Related Link Browse the Interactive Report Now Join the conversation Knight Foundation will host a Twitter chat at 1 p.m. ET on June 11, 2015 to discuss the findings and get public feedback. Follow @knightfdn and use #votelocal to participate. When I was 7, I remember handing out literature at our polling place on […]
Article · June 10, 2015 by Carol Coletta
As American cities fill with new and smaller households, school populations are shrinking. And that means a lot of closed schools in communities with no idea how to repurpose them. Enter Lindsey Scannapieco, principal with Scout, Ltd. and now the enthusiastic developer of the Edward Bok Technical School in South Philadelphia. It is a mammoth […]
Article · May 29, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Is it possible to forecast the future? Institute for the Future has been doing that for almost 50 years. Kathi Vian leads Institute for the Futures’ Ten-Year Forecast, which was just released for the institute’s clients. It explores seven economies working at once to produce a future with a lot of surprises. We talked to […]
Article · May 20, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Even though young college-educated adults are moving to city centers in far greater numbers than any time in 40 years, it is also true that poverty is growing in most American cities. While at least one strategy for tackling poverty – increasing the minimum wage – is gaining strength, the policy response to the problem […]
Article · May 13, 2015 by Carol Coletta
A new kind of journalism is being born in Philadelphia. It’s manifested in The Philadelphia Citizen, and its purpose is nothing less than to spark a new movement of citizens who refuse to outsource leadership to a political class. The Citizen hopes to convince Philadelphians that citizenship is something they must actively and urgently claim. Jeremy […]
Article · May 6, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Joy. Play. Whimsy. Those are words not often used to describe city planning and the associated public engagement it usually requires. But with its Market Street Prototyping Festival, San Francisco inverted the traditional planning model and turned its main street into a canvas for testing ideas submitted by citizens. The result, on display for three […]
Article · April 29, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Are “creative” and “bureaucracy” mutually exclusive terms? Erma Ranieri is working hard to prove otherwise. As commissioner for public sector employment in South Australia, she is leading Change@SouthAustralia to speed change in government. For her efforts to make government bureaucracy creative and responsive to citizens she was named 2014 Telstra South Australia Business Woman of the Year. Change@SouthAustralia […]
Article · April 22, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Sign up for Podcast Alerts Subscribe With city finances squeezed, the call for public-private partnerships is increasing. But even in the best of circumstances, they can be tricky to manage. Kathryn Ott Lovell is responsible for one of the nation’s largest non-commercial public-private partnerships. She is executive director of the Fairmount Park Conservancy, an independent […]
Article · April 8, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Shawn McCaney, program director of creative communities at the William Penn Foundation, has been a leader in reimagining Philadelphia’s civic commons, those places that together encourage us to cross paths with our neighbors, encounter new ideas and make broader connections. Sign up for Podcast Alerts Subscribe Shawn has been an aggressive advocate for better planning, […]
Article · April 1, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Civic innovators from across the country, including the Knight communities, helped review more than 7,000 applications for the first Knight Cities Challenge. Just six months ago, we launched the first Knight Cities Challenge. It attracted more than 7,000 applications, and we were, at once, thrilled and overwhelmed – thrilled because there are so many people […]
Article · March 31, 2015 by Carol Coletta
Is it time for a new kind of local economy in our cities, one that’s based on people sharing their knowledge? Tessy Britton believes it is. Sign up for Podcast Alerts Subscribe Tessy and her colleagues at Civic Systems Lab are building a city framework where people can teach skills to those around them and […]
Article · March 26, 2015 by Carol Coletta