Helpful Links :::

There are a number of good resources for civic leaders on the Internet.  Here are some worth visiting:

Governing.  This site is sponsored by Governing, an award-winning monthly magazine about state and local government. Some but not all of Governing's feature articles are available here. http://www.governing.com

Planning Commissioners Journal.  This is the web site for a highly regarded newsletter for citizens appointed to city planning boards. PCJ was writing about urban sprawl before just about any other publication.  http://www.plannersweb.com

City Journal. Don't like the conventional explanations of what's wrong with cities? Try this site, sponsored by City Journal, a quarterly magazine published by the conservative Manhattan Institute.  http://www.city-journal.org/

Site Selection/Conway Data. Site Selection is the leading economic development magazine, published by Conway Data. But the company's web sites are more than a collection of magazine articles; they've grown into sophisticated data portals. The main site is http://www.sitenet.com, which covers news about commercial real estate and corporate locations in detail. The other valuable Conway link is to http://www.developmentalliance.com, which allows you to retrieve articles and get information about communities, including county-level demographics. These are sites for professional economic developers and corporate site locators. For civic leaders interested in economic development, they can be a little overwhelming. But don't be put off. The information you're look for is here.

Area Development.  Most economic development magazines, such as the one sponsoring this site, are aimed at corporate location officials – people who pick where plants and offices go – so they are of limited use to local leaders looking to build an economy.  Still, they can help educate you on how corporations think about the places where they do business.  http://www.area-development.com

The Common Space: Grassroots Civics and Culture in St. Louis. This is a good example of a community institution made possible by the Internet: the civic web site. Some of these web sites are extended tirades against the local government, but Common Space represents a more mature form, which looks and reads like a local magazine on the web. http://www.thecommonspace.org/

GothamGazette.com. Could this be the future of urban journalism? As metropolitan dailies cut back on their coverage of local public issues, other publications — or perhaps online entities — will take newspapers' place. If the latter is the case, this could be the model. New York's GothamGazette.com is sponsored by the Citizens Union, a citizens league. It is part news digest and part news gathering operation, with some public policy research thrown in. http://gothamgazette.com

Smart City. Smart City is a weekly hour-long public radio show, hosted by Carol Coletta, that takes an in-depth look at urban life. Don't get Smart City on your local public radio station? Two ideas: Call the station manager and ask her to consider picking it up (tell her that Smart City is available on the Public Radio Satellite Service). And tune into the Smart City webcast.  You can also sign up for the Smart City newsletter, which will alert you to upcoming shows. http://www.smartcityradio.com

Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy.  The Brookings Institution, a venerable Washington think tank, has a center on urban affairs.  You'll find reports and articles about big city issues here.  http://www.brook.edu/es/urban/urban.htm

Urban Institute. This is a Washington-based think tank, which focuses on the problems of big cities. The institute's research is broad, from education policy to health policy, non-profits to criminal justice. Many of its reports are available on the institute's web site. http://www.urban.org/

Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship.  If you are a community relations professional — or interested in business and community issues — this university-sponsored site is worthwhile. http://www.bc.edu/corporatecitizenship

Main Street Program.  If you're interested in downtown renewal, this is a good place to start.  Main Street is an initiative of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Therefore, it has a bent toward preserving old buildings.  But it also has a good track record, and most of its ideas simply make good sense.  http://www.mainst.org

American Planning Association. This site is maintained by a city planners' professional group, but it contains numerous resources for civic leaders.  Be sure to look over the articles from Planning, the APA's magazine.  You'll find the magazine on the home page, under the heading "publications." http://www.planning.org/index.html

Project for Public Spaces. Why can't public spaces, from urban parks to bus stations, be more inviting? The reason, says the Project for Public Spaces is often because of bad design based on bad information about how people actually interact with each other and urban spaces. PPS's mentor was the late William H. Whyte, best known for writing the book The Organization Man, who devoted years to studying how people acted in public spaces. You'll find lots of good ideas about designing everything from markets to street corners, grand plazas to vest pocket parks. http://www.pps.org/  A noteworthy section of the PPS web site deals with urban parks and offers good advice about planning a restoration project. http://urbanparks.pps.org/