There are many great books you could use to kick off your summer reading—and those of you interested in urban design may be excited to get your hands on Pedestrian and Transit-Oriented Design—a joint project of the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute.

The book provides measurable guidance for creating communities that are designed for humans. There are 28 features it promotes as “best practices,” divided into 3 groups—essential (orienting buildings toward the street, without parking in between), highly desirable (closely spaced street trees), and nice additions that may not be essential (“worthwhile” characteristics, public art, water features, etc.).

We were thrilled to get the opportunity to talk with Reid Ewing, a coauthor of the book, to hear his thoughts on the book, on urban design, and how what the book’s topic fits in with the CEOs for Cities mission.

CEOs for Cities: What sets this book apart from others like it today?

Reid Ewing: Others are not nearly as specific, concrete, tangible. This book takes the subject of urban design into the realm of operational guidance. The photos are incredible. There are also two code examples for each of the features from local development codes—so the practice is connected firmly with implementation.

We also utilize a different model of urban design. You usually get general statements like “need lots of open space,” with a photo. In Chapter two, though, we talk about qualities—perceptual qualities of the built environment. Urban designers have talked about these qualities for over 100 years and are deemed by designers to be important to people in creating livable/walkable spaces. Complexity, visual enclosure, outdoor rooms, transparency—the book goes through all of these qualities in classic design literature,  and then outlines them. Then, when you go through the features, it explains how that feature contributes to these particular perceptual qualities.

I think it’s going to be an eye-opener.

CEOs for Cities: What are some of the "low-hanging fruit" measures cities can take to create more walkable, pedestrian-oriented communities— particularly as budgets become increasingly sparse?

Reid Ewing: Moderate to high density. It doesn’t cost more. In terms of the literature, it’s been seen that public infrastructure actually costs less to develop at higher densities. Spreading the cost of infrastructure differently and more cost-efficiently would be my first suggestion—and mixed uses.

I also think it’s important to use the more expensive solutions, but just be selective to save on costs.

One that is a bit glossed over is the need for more public space. This costs something, but can be provided (like it has been in NY) as a density bonus for private development. I think it’s important to remember that there’s a market for what we’re pitching.

CEOs for Cities: CEOs for Cities embraces four basic concepts as the "recipe for City Success": Connectedness, Innovation, Talent, and Distinctiveness. How do you feel the topics from the book might fit into this framework? 

The first quality in Chapter 2 is imageability. This is a Kevin Lynch term, and it very related to memorability—whether places are memorable, distinct, and have their own identity.

Creating walkable places with a mix of uses and lots of public space and amenities attracts talent, the creative class—they like walkable, social interaction, higher density living, and require a critical mass promoting face to face contact.

If you created a place (and there are some) that have all 28 features), that would be really innovative. Or even half of them, for most communities, would be innovative.

Photo by Elliott Brown

What do we really know about parking?

Of everything that the responsible urban planner has to think about, parking can be the most vexing.

Incredibly, no one knows how much of it there is in the U.S., which can make it tough to study. Part of the problem is that all parking is local, to paraphrase Tip O’Neil. You can’t borrow one of Albuquerque’s plentiful parking spots when you’re circling the block in Manhattan’s East Village. And although satellites can give us part of the story, it would take an unprecedented nationwide census (on par with the one we conduct of people) to deliver an accurate count.

Furthermore, parking is subject to a dizzying range of local regulations, mostly minimums that force developers to build more than they might want to. As long as they don’t contravene Federal regulations for accessible parking, cities have wide latitude to decide what their complexion should be like, and that includes figuring out how much parking new businesses need.
Unfortunately, these requirements are often boilerplate – according to Donald Shoup, 45% of all American cities just look at what the next town over did, and copy it. Since these guidelines were formulated when parking was seen as an unqualified plus, and they aren’t revisited very often, and outsized, half-baked requirements are a major problem.

Is Houston really a parking desert?

When MyParkingSign looked into parking minimums for a sample business type – miniature golf courses – we found that Houston requires 1 parking space per hole, while Phoenix, AZ requires 1.5 per hole plus one additional space per 60 sq. ft. of “game room” area, and Santa Ana, CA requires 3 parking spots per hole. According to stats from The Green Dividend, Houston tops the list of American cities for average vehicle miles traveled per day – it’s not a city that’s unfriendly to cars!

This level of variation tells us that at least some of these cities are basing their requirements on something other than careful study – there’s just no way that Santa Anans need three times as much parking at mini golf courses as Texans do, and we’ve looked in vain for Houstonians who couldn’t find a spot at their favorite courses.

So thanks to decades of planners treating it as an afterthought, we do know that Americans are drowning in oversupply – according to one of the few studies to look at nationwide stock, the U.S. has anywhere from a little over two and a half to as many as 8 parking spots per vehicle, and more is being built all the time, even as our overall appetite for cars dies down somewhat.

The trouble is, having too much parking nationwide does have nationwide consequences. According to Elan Ben-Joseph’s book Rethinking A Lot, each car’s share of parking adds 10% to its lifetime carbon dioxide emissions (as well as 20% to its sulfur, and a whopping 90% to its soot emissions, so-called “black carbon,” which also causes climate change). Since 27% of the U.S.’s carbon emissions come from transportation, eliminating emissions due to parking would mark a serious step toward reducing our overall pollution load. It’s important to note that these statistics use an assessment of parking stock that’s toward the low end of the spectrum so total emissions may indeed be higher.

Moreover, the more parking we build, the more we need cars to get around, and parking minimums can lead to development that doesn’t make sense.
One EPA case study looked at a hotel being built in Long Beach, CA, the D’Orsay. The study found that following the city’s parking minimums of one space per hotel room plus four spaces per 1,000 sq. ft. of floorspace would have led developers to spend $2 million over and above their projected needs on parking. (Fortunately, the developers managed to obtain variances and in-lieu arrangements that reduced the final cost.)

Still not enough information

A lot of this story will be familiar to anyone who’s read Donald Shoup’s seminal book, The High Cost of Free Parking, an urban-planning chestnut if ever there was one. But holes remain in what we know. For example, even though statistics from the International Parking Institute fill in some of the blanks about how many private lots there are, there are still lots of questions:

• Is new off-street parking construction accelerating or slowing? How about private parking facilities?
• How much of new parking construction uses permits to allocate spots? (Since permit-only lots are typically closer to capacity than baggy, mall-like lots, this is an important statistic!)
• Can encouraging turnover provide a substitute for providing more parking? How aware is the public of the benefits of higher turnover rather than big lot size?

Sometimes, when you’re missing an important data set, it’s helpful to look at phenomena at a little bit of a remove, like when Google looks at “flu” searches as a way to estimate flu incidence, or when analyst Richard Aboulafia looks at the ratio of fighter jet sales to business jet sales to measure world peace.

We can’t definitively answer all of those questions, but Myparkingsign.com is well situated to look (obliquely) at how parking is changing in America. As part of a report on parking and signage trends, we looked into what’s selling, what isn’t, and where the public interest is (as reflected in search statistics).  It’s as noisy as any sales or search data is wont to be, but still points in the direction of a few changes in how we park.

What signs tell us about parking

Time-limited signage and turnover

In municipalities and on particularly crowded private lots, users occasionally have use for signs that encourage turnover by limiting the amount of parking time allowed.

• According to our findings, the median amount of time on the time-limited signs we sold in 2008 was 45 minutes – many customers bought 1 or 2-hour parking signs.
• In 2013, the median time was 20 minutes, marking a noticeable drop in the period of time allotted motorists for short-term parking. Our strongest sales were in 10-, 15- and 20-minute signs.

Although we only have anecdotes and customer feedback to go on to explain these trends, we believe that our customer base for these products has shifted toward small lots already at capacity, particularly takeout restaurants, doctors’ offices, and apartment buildings that need a loading and unloading area, and larger businesses that want to reserve prime spots near the door for quick purchases. In the case of retail, we believe that in a poor economy, when retailers in some sectors can generally expect profit per transaction to fall, maximizing turnover is one way to avoid “leaking” business and maximize volume.

Parking permits

An affiliate business, myparkingpermit.com, has seen a particularly rapid growth in sales. Part of this is due to customer-collecting – once a potential customer orders from us once, they’re likely to do it again on a cyclical basis, because permits are usually recurring expenses, bought on a schedule. But that shouldn’t affect search statistics, and “parking permits” sees 170% as much search traffic today as in 2008.

For comparison, traffic for “No parking” (a popular parking sign in off-street lots) has risen by only about 12% over the same period.

Over the past five years, our own sales volume has increased by several orders of magnitude, though this is due to internal factors like better search optimization, a broader range of SKUs, and more online advertising.  At the same time, though, between the size of the average myparkingpermit.com order has decreased by 43%, from $283 to $161.

Put together, these two statistics – in conjunction with the overall growth of our business – tell us that smaller and smaller lots are opting to institute parking permits, even as lot owners are ever more likely to use permits in their lots.

What it means

Our report includes much more information drawn from our own sales, as well as a summary of the knotty economics of parking in the U.S. and a state-by-state map of permit sales. We think it provides a good précis of debates over parking policy and parking minimums. But what do moves toward increased turnover and the popularity of parking permits tell us?

Parking lots are gradually losing their status as public spaces. Sociologically, this can cut two ways. Businesses and schools no longer see their responsibilities ending at the door – which will make for safer, more organized environments (where we’re more likely to find parking when we need it).  At the same time, more formalized parking arrangements can appear less welcoming.

Since the Americans with Disabilities act was signed into law in the 1990s, we’ve seen parking undergo a radical transformation. Once a free-for-all, preferential treatment was granted a minority of lot users – sensitizing owners to the value of spots close to the door. There’s just no reason to encourage turnover on the periphery of most lots, so we think retailers and residential property owners no longer see all parking spots as created equal, and are starting to incorporate parking lot turnover into their overall business strategies.

After all, there usually isn’t much difference between a customer who has an hour to buy and a customer who has two – but the difference between 20 minutes and 45 is much more important. A 2012 study in the UK showed that the much-rumored link between plentiful parking and retail success may have been overstated, too. Tighter, more organized lots are what we want as a sign company, yes – they help us sell our products – but we’re also citizens who want to live in a human-scaled environment.

***

Conrad Lumm is a content director at MyParkingSign, an affiliate of SmartSign, which Internet Retailer calls one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in America. Conrad is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and a former journalist; although he lives in Manhattan, he pines for his hometown in northern Michigan.

Photo by Flickr user James

A number of entities give cities in the U.S. and abroad scores for livability based on a variety of criteria. Use these resources to find out how livable your city is!

International Rankings

The Economist Inelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Livability Report ranked Melbourne, Australia as the most livable city in the world in its most recent calculations. The EIU ranks 140 cities worldwide, based on “30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure." No U.S. cities ranked in the top ten this year, and Pittsburgh was the highest ranking at 22. Read more!

The Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranks over 460 cities worldwide. Its rankings are based on:

Living conditions according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories: political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement); economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services); socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom); medical and health considerations (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution, etc.); schools and education (standard and availability of international schools); public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transportation, traffic congestion, etc.); recreation (restaurants, theatres, movie theatres, sports and leisure, etc.); consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars, etc.); housing (rental housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services); natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)

Mercer’s 2012 report gave its top spot to Vienna, Austria. Honolulu, Hawaii received the highest ranking among U.S. cities at 28.

Monocle magazine’s Most Livable Cities Index named Zurich, Switzerland the most livable city in the world.  The magazine’s index takes into account some unique measures, such as number of bookshops and ‘well-maintained swimming lakes,’ as well as the usual quality of life indicators (like crime rate, infrastructure, and cost of living)." Monocle’s list also has Honolulu as the highest ranked U.S. city at 17. Read more!

US Rankings

Forbes called Pittsburgh America’s Most Livable City in 2010. Their team ranked over 200 U.S. cities based on five criteria: unemployment, crime, income growth, the cost of living, and artistic, and cultural opportunities.

