Urban Institute history

In 1977, a group of Grand Rapids artists formed a non-profit organization to create a venue for challenging new forms of artistic expression.

In 1979, UICA’s first home on Front Street was demolished to make way for a parking lot for the new Gerald Ford Museum.

In 1980, it won the William F. Thrall Award for excellence in architecture design from the Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids.

In 1987 the institute also released a groundbreaking study of the problem of urban homelessness.

In 1991, UICA moved again when its Race Street home was torn down, and it rented a temporary facility at 88 Monroe in the central business district with the goal of finding a permanent location.

Welfare reform in 1996 ended more than 60 years of guaranteed cash assistance to struggling families and turned responsibility for much of the social safety net over to states.

In 1997 the institute published its "neighborhood indicators," a progress-assessment checklist designed to help state and local municipalities improve their performance in achieving social and economic goals.

Programming has tripled since 1998, and UICA’s regional, national and international profiles have risen accordingly.

In the year 2000 the institute inaugurated a new project, Assessing the New Federalism.

In 2006, UICA completed an exceptional merger with the ArtWorks organization.

The Global Urban Research Centre and the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) were each established in 2007, reflecting both the growing number of disciplines working on urban issues and the urbanizing of the global south.

With the growing recognition that the future of cities and the future of the planet were one and the same and that the challenges posed required a move towards more multi-disciplinary teams, so in 2010 the University of Manchester established cities@manchester.

In 2011, UICA’s new facility allowed us to present an even more dynamic array of contemporary art, new media, and experimental design/architecture projects.

In May 2013, GiveWell recommended that Good Ventures make a $50,000 grant to the Center for Global Development (CGD) to support updating its Millions Saved series.

It established the Summer Institute in Urban Studies in 2014 that has run for three years with 75 early career alumni.

In 2016, given the increasingly important role that cities are playing in addressing many of the most pressing global challenges, The University of Manchester united the strengths of the various centres and groups to create the Manchester Urban Institute.

From health care and taxes to the social safety net, Urban served as the trusted source for decisionmakers engaged in fast-moving policy debates in 2017.

UICA retains its own Directors and staff of program professionals who are responsible for curation, implementation and development.In 2020, Covid-19 was unprecedented, and that led UICA to rethink how it works, and provide programming in the future.

TEMPORARILY CLOSED Re-Opening in New Location at 17 Pearl St July 15, 2021