Planning and Urban Design Director
City of Asheville, NC
Asheville, North Carolina
Steph Monson Dahl is the still-very-new Planning and Urban Design Director for the City of Asheville, North Carolina-a small city located in the mountains of southern Appalachia.
Her first fifteen years of work as an urban planner resulted in a significant transformation of the French Broad riverfront. The process took major coalition building, and applying for -and recieving- over $35 Million in grants. After being handed the management of the City's public art program and the urban design office as additional duties, she started to better understand how the incomplete and often times exclusionary narrative local government has allowed or promoted in public space actively harms all of us. And how she and her teammates could be building different kinds of coalitions and applying for grant funds that directly address disparities and repair harm.
When 2020 hit, and local govenment agreed to take down a 70 foot tall obelisk in Asheville's central square, Steph pushed for the City and County to fund an engagement process to look more comprehensively at what comes next. To kick-start the first phase of implementation for the resulting vision plan, she secured $3 Million in grant funds from the Mellon Foundation's Monuments Project.
Public Monuments: Shaping More Equitable and Inclusive Cities
Sunday, April 14, 2024
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM CT