Livability.com is a website that allows you to input the aspects of a city that are important to you and your lifestyle in order to find a place that will best suit your preferences and needs. The site focuses primarily on small to mid-size cities across the U.S., and allows users to search for cities by state. It regularly compiles “Top 10” lists around different themes such as “Top 10 Foodie Cities,” “Top 10 Best Winter Vacation Destinations,” “Top 10 College Towns,” and “Top 10 Cities for Book Lovers.”

Areavibes.com is another online resource that ranks a city’s livability based on amenities, cost of living, crime rates, education, employment, housing, and weather. Each city is given a score between one and one hundred. The site compiles data from a number of resources, such as the U.S. census, the Council for Community and Economic Research, and the National Weather Service-- allowing users to search any U.S. city or location of any size.  The site currently ranks Plano, Texas as the best place to live in the country.

Businessweek’s America’s 50 Best Cities put San Francisco at the top of its list. The scoring of 100 of the biggest U.S. cities was based on “leisure attributes (the number of restaurants, bars, libraries, museums, professional sports teams, and park acres by population), educational attributes (public school performance, the number of colleges, and rate of graduate-degree holders), economic factors (income and unemployment), crime, and air quality.

Artplace America compiled a list of the 2013 Top 12 ArtPlaces in America using what they call “vibrancy indicators”: population density, employment rate, percentage of workers in creative occupations, number of indicator businesses, number of jobs in community, walkability, number of mixed-use blocks, cell phone activity, percentage of independent businesses, and number of creative industry jobs. The organization chooses to focus on arts because they believe in the “idea that arts-related activity plays a key role in contributing to the kind of quality of place that attracts and retains talented people and enables people to put all their talent to work." Their top 12 cities, listed alphabetically, are: Brooklyn, NY; Dallas, TX; Los Angeles, CA; Miami Beach, FL; Milwaukee, WI; New York, NY; Oakland, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, OR; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC.

Image via Civic Data Challenge

Challenge Yourself: Use Civic Data to Meet Community Needs

The 2013 Civic Data Challenge launches today at the Data Visualization Summit in San Francisco. The Challenge invites participants to turn raw data about civic health into useful applications and visualizations that have direct impact on public decision-making.

Last year, the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) and Knight Foundation launched the first-ever national Civic Data Challenge. Winning teams spanned the country and included undergraduate students and nonprofit leaders, financial analysts and graphic designers, developers and coders. They brought new eyes, new minds, and new skill sets to the field of civic health to help make this trove of community insight more valuable and accessible to decision makers and the public. For a great recap of last year’s Challenge, read Fast Company’s Visualizing Civic Data to Make the Case for Civic Health.

This year, NCoC and Knight Foundation are teaming up again to launch an expanded version of the Challenge. Exciting additions to this year’s Challenge include: 

• Three Challenge phases--ideation, creation, and implementation-- to help teams come together to build entries that are responsive to community needs.
• Grand prizes to teams that create exceptionally useful products AND work with community partners to successfully implement those tools.
• The opportunity for participants to improve entries along the way with the support of a team of expert advisors.

Submit an idea now

The Civic Data Challenge is asking community leaders, government officials, developers, coders and all interested citizens to get involved. The first step is to submit an idea through the Challenge website, from April 11 - May 19. This ideation phase is an opportunity to create a collective brainstorm about what tools (apps, websites, videos, and infographics) can be informed by civic data and used to improve a community's civic health. These ideas will inform the parameters of the Challenge and teams will begin building entries to respond May 24 - July 28. Join at www.CivicDataChallenge.org.

The Civic Data Challenge is supported by our launch partners at Innovation Enterprise who are organizing the Data Visualization Summit. DVSF is the world’s largest executive led data visualization summit and will be attended by Fortune 500 executives. The challenge is also supported by promotional partners at CEOs for Cities, DataKind, Data Visualization Summit and sponsors at Iron.io.

154 years ago, Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, wrote in part:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

Those words could just as easily have been written today about the critical crossroads America stands at today.

Today, there is a tale of two futures.

One of foolishness and darkness; the other of wisdom, light, and hope.
One of top down dysfunction; the other of bottom up change.
One of self-important status quo; the other of creative reinvention and disruption.

First, the foolishness, darkness, top-down dysfunction, and self-important status quo.

Not long ago I moderated a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative, and the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson said something that really struck a nerve with me.He observed, “the problem with you Americans is that you spend too much time waiting for Washington.” 

As recently as 2010 when I ran for the U.S. Senate, I thought that Washington D.C. was the best place to bring about change. But President Grimsson was right. I was wrong. Washington is not the place to change the world today. Today, if you’re not angry about what’s going on in Washington, D.C., you’re not paying attention. Our federal government has never been more dysfunctional. Too many of our federal elected leaders have driven themselves into politically partisan  corners and are trapped in their own rigid ideologies. Ideological purity has trumped common sense and compromise. Our federal government is going from one self-inflicted manufactured crisis to another, with no end in sight. Every day, Washington proves the old adage that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. As one Mayor told me, “we don’t have the luxury of doing nothing, and neither should they.”

In my position with CEOs for Cities, I have the rare opportunity to travel to a different city almost every week. And what I’m seeing is lots of wisdom, light and hope in our own backyards. The change in the world is coming not from the top down, but from the bottom up. It is what is called “change by us.” It’s happening in our cities where rubber meets the road and risk meets results. Cities are the new ground game. Tip O’Neil famously said, “All politics is local.” I’ve come to believe that “All change is local.”

I find it particularly ironic that at a time when our federal lawmakers talk about the need for jobs, so few seem to understand that cities and regions have become the true engines of economic growth.  
As Tom Friedman has noted, cities are “the job factories of the future.” And as Jim Clifton, the Chairman of Gallup and author of The Coming Jobs War has observed, “fixing America’s  biggest problems and re-winning the world can only be accomplished one city at a time.”

The hope and wisdom that I’m seeing is not just in the brain hub cities you would expect like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, San Jose, Portland, Seattle and Boston.
I’m also seeing it in Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Memphis, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Des Moines, St. Louis, Kansas City, San Antonio, Pittsburgh, Miami, Greensboro, Richmond, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.

Most of all, I’m seeing the hope, wisdom, and light in a diverse new mobile generation, often called the “ young and the restless”(ages 25-34). They are moving twice as fast as all other age groups into close-in urban neighborhoods. The number of college-educated young and the restless has increased two to three times faster in cities than in the overall surrounding regions.

In my home town of Cleveland, for example, we are seeing that exciting trend in many neighborhoods such as Tremont, Ohio City, University Circle, Kamms Corner, Edgewater, Old Brooklyn, and Detroit Shoreway.
Among these young and restless are a growing group of remarkable new leaders who are reinventing cities and disrupting the status quo. They are city disrupters.

They lean into the city and grab it. They don’t wait for permission and they refuse to sit at the kids’ table until another generation gets off the stage. They’re not angry; but they are impatient. Most of all, they see possibility where others see barriers and roadblocks.

Everywhere I go, I’m discovering these city disrupters and changemakers hidden in plain sight.

Jack Storey and Gina Prodan are two of many city disrupters throughout Cleveland who are not waiting for Washington, or anyone else. They are leading from the bottom up.

Jack played guitar and sang in a Cleveland band called “Reasons for Leaving.”  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what every member of the band eventually did. They left Cleveland. Jack left in 2000 and for the next 10 years, lived in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Orlando. But he always wondered whether he should return home and give his hometown another chance. So he did. Jack returned home and bought the house his great grandfather first purchased in North Collinwood in 1936 for $8,000 cash. He got together with some Afghan War veterans and decided to start a new organization called “Saving Cities.”  They raised $20,000 to make a film about so-called “rust belt” cities and the film had its debut this week at the Cleveland Film Festival.

Gina grew up on the near east side of Cleveland and moved around for years, her sights set on a sparkly life in New York. One day, as she was ready to wrap up her Cleveland life for good and store it in a memory box, she heard a NPR radio story on brain drain in Northeast Ohio. It made her stop and think. She turned her car and her life around and came back home to Cleveland. Gina has made it her daily mission to help people make the most of Cleveland every day. She helps people understand how to navigate the city, to get out of their boring everydays and get into new places. 

There are city disrupters everywhere.  Eric Wobser, who’s leading the renaissance of Ohio City ; Cleveland Councilman Matt Zone (my brother-in-law) who’s leading the renaissance of Detroit Shoreway, the neighborhood where the Zone family grew up in ;Jennifer Coleman, who founded City Prowl, an audio walking tour of Cleveland neighborhoods that can be used according to your own schedule and lifestyle; Dan Brown, who started a community garden on a vacant parcel of land in the St. Clair Superior Neighborhood; Rachel Downey, who is fast becoming a nationally known expert in placemaking, wayfinding, and branding that invigorates public spaces; Graham Veysey, who bought the Ohio City Firehouse and renovated it as a business incubator, coffee shop, florist, and his own company; Hallie Bram and Eric Kogelschatz , the founders of TEDx Cleveland. This year, they sold out all 685 seats in 24 minutes.; and Andrew Samtoy, the founder of Cash Mobs, a creative crowdsourcing platform to encourage people to go into small, local businesses and spend their money, en masse, to give the business owner a little bit of economic stimulus.

Civic engagement is critical for a city’s success, but the stories that I’m discovering in cities throughout the country are much more than that. These are stories of a new generation,  reinventing and disrupting what it means not only to engage, but to lead.

I’ve never been more pessimistic about the ability to make change from the top down, but I’ve never been more optimistic about the power to make change from the bottom up.

On the ground. In our cities. Led by city disrupters.

The growth and popularity of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has led to growth in map availability with increasing ease of use. As more and more people become familiar with GIS programs, they can make maps for recreational uses. Map websites for the public include Greemap.org and Google Maps. Both of these sources allow the public to contribute points of interest to a community map, creating a new visual angle on civic engagement and crowdsourced data.
Greenmap.org has a community focus emphasizing three types of amenities in an area: cultural resources, green living, and nature. Once a person or entity registers (for free), they can add a point by choosing from a huge list of icons, including: wind energy site, farmers market, eco-spiritual site, water recycling center, and many others. These icons are then plotted on an interactive map. Google Maps is another mapping resource that can be used to promote the cultural amenities within an area. The advantage of this option is the Google database of addresses, phone numbers, and directions, pervasiveness of the platform, and the increased functionality Google has been building over the last few years.

These resources are incredible pieces of technology on their face, but the important question to ask when dealing with these tools in a civic capacity is how they are used. Here are a few examples:

Eco-Tourism

New York City has been able to increase its tourism through offering green amenities, pushing their own internal standards for sustainability. The creation of their green map identifies green buildings throughout the city, multimodal transportation routes and options, and natural amenities – such as kayaking along the Hudson River. Wendy Brawer of Green Maps enterprise is one New Yorker who confirms her city's eco-offerings—pointing out amenities such as amazing bike trails, the biomass-powered Liberty Island, community gardens and progressive initiatives such as Sustainable South Bronx. In this case, the open green map is able to capture and disseminate information about amenities that may not generally be associated with a particular city.

Local Database

The general function of maps first and foremost is to provide the community with large aggregate of specific location data, while simultaneously showing the bigger picture of the area. Local communities can produce a map calling attention to the negative aspects of the neighborhood to solicit solutions and ideas towards solving those problems. Excellent examples can include Brownfields or high crime spots. Illustrating the positive aspects visually can provide both long term residents and visitors to a community a look at amenities offered locally. Urban neighborhoods that have created a visual path towards sustainability have the additional bonus of attracting new residents.

Community Involvement

The process of map creation is one of selectivity. There are many ideas and perspectives within a group of local residents, and maps can provide a great visual tool for guiding discussions and involving the community in both planning efforts and showcasing what is important. Interviews, focus groups, and block meetings provide mapmakers with the details of what to include in a map.

