Urban Compass reader Chris Eaton, who lives in Lexington after several years in the Pacific northwest, and is the consultant behind Springfield’s zoning ordinance revision project, wrote to share some ideas about neighborhood empowerment stemming from work in Seattle. From her email:
For inspiration and ideas on city-wide neighborhood association support, see the City of Seattle, where Mayor Norm Rice started a "Neighborhood Matching Fund" where they leverage city funds every year and gave it to local groups to do a variety of projects—with a requirement for volunteer match and local support.
For example, they fund neighborhood groups to organize themselves and get better professional help and advice for certain projects (e.g. business district banners or trash can holders that improved identity and looked good).
Way back in 1991, I coordinated an early two-year neighborhood planning effort (PDF) funded by this program for the "Pike/Pine" area. The key paradigm shift was that the city "let go" of controlling the planning process, and it was led entirely by volunteers from the bottom up. They hired me as their staff, but I was directed by the volunteer group. Another key was that the city took the neighborhood planning recommendations seriously, and even adopted a new zoning district for mixed use housing incentives.
The former director of the Office of Neighborhoods in Seattle is Jim Diers, who has written a good book about his experiences there and the importance of local community involvement in city-making.
Another reader, scholar and Longmeadow resident "RMT," emailed to reflect on the Pioneer Institute panel discussion about Springfield, the role of media and blogging in particular in civic engagement, and the nature of the disparity between our neighboring municipalities. From her email:
The media does serve an agenda-setting function, to be sure. Civic participation is starting to experience a revival. Scholarship in public deliberation is again experiencing a mushroom phase. The new phenomenon of blogging is a major challenge to mainstream press, however, and with its interactive quality, it holds great promise.
You might be interested in this guy Bent Flyvbjerg. His view is that those in government need to pay attention to people’s practical wisdom. He writes, "Insofar as social and political situations become clear, they get clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Such clarifications provide a main link to praxis."
He values "in-depth narratives of how power works and with what consequences, and to suggest how power might be changed and work with other consequences. The result of phronetic research is an account of the possibilities, problems, and risks we face in specific domains of social action."
One thing blogging can do is to provide the stories and the interviews that people need to help them make sense. When others respond, they help shape what that story is. The "maybe Springfield really is beautiful" story that is taking shape from the varied entries on your blog is helping to revise the dynamics as well as the perspectives of what is happening in Springfield.
There are many, many seeds of hope, however. The reports you’ve been making show that: the Armoury-Quadrangle Civic Association, anything Pangore does, the River’s Landing project. With the Urban Land Institute study, and people seeming to take planning seriously, and seeing results in other places, it seems that things could turn bright for Springfield.
Police Commissioner Edward Flynn articulated a frustration to regional cooperation at the Pioneer Institute meeting: "We are the prisoners of really an archaic, colonial, governmental structure that says these few square miles have an invisible wall around them ten miles high, and everything inside these 12, 15, 30 square miles must float on its own public."
This is very true. Each town is a kingdom, and people here get viciously protective of their boundaries. A counter (more positive) result is also true. Within the walls, there are many, many folks who take it as their birthright to participate in governing themselves. Getting people to see beyond their borders is more necessary than ever, however. It goes both ways.
Flynn said, "We border on one of the richest towns in Massachusetts, Longmeadow, leafy, lovely Longmeadow: another world. It supports itself, doesn’t need state aid, schools are wonderful, everybody walks to the store in the middle of the night and fears nothing." One friend said that she’d never recommend Longmeadow to anyone: too snobby. Another friend of mine characterized Longmeadow as an aging beauty queen, on-the-surface attractive, but hollow in parts, e.g.: sewerage in the Connecticut River. You want to talk poor government…
Most of the people here are good and decent, but the government was in need of major overhaul…we’re still getting there. And there are too many folks who could use a little less privilege and appreciate what they have.
