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What this report finds: Income inequality has risen in every state since the 1970s and in many states is up in the post-Great Recession era. In 24 states, the top 1 percent captured at least half of all income growth between 2009 and 2013, and in 15 of those states, the top 1 percent captured all income growth. In another 10 states, top 1 percent incomes grew in the double digits, while bottom 99 percent incomes fell. For the United States overall, the top 1 percent captured 85.1 percent of total income growth between 2009 and 2013. In 2013 the top 1 percent of families nationally made 25.3 times as much as the bottom 99 percent.

The highest rates of multidimensional poverty are found in Southern and Western metro areas like Memphis, Birmingham, and Miami, where more than 1 in 5 low-income adults live with multiple disadvantages. The McAllen region exhibits the highest rate of multidimensional poverty overall (41 percent), followed by metropolitan Fresno, where one-third of adults are at least doubly disadvantaged. In each of the regions mentioned, living in a poor area is the most likely additional disadvantage experienced by low-income residents. But in other metro areas with above-average multidimensional poverty rates, different disadvantages come to the fore, like limited education in Stockton, lack of health insurance in Deltona, and lack of employment in Lakeland (see the interactive bar charts below, or the full appendix tables).

"Participatory Budgeting is perhaps the greatest innovation in municipal governance in the United States in the last five years, and it has grown rapidly. Originating in Porto Alegre, Brazil-where 20 percent of the municipal budget is now allocated this way-PB has spread quickly throughout Brazil and Latin America over the past two decades. It's currently in place in roughly fifteen hundred municipalities throughout the world, but U.S. municipalities have been late adopters." This is one of the best community empowerment tools out there. Trouble is most communities aren't empowered enough to implement it.

Code for America hosted Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu for a discussion of their recent book, "Gardens of the Democracy." In it, they challenge Americans to approach the world not as a machinery that needs to be perfected but as a garden that needs constant attention, discretion, and periodic weeding. The book argues that since society and technology have fundamentally changed, so must our notions of citizenship and democracy: turning "the machine" into a garden. 

In 2011, the suburban poor outnumbered the urban poor by three million; from 2000 to 2011, the number of poor people soared by 64 percent in the suburbs, compared with 29 percent in cities. Today nearly one-third of all Americans are poor or nearly poor. One in three poor Americans live in the suburbs. If you're poor in the Seattle, Atlanta or Chicago regions, you're more likely than not living outside the city limits.

California will soon launch its cap-and-trade program, which uses a market-based mechanism to lower greenhouse gas emissions. California's program will be second in size only to the European Union's Emissions Trading System based on the amount of emissions covered. In addition to driving emission cuts in the ninth largest economy in the world, California's program will provide critical experience in how an economy-wide cap-and-trade system can function in the United States.

ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA STEWARDSHIP NETWORK In 2008, the Morgan Family Foundation launched the California Stewardship Network as a civic venture, investing $ 1.5 million over 2 years in matching grants to 10 economic regions that agreed to focus on breakthroughs led by stewardship teams composed of business, community and government civic entrepreneurs. While each regional team has developed its own stewardship strategy, all share a common approach. Typically, these strategies are: (1) Data-driven, (2) Based on economic regions and industry clusters, (3) Successful in sustaining the engagement of business, (4) Effective at integrating economic, social, and environmental considerations, and (5) Innovative in their approach to public-private partnerships in implementation. The teams represent the diversity of California ranging from San Diego and Los Angeles in the South to Sacramento Valley, the Fresno Region and the Central Coast to the Sierra Region, Sonoma and Butte Counties and the Redwood Coast near the Oregon Border. These regional groups meet on regular basis and exchange best practices.

Across the country, and throughout the world, many large and small groups of individuals and families, in partnership with businesses and governments, are in the process of making a new system - where people know what they are entitled to and can allocate the money that is assigned for their benefit.. This system is called Self-Directed Support, or Consumer-Directed Care. Variations of these terms are used in Education and Health Care. Internationally, this trend towards personalisation of funding is well-advanced. In Australia it is beginning in disability, accident compensation, aged care and soon in technical and vocational education. But Australian governments and institutions have been very slow to pick it up. We aim to pull them into the 21st century.

Community Health Centers serve the primary health care needs of more than 22 million patients in over 9,000 locations across America. They play a crucial role in the nation's health care system, providing affordable health services for millions of uninsured, the working poor and newly jobless Americans. Health centers are good for the country. They lower overall health care costs, improve the health of their patients and generate economic opportunities in the communities they serve by providing jobs and training for local people. Community Health Centers create savings in health care every time a patient opts for an exam and treatment at the first sign of a health issue instead of waiting until a costly emergency room visit or hospitalization is the only option. Each health center takes a tailored approach to meet the unique needs of the people in its surrounding community. That local approach to health care, combined with an emphasis on comprehensive preventative care, generates $24 billion in annual savings to the health care system - for the American taxpayer, local, state and federal governments and public and private payers alike.