The Future of Community Maps

While the expected growth of map-making formats continues, the app market has connected maps to specific topics too—from apps that allow us to find the location and information about parks in the immediate area to ones that give us access to interesting demographics of the residents of our neighborhood. As technology continues to improve, we’ll find additional ways to make maps and the data within them more useful—and hopefully more useable by cities, for cities.

Written by Maria Agosto

On March 1, 2013, listeners at the City Club of Cleveland waited eagerly to watch our President and CEO, Lee Fisher, unveil the secret sauce of City Success. You too can discover the recipe of the secret sauce by clicking here or above to watch the video. Enjoy! 

Photo via Lanpernas Dospuntotzero

Oppositional categories have been in existence throughout all of history: dark vs. light, good vs. evil, male vs. female—these are some of the usual suspects when we consider traditional dichotomies. It makes sense to categorize and label. We’ve been practicing taxonomy since before the time of Aristotle, attempting to organize the environment around us so that we can better understand, manipulate, and improve it. Categorizing in terms of two, however, becomes messy and can drastically oversimplify. The definition of dichotomy necessitates that a whole be divided into parts that are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. There is nothing that fits outside the realm of the two, and any one item can only belong to one set.

One of the more dangerous and pervasive dichotomies that exist in our culture is that of Us vs. Them. On its face, this opposition isn’t necessarily bad, except that it is an opposition—when we paint ourselves and others with broad brushes, we assume that the two are mutually exclusive and there is constantly tension and conflict. When we put this in the context of creating, managing, and recreating our cities, this (as we’ve seen through history) can be disastrous.

A classic example in America is that of race. White vs. Black. This shaped our cities dramatically. We saw how us/them ideologies came into play as redlining practices concentrated race and then poverty in our urban cores. We used zoning practices to safeguard the character of “our” communities, which in some cases can be empowering, but in many ways also safeguarded against “them,” or more specifically the anxieties surrounding “them,” because by definition they must be different.

In our political realm we see a starkly divided set of individuals who spend more time trying to preserve their ideas of the American Dream than they do actually ensuring its success. The paralysis of the system gets blamed on “those Republicans” or “those Democrats,” while our infrastructure crumbles, our middle class shrinks, and our people struggle to find jobs.

There is nothing wrong or bad about having differences—in fact, diversity is a great asset to any city. When we only see the world in terms of us and them, however, we close ourselves off to a world of possibility and can in many ways sabotage the growth and functionality of our communities. Those of us responsible for making decisions, in particular, need to be cognizant of the harm we can do to the very people we are trying to serve when we perpetuate this ideology.

A recent example exists in the argument concerning density. The urban/suburban dichotomy is a hot one right now, as we rethink the ways in which we plan our communities. I have heard plenty of anti-suburban rhetoric among the planners I’ve met, talking about “those people” who drive their SUVs and fly away from the center so that they can lead insulated, affluent lives away from the realities of the inner city. I’ve also heard New Urbanism touted as a conspiracy threatening the rights of Americans to chase their version of the dream and live comfortably. I’ve listened to advocates cry out that if it isn’t rail, it isn’t good enough—and people rally against the institutions driving economic growth in an area because they are afraid these parasitic entities will come take away all of their homes.

Is there truth to any of this? Of course there is—because no one type of community, urban or suburban, is perfect. The problem isn’t that dense is bad or low-density is bad, but that they are not approached as ways to organize the built environment, they are approached as lifestyles that are considered completely different. When it comes down to it, though, what is it that we as Americans generally want? Safe neighborhoods, quick and accessible transportation, employment opportunities, entertainment, affordable living, functional infrastructure, good school systems—and like-minded people around us. Our job as planners isn’t to think through the lens of city and suburb, it is to create healthy, vibrant communities where residents thrive. Neighborhoods are not strictly “urban” or “suburban.” There is a continuum of qualities that make up neighborhoods, and a range of densities that encompass this continuum. While we can’t necessarily change the regulatory language, we can certainly start framing these issues differently and breaking down the dichotomies that inhibit compromise and complicate the decision-making process. 

How can we do this? It will certainly never be an easy task—but we can start by starting to eliminate oppositional thinking. In a city, region, or even country it shouldn’t be Us vs. Them. It should be everyone working together to find solutions that benefit the whole. We need to stop looking at “other” as a four-letter word. We need to open our minds and expose ourselves to difference so that we can also see similarities while celebrating our uniqueness. It is essential that we look beyond our own immediate needs to understand the system of the whole and how our decisions can affect it.

Because communities are made up of millions of interactions taking place spontaneously throughout space, within a diverse set of people with differing beliefs, talents, and preferences, it is easy to understand things in terms of us and them—because it’s difficult to be wrong. It takes a leap of faith to break free of our usual paradigms and open the doors for new ways of understanding and seeing the world we’ve categorized. When we do, however, we’ll find that possibility. Then it’s just up to us to seize it.

Photo via Flickr User Soupstance

The focus of city revitalization efforts and policy prescription as of late has increasingly been focused on young professionals— in order to cultivate creative talent and innovation. Cities and municipalities have funneled money into amenities generally associated to the needs of this population, hoping to attract and retain these young people. Though this is generally deemed a vital step in creating a vibrant, economically feasible city, the effect of the transient nature of this group on the stability of the neighborhoods has historically been considered negative. The most common argument points out that homeowners have an incentive to invest in their community—primarily due to permanence and the overall neighborhood’s effect on property values.

Young renters are on the rise, partly due to green housing, sluggish wages, and a preference for mobility within the job market. There are also a noticeable number of new renters to the market because of housing losses in 2008. According to Business Insider Magazine, the number of renters has jumped 16 percent since 2004— to include about 106 million people in America. Communities that were once almost exclusively owner-occupied, single-family homes have seen the rise of multi-family residences. Business Insider explains that the number of multi-family housing permit units “soared to 61% between the first quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012.”

The behavior, consumer patterns, and desires of the millienials have been under much scrutiny as of late. The Atlantic Cities found that large amounts of student debt, the recent re-evaluation of the home as a permanent asset, and tighter lending standards have directly contributed to a paradigm shift in the choice of homeownership. As CEOs for Cities discusses in our report, The Young and Restless in a Knowledge Economy, this population is the most mobile—showing the aversion to committing to a particular area. The report explains, however, that as these people age they tend to sink their roots, potentially becoming the homeowners that anchor and provide stability to communities.

Cities have always held the need to strike a balance between the unique needs of renters and homeowners. It is important, then, to understand what we can do to increase the stability of communities as the number of owner-occupied housing decreases. Inviting renters to attend block meetings and contribute to the success of a neighborhood is a win-win for everyone. Renters benefit from a network of concerned neighbors, and are more likely to stay in a community they feel is connected and striving for the same goals. Homeowners benefit from working with their more transient neighbors to make the community a better place. Getting younger community members (and more community members in general) involved in the conversation will necessitate using different methods for reaching out to individuals—which could include internet-based platforms as well as more interactive in-person strategies. Attracting renters into the conversation about the communal future of a neighborhood is essential to tethering people to a community.

Offering neighborhood amenities that increase neighbor interaction is a way to enhance the relationship between a resident and the community at large, kickstarting some of these important relationships and the ability to co-own and co-create the future of the area.

Shared Possessions

Tools, yard equipment, and other functional equipment are things that many in the neighborhood need to use. Encouraging (or enabling) neighbors to mutually use and respect community belongings will facilitate the connectivity of residents. Also sharing of tools and lawn equipment enable to renter to maintain some of the upkeep on a house and yard—which can be a great asset in scenarios of absentee landlords.

Shared Physical Assets

Breaking down community isolation and encourage interaction is a concept that planners should be striving for, but in many cases has not be instituted historically over the course of the last few decades. Providing larger-scale community assets such as community centers, recreation centers, parks, community gardens, or even living space can all increase the likelihood of interaction and in many cases an increase in property values throughout the neighborhood.

Shared experiences

Community programming is a great way to strengthen identity, as well as get new residents involved. Having welcoming committees for new residents is a great way to initiate connections and familiarize new people with the neighborhood. Community walks, neighborhood clean-ups, potlucks, church raffles, poetry/art based events, and annual meetings all contribute to the strength of the community and the organization of the block club by providing a relaxed environment where residents can give feedback to the structured organization and meet other neighbors.

It is healthy for communities to have a diverse set of residents—and the mix of renters and homeowners will become increasingly more successful as we find new ways to bridge the needs of these two groups and make our neighborhoods places that everyone would want to invest in.

Written by Maria Agosto

Photo via Flickr User DeclanTM

Innovation in so many ways is seen as the key to driving economic growth in America’s cities. In fact, us here at CEOs for Cities truly believe that it is one of the four key elements that make up city success. As we all know, however, it doesn’t just happen on its own.

One relatively recent phenomenon that we have witnessed in today’s world is the use of competitions as a format for generating energy and getting incredible results over a short period of time. Startup competitions are one such way that cities all over the country have attempted to generate an entrepreneurial culture and connect innovative, creative minds.

Ryan Marimon and Brian Adams (no, not that Bryan Adams) are two software developers that are leading the charge in bringing this institution into the city of Cleveland, organizing the first Startup Weekend the city has seen in three years—which is taking place this weekend (March 8-10). They recognize the potential power of this competition to jump-start entrepreneurial energy within the city, even within a short time-frame.

Participants signed up for the event give pitches to an audience, which then votes on the ideas they deem best. Teams are formed around these ideas and then have the rest of the weekend to create a startup business and finally present to a panel of judges. The winning team wins a prize (not yet announced)—but Marimon and Adams both agree that while winning the prize and creating a startup are great assets to participation, the real value is found in building relationships with other innovative, like-minded individuals.

As participants in other startup competitions, they see the kind of people these events attract—noting that they are just the kind of risk-takers that drive action in places like Silicon Valley: “The people that take part in things like this are eager, energized, and creative. They see the big picture and are looking for a way to be a part of it. They don't mind trying things and don't mind failure.”

Marimon understands the link between the competition and the future success of the city, explaining: “Cleveland is in need of fresh life-blood.  It has been struggling to pick itself up after the collapse of the steel industry.  We suffer from "brain drain" because young and talented individuals believe that they need to leave and head elsewhere to do big things.  By fostering entrepreneurship and innovation we will create jobs and opportunities  right here in Cleveland and make it a place that people want to be.” They are working to make the connection even stronger by ensuring that everything from tee shirt printing to refreshments are locally sourced. The event itself is taking place in the 5th Street Arcade, a historic institution located on the central thoroughfare in downtown Cleveland.

While they find it important, however, this kind of grassroots organization is certainly no simple task. Building a wide net of players in the event is a sizable task for just two individuals. When asked why they were willing to put in the time and effort, Marimon’s answer reflected the entrepreneurial spirit the event itself attempts to inspire: “In this town things don't just happen, while in areas like Silicon Valley or Austin, TX there is so much momentum for things like this. It takes people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get the fly-wheel moving again. We are doing this because events like this are taking place all over the world, and there is no reason that it shouldn't happening here as well. When we can feel that we've taken a step towards engaging and connecting the next generation of entrepreneurs in Cleveland, it will all be worth it.”

Building this culture of innovation certainly happens from the ground-up. It is the work of leaders, however, to support this work and be a part of a collaborative solution for city revitalization.

For anyone interested in participating, use the discount code "CITIES" to save $25 on the registration fee! 

Photo via Institute for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)

As Cleveland’s inner city population has yet to stabilize, despite a massive influx of young professionals, the city has turned to transit as a promising fix for the city’s problems. Transit-oriented development (TOD) is one of many ways cities are remaining competitive with outer suburbs for the almighty real estate dollar, and Cleveland has established itself as a regional leader worth keeping an eye on.

According to Maribeth Feke, Director of Planning at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority—the city’s transformative Healthline bus rapid transit (BRT) line is responsible for $4.3 billion in TOD. Feke said that TOD was calculated based on a half-mile radius. Despite the apparent success since its opening in late 2008, the $168 million project has its skeptics, though those critics are primarily working toward the same goal of revitalizing the city through transit.

