by Melissa Assion Germanese and Katie Seeger

?What trends and challenges will have the highest impact on cities and towns in 2007?? This question was the focus of the Advisory Council?s meeting at NLC?s Congress of Cities in Reno, Nev.

The 2006 Advisory Council Chair, Jim Dailey, mayor, Little Rock, Ark., chaired the meeting and was assisted by Vice Chairs Willa Johnson, councilwoman, Oklahoma City, Okla., and Bob Overstreet, councilmember, Everett, Wash.

Helping the Advisory Council identify these trends and challenges was Bob Treadway, a futurist who has worked with a range of public and private clients. Treadway, who joined the Advisory Council for its 2006 meetings, continued to guide the Advisory Council members? use of ?futuring? tools and strategies to reach consensus on the major forecasts for cities for the upcoming year. 

?This futuring work can be of great significance and provide great benefits for NLC and for our cities,? said Mayor Dailey.

The results of the Advisory Council?s efforts will appear in the December 25th issue of Nation?s Cities Weekly.

In addition to its work on futuring, the Advisory Council also celebrated the outcomes of two years of work on economic vitality. The Advisory Council released the 2006 Futures Report, Economic Vitality: Your City?s Success in a Changing Economy, at the Congress of Cities.

The report aims to help NLC members understand how they can help their cities and regions thrive and be resilient in the changing global economy.

The report focuses on six roles for local elected officials: Understanding the changing economy; Adjusting your local economic development efforts; Developing the skills and talents of local workers; Finding the place and the roles for your community in the global economy; Developing and telling useful stories; and Crossing boundaries to build partnerships.

Two new economic vitality Municipal Action Guides ? Building on Your City?s Economic Strengths and Building Partnerships for Economic Vitality ? also debuted at the Congress of Cities.

Building on Your City?s Economic Strengths presents ?how to? information for local officials to think in new ways about their economic development, focusing on a community?s strengths and distinctiveness.

Building Partnerships for Economic Vitality provides practical advice and guidance to help local officials develop partnerships to respond successfully to the challenges of the rapidly changing global economy.

A companion piece to the Futures Report, the Economic Vitality Resource Guide, was also presented at the Advisory Council meeting. The guide is an online, annotated compilation of the many NLC resources available to help city officials understand and take action on their communities? economic vitality issues. The guide provides online links to all the documents, will be updated with new NLC resources regularly, and can be found on the NLC Economic Vitality webpage (www.nlc.org/inside_nlc/7253.aspx).

Details: To find out more about the activities of the Advisory Council, and to obtain copies of Economic Vitality: Your City?s Success in a Changing Economy, or any of the other resources mentioned in this article, please visit the Advisory Council or the Economic Vitality pages at www.nlc.org.

The Advisory Council, along with the four CityFutures Panels, is part of the NLC CityFutures Program. The CityFutures Program looks beyond immediate day-to-day issues in order to understand the current and future trends and to use this knowledge to improve what governments do and how they do it. The Nations? Cities Weekly article on the outcomes from the CityFutures Panels at the Congress of Cities will be in the December 25 issue.