E-Democracy.org builds online public space in the heart of real democracy and community. Our mission is to harness the power of online tools to support participation in public life, strengthen communities, and build democracy. Starting with the world's first election information website in 1994 in Minnesota, today we host over 50 local Issues Forums in 17 communities across three countries - New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to these "online town halls" and our "community life" forums we promote civic engagement online around the world.

Participedia harnesses the power of collaboration to respond to a recent global phenomenon: the rapid development of experiments in new forms of participatory politics and governance around the world. We live in a world in which citizens of most countries are asking for greater involvement in collective decisions. Many governments, non-governmental organizations, and even some corporations are responding by experimenting with ways to increase public participation. Hundreds of thousands of participatory processes occur each year in almost every country in the world. They are adressing a wide variety of political and policy problems. And they often supplement and sometimes compete with more traditional forms of politics, such as representative democracy. Participedia responds to these developments by providing a low-cost, easy way for hundreds of researchers and practitioners from across the globe to catalogue and compare the performance of participatory political processes.

The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee. From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally.

A potential danger in a systems approach is that there is a risk of overjargonizing and getting lost in complex terminology, maps and paralysis by analysis. One of the key themes that emerged from the discussion is that many people are starting to experiment with systems thinking but that it can be daunting or confusing to explain, operationalize or find common agreement. Does system thinking imply a rigorous and dynamic mapping of key actors, power relationships and other factors in a community (Yes)? But then how does systems thinking differ from a solid context analysis (still needs more explanation)? A potential danger in a systems approach is that there is a risk of overjargonizing and getting lost in complex terminology, maps and paralysis by analysis. One of the key themes that emerged from the discussion is that many people are starting to experiment with systems thinking but that it can be daunting or confusing to explain, operationalize or find common agreement. Does system thinking imply a rigorous and dynamic mapping of key actors, power relationships and other factors in a community (Yes)? But then how does systems thinking differ from a solid context analysis (still needs more explanation)? 

Memes are to culture what genes are to biology: the base unit of evolution. The term was originally coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins writes, "I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged . . . It is still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leaves the old gene panting far behind." He goes on, "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain, via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation."3

The closing keynote at the Economist Conferences Event, "Creating tomorrow's liveable cities", presented byProfessor Jan Gehl, founding partner of Gehl Architects,Copenhagen. This video provides a good deal of information on the benefits bicycling and walking have on a livable community when integrated into the community landscape.

ince 1994, VERTICES, LLC. has provided the health care and local government sectors with advanced GIS (Geographic Information System) solutions. VERTICES delivers customized solutions to you in the form of digital maps. Traditional methods of displaying information in columns and rows in a table have evolved into their visualization as digital maps with layers of specific information. With the increasing popularity of the Internet and numerous advancements in information technology, VERTICES has developed new technologies to deliver geographic information to your organization and clients in an easy and affordable way.

Did you know your zip code can predict how long and how well you live? Learn why in the all-new multimedia exhibit "Health Happens Here." Discover what Californians are doing to build health in communities across the state in this interactive journey through all the places and all the ways health happens in California. Through a series of high-tech games and interactive stations, visitors explore key factors that affect health beyond traditional diet and exercise while earning points that can be donated to 1 of 10 charities to make health happen for all Californians. Engaging and educational fun for the entire family, "Health Happens Here" was developed in partnership with The California Endowment and is a national award-winning, ongoing signature exhibit -- only at The California Museum.

The Loughborough Junction Action Group, or LJAG, is an independent group of people who live or work in Loughborough Junction in south-east London. We share the common aim of regenerating and improving the area and the lives of the people who live there. We are embedded in our diverse and vibrant neighbourhood and hold festivals, street parties and monthly gatherings, literary and film events and organise arts activities in local schools. Our members work with many local organisations, such as tenants' and residents' associations, community initiatives such as Building Communities in Coldharbour and the Big Local, which are working on projects designed to empower local people, improve community cohesion and enhance neighbourhood facilities.

In GlobalNet21 we bring people together both online and off.  We hold many meetings from those in the House of Commons to online webinars and from larger meetings and presentations to smaller study circles. We work with others to create events that people want to engage in. In creating this virtual "public square" GlobalNet21 has emerged now as a vast social networking system that brings new audiences together to discuss and seek solutions for critical issues of the day - issues that divide and threaten the stability of our society and our planet. We also create space at meeting and online for people to connect and collaborate so that they can take further action whether that is expressing their views through our networks, learning more from others or linking with others to take action in order to make a difference.

Systems thinking The fact that ecological sustainability is a property of a web of relationships means that in order to understand it properly, in order to become ecologically literate, we need to learn how to think in terms of relationships, in terms of interconnections, patterns, context. In science, this type of thinking is known as systemic thinking or "systems thinking." It is crucial for understanding ecology, because ecology - derived from the Greek word oikos ("household") - is the science of relationships among the various members of the Earth Household.