Ken Prendergast, Executive Director at All Aboard Ohio, believes the GCRTA should utilize rail and BRT more extensively in a few targeted corridors. “BRT lite is really just an effort to try and get some federally-funded streetscapes,” he noted. According to Feke, Cleveland’s BRT-planning incorporates amenities such as pedestrian islands and streetscaping in order to boost TOD. “Very, very rail-like,” Feke added.

While conceding that the GCRTA has very difficult public constraints, All Aboard Ohio also espouses better stewardship of Cleveland’s already-impressive rail-based transit system. One such example is the heavy-rail Red Line which lies mostly in an industrial swath of the city. “It is hard to get new communities on board with these bad land-use models around existing stations,” he said. Prendergast suggests that nearby negative examples of land use, including the Red Line’s industrial surroundings, are more influential than further-away positive examples, whether they be Portland, Seattle, or even Cincinnati’s promising new streetcar system. 

For Feke, there lies the rub—as it is politically difficult to coordinate land use around transit lines that transcend multiple municipal borders. “What we’re seeing today is that transportation corridors are regionally based, so we really do have to analyze existing land use and development patterns in those corridors, not to sprawl more.” Feke predicates her argument on Northeast Ohio’s inability to pay for further growing its infrastructure footprint while the regional population is stagnant and the central city is still loosing population.

Regional planning, perhaps through a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) similar to Portland or Minneapolis-St. Paul, will be the key to coordinating land use according to Feke. Prendergast also championed regional planning, and went further suggesting a city-wide TOD community development corporation (CDC) could be an intermediary solution for coordinating between GCRTA and municipalities. Most CDCs focus on target neighborhoods, while some have more thematic missions, like affordable housing.

While Prendergast also concedes rail is difficult to finance because of how Northeast Ohio’s low growth translates into poor FTA scores (compared to competing projects in high-growth areas like Denver that usually win funding), there are a few very simple fixes. These include embracing single-track operation on the outer ends of newly extended rail lines that would reduce rail construction costs, switching rolling stock on the light-rail transit (LRT) lines to bring down those expansion costs. Another is utilizing existing railroad corridors to provide commuter service beyond the existing rapid transit service that terminates in East Cleveland. Suburban Lake County (home to growing communities such as Mentor and Willoughby), he said, would score higher because rail realizes greater transportation efficiencies over farther distances. Job access, he argued, already exists along the railroad. Much of his vision is based on a 2011 Center for Neighborhood Technology study called Broadening Urban Investment to Leverage Transit (BUILT) in Cleveland.

The easiest of all fixes All Aboard Ohio suggests is transit overlay zoning, which right now, only exists along the city’s BRT route. The transit overlay zoning was instrumental in streamlining Euclid Avenue’s revitalization, which has included over 4,000 housing units according to the GCRTA website. Many local planners deduce that the outdated housing stock may be the primary reason for Cleveland’s declining inner city population, pointing to 98% occupancy of downtown housing.

GCRTA primarily sticks to BRT for its vision of how Cleveland could become a national transit leader, with several new BRT systems currently in the works, including a Clifton Boulevard/Shoreway line linking downtown and the extremely dense inner suburb of Lakewood, a HealthLine extension through the northeast inner suburb of Euclid, as well as preliminary planning of a Lorain Avenue BRT that could revitalize the west side of Cleveland. GCRTA’s new transit lines are largely based on a study that identified ten “transit propensity corridors” that will be studied as focus areas.

Feke also offered hope for a W. 25th Streetcar linking Ohio City and Old Brooklyn, as well as projects that build off of the existing rail-based network, like the Blue Line extension in Shaker Heights. She called it “a way to strengthen what we already have and reinforce transit connections and better service.” Exciting rail extensions being considered include looping the LRT Waterfront Line around downtown’s east side, through Cleveland State University, and hooking back up with the existing rail network around Cuyahoga Community College, southeast of downtown. Another possibility is a western Red Line extension to better facilitate business connections around the airport. While Prendergast was skeptical of the airport extension’s cost feasibility, he praised the ideas of a W. 25th streetcar and Waterfront Line LRT extension.

While All Aboard Ohio and GCRTA can be presented with competing visions, that may not necessarily be the case. Cleveland is lucky to have knowledgeable rail advocates who provide an infusion of ideas for transit planning, while the Regional Transit Authority must operate within the political reality of today. This could have been a much longer article, going into more detail on GCRTA’s plans to put Cleveland on the cutting-edge of TOD, including an ambitious program to build new or retrofitted rapid stations in conjunction with University Circle Inc.’s “Missing Links” program, or Shaker Heights’ massive “Van Aken District” Blue Line TOD plan. Likewise, it could have gone into more length on some of Cleveland’s problems, like an $8 billion hole in the local economy going toward transportation needs (cited in the CNT study) which the Brookings Institute concludes far outpaces the national average. $8 billion can support an incredible amount of retail or new housing, and fix many serious problems.

The point, however, is that the regional transit authority and Cleveland’s rail advocates can foster a healthy debate while providing competing visions. More cities need a transit discussion like what is brewing in Cleveland. Here at CEOs for Cities we may be biased due to our Cleveland ties, but 10-20 years from now Cleveland’s rapid transit system will turn some heads while possibly serving as a TOD beacon that helps stabilize the inner city population, as Feke and Prendergast both hope. That can probably happen whether the priority remains building on existing rail infrastructure or trail blazing new long-distance rail service, as long as the city remains bullish on new fixed-route transit corridors.

By Nick 

Photo via Jason Paris

“Right now, in your community, at this very moment, there is someone who is dreaming about doing something to improve his or her lot,” Ernesto Sirolli wrote on the rebirth of local economies. “If we could learn how to help that person to transform the dream into meaningful work, we could be halfway to changing the economic fortunes of the entire community.”  For every dreamer, there is someone who can match a passionate idea with needed skills, resources, or networks. It is the nurturing of these relationships that hold the potential for real progress.

Yet, it has often been difficult for someone with an idea to cross paths with someone who has complementary resources and interests. Too often, this disconnect has resulted in palpable consequences: aspirations gone lifeless, underused and uninviting places in neighborhoods, and an impoverished sense of community. 

Matchmaking is a service often associated to websites such as E-Harmony, but by harnessing the power of crowdsourcing and social platforms in the urban sectors, these necessary resources can come into reach (and our communities can certainly benefit from finding a little bit of love). Whether connecting with someone on ioby to fund a local environmental project, Change By Us to create a link between resident and leader, or matching spaces with creative ideas on ArtHERE to crowdsource revitalization, there are an increasing number of tools that help to realize the visions we previously thought impossible by simply creating connections.

In the case of community revitalization, there are many stories about art breathing life into neighborhoods across the country, helping organizations and communities increase vibrancy often with little resources. Surfing the internet, examples of light hearted activism like guerilla gardening and yarn bombing, crowdfunded community projects, and inviting pop ups and public spaces inspire people to take action. The dreamers Sirolli speaks of are not the exception. Communities are filled with people with aspirations to improve the quality of life, but who are often uncertain of how to do it, where to do it, if they’re allowed to do it, if they can do it, or who to do it with. So often times, they just don’t do it.

ArtHERE bridges this disconnect in creative place making and community engagement by facilitating the matching of spaces and art. Using ArtHERE.org, we are empowered by a platform to put our ideas into action – whether you have a space or a creative idea. Using this idea of creating connections as a template for future collaborative action is just the beginning of the essential process of activating an underutilized, yet powerful resource: the capital of a community and its social network.

By Lauren Sinreich, Cofounder of ArtHERE

ArtHERE is a platform for crowdsourced revitalization through the matching of spaces and art. ArtHERE launched in partnership with ZERO1’s 2012 biennial, Seeking Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California and has recently expanded to New York City. For more information, go to arthere.org or email hello@arthere.org.

If cities gave out Valentines, what would they say? We took a quick stab at it-- so you can share or give them to the thought leaders and city advocates in your life! What would your City Valentine say? Tweet us with the hashtag #CityValentine or post on our Facebook timeline and we'll pick one to create and post on our blog tomorrow! 

An Urbanizing World, By the Numbers

Image via Next City

This set of infographics published in Next City detail just where our populations exist in BRIC countries and the United States. The image above covers the percentage of each population that lives in urban areas, while an additional graphic on the site details the percentage of the total world population held by each of these countries. 

Global MetroMonitor

Brookings Institute released this interactive map in November of 2012. It covers a set of metrics exploring economic growth data for the largest 300 metropolitan economies worldwide for three periods: 2011-2012, 2007-2011, and 1993-2007-- covering a wide range of volatility and stability in the world economy. It also provides a series of basic economic information for each of the metro regions. 

If the World's Population Lived Like... 

Image via Per Square Mile

Have you ever wondered how big a city would be if the entire world's population lived within its borders? Now you can. Per Square Mile put together a series of infographics exploring this idea based on the densities of different cities around the globe. The one above explores some of the denser cities, while an additional graphic on their page explores densities that would span over 4 times the land available on the globe. 

There are two ways you can enter into the contest: 

1. Follow our Twitter page and tweet us your favorite example with the hashtag #CityIdeas or 
2. Like us and share your idea on our Facebook Page

Entries must be in by Sunday, January 13 at 5:00pm-- and we'll pick one entry at random to win the free report. We'll also publish everyone's ideas (credited to the contributor) on our blog after the contest closes so everyone has access to these wonderful ideas! 

Here are some examples to get you inspired: 

• Spain: Atlantic Cities covers six ideas that they feel every city should steal from Barcelona -- including thinking like a citizen rather than a planner! 

• Romania: A metro station in Bucharest papers its walls in... books. Well, digital books. Riders can scan QR Codes on the “library wall” and download reading for their travels. 

• Japan: This article featured on NPR discusses some differences between Eastern and Western approaches to teaching in the classroom-- which could be an indication of how different cultures understand what it means to be “smart.”

• Sweden: As covered by Springwise, this European country tackled winter depression using a clever method and already established transportation infrastructure-- showing an innovative way to address a health issue for their citizens. 

Have fun! We're looking forward to seeing what amazing ideas you all find!

Photo via Dennis Yang

There have been a number of publications detailing the concept of the city as a startup. This is a useful framework for managing cities more efficiently and creatively. As we look at the private market, though, we find that only a small fraction of startup companies will ever come to be successful and sustainable. Merely approaching running cities like a startup, then, is certainly not enough.

Incubators are an invaluable asset to the startup community—but what would a city incubator look like? What would it do? We will look at a few roles that business incubators take on, and try to understand how the same model can be applied to supporting cities.

Covering the Basics

Business incubators realize that while someone may have a great idea, not every passionate entrepreneur necessarily has the means to pull it off—or may not know how to make it sustainable in the long run. The very first question any advisor or mentor would ask after hearing your pitch is: how does it generate revenue? While a city financing structure is clearly unique, it is important to understand that maximizing return on investment is critical. In many cases, the role of the incubator is to ask the difficult questions. Who is your target audience? What is your value proposition? How are you differentiating yourself from your competition? The city—whether the actor working to improve it is a governmental agency, nonprofit, or other organization—must be able to admit when it doesn’t have a good answer. Many entrepreneurs fall in love with their products and ideas, making them blind to the reality that the numbers just don’t work out. An incubator would help the startup city recognize this, but also help them to understand what changes could be made to make the idea viable. In turn, the city learns to be flexible. 

Providing Resources

Incubators provide startups with the physical infrastructure needed to test-run and evolve their business and strengthen legitimacy. They also provide marketing resources. Cities already have space, but they exist as the culmination of a variety of different decisions, spatially scattered and independent of one-another—despite the fact that these individual decisions could intertwine quite closely when it comes to impact. A city incubator could provide space for different actors within a community to come together in driving growth. The importance of carrying a strong brand is just as important for cities as it is for startups. Having a clear community identity will strengthen vision, and the commitment to that vision. At the same time, marketing is only as good as the product one sells. Ensuring your city has value to the customer is just as important (if not more so) than communicating that value to current and potential residents. 

