About Us

Citiscope Responds to the Global Challenge!

Mission:  In this fast urbanizing world, Citiscope’s mission is to spur innovation to help cities work better for all of their people through the power of independent journalism.

Citiscope is designed to serve public officials, administrators and decision makers of cities worldwide, as well as the broader world of problem solvers and change makers from business, non-profits, academia, neighborhoods, foundations and the media – all and any sharing a stake in the urban future.  All Citiscope releases are also made available to world media.

 The “how” of Citiscope:


  • Use the power of strong story-telling, a focus on original content, getting the facts straight, to build credibility and draw reader attention to the world's most imaginative steps to build sustainable cities.
  • Maintain a flow of story alerts on innovative ways that cities are dealing with their multiple challenges—from "green" energy grids to slum upgrading, accessible transit to sustainable water systems.
  • Enrich the global urban knowledge base with context-setting commentaries and periodic trend analyses: coverage needed to raise public consciousness, prompt experimentation, and build government capacity.
  • Encourage interaction with journalists worldwide to recognize quality coverage of urban issues and to prompt more writers to take a career interest in covering the tide of new experiments in their cities and across the world.

The Global Challenge

Today’s global media, for all its diversity and assets, suffers clear “market failure” on issues of immense concern to city builders and reformers everywhere. The prevailing focus, in print, broadcast, and on the Web is on politics, central governments’ policies, personalities, and disasters.

The majority of the world’s peoples now live in cities, yet there's relatively light coverage of urban experiments and breakthroughs—how cities are inventing new ways to cope with such challenges as climate change, poverty, congestion and environmental safety.

Citiscope seeks to fills some of the gap, drawing attention from city builders and leaders worldwide, and act as a conduit of experimentation in news to other media.

 

Who We Are

Citiscope's founder-editors are associates of the Citistates Group, a 17-year-old network of journalists, speakers and civic leaders focused on building competitive, equitable, and sustainable 21st century cities and metropolitan regions. The Citistates team covered, at the request of the Rockefeller Foundation, its month-long "Global Urban Summit" in Bellagio, Italy, and then wrote the book that flowed from that event: Century of the City: No Time To Lose.

Citiscope was subsequently organized as an independent, charitable organization dedicated to spreading objective, journalist-based information of cities’  innovations worldwide.  It has received 501-c-3 tax exemption from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.  Members of the board of directors are Curtis W. Johnson (president), Neal R. Peirce (secretary), Thomas M. Downs, Richard C.D. Fleming, William Stafford, and Farley M. Peters.

Citiscope received early support from Cities Alliance and launched its operations in close collaboration with the World Urban Campaign and UN-Habitat at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 2010. Recognizing its efforts and mission, the Ford Foundation has supported Citiscope’s development of a business plan for long-term sustainability.  Citiscope articles have appeared on the World Bank’s website.  In addition, Citiscope recently received assistance from the Kresge Foundation to work with 29 youthful Detroit fellows, most recent arrivals, with a commitment to building a more resilient city.

 

The Citiscope Team -- Key Advisors, Participants, and Board Members (*) 

Neal Peirce * Neal Peirce, Editor-in-Chief -- Citistates Group founder and syndicated newspaper columnist, Washington Post Writers Group. Lead author, Century of the City. 

Farley Peters * Farley Peters, Deputy Editor -- Citistates Group Vice President, chief strategist, organizer and project manager.

Eugenie Birch -- Scholar of cities; co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research  (Penn IUR).

Gail Christopher -- Vice president for Program Strategy, W.K. Kellogg Foundation; former director, Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard’ University’s  John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Gene DePrez -- Former Innovations Officer for Sheffield, England, earlier an executive for IBM, PricewatershouseCooper and other corporations. Represents Citiscope to the business word.

* Tom Downs -- Chairman of the North American Board of Veolia Transportation. Former president/CEO of the Eno Transportation Foundation, CEO of Amtrak, and City Administrator of Washington, D.C.

* Richard C.D. Fleming -- Active civic entrepreneur in business and government; currently President of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association.  Previously president of the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce and HUD executive.

Jon Greenberg -- Executive editor, New Hampshire Public Radio.  A nationally recognized innovator in radio-web integration.  Previously a Washington reporter at NPR.

Peter Harkness -- Founder and publisher emeritus of Governing, a magazine for leaders of state and local governments.  Earlier editor and deputy publisher of Congressional Quarterly.

* Curtis W. Johnson --  Co-author of Citistates, Boundary Crossers, Disrupting Class andCentury of the City. Former board chair, the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and state government official.

Charles Lewis -- Investigate journalist and professor, American University’s School of Communication.  Founder of the Center for Public Integrity and its International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Andrea Peirce, Web Editor - Book author, former wire service editor and director of editorial communications and web sites for the Lupus Research Institute.   

* William Stafford  -- President (recently retired) of the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle; former deputy mayor of Seattle with a specialty in intergovernmental relations. Premier leader of regional study tours to world citistates.

Nicholas You -- Chairman of the World Urban Campaign Steering Committee.  Former UN-Habitat official.  Veteran urban and intergovernmental expert, architect-planner and organizer of international city activities.

Please send comments and questions to editor@citiscope.org