Citizens – Page 4

The Leader as Strategist and Persuader

August 31, 2012 By Otis White

I’ve met a lot of mayors over the years. Some were smart, a few were philosophical, many were shrewd, but only a handful were strategic. One of the few, Frank Martin, died a few weeks ago.

Martin was the mayor of Columbus, Georgia who, in a single term in office in the early 1990s, changed his city. Yes, you read that right: He served a single four-year term. (It was his decision. He finished his term to acclaim but chose not to run again.) And in that single term he set in motion changes that are still being felt, 20 years later.

I met Mayor Martin when I was researching a book about the remarkable turnaround of Columbus’ downtown, which was a desolate and hopeless place in the 1970s, only to be reborn three decades later as a thriving business, cultural, entertainment, and educational center. I wanted to know how these things happened, and that led me to the political leader who had changed the arc of the city. (If you’re interested in the book, you can find it here.)

We had three long conversations, one by phone, one in his office, and a third for a podcast. Each time we talked I was impressed by how his mind worked. He had the ability to look at something familiar (the city he had lived in his entire life or the government he presided over), see assets and opportunities that others couldn’t, and move decisively toward them. And, in a nutshell, that’s what great strategists do.

And one more thing: He knew how to change people’s minds. That’s important because, in civic work, it’s not enough to see the right thing to do. You have to bring others along with you. Martin knew that words weren’t enough. If you wanted to change people’s minds, you needed actions as well. Bold actions.

When he became mayor in 1991, Columbus was at a very low ebb. For 15 years, a handful of business and civic leaders had been searching for ways to turn around the downtown, without much success. For one thing, there was the sheer size of the problem: Block after block of empty storefronts, sleazy bars and porn shops, and some of the tackiest retail imaginable. The good stores had moved out of downtown in the 1960s, and many of the offices had joined them in the 1970s. (No one lived downtown then.) A few new projects had been built—a convention center, a hotel, a new office building or two—but the tide was still running out for downtown.

And beyond that, there was a huge impediment to change, which was the citizens’ deep-seated cynicism. After seeing decades of decline, they thought the downtown was hopeless and any effort to help it was throwing good money after bad. In fact, they thought the same of the city itself. In the citizens’ minds, Columbus was, if not declining, going nowhere and nothing could change it.

So, where do you begin when you’re trying to save a city that doesn’t believe in itself? Martin’s answer was to start with a bang, with what he called his “man on the moon project,” a project so ambitious and difficult to achieve that, when it does succeed, the civic self-doubt fades away. He found such a project on his first day in office, when he opened a closet in the mayor’s office and discovered a complete set of plans for a civic center. A previous mayor had commissioned the plans and then quietly rolled them up and stowed them away, defeated by the project’s politics and finances.

That, Martin decided, would be his “man on the moon project.” He would build the civic center that a line of mayors had talked about but been unable to deliver. To make a long story short, he did just that, and Columbus has an impressive new civic center today. But Martin didn’t stop there. While he was working on the civic center project, he put together a huge bond referendum that in addition to financing the civic center would make sewer improvements, build sidewalks and parks, and construct a major new softball complex near downtown. He campaigned furiously for the referendum and got it passed.

From the outside, this may not seem like much, but in the sleepwalk that was Columbus in the early 1990s, it was a huge awakening. And Martin was just getting started. The sewer project had an interesting feature, he came to understand. It involved running miles of storm water pipes alongside the Chattahoochee River. And here’s where Martin’s knack for strategic thinking came in: Why not turn this sewer project into a major new public asset by placing a river walk on top of it? (The idea wasn’t his, but he once he heard it, he grasped what it could mean.) He approached the city’s foundations and businesses, and they agreed to put up the additional money. The result is one of the largest and most attractive urban river walks in America today, stretching more than 20 miles.

And the softball complex? It became the way that Columbus got a share of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when it served as host for the women’s softball competitions. The city that doubted itself was suddenly seeing itself on international broadcasts, with its beautiful new riverfront improvements as a setting.

I could go on and on about Martin’s accomplishments and how they laid the groundwork for the downtown’s revival. (Again, if you’re interested, read the book.) But at the center of things was a civic leader who combined the mind of a strategist with a shrewd understanding of human nature and what it took to move people.

And these are the things the best leaders do: They see unnoticed assets, find ways of making them greater and far more apparent, and bring others along on the journey. Cities need an army of such people, but sometimes it takes only a few. Or, at the right time and in the right place, just one.

