Congress is back in session and America’s cities, towns, and villages are looking for 2020 to be a year of action, partnership, and progress. For local leaders and their residents, this year is about addressing critical community priorities before the legislative process slows during the election cycle. Here are a few key things we expect Congress

In 2018, Anchorage emerged largely unscathed from what could have been a devastating 8.0 earthquake. Following the event, Mayor Ethan Berkowitz and other city officials noted that while strict seismic building codes and significant strides in emergency preparedness had paid off, a gap in communication between limited and non-English speaking communities and the city remained.

At City Summit 2018, 50 cities committed to new initiatives to support their innovation economies. NLC’s City Innovation Ecosystems program collects and tracks these commitments in order to showcase successes, identify best practices and connect peer cities who can learn together. Here we share the story of one city’s work: “What can you build with $2,500

Before leaving Washington for the holidays, Congress made headlines with an agreement to fund the federal government for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2020 and avert a shutdown. However, the federal government also completed a large amount of legislative and regulatory activity that you may have missed. Congress slipped a tax-extenders bill into its FY2020 spending

By Ashwini Chhabra From the rise of the micromobility industry in Santa Monica, California in 2017, through its rapid growth and global expansion in 2018, to its global presence in 2019, we have seen a remarkable evolution of this new and popular service and the approach cities are taking to support sustainable mobility for all.

By Steve Cimino When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August of 2005, it quickly became a force unparalleled in the history of modern disasters. Roughly 850,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, leaving countless residents with nowhere to go. At the time, J. Scott Eddy, AIA, was working on a VA hospital renovation project on the

At City Summit 2018, 50 cities committed to new initiatives to support their innovation economies. NLC’s City Innovation Ecosystems program collects and tracks these commitments in order to showcase successes, identify best practices and connect peer cities who can learn together. Here we share the story of one city’s work: Over the last two decades, Pittsburgh

What began as a project of five cities in 2011 to research whether summer learning programs that offer a mix of academic instruction and enrichment opportunities can boost success in school quickly turned into a commitment to understand and improve the role that summer learning plays in closing the opportunity gap for students. One of

In Martin v. City of Boise, the Ninth Circuit held that if a homeless person has no option of sleeping indoors a city cannot cite him or her for violating an ordinance disallowing sleeping outside in a public space. This significant holding is now final. The Supreme Court refuses to review thousands of lower court

Congress is on the path to approve all 12 annual spending bills this week before a looming midnight Friday deadline, at which time government funding would lapse and trigger a federal government shutdown. The 12 fiscal year 2020 appropriations bills are being packaged together in two “minibus” bills that will allow Congress to significantly speed