Seven Big Lessons for Local Governments

Who Is Otis White?

Otis White is the founder and president of Civic Strategies Inc., an Atlanta-based public policy consulting company that specializes in cities and regions.

Before becoming a consultant, White was editor and publisher of Georgia Trend, an award-winning magazine that covered the Georgia business community (and which was then owned by the same company that publishes Governing). In 1982, as a business reporter for sister publication Florida Trend, he won an Alicia Patterson fellowship that enabled him to spend a year traveling around the country studying how computers were changing the way people work.

After founding Civic Strategies in 1998, White began looking for a way to keep tabs on important events in cities across the country. He began e-mailing a list of summaries of news articles from around the country to clients. The e-mail list evolved into Otis White’s Urban Notebook, which ran as a daily feature on Governing.com as well as in Governing Magazine.

In January 2007, White moved on to other pursuits, most notably a project to understand how communities make important decisions.

Special projects undertaken by White resulted in reports that remain available for download (.PDF format) on Governing.com:

• Secrets of visionary mayors

• A Turnaround Town Revisited
In 1995, Otis White visited Delray Beach to write about the South Florida city's remarkable turnaround. Nearly 10 years later, he checked back on Delray and found that the experiment in neighborhood decision-making and citizen involvement was alive and well. His reports:
Delray Beach 1995
Delray Beach 2004

E-mail Otis White

Travis Foster illustration