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Economist Joe Cortright has been a trusted guide for urban leaders for many years.

For more than a decade, he has dissected the movement of young talent through America’s big cities. He calcuated the Talent Dividend and the Green Dividend for cities. He developed a way to measure changes in vibrancy associated with creative placemaking and unpacked what’s really happening in the poorest neighborhoods. He is one of the world’s experts on clusters and effectively presses the case on the value of difference to cities. This week, he strongly challenged a New York Times Magazine piece on Portland that claims the city suffers from too much talent. Sign up for Episode Alerts Subscribe

Those are among the many reasons I am excited to talk with Joe this week on “Knight Cities.” He is an easy-to-understand economist who uses plain talk to discuss what’s important to the success of cities.

Listen to my conversation with Joe here.  And sign up for the “Knight Cities” newsletter to get alerts as soon as new conversations are posted.

Look for new content posted every Wednesday here. You can follow us on Twitter at #knightcities or @knightfdn. And if you have ideas for people you’d like to hear more from, please email me.

Carol Coletta is vice president of community and national initiatives at Knight Foundation.

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