About

Future Cities 2009 will stimulate municipal efforts to engage citizens in their local democracies to promote a shift from carbon and nuclear energy sources to renewables and conservation, greener transportation and development practices, global elimination of nuclear weapons, and a transition from war spending to a peace economy.

As the United States experience an era of renewed green consciousness, many communities are making major efforts to improve energy, transportation, food, water, and land use practices, as well as to shift our national priorities toward peace and disarmament. These local efforts have come primarily either by the venue of private sector civil society initiatives, or of local government policy reform, or of municipal advocacy for change at higher levels of government. Of these, civil society initiatives has until recently played the most significant role. Yet local governments, recognizing their unique potential to effect rapid change, are increasingly stepping up to the plate, both in their policies (e.g. Community Wind; sustainability commissions) and in their advocacy (e.g. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement; Mayors for Peace).

Despite positive leadership by many local elected officials across the country, the speed of local governmental action lags far behind the need posed by challenges such as climate change, militarism, food insecurity, and water degradation. In some cases, mayors and other local officials find themselves isolated in their efforts to green their communities. In other cases, elected officials sign on to green agendas without taking the necessary steps to engage their communities in making real change.

Future Cities 2009 combines expertise in four policy areas -- energy, peace, community development, and citizen participation -- to help mayors, local elected officials, citizens, community groups, and business and labor leaders to use our local governments more effectively in achieving a greener, more peaceful world. Prominent in Future Cities will be elected officials from across the country who have shown leadership in making their communities more sustainable and stronger advocates for peace.

Local Solutions for Global Problems

Future Cities 2009 is inspired by the active role cities, towns, and villages have assumed in nuclear abolition and climate protection initiatives, and by the growing global movement for local democracy and sustainability.

For example, more than 1000 mayors have now signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging to work to implement the Kyoto Protocol in their own communities. In June of this year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a resolution proposed by Mayors for Peace, “Affirming the Role of Cities in Achievement of a Peaceful World Free of Nuclear Weapons by 2020.” Mayors for Peace is a rapidly growing international network dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons, now with 3,147 members in 134 countries and regions, including 148 US mayors in 35 states. It is headed by Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima and Mayor Tomihisa Taue of Nagasaki .

Local communities and states are connecting the dots for federal policy makers on other fronts as well, as they take action on national and global issues:

• The citizens of nearly 200 communities have voted in plebiscites for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq; hundreds of municipal councils and state legislatures have joined them.

• Twenty states have divested from Sudan, following in the wake of the Burma and South Africa divestment campaigns of the 1990s and 1980s.

• At least 30 cities, including the nation’s capital, have declared themselves “Sanctuary Cities” for undocumented immigrants.

• Over 400 cities and some states are protecting civil liberties through ordinances that direct local officials to honor the Bill of Rights over the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act.

And closer to home, local communities across the country have succeeded in achieving reforms such as transparent and participatory budgeting initiatives, municipally owned cable and energy utilities, support for living wage jobs, community support for local agriculture, the phasing-out of toxic pesticides and plastics, pro-pedestrian and bike-friendly transportation initiatives, and much more.

Join us at Future Cities 2009. Together, we'll make plans for stronger, healthier, more vocal, and more sustainable cities, towns, and villages.