Cities throughout the West face rising crime, soaring housing costs, a sprawling homelessness crisis and devastated downtown areas following two years of COVID restrictions and the aftermath of destructive protests. Policymakers typically address these and other urban problems in a piecemeal fashion. They fail to understand what makes great cities thrive.

The Free Cities Center is Pacific Research Institute’s effort to foster serious thinking about urban policy. PRI hopes to incubate good ideas that will improve our cities. It will feature incisive reporting and opinionating on our new web page, and in a series of webinars, research papers and books.
If you love cities and are brokenhearted by their current state, help is on the way.