Diigo Update 12/18/2016

• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | Informing debates. Shaping policy. Producing results.

  We are a nonpartisan research and policy institute. We pursue federal and state policies designed both to reduce poverty and inequality and to restore fiscal responsibility in equitable and effective ways. We apply our deep expertise in budget and tax issues and in programs and policies that help low-income people, in order to help inform debates and achieve better policy outcomes.

  Tags: economics, policy, government, budget, research, statistics, politics

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• The Center for Economic and Policy Research

  The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) was established in 1999 to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. In order for citizens to effectively exercise their voices in a democracy, they should be informed about the problems and choices that they face. CEPR is committed to presenting issues in an accurate and understandable manner, so that the public is better prepared to choose among the various policy options.

  Tags: Economic, policy research, debates, democratic, governance

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Council of Economic Advisers | The White House

  The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency within the Executive Office of the President, is charged with offering the President objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international economic policy. The Council bases its recommendations and analysis on economic research and empirical evidence, using the best data available to support the President in setting our nation's economic policy. The Council is currently comprised of a Chairman and two Members. The Chairman is Jason Furman. The Council's members are Sandra Black and Jay Shambaugh. The Council is supported by a staff of professional senior economists, staff economists and research assistants, as well as a statistical office.

  Tags: council, white house, economics

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 12/17/2016

• SC2 home | HUD USER

  Through SC2, 19 federal agencies work together in partnership with committed city leaders as they implement locally driven economic visions. SC2 does not involve new federal money nor is it a top-down approach. Based on a city’s local vision and its request for federal involvement, SC2 seeks to support each city by increasing federal-local collaboration and improving how the federal government invests in and delivers technical assistance to advance locally driven economic development and job creation goals.

  Tags: hud, user, sustainability, community empowerment, collaboration, economic development, governance, cities

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 12/16/2016

• National League of Cities | Helping City Leaders Build Better Communities

  The National League of Cities (NLC) is dedicated to helping city leaders build better communities. Working in partnership with the 49 state municipal leagues, NLC serves as a resource to and an advocate for the more than 19,000 cities, villages and towns it represents.

  Tags: national, league, cities, governance

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• PolicyLink

  Founded in 1999, PolicyLink connects the work of people on the ground to the creation of sustainable communities of opportunity that allow everyone to participate and prosper. Such communities offer access to quality jobs, affordable housing, good schools, transportation, and the benefits of healthy food and physical activity. Guided by the belief that those closest to the nation’s challenges are central to finding solutions, PolicyLink relies on the wisdom, voice, and experience of local residents and organizations. Lifting Up What Works is our way of focusing attention on how people are working successfully to use local, state, and federal policy to create conditions that benefit everyone, especially people in low-income communities and communities of color. We share our findings and analysis through our publications, website and online tools, convenings, national summits, and in briefings with national and local policymakers. Our work is grounded in the conviction that equity – just and fair inclusion – must drive all policy decisions.

  Tags: equity, community empowerment, collaboration

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• National Equity Atlas

  Equity is more than the right thing to do—it is an absolute economic imperative. The National Equity Atlas is a first-of-its-kind data and policy tool for the community leaders and policymakers who are working to build a new economy that is equitable, resilient, and prosperous.

  Tags: equity, Economic, equitable, resilience, prosperity, community empowerment, collaboration

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Economic growth in the United States: A tale of two countries - Equitable Growth

  Over the past 40 years, economic inequality in the United States has returned to levels last seen in the 1920s. Today, the United States is in the top quarter of the world’s most unequal countries. Economic mobility—a child’s likelihood of occupying a different position on the income ladder than his or her parents did—has fallen well behind Canada, Great Britain, and other advanced economies. And inequality has worsened over the course of the current economic recovery.

  Tags: piketty, inequality, economics

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Resources: Helping You Find Leverage | Pontifex Consulting

  We continually build our catalog of resources to inspire and support you on your journey to apply the latest innovations in adaptive leadership. View the most up to date Pontifex Consulting (and partners) videos. Download our practical resources to illuminate concepts and provide you with concrete tips and techniques for building your adaptive learning skills.