Photo of the Columbus Riverwalk from The Great Project, used with permission

Smart Citizen Engagement . . . and Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

March 29, 2012 By Otis White

I am a fan of governments reaching out to citizens for ideas and participation for two reasons. It’s good for government officials to work side by side with citizens, and it’s good for citizens to work side by side with governments. But there are smart ways of doing this, and there are dumb, dumb, dumb ways.

I’ll talk about the smart and the dumb in a moment, but first a few words about why citizen involvement is important. Start with the basics: Citizens know some things better than government officials, and government officials know some things better than citizens. Citizens know things that begin with the word “what”—what the problems are (particularly in their own neighborhoods), what they want their city or neighborhood to be, and what they are personally willing to contribute in time and taxes to make these things happen. In other words, citizens are good at vision and judgment. Government officials are good at the “how” parts—how to deliver the things the citizens want, how to pay for them, and how to be sure things work as planned when they’re in place.

When you put these competencies together, with the citizens taking the lead—but not having exclusive say—in the “what” parts, and government officials taking the lead—but not having exclusive say—in the “how” parts, you get a strong partnership . . . with a little creative tension. The tension comes from not totally ceding either part. On the contrary, it helps if the parties look over each other’s shoulder. Citizens sometimes have great ideas about getting things done. And public officials can often suggest things the citizens ought to be thinking about but, for some reason, aren’t. How do you let one side take the lead without ceding control? You act with respect for what the other party does best, the way you would toward any valued colleague or partner.

Here’s another principle of citizen engagement: The goal shouldn’t be a new set of ideas or goals but a long-term sharing of responsibilities. Alas, that’s not the political reflex. The reflex, upon hearing a complaint or an idea, is to take the problem away from the person who’s complaining. I understand why this happens—many elected officials believe the path to re-election is paved with credit for getting things done, and most appointed officials think it’s important to appear in control—but by taking problems away from people you diminish them and limit a government’s effectiveness. The best way to deal with community problems and opportunities is through partnerships, where everyone does his part: government, businesses, nonprofits, and citizens.

By taking the time to plan and act as partners, two wonderful things happen. First, resources multiply—not just financial resources but human labor and creativity. Second, solutions become virtuous cycles, where each partner’s contribution rewards the others’ efforts, increasing the rewards and making the effort easier with each turn of the cycle.

You see this most clearly in business improvement districts, where landowners tax themselves to make commercial areas safer and more attractive. The virtuous cycle for BIDs works in two ways. As they make improvements, property values rise and revenues to the BID increase, enabling it to do more, which makes property values rise even more . . . and on and on. But the real secret to BIDs isn’t the money they raise and spend on their own. It’s the partnerships they forge with governments. Over time, smart and focused BIDs learn how to ask intelligently for things, and governments like working with them. The money they raise, then, becomes not replacements for government services but enhancements, which helps everybody. The commercial district looks good, citizens are happy, businesses prosper, property owners see their investments rise in value, tax revenues grow for government and the BID, and the cycle goes round and round.

This, then, is the power of partnership, and it ought to be the aim of every government—not to coddle citizens or push them out of the way, but to plan and work with them as respected equals.

OK, then what’s a smart way of doing this? You start by asking citizens what they want, plan the “how” parts together—so citizens learn the cost of public goods and can decide if they truly want them—and then you ask those working alongside you to lend a hand in making them happen.

I have two examples of smart citizen engagement, both from older cities dealing with major crime problems. First is from Philadelphia where Mayor Michael Nutter has created a small agency called PhillyRising. It’s a handful of government workers who are good at talking with citizens and enlisting them as partners. Not long ago, a newspaper reporter sat in on a PhillyRising meeting in a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood plagued by crime. The meeting began with a top city official saying something you don’t hear enough from government leaders. “The city doesn’t have all the answers,” he said. “We know you guys,” referring to neighborhood residents, “know the problems in the community better than anybody else.”

And that was pretty much the end of the speeches. For the rest of the meeting, the PhillyRising staff facilitated the 35 or so who came in talking about the neighborhood’s issues—not just the crime problems, but things like neighborhood schools and adult literacy problems—as others took notes on large flip charts. At the end, staffers invited the residents to come back in two weeks to work on plans for changing the things they had identified—with the city playing a supporting role. As the PhillyRising director told the reporter who was there, “The idea behind it is, instead of doing things for people, we’re trying to do things with them and teach them.” Precisely.

