This great video features our colleague and Senior Advisor Joe Cortright who recently spoke with leaders in Akron about ‘Attracting Talent Through the Development of Vibrant Urban Centers’.

Speaking as part of the Urban Innovators Speaker Series, Joe shared his insights on the ongoing transformation…

Excerpts from Carol Coletta's remarks to the Cities of Service "Building the Blueprint Meeting" in Philadelphia Dec. 3, 2009.

Not that long ago, there was an obvious reason for business to be involved in community.  In any mid-size city, there were three big local banks, three local department stores, two…

Trendwatching.com has named Urbany a top ten trend of 2010.  As Trendwatching puts it, "Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and demanding consumers around the world."  And demanding consumers lead to innovation. 

Read more here.

While regionalism might look good on paper, in practice it leaves much to be desired.  Carol Coletta discusses the pitfalls of being place agnostic in this blog entry featured on GOOD.is.

How can cities deliver a new and much-sought after American good life that is both sustainable and delightful to citizens? 

That question will be at the center of a two-day creative salon of 40 select experts from a variety of fields held in Grand Rapids on Sept. 14-15, which will…

Those who met Enrique Penalosa at our national meeting in San Diego last spring know that he is unapologetically pro-urban, pro-pedestrian and anti-car.  We recently ran across a series of videos featuring Enrique's thoughts on a car-free world, investing in public space and cities as a means of achieving equality…

As a preview to the work CEOs for Cities is launching on the future of cities next month at our VELOCITY salon in Grand Rapids, GOOD Magazine asked for a primer piece, which was published late last week on the GOOD blog. It's capturing quite a bit of attention…

Reviews of Monday's remarks by the president on his plans for urban America have been mixed.  Some have praised simply the attention he gave to the subject while other have criticized the apparent lack of muscular policy response on behalf of cities.

I read it this way.  It is still…

At first glance, cities may appear to be a big source of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. But new research by the nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), which compares greenhouse gas emissions of city and suburban households, yields some surprising results.

CNT looked at emissions of…

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood held a press conference today to announce a new U.S. push to transform travel in America, creating high-speed rail lines from city to city, reducing dependence on cars and planes and spurring economic development.

The President laid…

A paean to American cities circa 1956.  Scenes from a film called 'American Engineer.'

We'll be Live Blogging on this page from the CEOs for Cities Strategy Summit in San Diego next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Check here for live updates, photos and speaker notes.  We also have a tv crew taping the entire meeting for later broadcast.  I look forward to the conversations.

USA Today finally picked up the story we blogged last week on new EPA research that shows a substantial amount of housing built this decade has shifted from open fields on the edges of suburbia to dense central cities and their nearby suburbs, a change that suggests that the…

I'll be joining city managers and planners from the world’s leading cities including Seoul, Lyon, Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Jeddah, Riyadh and San Francisco in Abu Dhabi next month to debate and determine the blueprint for successful urban living over the next 10 to 100 years.

Global City 2009 will be…

Normally, I run the other way when I see these Forbes' lists of most/best/least/worst cities.  But I'll post the link to the list of America's Fastest Changing Cities. Los Angeles is at the top of the list, having lost the most households in the nation.  The rest of the…

It is now accepted wisdom that federal highway funding has been a major subsidy to sprawl.  But sometimes the subsidies are so insidious that they go unrecognized for years, even by those who pay the bills. 

This is the case today in Memphis where taxpayers there pay once for City…

This morning I've been reading an advance copy of Jeff Brugmann's new book, Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing the World, along with the new issue of Seed magazine. 

Both make the obvious (but much ignored) point that cities are bastions of efficiency, thanks to their density. …

While the future may be uncertain, a collaboration in Stamford is actively engaging in conversations to ensure that their city rides this wave successfully. The Reinventing Stamford initiative, co-hosted by CEOs for Cities partner Kip Bergstrom, will use this year to convene key stakeholders with outside thought leaders…

On a recent trip to Neiman Marcus on Chicago's Michigan Avenue, I found this striking woman reading intently in the Accessories Department.  When I left the store almost an hour later, she was still there.  That's when I took this photo.  I later learned from a sales associate that she…

After an interview on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi show Thursday, I started thinking again about this idea of America as a "metro nation."  I was on first with guest host Rebecca Roberts, followed by Amy Liu of Brookings, where the idea of regionalism has been pushed hard for the…

Why do cities continue to grow? And why, even in the electronic age, do they endure as wellsprings of intellectual life?

The Boston Globe believes it has found the answer.  "Recent research by scientists at the Santa Fe Institute used a set of complex mathematical algorithms to demonstrate that…

Freakonomics author Steven Levitt disputes the new report making headlines by James Alan Fox that homicide rates of black teens are up.  Turns out that Fox failed to adust for the increase in the number of blacks ages 15 to 19, which rose 15 percent between 2000 and…

Bob Yaro, who continues to lead on good regional planning from his post as head of New York's Regional Plan Association, has prepared a statement to the new administration on the economic stimulus plan that outlines a five step program for infrastructure investment as part of the America 2050 Coalition:

Mayors meet in Chicago Thursday with Valerie Jarrett, White House Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.  Jarrett is expected also to have the new Office of Urban Policy reporting to her.  Reports are that mayors will at minimum describe the type candidate they…

As reported by Politico:  "To the nation’s mayors, Barack Obama seems a little like Santa Claus — with a big sack of federal money to build local projects that would help stimulate the nation’s faltering economy.

"With infrastructure investment a key tenet of the economic…

That's the cover headline on a recent issue of Azure.  Inside, reporter Nelda Rodger asks, "Is a great city one that is thrilling to live in, or one where you never have to lock your bike?  Where buildings are tourist attractions, or where everyone rides public transit?  Can a…

In the past week, I've been in South Africa and Canada, as well as the U.S., speaking and exchanging ideas with leaders.  It occurred to me that in all three nations, there is a romanticized notion of the role rural areas still play in their success. 

In the U.S., we've…

Did anyone else notice?  Good for Colin Powell.  See it here.

Also, Powell comes out strongly -- strongly -- for religious freedom by telling a very poignant story of an American soldier who died in service who was also a Muslim. 

If we can't get along across faiths,…

I couldn’t find a guidebook before I arrived in Johannesburg.  In fact, I couldn’t find one after I arrived either.  And the attractions listed in the (very good) hotel directory had only five listings, including a Lion Park and the Zoo. Not exactly what this urbanist had in mind.