The US Initiative
The Community Challenge
Imagine a city where every citizen enjoyed public amenities of choice, engaged actively in the decisions affecting their community, shaped their community with their citizenship and volunteer commitments, and shared public space joyfully with others. How can citizens’ attachment to their community be solidified by their ability to engage in a robust public life? What would that vision look like for cities throughout the country and what can we do now to realize it?
These are some of the questions we tackled as part of the Community Challenge, one of five big challenges that are part of a national initiative spearheaded by CEOs for Cities and its network of partners in 45 of America’s largest communities. We call it the US Initiative – an initiative to build and sustain the next generation of great American cities that are of, by and for us.
The Community Challenge was held in Detroit on November 10-11, 2010. Experts from the fields of citizen engagement, public policy activism, volunteerism, technology, government and citizen-led civic production came together to share knowledge and, informed by their diverse points of view, develop a new understanding of what a contemporary robust public life looks like, what attracts people to it, what it ought to deliver (its purpose and its value to individuals and to communities), how it should be evaluated and how we get more of it.
Because attachment to community underpins the rationale for participation in public life, the framing of the dialogue reflected the primary drivers of community attachment identified by the Knight Foundation Soul of the Community poll—social offerings, openness and aesthetics.
Together, Community Challenge participants produced a set of big ideas to foster a robust public life that amplify drivers of community attachment with a particular focus on concepts that can be produced through citizen-centered activities, such as crowdsourcing, DIY or pop-up, and offer opportunities for meaningful progress in the next 18-36 months. A summary report is forthcoming.
Both the Community Challenge and the demonstration projects have been made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
