The Public Square Project

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to The Public Square Project. The Public Square Project was born out of a simple idea: that local government matters. It matters to our quality of life, our economic competitiveness, our ability to attract talent. But unfortunately, too few of us actually understand how it works, much less how to influence it. As a result, we are left with too many undemocratic and ineffectual local government institutions.

That's where The Public Square Project comes in. The Public Square Project will empower citizens to make positive change in local government by building an online hub for information about government and public policy in the Pittsburgh region. It is our hope that The Public Square Project will provide a forum for new kinds of collaboration by bringing together citizens, government officials, policy experts, and nonprofit organizations to devise innovative solutions to the policy challenges facing the Pittsburgh region. In effect, we hope to create a new kind of "public square."

Although our organization may be new, the values that we stand for are not: transparency, accountability, innovation, participation. These are values that are too often missing from the way that local governments in the Pittsburgh region make public policy. The Public Square Project is dedicated to changing this culture by giving citizens the information and tools necessary to make our local governments better. In short, The Public Square Project is an experiment in citizen-driven local government reform. But this experiment cannot succeed without your help.

We hope that you will join our efforts to make local government in the Pittsburgh region more transparent and responsive to the needs of all of its citizens. Thank you for taking the time to visit our website and we hope that you will check back often as we grow.

Best regards,
Ryan Hopkins

President
The Public Square Project
info@thepublicsquareproject.org

Photo courtesy of Matt Griffin