Bright spots in community engagement.

• Position: News & Numbers - Brief article

Communities across the country are experimenting with new ways to engage citizens in the decisions made by civic leaders, and they're finding that making democracy work and sustaining healthy communities requires engaged individuals, organizations, and institutions.

The National League of Cities, working with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, selected 14 communities and explored how their experiments with a variety of community engagement efforts are faring. The purpose of the project was to identify promising practices and models in communities that are successfully engaging citizens in local problem-solving efforts, and to develop a series of city examples and case studies highlighting key elements and strategies embedded in...