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What's a Citistates Report?
Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce and his colleague Curtis Johnson give “outsider” views on the future prospects of U.S. urban regions. They have done some two dozen Citistates Reports. This is their first “revisit” to an urban region.
In 1995, their “Peirce Report” ran in four installments in The Charlotte Observer and other newspapers in this region. To read it: www.ui. uncc.edu.
To read the two previous installments of 2008 Citistates: www.charlotteobserver.com/ citistates.
What's a “citistate”?
“Citistate” is a term Peirce and Johnson coined to describe how metropolitan regions operate in the global economy. A citistate is not defined by political boundaries. It's what the economy does.
To learn more: citistates.com.
Who did this report?
Peirce, Johnson and colleagues Alex Marshall and Farley Peters interviewed almost 200 people throughout the 14-county Charlotte region last spring. Peirce and Marshall wrote this installment.
Peirce is an author and syndicated columnist on U.S. metro regions.
Marshall is a New York-based writer on planning, architecture and transportation systems and senior editor with the New York Regional Plan Association.
Johnson is a writer, former board chair of the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis-St. Paul and former community college president. Peters is a public policy specialist who manages the Citistates Group.
Who sponsored the report?
The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute sponsored the report, with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight Foundation is a national foundation that aims to improve the quality of life in Charlotte and 25 other U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Assistance was provided by the Lee Institute, the Centralina Council of Governments and the Catawba Regional Council of Governments.
Who's publishing the report?
As in 1995, news outlets throughout the 14-county region are publishing the Citistates Report. They are: The Herald of Rock Hill, Charlotte Post, Gaston Gazette, Independent Tribune (Concord and Kannapolis), Lake Norman Times, Mi Gente, News at Norman, Salisbury Post, Shelby Star and magazines Business North Carolina, Charlotte Magazine and Greater Charlotte Biz.
What's next?
Dec. 14: Growing “Green” is a Necessity.
Mary Newsom