  Tags: resources, leverage, systems thinking, collaboration, community empowerment

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• States Will Drive Clean Energy Forward Until the U.S. Leads | NRDC

  NRDC just released its Fourth Annual Energy Report: Accelerating Into A Clean Energy Future. The report explains the transition to clean energy is well underway, driven by a combination of market forces, state and federal policies, technological advancements, and strong public support in red and blue states alike.

  Tags: article, sustainability, environmental

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Welcoming + Economic Development

  A growing number of places recognize that being welcoming leads to prosperity. Welcoming America provides the roadmap and support they need to become more inclusive toward immigrants and all residents. Launched in 2009, Welcoming America has spurred a growing movement across the United States, with one in eight Americans living in a Welcoming Community. Our award-winning, social entrepreneurship model is beginning to scale globally. A non-profit, non-partisan organization, Welcoming America is proud to support the many diverse communities and partners who are leading efforts to make their communities more vibrant places for all.

  Tags: development, community empowerment, economic development

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 12/14/2016

• Nonprofits Assume a Bigger Role in City Government - CityLab

  But the good stuff only happens if these organizations know what the entire neighborhood actually needs. Sometimes they don’t. And in those cases, it’s not possible to vote them out or hold them accountable. If a nonprofit dissolves, it’s hard to pick up the pieces quickly, because the infrastructure for a new organization has to be rebuilt from scratch.

  Tags: article, nonprofits, city, government, community empowerment, collaboration, governance

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 12/09/2016

• VERDUNITY

  We are a team of civil engineers, planners, and sustainability specialists with expertise in land use planning and zoning, municipal finance, transportation planning and design, stormwater management and green infrastructure implementation, and urban design and placemaking. But, design of elaborate, expensive infrastructure projects is not what we do. The leaders of our organization spent the majority of our careers with large firms designing complex, expensive projects, only to later realize we were making things more economically fragile and unsustainable. We acknowledged that before we could do more of the types of projects our communities need, we'd have to change how people think about the way we have been planning and building our cities and neighborhoods. Rather than sit back and wait, we started VERDUNITY to help lead this change.

  Tags: sustainability, innovation, collaboration, cities, planning, engineering, zoning, design, neighborhoods, economic development

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Bridging Health & Community

  We're innovators. We’re curious. And we're dissatisfied with the status quo. We’re dedicated to strengthening the field of practice that bridges health and communities. Bridging Health & Community aims to transform how we approach health so that it goes beyond health care and public health to include fostering community agency. Based in Seattle, WA, with an office in London, UK, we do our field-building work through convening and coaching. We share the fruits of our work with a view to further describing and strengthening the field of practice that bridges the health sector and those that foster community agency. We met through the Creating Health Collaborative, an international group of innovators exploring health from the perspective of communities. By sharing our work through the Collaborative, we learned of the critical link between a community's ability to make purposeful choices and its health.

  Tags: health, community, collaboration, community empowerment

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 11/27/2016

• Health Inequality Project

  The Health Inequality Project uses big data to measure differences in life expectancy by income across areas and identify strategies to improve health outcomes for low-income Americans.

  Tags: inequality, health data, Healthy Cities, Healthy Communities, Big Data

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Planning and Community Health Center

  The Planning and Community Health Center focuses its efforts into projects and policies that prioritize active living, food systems, and health in all planning policies.

  Tags: planning, community, health, cities

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Planning for Public Health

  Across the U.S., local governments are beginning to include goals and objectives that promote public health into their comprehensive plans. These long-term plans impact how people make choices of where to live and how to get around, their ability to access healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity, and affect broader issues of social equity, clean air and water, and more.

