Search en

Strong Cities Network

Our resources

Resource hub
Tools & Guides for Cities
Beautiful colorful houses, architectural background, traditional little painted homes, the amazing unique architecture of an Italian coastal village, Cinque Terre
City directory
Meet our Members
Regional Hubs
Connect with your Regional Hub
UPCOMING event
Fifth Global Summit December 2024
Join the network
Is your City a Strong City?
arrow-circle arrow-down-basicarrow-down arrow-left-small arrow-left arrow-right-small arrow-right arrow-up arrow closefacebooklinkedinsearch twittervideo-icon
North America Regional Hub

North America

The North America Regional Hub is working with cities, with an initial focus on Canada and the United States, to empower mayors, city council members and local governments to build socially-cohesive, strong and resilient cities, and respond to hate, extremism, political violence and polarisation.

Five Pillars of Activity

Our North American Regional Hub works across five pillars, with activities informed by the needs and priorities of member cities across the continent.

Empowering Mayors & Local Leaders

Sharing of good practices, decision points, and actions city leaders can take to proactively build socially cohesive, strong and resilient cities, and respond to threats, tensions, and violence.

City-Led Action in Prevention

Identifying city needs and the crucial roles local government can play in prevention, including by building trust and reducing inter-communal tensions.

Peer-to-Peer Learning

Exchanges of city-led prevention models, strategies, and experiences from across the region, and the broader global network, to inspire local action.

Partnerships for Prevention & Response

Models and approaches through which local governments can build trusted relationships and strengthen cooperation with civil society and private sector actors to become co-producers in prevention and response.

Data-Driven Threat Analysis & Mitigation

Approaches that can support cities in taking a data-driven approach to understanding and addressing local concerns, challenges, vulnerabilities and needs in both online and offline contexts.

Catalysing City-led Prevention & Response in North America

Informed by the priority themes and concerns identified by cities across the region, with a particular focus on leveraging existing city-level frameworks, resources and structures, and informed by the practices and experiences of cities across the Network, the Hub’s initial focus areas will include:

  • Mayoral and local city leadership in preventing and responding to hate, extremism and polarisation, strengthening social cohesion and promoting civil discourse and compassion.
  • Strengthening local government capacities through tools and guidance for mayors and other city leaders, capacity-building for city practitioners, and sharing of city-led, multidisciplinary prevention models that leverage existing service delivery for violence prevention, public safety and public health.
  • Threat analysis and monitoring across the online and offline environments, leveraging expertise of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which hosts the Strong Cities Management Unit.
  • Building trust between local governments and the communities they serve.
  • Navigating local impacts of global crises, such as the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, migration, mis/disinformation and conspiracy narratives.
  • Identifying and sharing good practices from the region to share across the Strong Cities Network global membership.
Learn more

North AMerica Pilot Programme

Developing Multi-Actor Frameworks in Small and Mid-Sized Cities in the United States

Strong Cities, in partnership with Boston Children’s Hospital, the University of Illinois Chicago and the Prevention Practitioners Network, along with inputs from a dynamic, multi-disciplinary group of subject matter experts (SMEs), is piloting a model for the development of local multi-actor prevention frameworks in several small and mid-sized cities across the United States, including: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Ohio; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Overland Park, Kansas; and Stamford, Connecticut.

The programme is  building the capacity of local governments in small and mid-size cities to develop, implement and sustain multi-actor frameworks for addressing hate and extremism that are tailored to the often-unique needs and resource constraints faced by local governments. 

Learn more
Testimonails

Hear what cities are saying about our impact

The City of Athens embraces the opportunity to join the Strong Cities Network, reflecting its commitment to confront hate, extremism, and racism. We look forward to collaborating with over 220+ members and learn from the experiences of others as we make a more resilient community.

City of Athens, Ohio, USA

Albuquerque leads the way in prioritizing equity and inclusion on every level, reimagining public safety, and ensuring those most vulnerable have a voice. As we continue our commitment to combatting hate, extremism and polarization, Strong Cities helps further that commitment.

City of Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

As a proud member city of the Strong Cities Network since 2016 which knows all too well the impact that targeted violence can have on our residents, we are excited to now partner with Strong Cities on a two-year initiative to develop and implement a comprehensive prevention hate and extremism framework that responds to the needs and concerns of our communities. As laid out in One Chattanooga, we are eager to continue doing the work of reconciling our sometimes-divided realities with courage and honesty.

City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA

Overland Park is proud to partner with the Strong Cities Network on a pilot initiative to bring government and community together to develop a comprehensive approach to prevent hate, extremism, and polarization from taking root in our city. Maintaining social cohesion in our city in the midst of the increasingly-divisive time in which we are living is a priority. Overland Park prides itself on the innovative approaches it is taking to build and strengthen trust with and between our communities, from our Crisis Action Team to the Neighborhood Executive Committee. Together with Strong Cities, we look forward to further strengthening these efforts.

City of Overland Park, Kansas, USA

We’re thrilled to announce that we will be working with the Strong Cities Network to comprehensively address hate, extremism and polarization in our communities. Having become Strong Cities member earlier this year, we have already benefitted from meeting and learning from counterparts across the country and around the globe on innovative city-led solutions to some of the most pressing social problems that we face.

