City leaders from Chicago, Portland, Oregon and Akron will convene in Chicago Sept. 25 to begin an 18-month process to develop and test concepts that will encourage talented professionals, which cities have worked so hard to lure, to stay in the city after they marry and have children as part of CEOs for Cities "Kids in Cities" national Learning Network.

Their work will be documented over the next year and a half and will provide general insights for urban leaders from all cities to address this opportunity.

"Our city welcomes these opportunities to share with other communities these ideas and, we hope, some solutions. The American city needs the support of young, growing families and we must assure them that cities can and do nurture families," said Mayor Don Plusquellic

The impetus of this project was a concern among urban leaders that talented people were leaving cities once the kids came along. To get answers on how to address this challenge, CEOs for Cities, with the generous support of Forest City Enterprises, turned to the Institute of Design in Chicago and asked teams of designers there to help develop a deep understanding of the market and how they might be moved to alter their behavior.

Their approach was to study pioneering urban parents. Rather than ask people what they might do in hypothetical situations, they studied what people choosing to raise their children in cities are actually doing. They also interviewed urban and suburban "discontents" -- parents not completely satisfied with their current situations.

What they found is that the top concerns of parents about city living are safety, space and schools. But they found that satisfied urban parents had ways to address each of these concerns. The very nature of the city alleviated their safety concerns with its density and "eyes on the street." They supplemented their lack of private space by using the city's public spaces, such as parks and sidewalks. And they augmented their children's education with the city's diversity and cultural and other assets.

"For pioneering city parents - and we found many of them - cities are the perfect place to raise children," said Carol Coletta, president and CEO of CEOs for Cities. "Urban leaders who understand the concerns of parents and are willing to respond with imaginative solutions can succeed in keeping young adults as they couple, marry and have children."

Learning Networks are a new initiative developed by CEOs for Cities that bring a small number of member cities together to collaborate on a particular project over an 18-month engagement. Topics of the Learning Networks are driven by members' interests. Learning Networks focus on a single pressing theme and are aimed explicitly at converting the insights produced from CEOs for Cities research into action in local communities.

The Kids in Cities Learning Network is an exciting opportunity to take groundbreaking, first-look research and translate it to on-the-ground action that will produce big wins for cities.