2020 AAC Letter of Intent Deadline is November 1, 2019
Submit a Letter of Intent to apply for the 2020 All-America City Awards by November 1st to receive $100 off your community's application fee.
Submit a Letter of Intent to apply for the 2020 All-America City Awards by November 1st to receive $100 off your community's application fee.
David Mathews, President of the Kettering Foundation, was a keynote speaker at the 2019 All-America City Awards and Event. His remarks centered around one of the National Civic League's Co-Founders, Theodore Roosevelt. Mathews posited that Theodore Roosevelt would immediately cancel the All-America City Awards. Mathews quipped that Teddy would replace the award with the All-America Failure Awards, given to cities that know how to fail successfully.
How can we move public engagement beyond the dual limits of angry or apathetic? We need an ideal that brings out the best in human nature and manages or avoids the worst, which would be a significant shift from our current processes that seem to do the opposite. Could we train and engage members of the public to be wise collaborators?
John McKnight, co-founder and co-director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University, is interviewed by Albert Dzur, a distinguished research professor at Bowling Green State University.
Community-based planning takes time and effort, but the time and effort are going to be spent one way or the other, either working with the public up front or having to overcome anger and mistrust because the community was not involved in the first place.
Across the nation, communities are convening diverse groups of residents to build trust across lines that too-oft divide and taking shared actions as “stewards of the future” to improve health and well-being for all. At the heart of this mission, are seven “vital conditions” that are essential for the sustained well-being of people and place.
Access to safe, sustainable transportation is often underestimated as an ingredient of well-being. Bike lanes and safe, walkable streets, reliable and energy-and cost-efficient public transit and innovative transportation infrastructure promise a safer, healthier and more economically sound future for all.
Equipping students to facilitate community deliberations bridges chasms between higher education and local neighborhoods, offering students an access point into community development in a more robust way than most service learning opportunities.
Public art plays an invaluable role in the process of community building. Not only does it establish and beautify public spaces, it expresses and supports a sense of neighborhood history, culture and identity and helps drive economic vitality. One aspect of increasing interest is participatory public art, in which the public plays an active role rather than merely being appreciative viewers.