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 The Alliance is gratified at the strong response to our appeal for formal participation in our network of regional stewards! Since publication of last months newsletter, the roster of stewards has swelled to include the Fresno Business Council, Fresno, Calif.; Wilf Sommerkorn, Davis County, Utah; Patricia Timm, Cincinnati, Ohio; John Provo, Portland, Oreg.; Usha Balakrishnan, Iowa City, Iowa; the Morgan Family Foundation, Menlo Park, Calif.; FutureWorks, Arlington, Mass.; Timothy Brennan, West Springfield, Mass.; the Public Policy Research Center, University of Missouri-St. Louis; John Hall, Tempe, Ariz.; the California Center for Regional Leadership, San Francisco, Calif.; Seth Feary, San Francisco, Calif.; Andrew Reamer, Belmont, Mass.; Jim DeAngelis, Pittsburgh, Penn.; David Harris, Stuart, Fla.; the Hampton Roads Partnership, Norfolk, Va.; the Birmingham Regional Growth Alliance, Birmingham, Ala.; Peter Hawley, Washington, D.C.; Joan Mobley, Chicago, Ill.; the Research Triangle Regional Partnership, Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Terence Quinn, Denver, Colo., and Hal Plotkin, Palo Alto, Calif. Benefits of joining the Alliance at the individual and organizational levels include discounted or free National Stewardship Forum registration, free copies of Alliance publications, and more. For details, or to join the network now, click on the button below.
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Indicator projects designed to furnish current snapshots of metropolitan social, economic, physical, and environmental status while tracking progress and trends over time are among the more powerful emerging tools available to regional stewards. Sometimes referred to as regional report cards, these efforts track statistics on a variety of topics, ranging from public health and housing affordability to traffic congestion and water quality.
The fiscal prognosis for Americas states and cities flipped last week. It went from the unmitigated disaster likely to flow from the $726 billion tax-cut package President Bush has been demanding to a more moderate disaster: $350 billion in revenue losses. Consequently, a fiscally sick Uncle Sam dooms states and localities to hard times. Already the states, denied the luxury of deficit spending, face grave fiscal crises. Collectively, theyve cut tens of billions from their budgets for the year starting July 1, and still have $25 billion in cuts to go. For next year their prospective shortfall is $85 billion to $90 billionnearly 10 percent of their total operating budgets.
In profile is the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. The mission of the College is to enhance public service and the quality of urban life. The College has been home to the Urban Center, long recognized as one of the nations largest university-based urban outreach units. In 2002, the Urban Center was reorganized into a number of integrated centers and initiatives. The collective mission of these research centers is to investigate issues and challenges facing urban communities and apply the Colleges resources to practical solutions. For more information, visit www.urban.csuohio.edu.
Chicago Metropolis 2020, a nonprofit organization established by the Commercial Club of Chicago in 1999 to promote better regional planning and smart investments consistent with the regions long-term health, has released The Metropolis Plan: Choices for the Chicago Region. In addition to reviewing the community-consultation process used by Chicago Metropolis 2020 to solicit citizen preferences for the regions future development, The Metropolis Plan lays out a strategy for metropolitan-wide visioning based on the consideration of multiple scenarios or alternative futures with business as usual (i.e., dispersed, low-density development, or sprawl) at one extreme and a multiple-nucleus network of compact, regional cities at the other.