Lavea Brachman, Greater Ohio's Executive Director, recently participated in a four day national conversation about cities in transition and the policy and practitioner strategies that can help revitalize and strengthen these places. “Defining a Future for America’s Cities Experiencing Severe Population Loss” was convened by The American Assembly, a nonpartisan public policy forum , and co-sponsored by The Center for Community Progress (CCP) and The Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Brachman, who served on the leadership team, joined roughly 80 leading U.S. thinkers to begin producing a set of well-defined policy approaches; approaches that will assist cities in stabilizing, “right sizing,” and finding new ways to rebuild their economies and engage local stakeholders. The outcomes of these discussions will be released in the coming weeks. For local coverage of the event, see this write up of the Assembly.
In developing federal and state policies that can support cities in transition, Ohio—as a state with many cities in transition—has much to gain from this summit. Previously, the American Assembly has successfully moved federal and state policy on a variety of issues, such as ways to develop economically competitive metros. As Greater Ohio has advocated before, federal policy and state policy must reinforce each other if our cities are to compete and thrive in the new economy. We look forward to learning about the American Assembly’s final recommendations and will be posting them on our website when they become available.