In a presentation last night to young professionals in Chicago on the ways to turn around America’s global image, Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide and the founder and president of Business for Diplomatic Action, offered an interesting perspective on ‘recruiting’ people to the U.S.… more

Share your experience in this survey by our colleague, Stacey Randall of SBR Consulting.  As smart cities continue to focus on talent as a key lever for success, this study could shine new light on unemployed young talent and perhaps what you can do to snatch them up. … more

This San Diego collective is an example of a group of artists who have come together “to connect creative people and create a new art culture”, developing their own DIY collective.

Yeller is working to connect up local artists with each other, generate new markets for their… more

This message came this morning from Mr. Peter Ong, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore, who is on a world tour of global cities.

"Carol

Seattle is interesting.  People come here first without a job because they
have first decided… more

Traveling around San Francisco over the weekend, I noticed that every cool coffee shop was surrounded by babies and strollers.  (And many of the strollers were doubles.)  Surely, urban leaders are seeing this new baby boom and planning to keep these young families in their cities, right? 

Wrong, according to… more

That's the headline on a piece from MSNBC.  When I started working to redevelop downtown Memphis in the mid-70s, a headline like that was unthinkable. And yet, there it is.

To quote from the article, "Most demographic and market indicators suggest that growth and development across the country are… more

Tell us how you really feel, Sean.

You may remember Sean Safford's presentation on community networks at the CEOs for Cities meeting in Chicago in 2007.  Since then Sean's book, Why the Garden Club Couldn't Save Youngstown, has been published, explaining why loosely networked communities are more resilient than those… more

Sounds like another routine business release:  SAIF Corp., which runs Oregon’s workers’ compensation system, will move its Portland operations and 128 workers downtown.

Doesn't sound like a big deal.  But it represents the second major suburban tenant in Portland to choose a more urban location.

More significantly, the… more

Joe Cortright wrote an important piece for today's Oregonian on why Oregon's economy has faltered and how Oregon should prepare to come back.

Joe warns against believing that when the economy comes back, it will look just like the economy we knew before the recession hit.  Clinging to the… more

That's the headline of a letter than ran in today's Chicago Tribune from a 17 year-old Lake Bluff resident.  Here are excerpts:

"I'm 17 and I am a senior in high school.  When the subject of teen drinking comes to mind, I am here to defend the underage drinkers.

"In… more

As the birthplace of Pringles and the 3-light traffic signal, Cincinnati has a history of invention. Launching today, Cincinnati Innovates is a contest open to anyone with a connection to Cincinnati and an innovative idea. With top prize of $20,000 this is one way to encourage local talent… more

Two interesting approaches to leveraging the knowledge, creativity and abilities of people previously un-tapped I came across this week:

“Targeting the more than 2 billion literate mobile phone subscribers in the developing world, txteagle aims to help alleviate high unemployment levels in many rural areas of countries… more

Here’s one example of a program exploring how to foster a system of opportunities for learning to build the creative capital of our future generations.

Thriving Minds emphasizes the importance of developing opportunities for children to be creative as a key to improving the lives of children,… more

Speaking to the R.J. Daley Global Cities Forum today in Chicago, Vice President Joe Biden cited the importance of the work of CEOs for Cities on the Talent Dividend.  He was using it to make the point that education is one of the most critical investments we… more

How do we help mobile talent connect with place?  Better yet, our place?  This is one of the big questions for cities. 

Lavonzell Nicholson and Ishaneka Williams have won a competition for the best business proposal to do just that: help the 23 – 35 year olds who… more

As the Talent Dividend tour continues, one of the questions we get at every stop is, "With so many lay-offs occurring. why should we be focused on increasing our number of college graduates?" 

Some facts in the current Newsweek bolster the answer we always give.  Newsweek reports, the unemployment… more

Today, we held our second Talent Dividend Summit in Atlanta where we were joined by a number of VIPs including Mayor Shirley Franklin, Superintendent Beverly Hall, Penny McPhee of the Arthur M. Blank Foundation and other community, corporate and civic leaders.   The meeting was convened by Peggy… more

A couple of times a week (or more) I am on the road talking about our work at CEOs for Cities.  Since talent is fundamental to the successs of cities, it is one of the big themes of my speeches.  As I talk about the need to increase the number… more

This story is a must-read.  Detroit's cheap housing is attracting (at least three) artists and dreamers who are then attracting friends.  "But the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished."

Rich Florida says it will.  Citing research from a number of sources, he makes a case  in the current Atlantic Monthly that can be summarized as follows:

+ The current crisis makes the end of a whole way of life in America. 
+ The recession will accelerate the… more

Eduardo Padrón, President of Miami Dade College and CEOs for Cities partner, has a compelling piece in Tuesday's Miami Herald on the importance of talent to the nation's economy.  From Padron "We reassure ourselves that we are still the greatest country on Earth, with the most creative and… more

In response to Carol's recent post on NYT Magazine's The Big Fix CEOs for Cities partner Diego Kolsky gives us a global perspective on universal access to higher education:

"As you know I come from Argentina. To this day the university is free to citizens and… more

Only in Portland?  Here's an ad from the Red Cross Chapter there for Singles CPR.  (Hat tip to Ethan Seltzer)

Alone on Valentine's Day? Find that special someone by attending our first-ever Singles CPR class!… more

Read The Big Fix in Sunday NYT Magazine, and you'll find that the answer to our economic woes is more college graduates.  Yes, that's right.  It's the Talent Dividend, exactly what we've been saying.  And it's worth $124 billion to the nation... every single year.

