What does it mean to be an American city?
Each of America’s cities is a microcosm of the nation as a whole—full of promise but confronting great challenges. The American Cities Foundation was founded to help confront these challenges, build on this potential, and ensure that a comprehensive urban policy remains a central focus of our political discourse.
The issues confronting our urban communities are multifaceted and cross-disciplinary, and so must be our responses. One of our founding principles is that the solutions to many of these difficult challenges have already been discovered by community residents themselves.
From housing education to environmental justice, local residents and the community-based groups they formed have been at the forefront of developing innovative, successful new approaches. Our role is to uncover these best practices from around the country and find proactive ways of sharing them with the rest of the country.
I encourage you to learn more about the American Cities Foundation and the important work we are doing, and help us as we seek to realize the promise of all of America’s cities.
Sandra Dungee Glenn
President