Living Cities Distinguished Urban Fellows

Read the press release announcing the papers released by the first two Living Cities Distinguished Urban Fellows.

In 2008, Living Cities began a Distinguished Urban Fellows program to bring the perspective of those with real-world governing experience to our work. Our staff and members have experience as private and philanthropic leaders, but we wanted to hear directly from successful practitioners and policymakers about the pressing issues they faced and the innovative practices they employed. 

In addition to asking our fellows to attend our board and committee meetings, critique our programs and evaluate our proposals, we asked them to produce one significant written product that furthers the work of Living Cities. The idea was that in these papers, our fellows would describe their successes in urban policy, while also analyzing why their approach worked—and what the field could learn from it.

Download a PDF of each fellow’s report:

Bart Peterson: Transforming Urban Public Education Through Education Entrepreneurship (PDF)

Erik Sten: A Human Connection How Portland, Ore , Made a Huge Dent in Chronic Homelessness (PDF)

While these reports do not necessarily reflect the perspective of Living Cities or our members, they are both eye-opening and challenging.