The second example is from Detroit, and it’s not about government doing smart things with citizens but citizens doing smart things with government. (Remember, it’s a partnership.) I don’t have to explain much about Detroit’s problems—they begin with a horrifying homicide rate and go from there. But not every part of Detroit suffers equally. There are a few neighborhoods that have kept crime at bay.

How did they do it? By organizing, watching things carefully, and working seamlessly with the police. These aren’t vigilantes. In one of the neighborhoods, North Rosedale, neighborhood volunteers don’t chase criminals; they photograph things that look suspicious and call the cops. They are so close to the police that, as neighborhood watch volunteers start their evening rounds, they check in with a nearby precinct to find out who’s on duty and what to keep an eye on.

As the Detroit Free Press reported, police and other city officials love these smart, organized, involved volunteers. “The cooperative effort that you have shown with the police department has just been super,” a police commander told one of the neighborhood groups at its regular monthly planning meeting with police and city officials last year. “The arrests that are being made are all with interaction with the community. A lot of other communities don’t offer that. It is a big tribute to you, and it’s very much appreciated.” The appreciation is mutual. One of the volunteers told the newspaper: “We believe it is important to work very closely with the police department.”

Let’s pause for a moment and review what’s right about these efforts. They create partnerships, not dependence. In each case, government knows its limitations. It appreciates what the citizens can do and stands ready to help but not direct. In one case, the government is reaching out to the citizens, in the other the citizens are reaching out to the government. The results of both will be smarter government (specifically, more effective policing) and smarter, more involved citizens.

So if these are examples of smart citizen engagement, what does dumb engagement look like? I have two examples of this, as well. The first involves the Pittsburgh police department, but instead of being partners of the citizens, the police have cast themselves as adversaries. The problem in Pittsburgh is a familiar one for urban police departments. Ethnically the police force doesn’t look much like the city today; it’s overwhelmingly white in a diverse city. The suspicion among African-American leaders is that the hiring process is rigged against black candidates, so they lobbied the mayor to open up the hiring process by allowing some community members to sit in on interviews.

Reluctantly, the police agreed. An organization called the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network offered the names of some volunteer interviewers to the police department, which forwarded them to other city departments for screening and training. In time, the interview panels including civilians were assembled . . . until someone noticed that one woman who was asking questions was wearing an electronic monitoring device on her ankle. Turns out, one of the police interviewers was a convicted felon who had pleaded guilty a year before to felony firearms charges.

The panels were abruptly cancelled. The police chief blamed city bureaucrats for fouling things up by not running background checks. Everyone was embarrassed and angry. But take away the embarrassing revelation—the woman with the ankle monitor—and you see this for what it was: a shallow and ineffective substitute for citizen engagement. It was shallow because it substituted a handful of people on city hall interview panels for genuine partnerships with citizens in their neighborhoods. And it was ineffective because it asked this handful of citizens to do something they weren’t equipped to do—judge what makes a good police officer. Actually, the citizen member who might know something about effective policing was the woman with the ankle monitor. At least she could claim experience with the criminal justice system.

What would have been better? It would have been much, much better if the department had taken the time to engage citizens in discussions about what they wanted from officers in their neighborhoods. If they had listened carefully and worked collaboratively to find better ways of recruiting, training, and retaining officers who fit the new profile. Afterwards, if some involved in the planning process wanted to serve on the interview teams, they should have been welcomed and would have come to the panels in a completely different way—with knowledge of what police officers do and an understanding of how the hiring process was changing. In short, they would have been seen as partners in making a better police department—and not as intruders or nuisances.

But it isn’t only local governments that make a mess of citizen engagement. Sometimes citizens do, too. This brings me to the worst citizen engagement process I’ve ever heard of, designed by a group in Pinellas County, Florida called FAST, which stands for Faith and Action for Standing Together. As the name suggests, it’s an interfaith group, and its heart seems to be in the right place. Founded in 2004, FAST wants to improve low-income parts of the county, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and has taken on important issues from crime and drugs to transportation and education.

But if its intentions are good, its methods are atrocious. After FAST members (who number in the low thousands) settle on an issue and decide—on their own, with no government officials involved—what the correct solutions are, they haul public officials before them, force them stand on a stage and say only “yes” or “no” to FAST’s agenda. As a final indignity, elected officials are not allowed to touch the microphone, for fear they might . . . you know, try to explain something. A FAST member stands with the microphone in hand, ready to snatch it away.