Creating Connections

Networking is a vital component to any incubator, as building connections leads to the intersection of ideas and resources—leading to a much greater likelihood of success. A city incubator could draw on this idea to create linkages between different actors within the city. It could create linkages with experts who have found success in their own ventures, so that the startup can draw on that experience. It could, then, connect cities with new ideas to springboard their own growth—understanding, though, that replication does nothing for the market. You have to either take an existing idea and implement it far better, or find a way to differentiate it or innovatively apply it for a different use to ensure demand.

There are many more functions and services that incubators provide to startup companies. What others do you think can be applied to helping cities grow?

Our President and CEO, Lee Fisher recently held a talk at TEDxDePaulU-- with a focus on the City 2.0. He explains why cities are the primary drivers of growth, and how change rests at the intersection of great people and great ideas. Click here or on the image above to watch the video, and let us know if you'd like to see Lee speak at your next event!

Photo via François Rejeté

Like a machine, our cities are made up of a variety of moving parts—needing maintenance and upkeep to run properly. Our cars have convenient dashboards that alert us when the oil is running low or our engines are malfunctioning. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a method or technology that allow cities to monitor where problems are occurring? Better yet, a handbook that tell us what exactly we should be doing proactively to prevent any future issues?

Having benchmarks for action allows us to understand where improvements can be made and forces us to face accountability head-on.  More and more organizations and startups are trying to find ways to leverage the incredible amount of data we have at our disposal in this technological era.

Choosing the right metrics is what will make a set of benchmarks meaningful and useful, and will of course change with a given audience or focus. Defining a concept like misery or livability, too, can lead to challenges, as well as arguments concerning methodology and relevance. Just because a concept is impossible to capture entirely doesn’t mean that it isn’t a worthwhile endeavor. The truth of the matter is, though, that numbers don’t always tell the whole story—but they can play a very important role in the ability to change it.

Most important to understanding the power of benchmarks, however, is focusing on how and to whom they are useful. Merely ranking cities against one another isn’t necessarily meaningful. Being dubbed the most miserable city in America certainly doesn’t provoke any inspiring thought or action. When cities are given a set of benchmarks paired with the potential for change, however, our decisions become even more powerful.

For example, a new startup has developed analytics dashboard that tracks how well cities are performing in terms of services like fixing potholes and picking up trash. The City Vitals research that CEOs for Cities has conducted looks at a broad range of metrics in the 51 largest metro regions of the United States to equip them with the means to become more competitive and vibrant—using measurements from the solid, such as college attainment, to the less easily defined weirdness index or internet search variety.

Linking these resources to the decision-makers in the community will be the successful element to this equation, and with increasing cuts in the budgets of cities and municipalities, having ready access to useful data will be incredibly valuable. As these entities face decreasing resources to conduct this research in house, it will become even more important to increase the efficiency and properly align the focus of our agencies and offices.

Using data to organize goals and action, too, is essential. Tracking and benchmarking gives us a good understanding of what goals are attainable—and what influence action can have. Any researcher who has conducted an economic impact study understands that action has a certain “butterfly effect” or multiplier. Our City Dividends demonstrate that tipping the needle on a particular metric can have a serious economic impact. Recognizing where returns on our city investments lie can lead to a greater likelihood of actually making a difference.

What are some other ways benchmarking has helped you or your organization in achieving or framing its goals?

Photo via Bob Vonderau

Though the Brookings Institution recently published numbers revealing that Millenials are becoming even more mobile, the focus of planners and city officials has fallen on this generation for quite some time now. CEOs for Cities published its report, Young and the Restless in a Knowledge Economy, just last year— echoing many of the points that we see regularly discussed influential thought leaders such as Richard Florida and Ed Glaeser. It is well known that our young, talented generation is on the move, and to be successful we must capture and captivate them so they can infuse our cities with the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit that drives economic growth.

From the point at which we started understanding the link between creativity and growth, the focus of cities all throughout the US shifted to attracting that talent and keeping hold of their own college graduates and creative types. We've seen countless articles and books published on the subject. The top ten lists have been plastered all through the digital sphere, and arguments have waged on about the relative importance of place making vs. creating jobs in securing the younger generation.

All that being said, the high mobility of this group has presented itself as both a challenge and an opportunity for communities, depending on whether a city is already positioned as a magnet for these creative types, or losing their own young professionals to those urban-meccas with the right cocktail of amenities. Millions of dollars have been infused into economic development budgets, attempting to sift through the preferences of these young professionals and create the entertainment districts, walkable neighborhoods, and urban comforts that are said to be in hot demand. Branding initiatives have been employed to draw their ideas and breathe life into struggling cities, live-work spaces built. Coffee shops have found their way to so many city streets.

The idea of approaching management of a city like a startup is an intriguing one—because we understand quite well the concept of competitiveness. But often I feel that we miss the mark for understanding the true opportunity in the pressure to compete for these young and restless professionals: we’re at a pivotal point of transition, and we can use this to work at creating meaningful places.

When we look at the brands often cited for being successful—like Apple and Google—we see that they make their mark not by focusing the bulk of their energy on the bullet-pointed list of features, but on building a culture—both internally and for their customers. Creative people don’t just want the bars and restaurants. They want authentic communities that are exciting and engaging. This can’t be articulated in a pamphlet, and it can’t happen if all we ask ourselves is, “What can we build to make the creatives come?” We should be asking, “What can we do to build a community where people thrive?”

At the end of the day, what us Millennials need to thrive is pretty much the same as anyone else—jobs, grocery stores, a way to get to work. All of those “extras”—the walkable streets, collaborative design, mixed-use development—allow everyone to think more creatively, live a bit more safely, and make the community a better place to be. The world is changing, rapidly. If we want our cities to be diverse, dynamic places where people thrive, we need to change the paradigm, not just the consumer group we’re focusing on. Our young are restless, and that creates anxiety and challenge, but a wise professor once told me to never waste a good crisis. This is a great opportunity.

Photo via Dinner Series

We are all thankful for many different reasons. This time of year we see an onslaught of status updates and tweets about why our friends, relatives, and peers are thankful: for having a job, for their families and friends, or for simply being alive. Because I am a lover of the Rust Belt, and the nerdy planner in me tends to take over in reflective situations; I’ll express what I am thankful for: My City.

I’m thankful that my trash gets picked up every week and clean water comes out of my faucet. I’m thankful for the train that carries me into work every morning. That if I dial 911, there will be a response. Many of us take these things for granted, forgetting the incredible expense and feats of human ingenuity that drove the improvements in quality of life all throughout this great nation. Now, this post is not an exercise in guilt—as there is an important reciprocity that is often lost when we consider thanks, or more importantly, love.

My list of thanks addresses the infrastructural functions of a city entity—the council, utilities bureau, or portfolio of services offered in our communities. In this sense, we could understand it as a network of decision-makers, whether public or private entities. But a city is far more than that. A city is a living, breathing, complex web of decisions and intentions. A city is its people. Decision-makers work daily to improve conditions in the city, prescribing, providing, and practicing in the name of the people. We want our cities to be lovable, for people to appreciate place—but too often we don’t understand living in a place in terms of a relationship.

Peter Kageyama points out in his book, For the Love of Cities, that we understand our cities in terms of consumption—“Consumption of culture, of resources, of infrastructure, of services. The better/easier/cheaper those consumables, the happier we are and the better we like our places.” He sees this as a fallacy, that it is in our human nature to produce, create, and contribute to our place. Our leaders and so-called creatives are the ones that are pushed to make the changes necessary to facilitate this as we have lost emotional connectivity with place—which is unsustainable at best. He calls on us citizens to understand that we have a relationship, that we should be emotionally engaged with our cities. This is what will make them thrive (because “when we are loved, we thrive”).

I draw on yet another inspirational writer who discusses love in great detail—bell hooks. She puts eloquently in her book, All About Love: New Visions: “Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.” She explains that this definition assumes accountability and responsibility, rather than thinking about it as a feeling that we have no control over—she comes to define love as openly and honestly expressing care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.

When we combine the thoughts of these two people together, we can understand our relationship with our place as one where we express our affection, care and respect for our city. We do this by not throwing trash in its streets, by taking responsibility and paying our taxes, by trusting in those prescriptions and practices put out by the city’s leadership. A relationship, however, only works if this love is given in return—so what, then, does this functional relationship look like? And how can we facilitate it?

I urge you to find reasons to be thankful for your place, perhaps for the parks where your children play or the many books available to you at the library. At the same time, however, I urge the City—the decision-makers and citizens alike—to be thankful for every amazing person that lives within your community—for opening a new business and creating jobs, for putting up holiday lights (albeit far too early), for supporting a school levy or donating canned goods at their place of worship. Thank people for making your community a better place, no matter how big or small that effort may be. We thrive when we feel loved, and we feel loved when we are appreciated.

Thank you for reading this piece, for caring about the future of our cities, and for all of the hard work you will put forth to make sure that future is brighter than it is today.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Photo by Nicholas I. Emenhiser

Downtown college campuses are a popular trend to follow for talent retention and galvanizing downtown activity. As this trend grows and becomes more successful across the nation, more research into particulars may be necessary to understand their effect on urban revitalization. It is clear, however, that downtown college campuses are yielding interesting benefits for cities such as Chicago, Richmond, Omaha, Cleveland, and Tacoma.

Many states have lost graduates, urban hubs such as New York, Chicago and Boston claiming those who have fled to pursue creative fields. This “brain drain” phenomenon has been a high-profile topic, as our most mobile sector of the economy has shown a marked preference in where they live, work, and play. In the past, the “brain drain” was seen solely as a function of job opportunities existing elsewhere. However, this phenomenon has recently been linked to the urban lifestyle and quality of life available in those places. If your community is losing young, educated individuals because another city offers better lifestyle amenities, why not develop those amenities in your own city?

The best approach is prevention rather than reaction—it is much harder to regain college degrees once a community has lost them. Though students seek metropolitan experiences like a performing arts scene, reliable public transit, and vibrant street life and culture, developing these elements benefits all city residents just as much as students and young professionals.

In The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida talks about how jobs are following young, educated individuals comprising the “creative class,” as opposed to the other way around. Destinations that grow their “creative class” tend to be the cities that are producing job opportunities for young professionals. While this trend calls into question whether talent retention and job growth is best done by focusing on economic development or quality of life, the most successful cities right now are merging the two goals by taking a holistic approach that engages quality of life improvements from an economic development perspective.

The downtown college campus plays an essential role in linking town and gown. Having a downtown college campus that plugs students into the city’s beating heart can alleviate strained relations due to the often-transient nature of students. For example, students at college campuses in Manhattan will be likelier to stay put because they’re plugged-in to internship and professional development opportunities in New York City. Economic reasons aside, they probably won’t leave for somewhere more recreationally desirable. While NYC often gets held up as the quintessential urban mecca, the downtown college campus is not just a Manhattan phenomenon. Constellation cities such as Louisville or Boise, however, need to examine and improve their own assets to recreate their own distinctive urban experiences to ensure competitiveness.

Many urban universities named for large cities exist on the edge of the city or even in a suburb (i.e., UT-Dallas located in Richardson, TX, or the University of Dallas, in Irving). By not being downtown, they’re missing out on many urban benefits and amenities, including arts institutions and walkability. Instead of pumping funding into campuses on the outer edge, cities could allocate their resources to downtown campuses, creating a win-win situation for the college and the community. Perhaps the future of this trend rests with cities that do not yet have a local university and still have the opportunity to look for new locations.

