Launch

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Citiscope! My colleagues and I have fashioned it to convey some of the excitement of cities' innovations and experiments worldwide. We aim to cover the area of cities' cutting-edge efforts -- all-too often neglected in today's normal newspaper, broadcast, Internet news coverage. We'll write about cities, with the goal of stirring up debate, new ideas, in cities. We're making our articles freely available to print and broadcast media and Internet sites (see our Reprints page). We hope to build a global coterie of journalists interested in this type of positive — but realistic — coverage of cities' efforts. And we'll build a world-wide coterie of subject-area experts willing to comment on the journalists' stories, placing their coverage in a full global city context.

But we have still more in mind! We want to foster, be part of, a global urban commons of city supporters — mayors and city staffers, NGOs, community and business and grassroots groups, scholars and advisers — who are concerned about, and open to dialogue about cities' challenges and emerging new tools and strategies. In planning Citiscope, we've reached out to forge informal partnerships with literally dozens of organizations — for example ICLEI, Ashoka, Metropolis, Sister Cities, the WorldWatch Institute, the World Bank, Cities Alliance, the Huairou Commission, national leagues of cities and a variety of foundations. Many of these organizations have excellent web sites that include information we can draw from, and on our website link to. The idea we've presented to them all: give us story tips on important urban models you've assisted or see developing. In turn we'll use the tools of clear and objective journalism to bring more global attention to your lead efforts.

The goal of Citiscope is to use journalistic tools to supplement, assist, broaden city-to-city learning — not to replace any existing efforts. It's in that very spirit that we have developed Citiscope in close collaboration with UN-Habitat and with the World Urban Campaign announced at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro. I'm personally a member of the campaign's steering committee and fully endorse its efforts to highlight policies, share tools for more sustainable development in a world of incredibly rapid urbanization.

We believe the cities of the entire world — Global North, Global South alike, even those of radically different economies and ethnic roots — can garner valuable ideas from each other. The selection of stories for this beta edition — from such far-flung spots as São Paulo and Singapore, Chicago and Berlin, even a viewpoint commentary from Fukuoka — was made with that in mind.

Your voice matters

But what is your take on this project — this adventure in watching fresh moves in and by world cities? Please give us your evaluation of the features we've included so far. Which work well for you, which don't? And especially, how would you improve the service, and the site? And how would you make the global urban commons grow? (Please send comments and questions to editor@citiscope.org.)

A more personal note: the group of us who have launched this site are Americans. That's just who we are. But we're more than open to sharing, to learning new approaches, to developing joint projects with allies around the world. So our invitation: Be in touch, give us a hand in this adventure of continent-to-continent, city-to-city learning. I've been covering city trends in my own columns and reports since the 1970s. My colleagues have watched the city scene for years. We all believe this a special moment of opportunity. And let's see what, together, we can accomplish!

Neal Peirce
editor@citiscope.org