By this point, most responsible elected or appointed officials will not participate what amounts to one of FAST’s public shaming sessions. Not long ago, though, several Pinellas County school board members came to one of the meetings, where they were told that the best way to instruct children was by using something called “direct instruction.” Would the school board members, on the spot, commit to changing the school system’s entire instructional approach? Yes or no? The answer, thankfully, was no. “I will not yield to pressure,” one board member told the group . . . presumably just before the microphone was snatched away.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be hectoring or patronizing. It doesn’t even have to be adversarial. In my experience, most government officials are perfectly willing to work alongside citizens; they just don’t know how to get started. And most citizens are far more interested in practical solutions than in venting their spleens and would welcome the opportunity to learn more about how government works.

There’s a marriage to be made here between governments and citizens, but like all good marriages it must come with some values. The two most important: respect for each other’s contributions and a belief in the power of partnerships.

Photo by Bytemarks licensed under Creative Commons.

Quality of Life as Community Glue

March 1, 2012 By Otis White

Here are two easy questions. What attracts people to a place? And what keeps them there?

Actually, these aren’t easy questions at all. There are many reasons a person might pack up and move to a new city: a job, an education, a change of lifestyle or climate, family connections, restlessness, curiosity, and so on. And what keeps a person in a place once she has arrived? Again, not a single reason. The job, family ties, inertia—and maybe a dozen other things.

**Block party in Los Angeles** *Flickr photo by waltarrrrr licensed under Creative Commons*

So let’s ask these questions in a different way: What can local governments and others who care about cities do to make their communities more attractive to outsiders and binding to those already there? To use an economics term, where can you invest at the margins to increase a community’s attraction and appeal, to make it more of a magnet and give it more glue?

If you don’t like my analogies—magnet and glue—don’t blame me. I borrowed them from a book written in 1997 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School. The book is “World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy,” and these were the things Kanter said every city needed to be successful: a “magnet” to pull people in, and enough “glue” to keep them there.

What can cities do to be better magnets? They can’t do much about their climates or family connections, but they can have a big influence on their economies. The best ways are by building and maintaining good physical infrastructure, offering a skilled and educated work force, and constantly and creatively selling the community’s assets through economic development activities. So spend money on roads, sewers, and transit, invest in schools, and support your local chamber of commerce.

And glue? What can cities do to bind their citizens so tightly that even if their economic circumstances change (say, their employer closes shop), personal lives change (they retire, their kids move away), or neighborhood demographics change, they can’t bring themselves to leave—even with good options elsewhere? Answer: They can invest in quality of life.

But what is quality of life? Of all the phrases used in cities, this may be the slipperiest. For many, quality of life is what they personally like about their community, from a favorite senior center and concerts on the town square to low taxes and good public services. But actually, quality of life is important and specific—and, best of all, it’s something only cities can deliver. States can’t provide quality of life, neither can counties. Only organized, developed places can—which is to say, cities and towns.

To understand quality of life—and why only cities can provide it—you have to start by knowing its purposes. In my view, there are three: to offer connectedness with other people, to create a sense of place and identity, and to provide opportunities for personal growth. Let’s look at each.

Connectedness: One of the most basic human needs is for connection with others. We do this all our lives—in school, at work, at parties, in churches and synagogues, and, yes, at civic meetings—and many of us do it so unconsciously that we forget how hard it can be for others, especially newcomers. The good news is that cities, with their sidewalks and town squares, libraries, restaurants, shops and work places, are tailor made for bumping into people and exchanging greetings from a tip of the hat to a long conversation.

But just because they are natural meeting places doesn’t mean every city does it equally well. The best—the ones we think of as having the highest quality of life—are intentional about bringing together strangers safely and harmoniously. The primary ways are through events and public spaces. Events are anything that draws a crowd and provides opportunities for conversation—parades, festivals, block parties, civic meetings, and the like. Public spaces do pretty much the same thing. If you’ve ever had lunch in at a sidewalk cafe or on a park bench and struck up a conversation with the person next to you, you know how it works. And even if you’re not the sort who talks with strangers, sitting in a place where you can see your fellow citizens is reassuring. It gives you a sense of connection even without interaction. And that’s the point: People don’t easily leave places they feel connected with.

Identity: This is another basic human need, the sense of belonging, but the connection here is not to other people but to a place. If you’ve lived in different parts of the country you know the feeling: Sooner or later, you decide this is your kind of town or it’s not. It could be the architecture, the accents, the things people eat for breakfast, the way they drive their cars, or the pace of life. Some of it is cultural, and cities can’t change much of that, but there are things at the margins they can change—things that build a sense of distinctiveness and civic pride.

**Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa** *Flickr photo by ferret111 licensed under Creative Common*

Here are three: Trademark institutions, trademark spaces, and trademark events. The easiest example of a trademark institution is a sports team, which by its nature builds loyalty to a place. But there are other examples, from museums and zoos to quirky traditions like the Peabody Hotel duck march in Memphis. (Here in Atlanta, I think of Chastain Park, home to outdoor concerts and picnics, as one of the city’s trademark institutions.) The keys are distinctiveness and authenticity. The reasons the Red Sox and Fenway Park are so beloved in Boston are because its fans can’t imagine the team in any other city and can’t imagine the team playing in any other ball park.

Trademark spaces work in a similar way: Central Park in New York, Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, the National Mall in Washington, D.C. As with institutions, it’s important that trademark spaces reflect the character of the place. And then there are trademark events, which do double duty by building connectedness and pride in place. Yet again, distinctiveness is important. Boston doesn’t just have a marathon, it has the marathon—the first annual marathon staged anywhere in the world, as any Bostonian will tell you. Can’t be historic? Then be quirky. Chicago set off an urban craze a few years back by putting painted cow statues all over its downtown, which told residents that theirs was a city with a sense of humor. Over time, events can become so central to a city’s identity that it’s hard to separate the two. Quick, what do you think of when you think of New Orleans? In all likelihood . . . Mardi Gras.

Point is, all of these quality of life assets build a sense of pride and belonging among citizens. (And, sometimes, a little tourism as well.) The aim is to give citizens a reason for staying, a tangible place or experience they would miss if they were to leave.

Personal growth: The third thing quality of life does is provide opportunities for personal growth and development. These could be anything from community theaters that allow people to try their hand at acting and directing to evening schools that teach art, floral design, foreign languages, cooking, great literature, and so on. These things may not be your cup of tea, but they are the passions—or, at least, the passing interests—of millions, and the communities that satisfy these needs are likeliest to hold on to their people.

**Community theater in Paris, Texas** *Flickr photo by In Paris Texas licensed under Creative Commons*

Of these personal-growth institutions, I find community theaters the most interesting. According to a trade association, there are 7,000 non-professional theaters in America, staffed by 1.5 million volunteers, offering 46,000 performances a year to audiences totaling 86 million people. That’s a lot of culture and entertainment, but the real value isn’t delivered to the audience; it’s delivered to the people on stage. They’re the ones who are changed by the experience, and once changed, they’re the ones who will most likely be anchored to the community.

When you look at quality of life this way—as a way of binding people to communities through connections, identity, and personal growth—it becomes not something that’s nice to have during good times, but necessary to have at all times, even the hard ones. This is something suburban communities need to learn in a hurry. Everywhere, the suburbs are changing rapidly. Among other things, they are becoming much more ethnically diverse. Diversity is a good thing, but the reaction to diversity, particularly if it’s sudden, can be bad. As newcomers move in, some old-timers leave out of fear. We won’t miss some of these people, but wholesale flight—where families move out of fear that property values will plunge —isn’t good for communities.

We can’t stop people from leaving, but we can make them think twice about what they’re giving up, the connections with neighbors, the city’s institutions and experiences, the opportunities for learning and growth. Quality of life gives people these second thoughts. It slows them from making rash and fearful decisions. It acts like glue. And, in the end, every successful community is a sticky one.

Planning Phase: The Slog of Civic Projects, and Why It’s Critical

November 18, 2011 By Otis White

In a series of postings, we’re exploring how conscious change happens in communities. If you haven’t read the first posting in this series, please take a moment to do so.

In a time when many wonderful parks have been built, New York’s High Line may be the most wonderful of all. It’s a park that runs above the street and through buildings on Manhattan’s west side. If you climb the stairs and walk the portions that are completed (it will eventually be a mile and a half long), you’ll see something at once modest and spectacular. The modest part is the park itself, a narrow trail edged with plants and trees with resting areas along the way. The spectacular part is the setting: a park in the sky, wending its way through post-industrial New York. The reviews, as you can see in this video, have ranged from glowing to awestruck.

But my interest is not in the park itself. It’s in the project—the road the High Line traveled from a pair of neighbors looking up and seeing potential in an old elevated track until its opening in June 2009—and what that journey tells us about the second phase of our map of community change, the planning phase.

