By Bruce Adams
President, A Greater Washington

Bruce Adams is the founder and president of A Greater Washington, an organization working for greater regional collaboration in the National Capitol Region. He is a former two-term member and president of the Montgomery (MD) County Council. He also assisted in writing, "Boundary Crossers: Community Leadership for a Global Age" (available at http://www.academy.umd.edu/publications/Boundary/contents.htm).

I'm a big baseball fan. In fact, I built a ballpark and run a team-although that's another story. And if you follow sports, you'll know this: For all of the Little League and Pony League teams, for all of the college and adult league teams, baseball is judged by the Major Leagues. The same is true in golf, tennis, and, in fact, most other sports. Wimbledon for tennis...The Masters for golf...The bottom line is that the real tests are the Majors.

It's the same with the Major Cities in the Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card. The 31 million people who live in the 25 Major Cities represent only about 11 percent of Americans and the cities represent only a tiny fraction of our land area. Yet the importance to our country of these cities can't be overstated. If our major cities don't prosper, our suburbs and small cities will not thrive. Why? Because we look to our cities for popular culture, finance, media, leadership, and regional identity. And if our children-all of our children, including those in cities-don't have the opportunity to reach their full potential, our nation won't flourish.

This report makes clear that the most important factor in creating a kid-friendly city is to make sure that the city has healthy kids. In fact, only one city with a grade of A in the Health Category finished in the bottom half of the overall rankings and all of the cities in the top half of the rankings got an A or B in the Health Category. While that may seem obvious-it's hard to be a great place to live if many of your citizens are ill-it needs to be emphasized. Great cities have healthy residents. And there's no better way to judge the health of a population than to look at the health of its most vulnerable population: children.

While everyone calls some city or town "home," the truth is that most of us live our lives at a regional level encompassing multiple jurisdictions. We must therefore find ways to cooperate across those lines. Our economic markets function at a regional level. The environment-the air we breathe, the water we drink-doesn't see boundaries drawn hundreds of years ago. Our suburbs will not prosper without strong central cities. Our cities need the support and cooperation of their suburban neighbors.

To take an important example, too many of our Major Cities have a large percentage of unemployed and under-employed people-at a time when most suburban jurisdictions are flourishing. Why this dichotomy? Why are the people in urban areas jobless when there are jobs in the suburbs that go begging? Like many other problems, this is just one dilemma that individual cities cannot solve by themselves. We don't have the physical and human infrastructure to make the needed connections. Most regions lack a transportation network that can get people back-and-forth to those jobs. We don't have the human services infrastructure that can provide child care and health care-essential services that allow individuals to participate in a regional economy.

From my years as an elected local official and from my study of cities and regions nationwide, I have concluded that building healthy communities is less about government structure and more about building relationships-across the boundaries of race, income, sector, politics, and geography that artificially divide and diminish our regional communities.

Citizenship is not a spectator sport. No matter where you live, no matter how well or how poorly your city did in The Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card, there is important work to be done. The challenge-for all of us-is to provide the children in our communities with the best possible quality of life.

This is not someone else's job. It's not for the politicians, the civic leaders, or the corporations. It's our job, individually and collectively. As a people, we ask too much of our governments and too little of ourselves. Ultimately, we're all responsible for what our community does for our children.

Even if your city is ranked near the top, there is room for improvement and a need for continued diligence. If your city ranked near the bottom, don't despair and don't give up. Your involvement can change the lives of children and of your community. The Kid- Friendly Cities Report Card is a call for all Americans to roll up their sleeves and work to make each community a more kid-friendly place.

The idea here is not to pick out a good city to move to. The idea is to pick out some issues where your community could use some help, and get involved.

On becoming a citizen of Athens, a young person would pledge, "In all these ways we will transmit this city not only not less but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us." This is the pledge we must make. It's our obligation to our children, to our grandchildren, and to their children. The Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card is our call to action. So, get involved. And make a difference.