``Gee, I wish my colleagues back home could see this,'' Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. of Charleston, S.C., recalls thinking as he admired the handsome old urban forms and new design initiatives of European cities on a 1984 trip organized by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

So Riley, now acknowledged as the dean of major American city mayors -- he's served continuously since 1975 -- is determined to do something about it. Noting his belief that a mayor, through decisions he makes, is ``the chief urban designer'' of his city, Riley urged creation of what became the Mayors' Institute on City Design, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Twenty years later, close to 700 mayors have attended Mayors' Institute sessions held every 60 days in cities across America. ``And the concept hasn't changed,'' notes Riley: a small number of mayors come, without staff, meeting with teams of experts in architecture, city planning, historic preservation and the like. Each mayor presents a design challenge he's facing; the others challenge and help guide him to solutions.

The mayors leave, as Riley puts it, as ``zealous apostles of good urban design,'' understanding their power to make physical design decisions that will shape their cities for generations.

Or as Mayor David Cicilline of Providence, R.I., recently told me: ``The Design Institute is spectacular-- the most valuable two and a half days I've been mayor,'' helping him conceptualize the design challenge of extending his city's famed new Riverwalk.

Says Riley: ``I can take you from Anchorage to West Palm Beach, from Honolulu to Boston, and show you parks and fountains, new downtowns, restored Main Streets, affordable housing skillfully designed, splendid public grounds, and so much more that has been shaped by a mayor's participation in the institute.''

But today it's not enough, however exciting, to help ``mayors hitch their stars to design and become stars,'' says Jeff Speck, the NEA's director of design. The task is how to design metropolises -- whole regions -- which means tapping the vast decision-making powers of state governments.

So a Governors' Institute on Community Design was announced July 12, again with NEA sponsorship, this time jointly with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Three recent governors are leading the effort: Maryland's Parris Glendening (D), who made ``smart growth'' initiatives a central theme of his administration, Christine Todd Whitman (R) of New Jersey, President Bush's first EPA administrator, and Maine's Angus King, an independent.

Many people's first reaction might be -- what do governors have to do with urban design? I asked this of Harriet Tregoning, director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, headed by Glendening, which will administer the new program jointly with the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education.

State policies, she said, have broad impacts on whether cities, regions and towns can be made ``wonderful, memorable and economically competitive.'' Where will highways go -- or not? Will open spaces be protected? Where will university branches and new schools be located? Is historic preservation valued, brownfield recovery supported?

Transit-oriented development, for example, is now a major potential for denser residential and office development at new train and bus stops. State decisions to support mixed-income housing, site offices and enable strong local planning at the stations can all be critical.

``The governors, like mayors, are quick studies -- they have to be to get elected,'' says Riley. ``Imagine they learn the pluses of new state buildings in the urban fabric, not out on the cheapest land you can find on some highway. To have a governor go home and say, 'let's develop a new policy on siting state buildings so they contribute to local and regional plans' -- that would have real power!''

Accommodating busy governors, the new institute will come to them, a state at a time. The governor and his Cabinet, and possibly state legislators, will be invited to meet for a day or two with nationally renowned experts in design, planning, transportation, housing, school siting, land use and the environment. The state's own major concerns will be targeted. The goal: to help the governors and their associates connect the dots to create stronger cities and regions.

The plan sounds grand, though the initial pace (four institutes a year) a little slow. A fascinating test will be of the governors: How rapidly will they grasp the full powers they have, and then get critical buy-in? It's a major step forward to get Cabinet officials, from transportation to housing to the environment, to see the interplay of their efforts and work together smoothly. Getting state legislators on board may be even tougher.

But it's high time we did a lot more state-to-state, expert-to-leader training and learning on how to grow our cities and regions -- not just accidentally, but so that we foster and create, in Glendening's words, ``communities (BEG ITAL)by(END ITAL) design.''

Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp(at symbol)citistates.com.