  Tags: planning, public, health, Healthy Cities, Healthy Communities, cities

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• » Projects and Initiatives

  Plan4Health is launching in neighborhoods, cities, and counties across the United States, funding work at the intersection of planning and public health. Anchored by American Planning Association (APA) chapters and American Public Health Association (APHA) affiliate members, Plan4Health supports creative partnerships to build sustainable, cross-sector coalitions. Each coalition is committed to increasing health equity through nutrition or physical activity. And, each coalition is dedicated to meeting the needs of residents where they live, work, or play.

  Tags: public health, planning, Healthy Cities, Healthy Communities, equity

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• National Resources & Technical Assistance For Transit-Oriented Development

  The TOD Technical Assistance Initiative is a project of the Federal Transit Administration administered by Smart Growth America that provides on-the-ground and online technical assistance to support transit-oriented development, improve access to public transportation, and build new economic opportunities and pathways to employment for local communities. Learn more about the project >>

  Tags: development, transit, transit-oriented development, cities, economic development, sustainability, technology

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Subsidy Tracker 3.0 | Good Jobs First

  SUBSIDY TRACKER 3.0 is the first national search engine for economic development subsidies and other forms of government financial assistance to business.

  Tags: subsidy tracker, jobs, employment, economic development, cities, Good Jobs

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Why systems thinking changes everything for activists and reformers | People, Spaces, Deliberation

  "We activists need to become better “reflectivists”, taking the time to understand the system before (and while) engaging with it. We need to better understand the stop–start rhythm of change exhibited by complex systems and adapt our efforts accordingly. And we need to become less arrogant, more willing to learn from accidents, from failures, and from other people. Finally, we have to make friends with ambiguity and uncertainty, while maintaining the energy and determination so essential to changing the world."

  Tags: article, systems thinking, change management, Positive Deviance

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 11/23/2016

• Google.org

  Tech entrepreneurs are using innovation to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. We invest in teams with bold ideas that create lasting global impact.

  Tags: google, sustainability, innovation, technology, economic development

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• IssueVoter | Government By the People Act of 2015

  Voter Participation. By keeping voters informed throughout the year on issues that matter most to them, more people will see how legislation affects those issues, and recognize the importance of voting and engaging with their representative year-round. Voters will have a more informed view their representatives during election season.

  Tags: government, people, community empowerment, governance, political

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Reinvent | Gathering top innovators in video conversations to reinvent our world

  Reinvent gathers top innovators in important conversations about how to fundamentally reinvent our world. We connect up a mix of smart, knowledgeable, innovative people from a wide range of fields to work on solving the big challenges of our time.

  Tags: video, conversations, collaboration, technology, innovation

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 11/16/2016

• The Better Block

  Better Block Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that educates, equips, and empowers communities and their leaders to reshape and reactivate built environments to promote the growth of healthy and vibrant neighborhoods.

  Tags: Better Block, New Urbanism, community empowerment, collaboration, governance, cities

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Wikiblock – Dream it. Design it. Print it.

  Wikiblock is an open-source toolkit of designs for benches, chairs, planters, stages, bus stops, beer garden fences, and kiosks that can be downloaded for free and taken to a makerspace where a CNC router (a computer-aided machine) can cut them out of a sheet of plywood. Most products can then be assembled without glue or nails, and used instantly to make a block better.

  Tags: Better Block, New Urbanism, design, community empowerment, collaboration, governance, technology

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 11/15/2016

• The State of Placemaking 2016

  At the Placemaking Leadership Forum this fall, more than 450 dedicated public space practitioners and policymakers came together to chart the future of the placemaking movement. The second day of the event was structured around ten major issues that converge in public space, which we at PPS refer to as “transformative agendas.”

  Tags: Placemaking, public space, sustainability, community empowerment, cities

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 11/13/2016

• Roosevelt Institute

  Inspired by the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor, the Roosevelt Institute reimagines America as it should be: a place where hard work is rewarded, everyone participates, and everyone enjoys a fair share of our collective prosperity. We believe that when the rules work against this vision, it’s our responsibility to recreate them. We bring together thousands of thinkers and doers—from a new generation of leaders in every state to Nobel laureate economists—working to redefine the rules that guide our social and economic realities. We rethink and reshape everything from local policy to federal legislation, orienting toward a new economic and political system: one built by many for the good of all.