Background: In 1999 two men, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, attended a neighborhood planning meeting on the future of the abandoned rail line known as the High Line. Some landowners wanted it torn down to make way for new developments. David and Hammond, who did not know one another, came with another idea, that you could turn this elevated freight line into . . . something else, some kind of community asset.

Their ideas were vague. They thought about a park of some sort, but what kind of park could you build on a narrow set of elevated railroad tracks? And David and Hammond hardly seemed the type to turn vague civic ideas into reality. David was a writer who specialized in travel articles for glossy magazines. Hammond was a consultant to business startups. Neither had run a nonprofit, managed a park, or had any serious contact with government at any level. They came to the meeting with hopes of volunteering for a nonprofit—any nonprofit—that would make the High Line into a community asset. What they learned was there was no such nonprofit. So, pretty much on the spot, David and Hammond decided to do it themselves.

If you’re following this on the map of community change, we’re at the very start of the discussion phase, with the recognition of a need. Or, in this case, two needs. The first was David and Hammond’s belief that, in the crowded lower West Side of Manhattan, there wasn’t nearly enough open space. That part of New York takes in many old industrial areas (one neighborhood is still called the Meatpacking District). In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, New York didn’t build parks in places like that.

The other need was for quick action. If somebody didn’t act soon, they believed, the city would tear down the High Line and an opportunity for public space would be lost forever. (They were right. Less than two years later, the Giuliani Administration sided with the landowners and signed a demolition order for the High Line.)

A funny thing happened, though, once David and Hammond took up this project. It turned out—to their surprise and others’—that these two were uniquely equipped for a civic project of this magnitude and complexity. While they had no experience in leading an urban change effort, they had valuable and complementary skills. One could write well and knew some in New York’s social and philanthropic circles. The other was experienced in starting things, was at ease in asking people to do things (including giving money), and had a good sense of strategy. They were both quick learners, and each had an interest in art and design, which became important as the project moved forward.

It took three years of contacts, conversations, fundraising and strategic planning for David and Hammond to accomplish two things that ended the discussion phase and began the planning phase: First, they halted the demolition order with a lawsuit; second, they arrived at a workable solution for the High Line. You can view their workable solution online. It’s a 90-page document titled “Reclaiming the High Line,” researched by a nonprofit called the Design Trust for Public Space and written by David.

It’s an interesting document for three reasons. First, it’s beautifully designed. It had to be because it was aimed at multiple audiences: the political and planning communities that had such a big say in what would happen to the High Line; the community nearby, which at that time had barely any idea of the High Line’s potential; and possible donors who needed to understand the High Line’s vision.

Second, it’s modest in spelling out that vision. While it makes a strong case that the old freight line should not be torn down, used as a transit line, or turned into a commercial development (a long, skinny retail area, perhaps?), it doesn’t say it ought to be a park, either. It simply says its best use is as open space in a part of the city where there isn’t enough. In other words, the workable solution keeps its options open.

The third thing that’s interesting is who wrote the foreword: Michael Bloomberg, who by 2002 had succeeded Rudolph Giuliani as mayor. This gets to an important element in any change effort: luck. The High Line project was lucky in who got elected during its 10-year path from concept to ribbon-cutting, starting with the person in the mayor’s office.

Well, if a workable solution is at hand and a powerful new mayor wants it to succeed, that’s that, right? What else is there to do? The answer: The real work was just beginning. And this is my central message about the planning phase. Getting agreement on a workable solution is like getting everyone to agree on the design concept for a new house. Now comes the difficult, detailed work of hammering out costs and financing, drawing blueprints and mechanical plans, obtaining building permits, and bringing together a small army of independent contractors.

As David and Hammond explain in their book, “High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky,” even with the new mayor on their side, there was still a gauntlet of approvals to be run, from community planning boards (basically, neighborhood organizations that review developments) to the owners of the High Line (CSX, the railroad company) and the federal agency that approves transfers of railroad rights of way. And they had opposition: from landowners who had expected to build where the High Line stood, but also from residents who couldn’t see how the dark, peeling, scary elevated railroad could ever be anything but an eyesore. Finally, they realized a truth about government: that, even in a strong-mayor government such as New York has, the mayor doesn’t call all the shots. As Hammond writes:

(By late 2002) the Bloomberg Administration fully supported the High Line, but if they’d only endorsed it and done nothing else, the project would have died. Everything about the High Line was complex, and it had to pass through so many different agencies and departments. City government is like the human body: the head, which is the mayor’s office, may want to do something, but the body has a number of different parts that want to go their own way.

