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The American AssemblyColumbia University

PRESS RELEASE The 110th American Assembly, Defining a Future for America s CitiesExperiencing Severe Population Loss will convene on April 14-17, 2011 at the Westin BookCadillac Hotel in Detroit, Michigan.

Speakers and panelists will include Mayors Dave Bing, City of Detroit; Jay Williams, City ofYoungstown; Dayne Walling, City of Flint; and William A. Johnson, City of Rochester. A panelof British, Italian, and German officials and policy experts led by Gregory Lashutka, formerMayor, City of Columbus, will compare American cities to their European counterparts. TheHon. Henry Cisneros, former HUD Secretary, will open the Assembly with a keynote address.

Over several decades, the population of a number of American cities has diminished to the pointthat governments are challenged to provide basic services, resulting in a vicious circle of furtherdecline. These include most of the cities in Ohio and upstate New York, several in Pennsylvaniaand Michigan, and many others inside and outside the industrial heartland. For these cities, the

principal urban policy challenge is to manage contraction in ways that lead to reinvention rather

than continued decline to right size cities to reflect the new economic realities and to resettheir trajectories so that they are better positioned to prosper in the future. This AmericanAssembly is aimed at building stronger policy strategies and practitioner networks strategies toassist these places.

The Assembly will convene about eighty participants from government, business, academia,media, and nonprofit sector, representing a broad spectrum of views. The Assembly is builtaround a process of structured discussions that lead to a report of findings and policyrecommendations, which is adopted at a final plenary session. The final report will be publishedand distributed broadly as well as posted on The Assembly s web site,www.americanassembly.org .

A set of papers that have been commissioned from leading national and international experts inthe field and edited by Alan Mallach, senior fellow at the National Housing Institute, the Centerfor Community Progress, and the Metropolitan Policy Program of The Brookings Institution.These papers will be published as a book in the summer of 2011.

Columbia University s American Assembly and Center for Sustainable Urban Development(CSUD), as well as the Center for Community Progress (CCP), are the co-sponsors of the event.Paul Brophy, Principal, Brophy & Reilly LLC and Elliott Sclar, Director, CSUD are the projectco-directors. Henry G. Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio and Secretary of the U.S.Department of Housing and Urban Development and Gregory S. Lashutka, former mayor of

Columbus and Senior Consultant, Findley Davies, are serving as co-chairs of the project.

The 110 th American Assembly is funded by The Ford Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, Bankof America, and Ally Financial.

For interviews, please contact Paul Brophy at 410-740-8745 or pbrophy@brophyreilly.com . For additional information, please contact The American Assembly at 212-870-3500.

http://www.americanassembly.org/http://www.americanassembly.org/mailto:pbrophy@brophyreilly.commailto:pbrophy@brophyreilly.commailto:pbrophy@brophyreilly.commailto:pbrophy@brophyreilly.comhttp://www.americanassembly.org/