Coming off of last week's Remix tour with Charlie Leadbeater, it's great to see that the tech companies that inspired our search for city-wide platforms for enabling mass creativity are continuing to innovate. According to the New York Times, In its first-ever developer day, Google is showing how… more

Charlie Leadbeater summarizes his thoughts about our week of conversations on enabling mass creativity in Portland, Chicago, Providence and Columbus.

video by: Christopher Reyes

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We are being hosted by CEOs for Cities member Doug Kridler at The Columbus Foundation this afternoon. Thirty locals from business, health care, nonprofits, government, and philanthropy have gathered to work through Charlie's ideas using their own experiences.

Charlie has gone right to the point: How do you orchestrate contributions… more

Charlie Leadbeater's thoughts so far on how urban leaders can promote radical innovation and provide a platform for citizens to collaborate, create, and contribute.

video by: Christopher Reyes

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video by: Christopher Reyes more

After our morning session at Providence's New Commons, we toured Olneyville, where beautiful old mill buildings house retail shops, industries, artists, and homes...or sit empty. Olneyville is the crucible for the challenge that Providence leaders asked Charlie to address:

"Providence has experienced a shift away from an industrial economy.… more

Notes from Charlie's summary in Providence...

What we are discussing today in Providence is how to create an appropriate civic culture and the capacity to a changing industrial place and in a place where civic culture has been compromised.

The new culture needs elements of:

Post-industrial: Web 2.0, software, networks
Anti-industrial: Eliminate hierarchymore

It's not a new idea to CEOs for Cities. Larry Keeley at Doblin has made the power of platforms central to work with innovation teams from our member cities. But as we sit here in Providence today on Day Three of our Remix Tour with Charlie Leadbeater, I keep asking… more

After a meeting with Mayor Daley in which education was the primary topic of conversation -

- Charlie toured Experiencia, an "an educational company that delivers unique, Immersive Learning programs providing exciting classroom curriculum, teacher training, parent involvement and all-day simulations in a… more

Full Circle is an outstanding example of how leaders can provide the platforms through which individual and communal initiatives can thrive. It's city-level co-creation in action.

Greg Sanders and Lee Deuben of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning built and maintain an open source database that community groups can… more

While our day in Portland was spent mainly interacting with initiatives that originated in the community, our day in Chicago revolved around city leaders' co-creation projects. After arriving into O'Hare at 5:06 am, we began with an 8:30 am breakfast with an impressive group of forward-thinking city officials, including Mary… more

Disengagement is a myth. Everyone is engaged in something. They just may not be engaged in your agenda.

Charlie says you have to understand the motivation for engagement -- why people are engaged. But you also have to understand what they are engaged in. It may provide clues on how to… more

It is hard to innovate within any system. But the resources lie within the system. How do you get the resources to innovate that can then affect the system?

How do you start small but link it up with other things so that it adds up to something important. How… more

photo by: Christopher Reyes Monday afternoon, we held a salon in Portland's Office of Sustainable Development (here's a view from the (green) roofdeck of this Platinum-certified building) with leaders from a variety of different organizations: SOLV, a volunteer organization dedicated to enhancing… more

Your job is to run a 10-year old's party. How do you run it?

The first thing you say is, "It's a party." That in itself tells you the context and how to act. You dress up, you bring a present, you have a good time. Then you set the boundaries.… more

The job of leadership is to create opportunities for bottom up creativity.

According to Charlie, the best example of bottom up creativity without strong leadership that produces absolutely nothing is Lagos. The best example of top down strong leadership that gets things done but without any bottom up creativity is Shanghai.

The… more

Charlie is leading an interesting Cafe conversation about how you can encourage mass creativity.

Charlie says you have to have the following:

Core -- a problem, a puzzle, a possibility, a desire
Contribute -- the ability to contribute easily, the how, who, what, why
Connect -- a market, a space, a social… more

The Cafe at New Commons is a highly structured process. After Charlie tells his story, the conversations will begin. Each conversation has a moderator, and each moderator has listened to Charlie with a particular focus. It may remind you of deBono's Thinking Hats, but the focus of their listening… more

Kip Bergstrom is the only economic development leader I know who is working intentionally to use networking to strengthen the position of a place.

The Remix Tour is in Providence, Rhode Island, today at the New Commons Cafe with 150 Rhode Islanders who are working on the city's future. We… more

Shane Endicott envisions Portland’s Rebuilding Center, a building materials recycling hub that he founded, as “an integral part of the fabric of the city.” His ambitions extend beyond employing those with little experience to take cast-aways – from claw-foot tubs to old window shutters, resell them, and use… more

A fundamental set of questions emerged in Portland around the tension between, on the one hand, the strength and flexibility that come with widely distributed resources and, on the other hand, the benefit of decisive and innovative leadership when it comes to making strategic leaps forward. Is a DIY culture… more

We're wasting no time whatsoever with Charlie Leadbeater on our Remix tour. About to board a red-eye from Portland to Chicago, I wonder how our days in these two very different cities will be similar. We'll find out soon enough: we begin tomorrow (already today there) with an 8:30… more

Oddly enough, one emerging enabler of Portland's success in empowering citizens to co-create opportunity, healthy environments, and strong communities seems to be the fact that the scale here is small. Prof. Ethan Seltzer, the Director of Portland State University's School of Urban Studies and Planning, opened the theme over… more

It's Day 1, or perhaps Day 0, of our Remix tour, and already Charlie Leadbeater--despite the umpteen hour flight from London to Portland today--has provocative things to say. Over dinner tonight at Jake's (a local fixture, says our fabulous organizer Kristin Wolff), Charlie offered this observation:

"Innovation is conversation."… more

We are on our way to Portland to begin the CEOs for Cities Remix Tour featuring Charles Leadbeater. Our goal is to develop a richer understanding of mass creativity and how it can be enabled to solve problems and capture opportunity in cities.