In the case of the University of Washington’s new downtown campus in Tacoma, civic leaders wanted to revitalize a lagging area that served as a gateway to downtown by building a college campus that stradles “the Link,” a 1.6 mile light rail streetcar. In 2005, the Sierra Club named that campus America’s Best Development. While UW-Tacoma’s new campus is an example where the city in particular benefited, the ideal relationship between downtown and a campus has many shared benefits:

• Students get plugged into the downtown job market
• Internship opportunities are often located downtown
• Access to the city’s recreational amenities (often with discount programs)
• Increased attendance at downtown’s athletic, arts, and cultural events
• Cultivating a talent pool that is uniquely geared toward and desired by downtown employers
• Increased vibrancy on the street and a boost in urban development

Downtowns have historically been the central gathering point. Too many cities have strayed away from leveraging their downtowns for this purpose. Connecting higher education to downtown reaffirms the city’s role as a central marketplace for ideas, talent, entrepreneurial activity, and everything else that we find makes cities successful in this era. Though much focus has been put on eds and meds, many will argue that suburban campuses have equal weight in driving economic growth—but in driving in talent, the preferences of the creative and innovative could (and we believe do) serve as a great advantage for urban universities.

While it’s easy for us to see the positive benefit of the downtown campus as we walk its streets and experience a vibrant nightlife, benchmarking its benefits will allow us to see the true economic value of focusing efforts on improving these assets. CEOs for Cities in conjunction with the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) published a study on leveraging colleges and universities for urban economic revitalization in the early 2000s (it looks ancient if you look at the PDF). While the report conveys some meaningful insights into the urban university playing a broad set of roles—such as employer, developer, and incubator—it would be great to find an updated look at the tangible benefits of investment in urban colleges and universities, and how these have possibly increased with the shift in lifestyle preference over the course of the last decade.

References:
Sierra Club Names UW Tacoma Campus Among America's Best Development Projects
CEOs for Cities Talent Dividend
Leveraging Colleges and Universities for Urban Economic Revitalization: An Action Agenda

About the Author: Nicholas I. Emenhiser is an intern at CEOs for Cities and a student at Cleveland State University. He considered his own experiences and observations in this downtown campus as a supplement to this piece. You can often catch Nick commuting to work or class via the Rapid—Cleveland’s light rail train, with a coffee in tow, enjoying the amazing art institutions around him as he makes his way to the heart of downtown. He says his experience here in the city, while short, inspires him to potentially stay upon graduation, demonstrating the power of its distinctive urban environment.

CEOs for Cities is pleased to announce a six-part webinar series titled “Strategies for City Success.” This series, designed to support the efforts of cities participating in the Talent Dividend Network and Talent Dividend Prize Competition, was made possible with generous support from the Kresge Foundation and The Council on Adult and Experiential Learning. The webinars will explore strategies around data use, engaging municipal leadership, economic and workforce development, and supporting adult learners. The presentations will also feature tips from key stakeholders in higher education development on idea implementation.

The series will begin on the first Friday in December and will continue through May 2013 on the first Friday of each month. Each webinar will begin at 2:30pm ET. Participants must register for each webinar separately.  Please click on the live links to register today!

The first three webinars will be administered by The National League of Cities, a coalition of municipalities that help city leaders build better communities. The National League of Cities Institute, NLC's research and education affiliate, is comprised in part by the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, which helps municipal leaders take action in their communities around several core program areas, including education.

The final three webinars will be administered by The Council on Adult and Experiential Learning, which works to link learning and work. CAEL works at all levels within the higher education, public, and private sectors to make it easier for people to get the education and training they need to attain meaningful, secure employment.

We hope you’ll join us!

Using Data to Drive Change for Postsecondary Success, Part I (Hosted by the National League of Cities)

December 7, 2:30pm ET

Register for the webinar

Description:  Building upon the release of attainment and enrollment reports to Talent Dividend cities, representatives of Riverside, California and another city in the Communities Learning in Partnership (CLIP) initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will discuss how they have assembled and built analytical capacity, used data points such as attainment and enrollment to establish baselines, and set citywide goals.  Riverside recently joined Louisville, Kentucky among cities establishing public postsecondary success goals in the form of a “report card." Check out our key reference.

Using Data to Drive Change for Postsecondary Success, Part II - Sharing Data  Across Sectors and Institutional Boundaries (Hosted by the National League of Cities) 

January 4, 2013, 2:30pm ET

Register for the webinar

Description:  Assessing starting points and gauging progress regarding postsecondary completion goals entails sharing data.  School districts, community colleges, and four-year institutions, and city planning departments charged with digesting census data all bring key data to the table.  Sources such as the National Student Clearinghouse, to which districts and colleges may belong, also play important roles.  Representatives of Dayton, Ohio and one other CLIP site will describe how they’ve successfully shared data and reflect on data sharing lessons learned.

Municipal Leadership for Local Postsecondary Completion Initiatives (Hosted by the National League of Cities)

February 1, 2013, 2:30pm ET

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Description:  As the National League of Cities pointed out in a recent Municipal Action Guide prepared with support from the Lumina Foundation for Education, mayors and other municipal government leaders – elected and appointed – can take on many key roles in a local initiative.  These roles include convening, setting out public accountability goals, commissioning research, and aligning postsecondary success goals with citywide economic development priorities.  Representatives of CLIP sites Mesa, Arizona Counts on College; Portland Cradle to Career; and the Philadelphia Council for College and Career Success will explain the varied means they have used to engage municipal leaders, and catalog benefits and challenges to date.

Economic Development and Workforce Development Alignment Strategies: Working as a Community (Council for Adult and Experiential Learning)

March 1, 2013, 2:30pm ET

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Description: This webinar will highlight how economic development and workforce development efforts are not only complimentary, but must be linked in order for communities and their economies to grow CAEL will provide examples of work conducted with our economic analysis partner, Avalanche Consulting, across the country to assess regional skills development assets and align learning opportunities with growing and high-potential industry sectors.   While each community’s economy and economic development aspirations are unique, CAEL will share how communities can make the most of their schools, training programs and partnerships to increase job opportunities for its citizens while addressing businesses workforce needs.  The session will showcase the JAXUSA Partnership -  Jacksonville and Northeast Florida's regional economic development initiative. JAXUSA is a private, nonprofit division of the JAX Chamber. 

Webinar Speakers:  JAXUSA Partnership, Avalanche Consulting

Engaging the Adult Population by Offering New Ways to Earn College Credit (Council for Adult and Experiential Learning)

April 5, 2013, 2:30pm ET

Register for the webinar

Description: This webinar will provide an overview of Prior Learning Assessment.  Prior Learning Assessment is a process by which adults can obtain college level credit for learning that’s taken place outside of the college classroom, i.e. work or life experiences.  PLA has many forms that range from standardized testing to individual learning portfolios.  CAEL has been a leader in PLA policy development, defining institutional rigor, and providing an independent platform for potential college students to submit learning portfolios for college level credit (LearningCounts.org).  This session will showcase the Tennessee Higher Education Commission who is working with CAEL to promote PLA to employers across the state as they pursue the Talent Dividend prize, focusing on the importance of PLA in helping adults to amass credits for what they already know, advancing them towards completion faster and more effectively.

Webinar Speakers: Tennessee Higher Education Commission College Representative

Link Learning to Work: Engage Employers to Develop Career Paths to Support Recruitment, Retention and Readiness (Council for Adult and Experiential Learning)

May 3, 2013, 2:30pm ET

Register for the webinar

Description: This webinar will focus on the importance of career pathway information for all stakeholders including employers, educators, counselors, case managers, students, incumbent workers etc. Stephanie Steffens, Director of the Colorado Workforce Development Council will showcase a project sponsored by the CO Governor whereby the public sector, education, employers and workforce investment entities are working together to build a statewide Career Pathways System.  During this session CAEL will showcase interactive career maps, which are industry career overviews which provide information for all positions (entry to CEO level) including job descriptions and responsibilities, education and experience requirements, standard wage ranges and career progression opportunities. We will examine models for several industries including: Telecommunications, Health Information Management and Solar Energy.

Webinar Speaker: Director Colorado Workforce Development Council

CEOs for Cities is a civic innovation lab and network for city progress and success, connecting cross-border, cross-sector, cross-generational civic CEOs and change makers to each other and to smart ideas and practices. We curate ideas, connect leaders, and catalyze change.

The National League of Cities helps city leaders build better communities. Working in partnership with the 49 state municipal leagues, NLC serves as a resource to and an advocate for the more than 19,000 cities, towns, and villages it represents.  The National League of Cities Institute (NLCI) is NLC's research and education affiliate, and the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families is a special entity within NLCI.  The YEF Institute helps municipal leaders take action on behalf of the children, youth, and families in their communities.  Since its founding in 2000, the YEF Institute (www.nlc.org/iyef) has provided direct assistance to hundreds of cities throughout the United States in several core program areas, prominently including education.  Currently, the YEF Institute serves as managing intermediary for the Communities Learning in Partnership (CLIP) initiative of the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, and manages the Municipal Leadership for Postsecondary Success initiative with support from the Lumina Foundation for Education.

The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) links learning and work. CAEL works at all levels within the higher education, public, and private sectors to make it easier for people to get the education and training they need to attain meaningful, secure employment.

1. Make it interactive.

STREETPONG from HAWK Hildesheim on Vimeo.

There are many different ways to inject a bit of fun into our streets. What if you could pick up a game of ping-pong or chess on your way home from work? Or a life-sized game of chess? 

2. Rethink Bus Stops

Images via toxel.com

Just think of how much more pleasant riding the bus would be if you could wait in a strawberry or have a leisurely swing?

3. Embrace Graffiti

Image via GOOD

Tagging can be a costly and headache-inducing problem for city leaders, but by encouraging controlled, colorful graffiti art you can turn a negative into positive artistic expression in communities that could use a pop of color.

4. Add Color to your Crosswalks

Images via cruz-diez.com and Curbly

Speaking of color… our crosswalks don’t always have to be the standard black and white stripe. All throughout the world we can find examples of creative crosswalk markings and interesting pavers. Other infrastructure in the city can be re-energized with nothing short of a bit of paint.

5. Inspire through Public Parks

Images via wallacegardens.tumblr.com

Public parks (when well designed) don’t have to be rolling green hills and a forest. Even a very small space can be made over into a small haven using the simplest of materials.

6. Don't forget the buses

Images via PopupCity and The Dirt

Though we certainly wouldn’t encourage a rainforest in every bus, this installation shows that getting a little creative with this public infrastructure could inspire some not so common users.

7. Make the Ugly Pretty

Images via Street Art Utopia - Leaning Tower of Pisa, Lego Corner

Things inevitably fall apart, as a fact of life. While many communities struggle financially to replace these items, there are people who make it a point to beautify them, if only temporarily.

8. Make Gardens where they are generally not

Images via Street Art Utopia and The Pothole Gardener

It’s amazing how little it takes to create a “garden.” From these hanging teapots to the simplest of seed bombing, a few flowers can go a long way in brightening up your walk to the post office. 

9. Think outside the bench

Images via Web Urbanist

The great William Whyte discussed the importance of having an abundance and variety of seating in public spaces—and definitely thought beyond the bench. I doubt he ever thought about Stair Squares.

10. Invoke your inner child

Image via PopupCity

Use the playground to inspire street and public space planning. You're never too old for play!

Which are your favorites? 

Photo by John Picken

While unemployment rates are at about 8.1%, we are finding that the problem is not always that the jobs aren’t there—it’s that our workforce doesn’t have the skills needed to fill available positions. This has caused much public discussion, but the problem persists. Some initiatives, however, are tackling this issue in an effective and meaningful way. It seems that the windy city is at the forefront of this effort, serving as a model for how to approach closing the gap through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) initiatives in higher education.

CEOs for Cities spoke with the key players behind two very important programs: the College to Careers (C2C) program spearheaded by Chicago City Colleges, and the more recent Minority Male STEM initiative, a partnership between Chicago City Colleges and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).