Everything hinged on three tasks that occupied much of the High Line’s planning phase: Coming up with a design for the park that would please politicians and neighbors and excite donors; dealing with the landowners’ objections; and figuring out how to pay for the construction and maintain this most unusual park in years to come.

If this doesn’t sound like exciting work, it wasn’t. This is the slog of civic projects, but it’s also why the planning phase is so important. Managing these details determines the success or failure of projects. And there were hundreds of details, from mapping the decision points and how to approach each of them to knitting together a coalition of supporters and funders. There were competing interests that had to be satisfied and intense politics. Oh, and they had to design a park unlike any in the world, and figure out how to pay for it.

What this phase requires from leaders are three things: the ability to plan (that’s why it’s called the planning phase), a mastery of detail (in an earlier posting, I called this the realm of “small-p politics”), and a willingness to ask for things. Throughout its development, David and Hammond asked people to do things for the High Line. Early on, they asked for information and advice (who owns the High Line, and how should we approach them?). Soon after, they asked for support and permission. In time, they asked for money. They started by asking for a small sums for printing costs and filing the lawsuit against the demolition. Eventually, they asked philanthropists and politicians for millions to pay for the park’s construction and maintenance. And they got it, in ways that surprised even them.

This brings us to the three elements of the planning phase that are in the map of community change: champions, narrative and strategy. I put them in the map as reminders. We’ve talked about one, strategy—that’s about mapping the decision points and making plans for each decision. This is the “inside game” of civic change, the political and bureaucrat checklist of approvals.

But there is always an “outside game” as well, and that’s where the narrative becomes critical because it speaks to citizens and potential supporters and donors. A narrative, of course, tells a story. It explains the need, why the need exists, the opportunity for addressing the need, how the solution was arrived at, and the future benefits of the change. Sometimes, the narrative has to change how people think about their community and its potential, something I call “reframing the community’s mind.”

And finally, there are the “champions.” Obviously, David and Hammond are the central figures of the High Line project. Without them, the freight line would be a memory and a remarkable asset squandered. But they aren’t the champions I have in mind; they’re the leaders and strategists. The champions are those whom David and Hammond asked for support who brought others along. Some were political champions who used their influence to win approval and gain government funding—people like Mayor Bloomberg, two successive city council presidents, New York’s senators and congressional representatives, and a host of people inside the bureaucracy.

There were also business and philanthropic champions, like media tycoon Barry Diller and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg who lent their names, made major financial gifts themselves, and hosted fundraisers for the High Line. Finally, there were celebrity champions who helped raise money and call attention to the High Line. An early celebrity endorser was actor Kevin Bacon, whose father had been an urban planner. Another actor, Edward Norton, also had a family interest (his grandfather was the pioneering urban developer James Rouse). When he read about the High Line project in a magazine article, he tracked down David and Hammond and offered to help out. As you can see from this video about the High Line, made before its opening, what Norton brought was public attention, which is what stars do.

The final box in the planning phase is “the plan,” but that’s a little too simple. In all likelihood, it’s not a single plan but a host of plans: one describing the project’s feasibility in great detail for decision makers, one speaking to the public about its benefits, one setting out the financing (for decision makers and funders), and one describing the design (if it’s a physical project). There will likely be internal documents that serve as a kind of project flow chart, laying out the approval process and decision points, and what each approval will require, so you can marshal the right supporters. Finally, your project may need interim funding, to print materials, commission studies and seek expert advice. You’ll need a plan for getting that funding along the way.

As I said earlier, this isn’t glamorous work; it’s a slog. The amount of detailed work and its complexity will test civic leaders’ commitment and attention spans. There will be victories along the way, and it’s important to broadcast them to keep your supporters’ spirits high. “One of the keys to the High Line’s success,” Hammond writes, “was in always showing progress, even if it was a really small step.” And sometimes there are big steps, like the day in late 2004 when Josh David opened an envelope and found a check for $1 million inside, from a donor he and Hammond had courted.

But make no mistake: This is the period when obstacles are met and overcome—or not. Do the planning phase right, and the next one, the decision phase, will be a triumph. Do it poorly and your chances of success are about as good as winning the lottery: theoretically possible . . . but practically impossible.

Photo of the High Line by Katy Silberger licensed under Creative Commons.

