The Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins, established with a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, aims to assist more than 100 U.S. cities in creating data infrastructures to transform the way their governments operate. The center is part of the university's 21st Century Cities Initiative, a university signature initiative that brings together city leaders and top researchers to confront the pressing needs of revitalizing cities throughout the country and abroad.
"Our focus is on resilient cities both here and around the world. We want to study 21st-century possibilities and challenges, and to adopt 21st-century solutions," says Kathryn Edin, a sociologist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, who has been named director of the 21CC initiative. Edin has guided the organizational, financial, and investigatory growth of 21CC, formerly named the Johns Hopkins Institute for the American City, since joining the faculty last year as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor.
"Imagine a city whose infrastructure is crumbling," she says. "The 20th-century solution is to dig up pipes, repair them, and put them back in the ground. In the 21st century, we'd want to think bigger than that." Continue>>>
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