Across the United States and Europe, metropolitan regions have emerged as hubs of public innovation and collaborative problem-solving. A new model for progressive governance is emerging from some of our most dynamic cities, large and small. In The New Localism, Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak describe this phenomenon:

“Cities are now dealing with some of the hardest challenges, facing our society: social mobility, competitiveness, climate change, and more. The 20th century was very much about hierarchical systems; specialized, compartmentalized, highly bureaucratic. The 21st century is going to be networked, distributed and led by cities.”

This urban uprising yields instructive insights for local and national policymakers in the United States and Europe. Both confront a rising tide of illiberal populism and would benefit from learning more about what creative cities on both sides of the Atlantic are doing to renew liberal democracy from the ground up.

Therefore, our project will focus on the city as a laboratory and experimental area for three topics: 1. Inclusive innovation and growth (digital transformation and energy transition), 2. Networked governance (cultural integration, citizen participation, and democratic innovations), and 3. Social mobility (equal opportunity and addressing inequality as well as accessibility of public services).

By launching a transatlantic dialogue with young leaders, activists, practitioners, experts, journalists and political actors from both sides of the Atlantic, we want to answer the following questions:

• How can cities promote economic innovation and entrepreneurship, while working to carve out distinctive niches in the global economy?
• How are cities pioneering a “networked governance” that supports a broad array of civic actors in getting things done?
• How are cross-sector metro coalitions finding creative ways to deal with the challenges of inclusive growth, social mobility, and affordable housing?

We believe that cities are rising actors of global policies and therefore can serve as a great vehicle for relaunching transatlantic dialogue. We want to contribute to the German-U.S. rapprochement by complementing intergovernmental diplomatic efforts with citizen diplomacy, emphasizing people-to-people exchanges. We want to engage young Germans and U.S.-Americans in a dialogue on contemporary social, cultural, and economic phenomena present in all post-industrial multicultural societies and through this lens, focus on what we have in common, instead of divisions.