The Citistates Group is a network of journalists, speakers and civic leaders focused on building competitive, equitable and sustainable 21st century metropolitan regions.
The Group’s forte is communications — using its journalistic, speaking and facilitation skills to stimulate active debate on the real-world choices facing 21st century American regions.
Formed in 1995, The Citistates Group is an LLC (limited liability company) that functions in a virtual mode, with no central office or staff. Its principals are syndicated columnist and author Neal Peirce, government/civic leader and writer Curtis Johnson, and Farley Peters, a veteran government activist who serves as strategist, business manager and speaking agent for the Group.
The Group offers one-stop access to its Associates — a group of about 30 leading American thinkers with specific experience and insights on the forging of stronger, more coherent American regions.
Services Offered:
- Citistates Reports for newspapers. These are the Citistates Group’s signature products. Twenty-five such reports — major series focused on individual regions’ challenges — have been written for metropolitan newspapers across the U.S. Each series is an independent editorial product. You can view a full description of these reports here.
- Speeches. Citistate speakers deliver talks examining and relating the new century’s cutting-edge regional issues, ranging from strategic economic positioning to smart growth, transportation and workforce housing to community design tools. In each case, they use a sensitive ear to relate the critical common themes to a specific region’s unique situation and challenges. See also: Speaker biographies
- Citistates Convergences. These events, set in distinct metro regions, involve bringing in a team of Citistates Associates from divergent fields — urban journalism, community design, economic clustering, metropolitan land use planning and city management, for example. The goal of the Convergences: to help leaders and citizens of a region, prompted by the outside team, identify and focus on especially salient challenges — or to see already familiar issues in a new light, based on the outsiders’ experience in other metropolitan regions across the U.S.