“Welcome to Citiwire.net! Can a new model of social services in America be invented–one that tries to reach vulnerable families (like new immigrants) before they run into crises like eviction, hunger, or lack of health care? There’s a brave experiment on Montgomery County, Md., described in my column. The bigger question behind it: If our society invested in people early on, in a preventive rather than emergency response way, couldn’t we save vast outlays for after-the-fact cures and help people become fully productive citizens? And along with that–Can’t local ties, natural neighbor-to-neighbor relations, be encouraged to give people self-confidence and capacity? … Anthony Flint, meanwhile, looks int o the challenges of the Obama administration’s urban policy, based on an interesting exposition by Xavier Briggs, one of the my favorite academic urbanists (MIT, Harvard), recently appointed to a key OMB job overseeing budgets of many of the relevant agencies.

TIME OUT: The next Citiwire.net dispatch will feature columns for May 31 release–We’re taking a week off! ”   -- Neal Peirce