  Tags: roosevelt, institute, democracy, collaboration, governance, collective prosperity

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Untamed: How to Check Corporate, Financial, and Monopoly Power - Roosevelt Institute

  This report, edited by Nell Abernathy, Mike Konczal, and Kathryn Milani, builds on recent analysis of economic inequality and on our 2015 report, Rewriting the Rules, in which we argued that changes to the rules of trade, corporate governance, tax policy, monetary policy, and financial regulations are key drivers of growing inequality. Where Rewriting identified the problem and began to outline a policy response, Untamed delves deeper on a specific set of solutions to curb rising economic inequality and spur productive growth. We start from the assumption that inequality is not inevitable: It is a choice, and, contrary to many opinions on both the left and the right, we can choose differently without sacrificing economic efficiency.

  Tags: check monopoly power, roosevelt institute, community empowerment, collaboration

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

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Diigo Update 11/12/2016

• What is Placemaking? - Project for Public Spaces

  WHAT IF WE BUILT OUR COMMUNITIES AROUND PLACES? As both an overarching idea and a hands-on approach for improving a neighborhood, city, or region, Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, Placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, Placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution.

  Tags: Placemaking, urbanism, community, community empowerment, Sustainability, cities, article

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Shared Value Initiative |

  Shared value is a management strategy in which companies find business opportunities in social problems. While philanthropy and CSR focus efforts focus on “giving back” or minimizing the harm business has on society, shared value focuses company leaders on maximizing the competitive value of solving social problems in new customers and markets, cost savings, talent retention, and more.

  Tags: impact, shared value, shared vision, Economic, sustainability, collaboration

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Volans

  Volans works to catalyze breakthrough change and to redefine the market rules for business. As a certified B Corporation, we aim to be the change we want to see in the world.

  Tags: B Corporation, sustainability, technology, economic development

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Homepage | UN Global Compact

  We are a voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles and to take steps to support UN goals.

  Tags: sustainability, global, un

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Project Breakthrough - Growing the Business of Tomorrow

  Project Breakthrough connects mainstream companies with next generation innovators and entrepreneurs – and shines a spotlight on the best examples of sustainable innovation. In this way, it aims to stimulate transformative insight and corporate action – geared towards the sense of urgency and stretch ambitions outlined by the SDGs.

  Tags: project, breakthrough, growing, business, economic development, Sustainability

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Business & Sustainable Development Commission | BSDC

  The core of our mission is to make a powerful case—supported by sound evidence, rigorous research and compelling real-world examples—for why business leaders should seize upon sustainable development as the greatest opportunity of a lifetime. We will show how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the private sector with a framework for achieving this market shift. The Business Commission’s flagship report, to be published in January 2017, will serve as the foundation from which we will launch a number of activities to inspire and mobilise a growing number of business leaders to align their companies with social and environmental impact.

  Tags: sustainable, sustainability, innovation, economic development

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Nurture Development

  Tags: ABCD, community empowerment, collaboration, governance, Facebook

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• 50 State Solution

  The 50 State Solution was conceived in early 2016 by California Forward (CA Fwd) as a transpartisan effort to build supportive infrastructure--and a platform for sharing information and ideas--among those working on political reform at the state level. While CA Fwd has served as the initiator and early catalyst of the effort, the vision for 50 State Solution is that it becomes an ongoing effort with shared leadership from the political reform community. The goal of the effort is explicitly not to make sure every organization is doing the same work or working on the same issue. Instead, the goal is create a learning community where reformers can share stories of success and failure, find allies, create coalitions and build community.

  Tags: state, solution, community empowerment, collaboration, governance, cities

  • - By Brian G. Dowling

• Placemaking Leadership Forum 2016

  Tags: youtube, cities, innovation, community empowerment, sustainability, governance, collaboration

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