Mapping an Viable Strategy

College to Careers aims to provide students with real-world experiences that can serve as the basis for future job opportunity. Chancellor Cheryl Hyman of City Colleges explained to us that the program works to recognize growing industries—both regionally and globally—to understand where future needs will be. Using that information, City Colleges works with a large spread of industry partners to understand how curricula can be shaped to provide relevant skills to tomorrow’s workforce. An important element of the program is what Hyman refers to as “stackable credentials,” a concept based on the fact that not every student is beginning their education right out of high school. In fact, 32% of City Colleges’ student body is made up of adults who have been out of school for several years, increasing the importance of addressing students at all points in their careers.

“There are various exit and entry points in which students can come in and get trained,” Hyman explains. “Many of our students come to us needing to work right away. We want to provide that opportunity where it exists, but we also want to encourage them to keep learning and to come back to build on that career. We make sure no credential within our program portfolio is a dead end.” This is not just a benefit for students, either. The fact is, employers don’t need a skilled workforce four years from now, they need one yesterday. A structure that encouraged continued learning is beneficial to students, employees and employers alike.

Addressing the current and future realities of our economic situation is important for those wanting to move into the workforce, as well as the developing needs of employers. The collaborative Minority Men STEM Initiative highlights the growing need for skills rooted in mathematics and the sciences. The initiative gives 20-25 African-American, Latino, or Southeast Asian students the opportunity to receive academic support, paid research experience, and access to a learning environment or “culture of science” that will pave the way for academic success, future job opportunities, and (hopefully) a path to graduate school. The participants in the program would complete an associate’s degree at City Colleges, then move on to UIC to finish a Bachelor’s degree in the same field. The program encompasses a myriad of different services, but Hyman emphasizes that research shows students having already completed and associate’s program have a higher probability of success in earning a four-year degree. 

Providing Practicality

Cecil Curtwright, who worked with Dr. William Walden to develop the Minority STEM program, emphasizes the vast amount of funding available to students who pursue science at the graduate and undergraduate level. “There are grants [and] fellowships available for continuing the pursuit of science.” Helping students understand how they can get the most out of their education at the least expense is critical. In order to create a qualified workforce, we must prioritize affordable training and education.  Chancellor Hyman also mentions the financial advantage of completing the first two years of college at City Colleges, where the cost of education is significantly lower.

Beyond the financial practicality, the Minority STEM initiative is cutting-edge in that it provides students with valuable (paid!) research experience. Curtwright explains that students will have the opportunity to be a part of a 10-week summer research program following their last semester at City Colleges, as well as the summer between their junior and senior years. This hands-on experience enriches academic programs and connects students with potential employers. 

Recognizing the developing needs of the consumer market is also extremely important. Chancellor Paula Allen-Meres of UIC highlights not only the growing importance of STEM, but also the increasing importance of diversity in one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy: “I’m a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and as we look at workforce needs going forward, we know that the healthcare arena is going to need an abundance of ethnic and minority racial providers to meet the changing demographics of our country. So this initiative, in my way of thinking, has this wonderful ripple effect across the STEM disciplines, as well as the healthcare disciplines needed for the future.”

Ensuring a Holistic Approach

For any program to be truly successful, it is critical that all stakeholders are committed to its vision. The partnership between the City Colleges and UIC shows how the roots of collaboration can sprout big ideas—but they didn’t do it all on their own. Anthony Monroe, the president of Malcom X College (representing the health sciences in City Colleges’ network), explained the importance of industry partners in the Colleges to Careers program in providing insight into the skills students should have coming out of the program: “We know that in the Chicagoland area, at least 15,000 nursing jobs are projected to become available over the next 10 years. So we’re busy in terms of preparing our students for that, in fact…we totally revamped the first year nursing curriculum… focusing on what’s needed for the nurse of tomorrow.”

Including governmental bodies and residents on board is just as important as academia and industry. Chancellor Hyman addresses this by explaining that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched the College to Careers program last December, and continues to lend his support for the program and its efforts to close the gap.

“When we go down and look at our local, state, federal governments, they are hugely concerned with the skills gap,” says Chancellor Hyman.  She highlights that the 9% of the Chicago workforce that is currently unemployed could be filing the 100,000 open jobs.  Therefore, officials are , “extremely supportive, and very excited about the fact that we are going to have a real focus on ensuring that when their constituencies leave our institutions, they can hit the ground running day one, whether that’s going right into a career or whether that’s transferring on to a four-year institution.” She also mentions that the taxpayers of Chicago are equally supportive: “Now that they see that we have a real strategy, aimed at seeing that our students succeed, they can feel very comfortable about getting a good return on their investment.”

Both the Colleges to Careers program and the Minority Male STEM Initiative stand as examples of the capacity that can be generated through collaborative efforts and a pragmatic look at the inadequate labor force of today. Sitting idly certainly wont cure the very real, very fundamental problems of our economy. So until we start laying bricks, we’ll never build the bridge—and it’s a long jump.

The Case Foundation is launching a new campaign — Finding Fearless — to identify the undiscovered social innovators who are dreaming big and taking risks to change their communities and the world. More than $650,000 in grants, software and technology prizes, and outdoor adventures are at stake in this search for America’s Most Fearless Changemakers.

So, are you a fearless changemaker?

We’re excited to help support the Case Foundation’s effort to uncover the stories of the undiscovered individuals in communities across the country that have a successful track record of tackling social challenges because their approach is bold, uncommon, experimental, unconventional, and fearless.

It doesn’t matter if they are 18 or 80; or if their work is done in a big city or one-stoplight town. It doesn’t matter if they have ten diplomas or no diplomas. It doesn’t matter if they get their work done through nonprofits, small business, state or local government, or their living room or garage. What matters is discovering the untold stories and tapping the unknown heroes who are bucking trends, disregarding the status quo, and making change happen with a fearless approach and attitude.

Does this sound like you or someone you know? If so, drop everything you’re doing and apply yourself, or nominate someone you know, today for a chance to get a piece of $650,000 in grants and prizes to take these fearless projects to the next level. Finding Fearless begins with YOU. Help us find America’s Most Fearless Changemakers!

Here’s how Finding Fearless works:

• You Nominate: Tell us about your fearless project or one that inspires you. Up to 1,000 nominations will be eligible for grants and prizes so be sure to enter today!
• We Narrow the Field: The Fearless Academy—a team of 50 judges representing the Case Foundation and our partners—will review and assess nominations.
• The top 10 fearless projects will each receive a $10,000 grant to take their work to the next level!
• The next 10 projects will each receive a $1,000 grant to support their fearless initiatives
• You Vote: In the spirit of citizen-centered approach to philanthropy, we want you to decide which project receives a bonus $10,000 grant and other prizes to help our fearless changemakers!
• We Announce the Winners: We reveal which projects receive grants and prizes worth $650,000!

Apply yourself or nominate someone who is fearless today! Finding Fearless starts with YOU!

Photo by Jorge Lascar

While closing the gap is important for getting more citizens across America employed, is it a worthwhile investment when our economy has been hit hard and jobs more scarce? It turns out that economic strains are making the need for skilled workers even greater. Jamie Merisotis is president of the Lumina Foundation, and will be speaking at our National Meeting in Boston next month. An article he published last month on The Hill demonstrates the importance of educating low-skilled citizens as we ride the tail of the Great Recession. 

According to this article, those with just a high school degree lost 230,000 jobs while those with college degrees gained 187,000 jobs during the slow recovery between January 2010 and February 2012, [2]. The stats are even more telling for recent graduates. While unemployment rates for new four-year college graduates reached a high at 11.1% in July 2011, they have dropped to 6.8% as of May 2012. For those entering the job market right after high school, their unemployment rate peaked at 30% and was still at 24% in May, by comparison. The difference is even more drastic when manifested in underemployment statistics. While only one in seven recent college grads are underemployed, nearly half of all recent high school graduates are mired in underemployment as they seek out solid footing.

This recent Lumina Foundation study, along with a wide scope of literature on the importance of education in workforce development, are in line with and support the concept behind CEOs for Cities’ Talent Dividend. The next step is understanding how we can best leverage education to cater to the needs of employers across the country—and how we can increase the accessibility of this education (but we’ll be covering this topic tomorrow!).

Take a look at the infographic Can a Degree Get You Through the Recession for a visual look at some of the numbers found in a report done by the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

Photo via Horia Varlan

Last week on the Huffington Post, CEOs for Cities’ Lee Fisher and Joe Cortright reviewed three books for those of us who love cities.

The first book, The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti, an economist at Berkeley, strongly validates CEOs for Cities’ Talent Dividend. Using statistics, Moretti makes a case for why educational attainment is extremely valuable to the community. Lee and Joe then shift their focus to Alan Ehrenhalt's new book titled The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City, which details a trend where the wealthy are moving into urban cores, rather than out of them as they did earlier in the century.  Finally, Lee and Joe share their thoughts on Richard Florida’s update of his highly influential (and similarly controversial) book: The Rise of the Creative Class - Revisited.  In his book, he reasserts "cities need a people climate as much, if not more, than a business climate."

Lee and Joe include a little bonus at the end of the article—but we wont give everything away. Read on to find out what it is!

Photo via Arian Zwegers

Thousands of years ago, the public square was created as the original marketplace; with the influx of people, goods and ideas, it evolved to be a bustling center of human interaction. Public squares still exist today, of course, and the public realm reaches far beyond the stark geographic boundaries of the square, piazza, or plaza. Our streets, parks, museums, and town halls are places where we can bump into an old friend, solicit important information, and exercise our right to free speech. Some say that the energetic power of interaction has been lost in these places over the last few decades, while others argue that our voices and interactions have found their place in another public realm: the internet.

The New Social

Though some of live interactions and experiences are being replaced by online marketplaces, digital newspapers, televised concerts, and the like, our sense of place in a particular city depends on the city’s physical spaces. We now have the ability to interact with these places digitally. We have Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and the ability to shoot a quick message out to the online world that something right-here-and-right-now is great, or perhaps not so great. We can easily snap a quick photo of an energetic event. If a customer service rep gives us the run-around, we can warn our fellow citizens or “followers.” Businesses have been leveraging the potential of this feedback since these platforms came about, and cities are starting to get on board as well. Potholes, road construction, trash services, the water coming out of our faucets… they all have the potential to be in the social media conversation, and despite (or maybe because of) the informality, officials are listening.

A recent article published by The Atlantic Cities covered how the Internet is becoming the new town hall.  The article introduces a concept pioneered by IBM through their Smarter Cities Program that compiles real-time thoughts for city leaders interested in tackling the issues important to the public. It goes by the name of Social Sentiment Analysis, and aims to listen to people where they are already talking. The best part? It allows them to actually engage.

The Potential of Engagement vs. Information

Engagement seems to be quite the buzzword, but has even more significance when we consider the way communication has flowed in the past. Public meetings are largely presentations, with minimal time allocated to public opinion. Pamphlets and mediocre websites have plagued our public entities—our questions hampered by inconvenience or a lack of understanding of how to contact the right people. Engagement requires two-way communication and is vastly strengthened by fresh internet and social media platforms. When city council posts an announcement on Facebook, any citizen can comment or ask questions directly on that post. When you or your neighbor tweet about the quality of a particular road, that complaint can be accessed and responded to, though it is up to these public entities to listen and respond. The potential for meaningful and timely engagement, however, is a great asset to planners, elected officials, and agency workers in terms of communicating, soliciting opinions, and educating their residents and stakeholders.

Tools for Planning and Civic Engagement

Another recent article published on Planetizen.com discusses some of the ways that apps are changing the world of planning. The authors highlight the great potential for collecting feedback, but also discuss a myriad of tools that are being used by planners to increase the efficiency of their practice and the potential for interacting with the public. We wont include every tool from their list, but will highlight the ones we found to be great for engaging the digital public sphere—as well as some others we’ve found around the web. 

