According to a new study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, cities around the world are beginning to treat high-speed Internet access and related information technologies as an essential component of their economic development and citizen engagement strategies.

The 2,800 person survey was sponsored by Siemens and EIU findings were unveiled in Singapore during the World Cities Summit Tuesday. According to Klaus Heidinger, Head of Global Center of Competence for City Management at Siemans IT Solutions and Services, more cities are treating their IT and broadband networks as basic utilities and an essential component of their governance strategies.

“One of the most striking findings is the fact that ICT has become a basic utility, like water and electricity, for all cities,” Mr. Heidinger said in a statement. The EIU study also found, Mr. Heidinger suggested, that ICT initiatives like smart grid will allow greater citizen participation with government and private sector electricity providers to reduce energy and encourage use of renewable energy sources.

According to the survey, 77 percent of businesses believe improved broadband networks in their cities would have a significant impact on city competitiveness, making it the most important ICT technology for attracting private-sector investments. It also found that emerging cities are turning to IT to manage infrastructure in ways that are as important as building the infrastructure itself.

The study also cited several US cities’ use of IT tools to empower citizens to help government. Portland’s CivicApps and New York City’s recent BigApps competition were heralded as proof of “an increasing trend where citizens, armed with data from official sources, video and other information, are coming up with smart phone and other mobile applications to make city living easier and more enjoyable,” the study said.

In March, Portland developed the Open Data Initiative and started a contest called CivicApps. According to an interview with Rick Nixon, program manager with the City of Portalnd Bureau of Technology Services, Portland noticed that other cities, like Washington, DC were proving the benefit of opening government data and releasing it to the public.

Mr. Nixon said the city wanted to “push innovation to the citizenry and empower them to deal with their own issues.”

And with the release of the EIU study, it seems other cities around the world are doing the same.

Earlier this week, we took another big step forward in the Obama Administration’s efforts to encourage more sustainable development as we announced $100 million for our new Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant program to encourage regions to integrate economic development, land use, and transportation investments – which will help to tie the quality and location of housing to broader opportunities such as access to good jobs, quality schools, and safe streets. 

For all the implications of “sprawl”—from job loss, economic decline and segregation, to obesity, asthma rates, to climate change and our dangerous dependence on foreign oil—all of them share by one fundamental problem: the mismatch between where we live and where we work. Whatever else we do to address these problems, America must find a way to connect housing to jobs.

 And Americans are demanding it.  Today, the average household spends more than half of its budget on housing and transportation.  They have become American families’ two single biggest expenses.

During the housing boom, real estate agents suggested to families that couldn’t afford to live near job centers that they could find a more affordable home by living farther away.  Lenders bought into the “Drive to Qualify” myth as well – giving easy credit to homebuyers without accounting for how much it might cost families to live in these areas or the risk they could pose to the market.

And then, an odd thing happened when these families moved in – they found themselves driving dozens of miles to work, to school, to the movies, to the grocery store, spending hours in traffic and spending nearly as much to fill their gas tank as they were to pay their mortgage...and in some places, more.  In addition to adding to families’ budgets and time, it is also contributing to increased carbon emissions and pollution.  

In all, in the last century, transportation costs as a share of household expenditures have increased by a thousand percent.

In February, HUD launched our new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities – allowing us to work directly with communities to support innovative planning and practice at the local level and helping to coordinate our investments with other agencies at the federal level.

In particular, HUD formed a Sustainability Partnership with the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.  When it comes to housing, environmental and transportation policy, the Federal government must speak with one voice. This is an example of how we’re changing the way we do business across the Administration – working not at cross purposes in our silos, but together, in common purpose
 
Of course, as critical as regional planning is, the hard work of implementing plans happens at the local level.

That’s why our $40 million Sustainable Communities Challenge Planning Grant program is targeted to cities and towns.  I announced this program earlier this week in conjunction with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in a joint grant program that includes up to $35 million for its “TIGER II” planning grant program. 

Where the Transportation program will fund planning activities that relate directly to a future transportation capital investment, HUD’s program will fund land-use related planning activities and affordable housing strategies that will be linked to that investment. This funding will make it possible for communities to hire staff with the expertise needed to remove barriers communities face to sustainable development. 

The goal of each of these efforts—at the regional level, at the community level and at the neighborhood level—is the same: to advance our shared priorities and values as Americans for the decades to come.

Priorities like jobs for the 21st century – located closer to where we live, so businesses spend less money moving goods and services and people can spend less time commuting and more time with family.

Values like healthier, more inclusive communities – with neighborhoods where kids can play outside and breathe clean air. 

