The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world’s Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims, may have seemed an unusual choice to receive the 2011 J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (“His Highness the Aga Khan, 2011 Laureate, ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development”). It was his work leading a vast development network that is improving the lives of impoverished people in more than 30 countries that attracted the attention of the Nichols jury. But a remarkable coincidence, discovered only on the day the prize was awarded in October, links the Aga Khan with J.C. Nichols, one of ULI’s founders. Shortly before the award presentation at ULI’s Fall Meeting in Los Angeles, Nichols’s grandson Wayne Nichols and his wife, Susan shared coffee with Luis Monreal, general manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, who accepted the prize on behalf of the Aga Khan. Monreal, a native of Seville, Spain, asked Nichols how Seville’s famous architectural landmark the Giralda (which happens to be a favorite of the Aga Khan) came to be etched in glass on the J.C. Nichols Prize itself.
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