• Accela Mobile 311: This iPhone app “enables residents, visitors, and other members of the public to take an active role in their community by requesting services from or reporting incidents to their local agency. The app ties directly into an agency's Accela Automation system to ensure that incoming information will be tracked and assigned to the appropriate departments, so that the item will be addressed in the most efficient and effective manner.”
• Change by US: This initiative is a collaborative effort involving the work of CEOs for Cities, and asks citizens to voice ideas on how to make their community a better place. The website also gives residents a place to organize projects, find volunteers, and celebrate what makes their cities great.
• MindMixer: A platform that aims to bring together and engage the members of a community, Mindmixer has a variety of different tools and ways of customizing its site to various cities in a way that is fun and interactive. It is being adopted by cities all over the U.S., and is just one of many similar platforms that are making civic engagement fun and entertaining.
• iPavement: A bit different than previous tools mentioned, iPavement bridges the physical and digital to interact with people not only when they are surfing the web, but also where they are standing (quite literally). Pavement stones installed into sidewalks have wifi and Bluetooth connections that alert anyone with a smartphone to provide passing residents and visitors with information to make assets more accessible—such as maps, public transport maps, or discounts at nearby restaurants. This is also a great tool for planners who want to collect data concerning pedestrian traffic.
• GOOD Maker: This website is another action-inspiring tool, which uses an online platform to interact with residents. Citizens submit their ideas on how to creatively move their community forward, and have the chance to win a $2,500 grant to make that vision a reality.

No doubt, hundreds of new apps, sites, and tools will be developed in the coming years to increase public engagement and leverage our already existing information exchange—and there are many not discussed here.

What do you feel are the advantages and disadvantages of a highly digitized public sphere? What tools have you found to be most intriguing and effective?

Photo via SJU Undergraduate Admissions

The apple, long a ubiquitous symbol of education, may take on a new role as technology challenges and reinvents the physical classroom… unless of course you are more of a Windows guy. Numerous innovations are appearing in our classrooms—smart chalkboards, remote controls, and online discussion boards—and some teachers are even using strange (yet entertaining) memes to motivate and teach their students.

Technology has allowed us to break free from the “traditional” classroom. The value of alternative education has been debated by leaders throughout education—discussing both the incredible potential for increasing access to higher education as well as the benefits of learning in a physical classroom.  With the rising price tag of a traditional college degree, monetary, cultural or value-driven barriers can dilute access to higher education.

Recently, Colorado State University became the first university in the United States to accept transfer credit for a course offered by Udacity, a free online education platform founded by Google vice president and part-time Stanford computer science professor, Sebastian Thrun. Colorado State is specifically offering credit for its Global Campus, an online university geared toward an audience of working adults. The University of Washington in Seattle has also announced its intention to offer credit for courses from a similar platform called Coursera, although UW students will likely have to pay a fee and work with a UW instructor.

Both Coursera and Udacity are MOOCs, or massive open online courses.  Thrun pioneered this course format with the intention of democratizing education through flexible intensive courses offered at a low cost to students (whereas the cost of a four-year degree is nearing $250,000). The Gates Foundation has recently announced a project to test the potential of MOOCs in revolutionizing how remedial education is offered. Other potential target audiences for MOOCs are the employed workforce, curious and motivated individuals, and lower-income people priced out of traditional academia.

A specific stipulation of the Gates Foundation grants will be partnering with an already established MOOC platform, including not only online universities like Udacity and Coursera, but also technology platforms already well-established in the institutional setting—such as Blackboard or Desire2Learn. This stipulation aims to ensure the new courses get adequate exposure and connect to students where they are already heading for these services.

A recent study on educational attainment underscores the vital importance of higher education reaching out to underserved demographics.  This Harvard-based Pathways to Prosperity Project concluded that education is increasingly separating lower-income jobs from more fulfilling work. Additional studies have concluded that alternative education can be successful in bridging the gap.

One of CEOs for Cities’ primary missions is to espouse the talent dividend, which concludes that a 1% increase in the population that holds a college degree in the top 51 U.S. metros would lead to a dividend of $124 billion— manifested in household income growth. That growth, which is already occurring in some metros, is one of the biggest factors separating lagging cities from those with economic development success.

What innovations in technology do you believe will help drive educational attainment rates?

City Vitals 2.0 is not a collection of “best and worst of” lists, like so many we see on the internet. It is not a set of value judgments. It is not a list of the best places to live. It is certainly not intended to be viewed in a vacuum. This report sets out four areas where cities have to get things right in order to be successful—talent, innovation, connections and distinctiveness—and offers a set of benchmarks to illustrate ways of measuring each of these characteristics. As Nate Berg explained in the Atlantic Cities article covering the report, “Rankings aren't always the best way to understand metropolitan success and vitality, and this report doesn't claim they are. Still it is interesting – and maybe even instructive – to see how metros stack up against one another through these various indicators.”

Culture is not an easily quantified variable, and we wouldn’t dare claim to document such a concept in terms of one number. The benchmark mentioned in the Gambit post was not a measure of how cultured a city is, nor does it claim to be. It is a ratio of cultural events attended to the number of HDTVs owned within the city. This can have a whole host of different interpretations, but clearly the measurement comes down to the definitions and the data available for only two, very clear variables. In 2007, it was unambiguously the case that when we take a look at these two variables, out of the 51 metropolitan regions explored, New Orleans has the lowest ratio.

Anyone that knows anything about New Orleans will associate it with a rich cultural history, including influential music, amazing food, and of course Mardi Gras. There is no denying that this resilient city has a rich, robust culture that is incredibly unique. To claim New Orleans to be devoid of culture would be—as many have pointed out to us—absurd and ridiculous, even disrespectful. We have not, and would never, assert this to be the case. Why, then, does it rank so low? Many have pointed out that Hurricane Katrina made cultural events far less frequent, and that the urgent replacement of furniture, including televisions, would explain this low ratio in 2007, just two years after the tragic event. We couldn’t agree more. Within this context, the small ratio makes much more sense—and that context is absolutely vital for interpreting the results of the analysis.

The intent of our research is not to rank one city above another, but to provide a set of tools for exploring the performance of your city, and how you can work to improve it. We both understand and acknowledge that these indicators are not perfect:

“We have compiled data in each of these four areas—connections, innovation, talent and your distinctiveness—to illuminate and better define the discussion of what it takes to build a successful metropolitan economy. There are, as often is the case, limitations to the data. Our indicators of talent, for instance, are good, general measures of skill but should not be taken to imply that only those with a college degree are talented. Nor do such broad measures capture the highly specialized talents that exist for corporate finance in New York, for movie production in Los Angeles, for petroleum geology in Houston or for logistics in Memphis. But these data provide a means for individual metropolitan areas to assess candidly their relative strengths and weaknesses against their peers nationally. While the data are the best and most recent available, they are still only indicators of the broad subjects we discuss.”

Our world is one that is seemingly driven by numbers. Data allows us to understand and construct in a quantifiable way—which allows us to understand our position, track progress, and articulate measurable goals. It can empower us, help us understand our limitations, and put our focus where our efforts are most effective. All that being said, these numbers are meaningless without context. In order for any data to be useful, it must be framed in a way that is relevant to the people using it. Data are used to support a story, not make one.  

New Orleans’ poor performance on this one measure in one year-–the ratio of cultural events to HDTV ownership  in 2007-- is an indication of how severe and lasting the impact of Katrina was on the city’s usually vibrant cultural life.  We would expect that subsequent data would show an improvement  in this indicator—and when it did, it would be evidence that the city is making progress this area.  And that will be something for the city to celebrate—as it should.

In fact, we believe distinctiveness is one of NOLA's greatest advantages. Our other indicators show that New Orleans ranks in the top five in internet search variety, and above-average for all metros in our weirdness index (#21) and in restaurant variety (#15). Rather than fixating on any one indicator, we think cities should understand in depth their unique characteristics and build their economic strategies around them.

The great amount of feedback that CEOs for Cities has received in response to the blog post shows just how passionate the residents of New Orleans are about their home.  Not only do they feel connected to the city, but also proud of its history, impressed with the strides it has made over the last seven years, and optimistic about the future. We  apologize to anyone who  feels that including this indicator in our report somehow  disrespected the legacy of the city of New Orleans in our research. We’re excited to see all of the progress as New Orleans rebuilds from this challenge.  Your story is an inspirational one that deserves all credit due. We hope that you channel that passion into action and use the entire scope of indicators in our report (within context) to support you in the development and implementation of your goals.

Update:

Since the preview edition of City Vitals 2.0 was being misinterpreted, we feel it is necessary to publish the disputed measures in their entirety in order to help explain our methodology and evaluation.  As explained below and in our full City Vitals 2.0 report, the Culture/HDTV report uses data drawn from SRDS marketing data (SRDS/Equifax, 2008).  It measures the relative consumption of mass entertainment and local culture by computing the “culture/HDTV” ratio: the percentage of persons reporting attendance at local cultural events divided by the percentage of households that had a high definition television receiver.

Your Distinctive City

One of the paradoxes of globalization is that as the globe has become more closely connected by commerce, communication and entertainment, the distinctive differences that distinguished one place from another have been muted by shared global commodities and multinational brands. Despite, or perhaps because of, the increasing sameness associated with globalization, the remaining local distinctiveness plays an increasingly important economic role. As Jane Jacobs said, “The greatest asset that a city or a city neighborhood can have is something that’s different from every other place” (Jacobs, 2006).

Local differences in tastes can give rise to new ideas and new products. The insatiable fascination of Japanese and Korean consumers for ever smaller, more capable electronic devices (cameras, phones, computers) gave rise to clever and innovative new products that eventually paved the way for worldwide distribution of products with similar capabilities (Porter, 1990).

The insights and original ideas behind many breakthrough business models emerged from practical experience gained in a local marketplace. In the 1960s, at a time when it was rare for most adults to exercise publicly, many people in Eugene, Oregon, took up the hobby of jogging and running. A small company formed to sell them imported sneakers. That company eventually became Nike, the world leader in shoes and sports apparel (Cortright, 2002).

There are many dimensions to distinctiveness, and because each community has its own special strengths and characteristics, no single measure or set of measures can capture this adequately. Effectively measuring a community’s distinctiveness requires different measures for each city. Every city should look to recognize the ways in which their city is “First, best, or only” in some category (Waits & Fulton, 2003). Recognizing this limitation, we’ve compiled a broad set of measures that begins to assess how much metropolitan areas differ from one another, and identify which urban areas differ most from U.S. averages in a series of key behaviors, including consumption, culture, food and Internet searches. These indicators signal the ways in which communities can begin to measure and validate their distinctiveness.

Culture/HDTV Ratio

Ratio of persons that reported attending a cultural event in the past year to the number of households with high definition televisions, 2007.

Individuals have substantial choice over the types of entertainment they enjoy. Residents of every metropolitan area have wide access to mass entertainment, like television, as well as a broad range of cultural events. One aspect of community distinctiveness is the extent to which people participate in local cultural activities (which vary enormously from place to place) as opposed to the passive consumption of electronic media (which offer the same set of choices everywhere).

We measure the relative consumption of mass entertainment and local culture by computing the “culture/HDTV” ratio: the percentage of persons reporting attendance at local cultural events divided by the percentage of households that had a high definition television receiver. These data are drawn from SRDS marketing data (SRDS/Equifax, 2008).

Overall, Americans are much more likely to report that own a high definition television than attend cultural events, such as theatre, concerts and museums exhibits. The ratio of attendance to cultural events to cable subscriptions is highest in San Jose, San Francisco, Rochester and Miami. In each of these cities, about a third as many households have attended cultural events as own a high definition television. The metropolitan areas with the lowest patronage of cultural events relative to cable viewing are New Orleans, Las Vegas and Louisville. In these cities, the ratio of households attending cultural events to those owning a high definition television is less than one in four.

If you have any additional questions pertaining to the indicators, please feel free to leave a comment below and we will answer them as quickly as possible. Additionally, we are always open to suggestions that you have for improving our indicators in the future.