Communities where opportunities for people of all ages, incomes, races and ethnicities are never determined by their zip code.

These are the kinds of communities we all want our children to grow up in. 

If, in this new century, we grow our communities and our economies out of this fundamental principle, then I have no doubt our America and our children’s America will be a strong, prosperous America infused with the same sense of purpose, opportunity and resolve that have always defined us.  

Shaun Donovan is the Secrecretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development

It turns out that the missing ingredient could be the friends a child keeps, specifically their in-school friends, the ones who sweat the same tests and homework and complain about the same teachers, rather than those they may make outside of school.

UCLA professor of psychiatry and senior study author Andrew J. Fuligni and first author Melissa R. Witkow, a former graduate student of Fuligni's, report in the online edition of the Journal of Research on Adolescence that adolescents with more in-school friends than out-of-school friends had higher grade-point averages and -- complementing this finding -- that those with higher GPAs had more in-school friends.

The authors found that these associations were similar for boys and girls and cut across all ethnic groups.

Drawing from three Los Angeles-area high schools, the researchers recruited 629 12th-grade students, split almost evenly by sex, with an average age of 18; no single ethnic group predominated. The students filled out a questionnaire, then kept a diary in which they logged such activities as time spent studying, time spent with in-school or out-of-school friends, and other activities.

Roughly speaking, the more in-school friends a child had, the higher the GPA.

"We found that within an adolescent's friendship group, those with a higher proportion of friends who attended the same school received higher grades," said Witkow, now an assistant professor of psychology at Willamette University. "This is partially because in-school friends are more likely to be achievement-oriented and share and support school-related activities, including studying, because they are all in the same environment."

This is not to dismiss or put a negative spin on a child's friends from outside school, Witkow said. "These friendships are still important in terms of fulfilling adolescents' social needs, and they are not necessarily always detrimental to achievement. For instance, friendships that form in academic settings outside of school, such as at an enrichment class, may very well promote achievement."

The next step, the authors say, is further research to better understand how out-of-school friendships are formed and how they are different from in-school friendships. The authors hope to expand their studies to draw upon younger ages and earlier grades.

Still, the findings from this work suggest that, on average, in-school friendships help support achievement because of the ways in which they engage adolescents in the school experience, Witkow said. The bottom line? Know who your child's friends are.

Enrichment classes, after-school activities, tutoring, not to mention the gentle prodding of parents -- all may count in giving a child that extra academic edge. But parents still puzzle over what the right mix is to make their children excel in school.

Kids have boundless imaginations. No matter how poor, colorless and toyless their environment, they’ll find a way to play. They will play with stones, twigs, grass and water, and they will play with each other. They’ll think up ways of turning mundane items into creations that have all the life of the latest computer game. But only if they are lucky enough to have the free time to play, are not too hungry to move about, or have water to play with.

In this light, what our urban kids have available to them, is excessively abundant. They have daycare and play spaces, parks, playgrounds, even yards. Yet, when we look at the basic play environments in our communities, there’s no denying that they are sadly short of what they could be. With some color, imagination, labor and resources, they could all be so much better.

There are wonderful examples of this, such as the recent “accidental” kids’ park at Madison Square Park in New York. It is an art installation by artist Jessica Stockholder, commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

The installation includes a multicolored triangular platform, a sandbox of bright-blue rubber mulch, multicolored bleachers and painted pavement. It was not intended originally as a children’s play space, but kids have taken to it like crazy, surprising both the artist and the Conservancy. The lesson we can learn from this is that if we point our resources in the right direction, the result can be infinitely fun and rewarding for everyone involved.

We spend millions annually on "adult playgrounds" — stadiums, concert halls, bars, restaurants. We spend billions advertising and promoting them. Why is it that we do not seem to want to dedicate the necessary resources to give our children the best we can offer?

Every dedicated kids’ arts organization will be able to point you to reams of research reports that show that early access to arts and arts education aids children in all aspects of their lives later on.

They will build self-confidence; discover their abilities, skills and talents; and in the best of circumstances, they will grow to be fantastic contributors in their communities. Yet another reason to make sure our kids live and play in environments that are rich in creativity, arts and inspiration.

If this generation of children is going to be responsible for solving the problems of a world where children are still too hungry to play at all, then we should be paying closer attention. We should be giving our kids — regardless of their resources — all the support and inspiration we can.

Anyone with creative ideas, energy, staff and money, can give to kids in his or her neighborhood. Who knows what could happen, if we as individuals, companies and cities paid as much attention to our kids’ play environments as we do to our own? - Tuija Seipell