The Distinctive City is one of CEOs for Cities four key dimensions for urban success in today's economy, and our colleague Ned Hill of Cleveland State University is working to ensure that message is heard. Ned was featured in a recent editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on that… more

Denver Mayor John W. Hickenlooper opened the Profiles in Leadership: America’s Great Mayors series sponsored in Philadelphia by the Economy League and Fels Institute of Government of the University of Pennsylvania. He shared his lessons for leadership learned on the brewpub floor, and excerpts from his remarks are below.… more

Technology Review is producing a series on planning for a climate-changed world. The first article told how U.S. institutions are revisiting urban storm-surge risk assessments and making fine-scale predictions about how disappearing mountain snowpack could devastate water supplies. The second examines how the Netherlands deals with climate… more

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, speaking in Los Angeles last week, promised to create a partnership to build a light rail network and help untangle the region's traffic problems.

With gas prices rising and roadways jammed, Richardson said it was time to rethink a federal transportation policy that pumps billions… more

Metropolis Magazine (June, 07) features designs by Public Architecture and founding architect John Peterson for a handsome, multi-functional day labor station. "This sustainability designed portable structure can be erected at congregation sites to provide shelter, seating and access to drinking water and toilets," according to Metropolis, and the shelter… more

"The Living Building Challenge" is an extraordinary proposal from the Cascadia Region Building Council that "moves beyond Platinum" LEED to the concept of a "Living Building" that generates all its own energy with renewable resources, captures and treats all water on site and uses resources efficiently and for… more

In his speech yesterday in Spartanburg, SC, Barack Obama outlined a vision for bolstering low income familes that balances new government aid with a call for parents to take greater responsibility for their children's fate.

Obama said the government has "gone AWOL" as working class families face new stresses from… more

A new study of immigrant entrepreneurs found a strong correlation between educational attainment (particularly in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and entrepreneurship.

IImmigrant Entrepreneurs: What’s their Education Quotient?
Well-Educated Immigrants Powered U.S. Tech Boom: Study
The Duke report, “America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” is available… more

Columnist Neal Peirce worries about the small increases in crime America is experiencing. Although, as he points out, it would take a decade of increases to get us back to the roaring crime rates of the 1980s and early ‘90s, if the recent rise is indeed serious, then we ought… more

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sued San Bernadino County for "failing to account for greenhouse gases when updating its 25-year blueprint for growth." Brown's contention is that the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act requires greenhouse gases to be regulated like any other pollution.

San Bernadino is the largest county… more

No, Google's not yet branched out to the public transit business (although who would be surprised, given Google's rapid growth and the woeful need for innovation in the field, if Google-branded trains and buses showed up on city streets?), but they are tweaking their products to make them more… more

The New York Times reports today that Mayor Bloomberg's bold plan to introduce congestion pricing to high-traffic areas of Manhattan is alive and well, thanks especially to "a boost today from the governor and the United States secretary of transportation, who announced that New York City was one of… more

One of our favorite websites, Trendwatching.com, has started an interesting conversation about the value of products "(STILL) MADE HERE." These products have a sense of place and "are coveted by consumers for a variety of reasons: from environmental concerns to shifting perceptions of what constitutes status.

“(STILL) MADE HERE… more

The Calgary Herald's lead editorial from Thursday, May 31, is a testament to the innovative initiatives of the likes of Colin Jackson at the EPCOR Centre, and acknowledges the significant contributions anchor institutions can make to their cities:

"Calgarians are being given a blueprint this morning that will put… more

Urban leaders in Calgary - from the Mayor to business owners to civic institutional leaders - are on a quest to reinvent that city's Olympic Plaza as "an experimental zone for urban vitality and inventiveness" and as the heart and soul of the city. CEOs for Cities colleague Colin Jackson,… more