Throughout the week, we’ll be looking… more

Research for CEOs for Cities led by Robert Weissbourd some years ago showed that the fates of cities and their suburbs are inextricably tied. Even though their leaders may not acknowledge it, cities and their suburbs sink or swim together.

A story in Friday's USA Today on Grosse Pointe villages outside… more

It's hard to believe, but the average American is driving substantially fewer miles for the first time in 26 years, according to a USA Today analysis of federal highway data.

"The growth in miles driven has leveled off dramatically in the past 18 months after 25 years of steady climbs despite… more

How prepared are America's communities to handle the needs of the burgeoning aging population? With the rapid rise in the number of aging Baby Boomers - by 2030 one in every five Americans will be over the age of 65 - localities are now challenged to provide accessible transportation, appropriate… more

Chicago Mayor Daley has pushed through an affordable housing plan that requires developers who purchase city land, get a zoning upgrade or get a change in designation to residential to set aside 10 percent of homes in projects in 10 units or more to be sold at lower prices. Affordable… more

You've read about alums taking vacation and retirement homes near their universities. Now they may make their university their final resting place. Campus cemetaries are popping up at Duke, Notre Dame and the University of Virginia, providing a new source of income and loyalty for universities.

Cemetery consulting Mel Malkoff told… more

A wide-range of corporations, from Wal-Mart to Nestle, is embracing the idea that products sold with less packaging can defray both environmental and production costs, and attract a new earth-savvy consumer. The New York Times reports, "Marketers usually boast about what they have added to their products. Increasingly, though,… more

A new report issued by Americans for the Arts and the Sundance Preserve and financed by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation shows that, "Giving by corporations to arts groups dropped by 65 percent from 2000 to 2005, a sharp indicator… more

San Jose State University, whose MLK Library - a joint project between the City of San Jose and the University - already represents lead-edge thinking when it comes to both libraries and city-university partnerships, is taking further steps toward the future of learning and (online) city living. The… more

Rohit Bhargava, who writes the very good blog Influential Interactive Marketing, has written about the importance of thinking outside your region.

"There is a restaurant in the Washington DC area called Cassatts which is the only location in all of DC where you can get a flat white. For… more

Town centers are springing up in suburbs. Suburbanites, it seems, are looking for a more complete lifestyle closer to home. Live, work, play is the new suburban imperative. And the suburban version of downtown -- the town center -- is the new solution. "Place making" is all the rage, fueled… more

The largest Spanish-language broadcast network in the U.S., Univision, is organizing a massive campaign to urge eligible Hispanics to become U.S. citizens so they can vote in the 2008 election. More than 8 million green card-holders are eligible for citizenship, and the majority are of Latin-American origin. Immigration, education and… more

Affordable housing is not easy to find in New York. So some young workers are taking up residence in their offices. They are pitching tents on the roof, camping out on bunk beds, converting office cubicles into sleeping spaces. Others are sharing rent by cramming into doorman buildings in prime… more

Best Buy and Circuit City intend to reduce their new store formats by 30-40%. Why? They need less space as some products get smaller and shoppers shift their purchases of movies and music from in-store to online. Plus, the brands are looking to fill gaps between their superstores. Home Depot,… more

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amsterdam and Copenhagen, two cities known around the world for their bike friendliness, are doing even more to encourage folks out of their cars: "Flat, compact and temperate, the Netherlands and Denmark have long been havens for bikers. In Amsterdam, 40% of commuters… more

Like a few other cities across the U.S., Youngstown is handling its decline in population in an innovative way: "rather than struggl[ing] to regain its former glory or population, it has adopted an economic-development plan that boils down to controlled shrinkage. By accepting the inevitable, the city says it can… more

San Jose, the site of CEOs for Cities' National Meeting on "Leveraging Anchor Institutions for Urban Success" last week, is growing fast, according to the San Jose Mercury News:

"Fast approaching the 1 million population mark, San Jose has returned to the ranks of California's fastest-growing big cities, while Santa… more

Having just returned from San Jose where our Spring national meeting was held, I was struck by the smart, clear, coordinated thinking being done by the leadership there. While I am still gathering my thoughts, I wanted to share the city's vision statement because it's one of the best I've… more

CEOs for Cities' Kids in Cities project focuses on American cities--members should be sure not to miss the teleconference May 15 at 12 pm Eastern--but cities around the world are discovering that they must capitalize on and communicate the benefits of city living for young families. Take Shanghai: the New… more