Therefore, the selection committee met twice - once to determine which sites merited a closer look and once to review the findings gathered by the evaluators during their site visits. The site visit was essential in extending the investigation and determining the actual effect of the project on the community. The first Bruner Award competition revealed five projects that proved it is possible to combine esthetics with good, solid amenities for the user community. The projects described in this book illustrate that a good urban place reflects its residents and visitors, not just its creator. For, like the Rudy Bruner Award process itself, a city's vitality cannot depend upon one person's vision of urban development.
Real vigor requires the continuing infusion of diverse ideas.
The Bruner Award program has been scheduled to run biannually for at least ten years. We hope that in five rounds of this program we will begin to learn something about what makes a city a better place to live in. As we begin to evaluate the success of our program in the late 1990s, we may have some better answers. For the time being, we hope the award process will stimulate collaboration and new ideas. Perhaps by keeping an open mind we can understand just what makes our cities so special.