City of Stamford, Connecticut, USA

About the North America Regional Hub

Launched in August 2024 during a US Mayoral Retreat in Pittsburgh, the North America Regional Hub is building and deepening the Network’s engagement with existing member cities and engaged non-member cities, in the Hub’s initial focus areas of Canada and the United States.

In addition to our engagement with cities, we are proud to partner with, and receive financial and/or in-kind support from, organisations such as:

Boston Children’s Hospital, Canadian Heritage, Canadian Centre for Safer Communities, Eradicate Hate Global Summit, Excelerate Foundation, Foundation for a Path Forward, JewishColumbus, Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation, National League of Cities, Office of the Attorney General of British Columbia, Ohio State University, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation, Prevention Practitioners Network, Public Safety Canada, US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and University of Illinois-Chicago School of Medicine.

DISCOVER THE NETWORK

Strong Cities in North America

A global network of cities in different national and local contexts ensures that wherever a city is located, there will be other cities facing similar challenges and with similar capacities and needs

United States

Rochester, NY

North America Regional Hub
United States

Boise, ID

North America Regional Hub
Canada

Victoria

North America Regional Hub
United States

Atlanta
Canada

Montreal

North America Regional Hub
United States

Overland Park, KS

North America Regional Hub
Canada

Ottawa

North America Regional Hub
United States

Albuquerque, NM

North America Regional Hub
United States

Athens, OH

North America Regional Hub
United States

Newark, NY

North America Regional Hub
Canada

Calgary

North America Regional Hub
United States

San Francisco, CA

North America Regional Hub
United States

Bend, OR

North America Regional Hub
United States

Hoboken, NJ

North America Regional Hub
United States

Highland Park, IL

North America Regional Hub
United States

Savannah, GA

North America Regional Hub
United States

Columbus, OH

North America Regional Hub
United States

Seattle, WA

North America Regional Hub
United States

Pittsburgh, PA

North America Regional Hub
United States

Anaheim, CA

North America Regional Hub
United States

San Diego, CA

North America Regional Hub
United States

Louisville, KY

North America Regional Hub
United States

Chattanooga, TN

North America Regional Hub
United States

Los Angeles, CA

North America Regional Hub
United States

Aurora, CO

North America Regional Hub
United States

Montgomery County, TX

North America Regional Hub
United States

New York, NY
United States

Minneapolis, MN

North America Regional Hub
United States

Denver, CO

North America Regional Hub
North America REgional Hub

Connect

Eric Rosand

Executive Director

Eric Rosand

Executive Director

Eric Rosand is the Executive Director of the Strong Cities Network. He has more than two decades of experience working with governments, multilateral organizations, civil society, academics, and the private sector on international counterterrorism and P/CVE issues. This includes more than six years as a senior official at the US State Department where was the international policy director for the White House CVE Summit and led efforts to develop and launch the Global Counterterrorism Forum, its inspired institutions, and the Strong Cities Network. He previously was a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and served as co-director of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, and a lawyer at the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. His writings, including on the role of cities and other local actors in P/CVE have appeared in a wide range of publications such as the American Journal of International Law, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Global Observatory, Just Security, The Hill, Lawfare, Order from Chaos, Time, and War on the Rocks. He holds a BA in history from Haverford College, a JD from Columbia University School of Law, and an LLM (Hons) in international law from Cambridge University.

Bill Peduto

Senior Adviser

Bill Peduto

Senior Adviser

William (Bill) Peduto is a Senior Adviser to the Strong Cities Network and a Distinguished Executive in Residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. He served as the 60th Mayor of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) from 2014 until 2022 and served on the Pittsburgh City Council from 2002 to 2014. He operated a political consulting business and served as general consultant, campaign manager, finance director and other roles for several Democratic candidates and elected officials. At 28, he served as a political director for then Acting Governor Mark Singel. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in public policy and management from the University of Pittsburgh.

Jordan Reimer

Senior Manager

Jordan Reimer

Senior Manager

Jordan Reimer is our Senior Manager for North America, responsible for managing our prevention programming in the United States and Canada, assisting in the development of local prevention frameworks and the provision of capacity-building efforts. Prior to joining the Strong Cities Management Unit, Jordan was the ISD Senior Manager for Threat Prevention, where he managed projects related to targeted violence threats and built relationships with relevant stakeholders to share information on salient threats identified by ISD researchers. He has also served as a policy analyst at RAND, focusing on targeted violence prevention and counter disinformation; an intelligence analyst for the NYPD, specialising in counter-terrorism investigations related to the Syrian civil war and the foreign fighter threat; and a Middle East policymaker at the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense. He is a recipient of Princeton’s Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative fellowship and has a Master in Public Affairs (International Relations) from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Caroline Wade

Project Coordinator

Caroline Wade

Project Coordinator

Caroline Wade is our Project Coordinator for North America, responsible for delivering project activities across a range of city-level stakeholders in North America. Prior to joining Strong Cities, Caroline was an analyst at Moonshot delivering a wide range of research and intervention programming focused on preventing domestic violent extremism in the United States. Her subject matter expertise focuses on racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism and anti-government/anti-authority violent extremism in the United States.

Email
EVENTS

North America Regional Hub in Action

News & Events
Copyright © Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2024). The Strong Cities Network is hosted by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a company limited by guarantee, registered office address PO Box 75769, London, SW1P 9ER. ISD is registered in England with company registration number 06581421 and registered charity number 1141069. All Rights Reserved