet," said Richard McCoy, Executive Director of Landmark Columbus Foundation. "Columbus has been asking the question of itself for more than eighty years and is still learning. Our Prove It Summit brings four communities, every READI region, and national design leaders together to work on it."
Landmark Columbus Foundation (LCF) will host Prove It: A National Summit on Design Excellence as Civic Practice, October 8 to 10, 2026, at The Commons in downtown Columbus with support from Visit Columbus, Indiana (VCI), the City of Columbus, and the organization’s Design Legacy Supporters.
The premise for this event is in the name. Design excellence is usually described as something a building or park either has or does not. The Prove It Summit treats it as a discipline that can be defined, measured, and practiced by any community willing to do the work, and invites the participants to test that claim together, against their own projects.
Each of the four partner cities will arrive in Columbus with a five-person, cross-sector delegation led by its mayor and a live design challenge from its own downtown, neighborhoods, or public spaces: Michigan City, Mayor Angie Nelson Deuitch; Muncie, Mayor Dan Ridenour; Rushville, Mayor Mike Pavey; and Terre Haute, Mayor Brandon Sakbun. On October 9, they will work through those challenges with one another, with Columbus, Mayor Mary Ferdon, and with a national design faculty drawn from architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, planning, and public land. Representatives from all fifteen of Indiana's READI regions are invited, with travel support, so what the five cities learn reaches the rest of the state from day one.
The Summit will open with a free public keynote built as a conversation between two people who rarely share a stage. Maurice Cox, Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, led planning for Detroit and then Chicago through a decade of urban reinvention. Courtney Spearman directed rural design programs at the National Endowment for the Arts and now leads Fieldwork at Building Common Ground, working with rural and Tribal communities on projects rooted in local culture. Moderated by Daniel Luis Martinez, Program Director of Indiana University's J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program in Columbus, the conversation asks what design excellence is for, and whom it serves, in a big city and in a small town. U.S. Senator Todd Young will offer remarks, and Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon will welcome the delegations.
Design Faculty
The faculty brings architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, planning, and public land to the table, and each member responds directly to the delegations' projects.
David Dowell, AIA, Professor of Practice at Kansas State University's College of Architecture, Planning and Design and a former partner at El Dorado in Kansas City, brings more than twenty-five years of practice focused on culture, education, and public well-being.
Gerardo Garcia leads The Urbanism Bureau in Chicago and previously directed the city's planning and urban design initiatives, work that supported more than $14 billion in economic development and earned the Chicago Mayor's Medal of Honor for INVEST South/West.
Eric Lucas, ASLA, PLA, CEO and Principal of MKSK, is a landscape architect raised in Indiana who has directed planning and public space projects in more than twenty states, with a focus on walkable urbanism and strategic reinvestment.
Jamie Simone, AICP, LEED AP, Chicago and Illinois Program Director at Trust for Public Land, played a central role in delivering The 606, the three-mile elevated park on Chicago's former Bloomingdale Trail, and leads the organization's work on neighborhood parks and stormwater parks.
Courtney Spearman leads Fieldwork at Building Common Ground, a national program giving rural and Tribal cultural organizations free design and project development support, after more than a decade directing the design field at the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Prove It Summit closes with a session led by Trinity Simons Wagner of the Mayors' Institute on City Design, the National Endowment for the Arts leadership initiative that has worked with mayors on their cities' design challenges since 1986. It also includes Brian Blackford of Ball State University's Indiana Communities Institute and Bridget Anderson from Patronicity.
"We are proud that Columbus can serve as the gathering place for this statewide and national conversation. Our community has long understood that investing in the places we share is an investment in people. Welcoming mayor-led delegations from four Indiana communities and representatives from all fifteen READI regions gives us the chance to share what we have learned while continuing to learn alongside them," said Mary Ferdon, Mayor of the City of Columbus.
What Indiana has committed to quality of place
Through READI, the Indiana General Assembly has committed $1 billion across two rounds since 2021, and Lilly Endowment Inc. has committed $250 million alongside it, including the $65 million READI 2.0 Arts & Culture Initiative led by IEDC with the Indiana Arts Commission. Communities have matched the state investment with local and private dollars. Separately, Indiana Community Development Projects, Inc. has allocated nearly $400 million from Lilly Endowment for the Community Parks Initiative: up to $14 million in noncompetitive planning grants and up to $380 million in competitive implementation grants to invited cities and towns, with applications open in fall 2026 (indianacpi.org). Columbus, Michigan City, Muncie, Rushville, and Terre Haute are among the invited communities.
The Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership
The Prove It Summit launches the Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership, a two-year effort running through 2027, led by LCF's Civic Design Institute, to understand and measure what makes public investment in place endure. Columbus hosts first during the Prove It Summit; then, through 2027, each of the other four partner cities will host the cohort in turn as the group advances its projects with peers and technical experts and documents evidence and lessons other Indiana communities can use.
The Prove It Summit will publish what it produces: a summary memo shortly after it closes and, in November, a draft framework with a starter set of indicators for measuring quality of place in Columbus and the partner communities. The indicators are a first draft for the cohort to shape together through 2027.
Attend
The Prove It Summit runs three days, October 8 to 10, 2026, at The Commons, 300 Washington Street, Columbus, Indiana. Delegations, design faculty, READI regional representatives, and invited guests take part in all three days.
The public is invited to the keynote on Thursday, October 8. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.; the program runs from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Admission is free; advance registration is required at eventbrite.com/e/prove-it-keynote. The Commons is fully accessible. Visit Columbus and the City of Columbus sponsor the keynote.
Interested in the full Summit? Seats in the working sessions are limited and by invitation. Community leaders, design and planning professionals, funders, and organizations interested in the Indiana Quality of Place Learning Partnership may write to Beth Hughes, Director of Civic Connections, at beth@landmarkcolumbus.org.
Why Columbus
For more than eighty years, Columbus has earned international recognition for the way civic leadership, philanthropy, business, architecture, and art have worked together to shape the city. LCF treats that record as evidence to learn from, including its mistakes. Columbus is a useful place to examine how design excellence operates as a civic practice because the decisions and their consequences are visible and can be walked in its downtown.
Through its Civic Design Institute, LCF defines design excellence as civic practice: making decisions about the built environment with rigor, care, and accountability to the long-term public good. Its framework of six Civic Conditions offers communities a way to examine their own decisions over time. The Summit is the first chance to test it alongside the delegations' projects and see what holds.
“We have worked a long time on design excellence in Columbus, and the most meaningful results come from sustained collaboration, thoughtful decision-making, and a willingness to invest for the long term,” said Tracy Haddad, Board Chair of Landmark Columbus Foundation. “This Summit gives us a chance to share that experience while learning from communities across Indiana that are working through their own opportunities and challenges.”
Media Contact
Jamie Goldsborough
jamie@landmarkcolumbus.org
About Landmark Columbus Foundation
Landmark Columbus Foundation (LCF) exists to demonstrate what design excellence can mean to a community, earned through discipline, proven in public, and cared for as a legacy for the future. landmarkcolumbusfoundation.org
About Civic Design Institute
Civic Design Institute is Landmark Columbus Foundation's platform for advancing design excellence as civic practice. Through research, convenings, partnerships, and publications, the Institute develops shared knowledge about how communities make and sustain better decisions about the built environment. civicdesigninstitute.org
