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North America Regional Hub: Maintaining Community Cohesion in Times of Global Crisis 

Publication Date:

14/11/2024

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Event Reports

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Community CohesionNational League of Cities

— 9 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the webinar and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Summary

On 14 November 2024, the Strong Cities Network hosted a panel discussion on Maintaining Community Cohesion in Times of Global Crisis at the National League of Cities’ Annual Cities Summit in Tampa, Florida, as part of its ongoing efforts to support cities navigating the local impacts of global challenges. Convened under the Strong Cities Network and National League of Cities strategic partnership, the session explored how small and mid-sized cities are operationalising whole-of-city prevention approaches to mitigate these impacts.  

The event featured insights from representatives of the five cities Strong Cities is working with to developed local prevention frameworks:  Mayor Steve Patterson of Athens, Ohio; Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Carmen Hughes, Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for Stamford, Connecticut; Kaitlyn Walberg, Assistant to the City Manager, City of Overland Park, Kansas; and Nina Cooper, Community Empowerment Officer for Albuquerque, New Mexico. Throughout the discussion, speakers shared strategies for fostering inclusion, addressing polarisation and strengthening resilience through local leadership and collaboration. They also offered practical examples and lessons learned that other cities can implement in their own communities. 

Key Takeaways

• Local leaders must act as conveners, fostering unity and collaboration to mitigate the impacts of global crises on their communities. Speakers emphasised the importance of consistent messaging and inclusive dialogue to support communities through challenging times. Cities should facilitate community forums, consistently promote city values and establish platforms that encourage meaningful conversations and collective decision-making to build trust and resilience. 
• Proactive, respectful and visible engagement with marginalised and vulnerable communities is essential to fostering trust and maintaining social cohesion. Local governments should implement culturally sensitive outreach programmes, provide accessible information about resources and engage directly with community leaders and organisations to ensure diverse voices are heard and supported during both crisis and calm periods. 
• City-to-city collaboration facilitates the sharing of resources, co-creation of solutions and adaptation of proven strategies in one city to the local contexts of other cities. Participating in city networks and establishing city-to-city partnerships enables cities to leverage collective expertise, develop innovative solutions and build stronger, more resilient communities. 

Key Themes

Fostering Community Trust 

Building and maintaining community trust emerged as a core theme during the panel discussion. For example, Mayor Steve Patterson of Athens, Ohio, highlighted initiatives in his city aimed at fostering social cohesion, such as welcoming dinners held in neutral spaces where residents can connect over shared meals. These City-hosted events have proven effective in building relationships across diverse groups and serve as one pillar of Athens’ broader social cohesion efforts. He also shared about the City’s work with schools to promote civility and respectful engagement among students, emphasising the importance of early education in fostering a culture of respect. 

Carmen Hughes, Director of the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Stamford, Connecticut, spoke about the local government’s response to a rise in hate crimes and rising levels of online hate and misleading narratives targeting immigrant communities. She said that the City recently convened a community conversation that brought together over 250 stakeholders, including the local police, nonprofit organisations and legal experts. The focus was on educating residents, especially immigrant communities, about their rights and the resources available to them. She highlighted that having strong relationships with community-based organisations allows for such convenings to take place, which, she said, highlights Stamford’s commitment to protecting vulnerable communities and building trust between harder-to-reach communities and local government. She encouraged others to hold similar convenings, adding, “Be prepared with data and resources, leverage the diversity and expertise of your community to support, and get to know state and local laws inside and out to have productive dialogue”.

Speakers also addressed the challenges of combating misinformation and polarisation. For example, it was shared how many Ohio mayors recently collaborated to offer moral support and practical solutions to Springfield, Ohio’s mayor, to counter disinformation narratives surrounding immigrants in the city that threatened social cohesion and community safety in Springfield and surrounding areas. Nina Cooper, Community Empowerment Officer in the Office of Equity & Inclusion, Albuquerque, New Mexico, shared how the City and law enforcement used strategic dialoging to de-escalate tensions and prevent violence during campus protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Overall, the strategies and approaches shared by speakers demonstrate how fostering community trust requires intentional actions, including consistent engagement with and creating inclusive platforms for dialogue with and among communities across the city. 

Reimagining Public Safety Through Partnerships 

Speakers emphasised the importance of partnerships in creating more inclusive and effective public safety frameworks. For example, Nina Cooper discussed Albuquerque’s efforts under Mayor Tim Keller’s leadership to reimagine public safety through innovative collaborations. She shared how the Office of Community Safety integrates social services into violence prevention efforts, working alongside the police to address the root causes of community concerns. She also highlighted the success of the City’s efforts — working with faith leaders, law enforcement, and community-based organisations –– to ensure the International District is a safe and healthy neighbourhood for all residents. 

Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tennessee, underscored the value of leveraging faith-based and community-based organisations as trusted community brokers to promote public safety initiatives and strategic messaging. Chattanooga’s One Chattanooga campaign, he said, is an example of building community narratives centred on inclusion and shared values, which helps to break down divisions across communities. Mayor Kelly added that Chattanooga’s proactive and sustained partnerships have played a significant role in strengthening its sense of place, helping to inoculate residents from hateful narratives and behaviour.  

Kaitlyn Walberg, Assistant to the City Manager of Overland Park, Kansas, highlighted the City’s partnership with school districts in the city to engage youth in prevention strategies. For example, Overland Park’s Teen Council Program involves young people in co-creating solutions to public safety through youth community surveys and dialogue sessions. These partnerships not only improve public safety outcomes, she said, but also foster a sense of shared responsibility and belonging among youth and young adults. Stamford is also working with youth to co-create solutions for prevention through their Youth Leadership Council. Most recently, the Council developed a system in schools of putting green dots on teachers’ offices that serve as safe spaces to address issues of hate and bullying, making it easier for students to identify educators who can provide support.  

Mayoral Leadership and City-to-City Sharing 

Mayoral leadership and collaboration among cities emerged as important strategies for addressing shared challenges cities are facing in the wake of global crises. For instance, Mayor Kelly emphasised the unique convening power of mayors, which enables them to unite diverse stakeholders in their cities to tackle issues of polarisation and promote social cohesion. He added that Strong Cities’ peer-to-peer learning events are invaluable as they have allowed him to learn from fellow mayors and cities about best practices and approaches that Chattanooga can then tailor and implement to address the needs of its residents. 

Mayor Patterson encouraged city leaders to learn and ‘steal’ from other cities, emphasising that what he has learned from participating in city networks like Strong Cities and the National League of Cities, which facilitate knowledge exchange to address evolving and complex challenges, has informed much of the work he has undertaken as mayor. Both local leaders also promoted working with neighbouring mayors to develop regional strategies to shared challenges and present a unified position on common threats to social cohesion and community safety. This strategy can be particularly helpful in regions where members of hate or extremist groups often travel to different city council meetings to promote their beliefs and cause disruption to proceedings. Some participants said that having neighbouring cities agree to uphold similar council meeting ground rules – with Mayors setting the tone of decorum and exercising their power to remove individuals espousing hate or adjourning meetings if necessary – could help curtail this recent tactic of hate and extremist groups. 

Additionally, speakers highlighted some of the benefits of participating in the DHS Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships-funded Strong Cities pilot programme.  Forming a local leadership group (a key feature of the pilot) in Overland Park, comprised of city officials, educators, law enforcement, nonprofits and community leaders, has provided the local government with new opportunities to work collaboratively on a whole-of-city approach to prevention. Through training and resource-sharing facilitated by the pilot programme, Stamford has identified gaps in its ongoing prevention initiatives and learned innovative ways to leverage existing programmes and resources more effectively for prevention.  

Next Steps

Strong Cities will continue working with the five participating cities in the pilot programme to develop and implement their local prevention frameworks over the next year. The remaining 10 months of the project will include a focus on facilitating the sharing of insights of and lessons learned by the pilot cities with the wider Strong Cities Network (and NLC) membership across the United States. 

Additionally, Strong Cities will host its next monthly webinar as part of the ongoing Global Crisis, Local Impacts initiative on 29 January 2025. This session will focus on the connection between urban planning and enhancing social cohesion. 

Additional Resources

• Impact: Catalysing City-Led Prevention, Strong Cities Network (September 2024) 
• Transatlantic Dialogue Initiative: Ten Key Findings in 2023, Strong Cities Network (March 2024) 
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism and Polarisation, Strong Cities Network (September 2023) 
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network (September 2023) 
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network (April 2024) 
• Countering Hate Speech in Times of Crisis: Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network (November 2024) 
• City-Led Youth Engagement in Addressing Hate, Extremism and Polarisation: 10 Recommendations for Cities, Strong Cities Network (November 2024) 

Global Crises, Local Impacts Webinar Series:

• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Migration, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (September 2024) 
• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Online/Offline Harms, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (July 2024) 
• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Restoring Civil Discourse & Empathy, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (June 2024) 
• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Local Impacts of Israel-Gaza, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (May 2024) 
• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Local Impacts of Israel-Gaza, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (April 2024) 
• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Local Impacts of Israel-Gaza, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (March 2024) 
• Global Crises, Local Impacts: Threats to Social Cohesion and How Cities Can Respond: Local Impacts of Israel-Gaza, Event Report, Strong Cities Network (February 2024) 
  

Donors & Partners 

Contact Information 

For more information on this event and the Strong Cities North America Regional hub, please contact [email protected]. 

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