Note writer David Leonhardt's conclusion:

Detroit is a wonderfully complex city.  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of Detroit civic leaders (members of the CEOs for Cities City Cluster) who are working to bring 15,000 college-educated young adults to Detroit by 2015.  And they are focused on making Detroit an appealing… more

The New York Times is reporting that President Obama will tell federal regulators Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards.  It's hard to imagine that car… more

"The Obama Effect" is what researchers are calling it.  The performance gap between African-Americans and whites on a 20-question test administered before Obama's nomination disappeared in tests given after Obama's acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.  Apparently, the model set by the president helped blacks overcome stereotypes that… more

CABE and English Heritage have collaborated to release a new site that helps teachers “exploit the world’s biggest teaching resource” by providing resources, suggestions and information on learning “through the whole built environment, from grand historic buildings to the streets and neighbourhoods where we live”.  It also connects… more

An email from Portland State U colleague Ethan Seltzer started an interesting conversation I thought I'd share...

First, Ethan pointed me to this excerpt from Willamette Week: 

"[Musician]Liz Harris is about to quit her job. It’s not a stretch by any means to say it’s a risky idea;… more

At his always interesting blog, The Bellows, Ryan Avent poses the fascinating question, How many talented people would have to move to Detroit to create a tipping point that becomes a self-sustaining movement?  What started as a Twitter joke ("Let's all go buy a mansion for a $1.") turned… more

Here is a great example of under-utilized talent being put to work in new ways.  In this initiative that taps young people’s intuitive grasp of technology, students aged 12 - 16 take on a mentoring role as cell phone ‘coaches’.

“The program’s goal is to improve their… more

The things that make a city delightful -- like parks, historic sites, museums and beaches - disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation, according to "City Beautiful," a paper published this month by Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia economists Gerald A. Carlino and Albert… more

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:

Paul O’Connor, former head of World Business Chicago and one of the smartest urbanists around, was my guest for a recent video conference.  Paul always has provocative things to say. Reviewing my notes of our conversation tonight on a flight from LaGuardia to Chicago that I almost missed, I was… more

NYT notes the demographic changes brought on by NYC's renaissance. 

Since 2000, the number of young children living in parts of Lower Manhattan has nearly doubled. The poverty rate declined in all but one New York City neighborhood. A majority of Bronx residents are… more

Austin is one of the nation's most successful cities.  The nation's 14th largest city with 800,000 population, Austin is bigger than Washington, San Francisco and Boston.  It is also the nation's youngest big city.

Mayor Will Wynn is contending with the addition of 85 new cars on Austin… more

Beginning this month, a local Cleveland grassroots think tank wil run a social marketing campaign to convince kids -- specifically black boys 10-13 years old -- that education pays.

PolicyBridge, the group responsible for the campaign, says its goal is to supplant the anti-education and other negative… more

Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who has been mentioned as a possible choice of the Obama administration to head the Office of Urban Policy, has been named to U.S. News and World Report's list of Best Leaders of 2008.  He shares the honor with Jeffrey Sachs, Stephen Spielberg, Amory Lovins… more

"How do we recapture the value of the investments we've already made?" 

If ever there were a time in the life of this nation to ask that question, it is now.  And if asked in a public sense, the answer leads inevitably to the need to re-focus on cities.

more

Greg Hinz, over at Crain's Chicago, produced a terrific column on the impact of having our first urban president in too many years.

But in it he also made some interesting observations about the ways city life is different and how it is changing:

"City folks are, well, different.… more

"Creative energy is the only inexhaustible resource we have."  - Pier Giorgio di Cicco, poet laureate for the City of Toronto.

No, it's not that kind of surprise. It was a beautiful evening in Chicago so I decided to walk home from the Museum of Contemporary Art by way of the lake.  When I crossed back under Lakeshore Drive to see a new park in Streeterville, I found this piece of… more

Some quick lines from today's conversations...

"Creativity is the only inextinguishable resource we have."

There are 3 principles of the creative ecology from John Howkins: 

1.  Everyone is creative.
2.  Creativity needs freedom.
3.  Freedom needs markets.

Creativity does not equal the arts. Creativity is not the same as innovation.

Austin's plans to participate in Thrill the World got a boost when Mayor Will Wynn showed his own Michael Jackson moves. What a trouper.

With creative cities strategies increasingly gaining the attention of city leaders around the world, the Creative Cities Summit being hosted in Detroit October 12 – 15 will engage leaders with ideas on how to “rethink and redesign our cities for this age of innovation, knowledge and creativity”. 

By… more

Can't let Tina Turner's tour launch in Kansas City last night go without notice.  The woman is 68.  68.  Two years short of 70.  Is Tina amazing?  Or is Tina the new normal?  And if Tina is the new normal, are workplaces prepared to consider that their 68 year-olds may… more