The Montana Study and the Untapped Capacity of Communities

July 6, 2011 By Otis White

We need to remind ourselves from time to time that most of what we know about communities and leadership isn’t new; it’s relearned. Here’s an example: a project called the “Montana Study.” The name is misleading, since it wasn’t really a study. Rather, it was a civic experiment that took place in small, windblown towns in Montana during and just after World War II.

By the time it was finished, some of its sponsors consider it a flop —or, if not a flop, not of much interest. But on the contrary, the Montana Study showed us something inspiring and important: that average people living in unexciting places could do remarkable things in behalf of their communities. It was the first and one of the most important large-scale demonstrations of community citizenship ever mounted in the U.S. Only problem was, once it was demonstrated, it was almost entirely forgotten.

That may have been because of where it took place: in tiny towns scattered across a large and remote state. Or the timing: There was a lot on Americans’ minds in the mid-1940s. Or it could have been a result of its academic origins and the confusion caused by its name. Whatever the reason, it’s a shame the Montana Study faded in memory because there was nothing academic about its aim, approach or results, and the lessons learned apply just as well to communities large and small today.

The Montana Study was the brainchild of Ernest O. Melby, the energetic chancellor of the University of Montana system. (An admirer called him “the crusadin’ist educator this state had ever seen.”) Melby was worried about many problems facing Montana, but one of the most worrisome was what would happen to its small towns after World War II. The war was in its third year for Americans, and people like Melby were looking forward to the soldiers’ return. But would they come back to the cattle towns of Montana they had left in 1941 and 1942? And it wasn’t just the soldiers; others had left for work in urban war factories. Would these men and women come back to Saugus once they’d seen Chicago?

Melby thought the best way to bring back the young—and hold on to future generations—was for the towns to make themselves more interesting. So he approached the Rockefeller Foundation with an idea: Help us put together an experiment in engaging citizens in small Montana towns in improving their communities through study, discussion and action.

He must have been persuasive. The foundation approved a three-year grant, Melby put together a small team of professors to design the program and work with communities, and, in September 1944, the team started looking for towns willing to participate. The first place that asked for help was the west Montana farm town of Lonepine, a place so small, one professor wrote, that “the one-man cheese factory just back of Ted Van der Ende’s home makes up the industrial section.”

The approach was simple, unhurried and open-ended. The professors asked the community to organize a group of people who more or less matched the community’s demographics and were willing to devote 10 weeks to study and discussion. Then they offered a framework for the discussions: The first week was “Why Are We Here,” a look at town history. The second was “Our Town and Its People,” a discussion of demographics and origins. Another week was a look at the local economy called “Our Town and Its Work.” Another was “How to Make Life Better in Our Town.” And so on.

Each study group member was asked to research and write a paper to guide one of the discussions. At every session, a member took notes. The professors took the notes back to Missoula, where they typed them up and (using the technology of the day) mimeographed and returned the notes to the group as a record.

Looking back, you might call these discussions consciousness-raising exercises. They were a way of showing citizens how to see problems and opportunities with a fresh perspective and talk about them in new ways. But then what? At the end of the 10 weeks, the professors asked if the group wanted to do anything more than talk, if they wanted to take on some kind of improvement project.

Of the 15 communities that the Montana Study worked in, most did. And as they did, something wonderful happened: The academics stood aside and the citizens took charge. In Lonepine, members of the study group organized their fellow citizens to build a community library. In Conrad, they rallied neighbors to build a recreation center. In Lewistown, they started a folk festival. Some places even went on to create permanent citizens’ committees. The Greater Libby Association stayed together for years, lobbying for a new hospital, tourist attractions and two school bond referendums.

One town, Darby, created a pageant, “Darby Looks at Itself,” that was built around the things the study group had learned about the town. It had a cast of 125 people, plus members of the high school orchestra—in all, better than a fifth of the town’s entire population. A central figure in the drama was the Devil, who represented “outmoded thinking” about natural resources. At the end of the play, a group of woodsmen, worried about forest depletion, threw the Devil off the stage.

By the end of its three-year life, the Montana Study had awakened citizens in more than a dozen towns to their communities’ possibilities, moved most of these places to take action and started attracting attention around the country. (In the years shortly afterward, educators in 12 other states and five foreign countries borrowed the Montana Study’s guidebooks to begin community study programs. Leaders in one Kansas town wrote, asking how they could “do a Darby” and organize their own community pageant.)

Unfortunately, the Montana Study no longer had Ernest Melby, who had moved from Missoula to, of all places, New York to be a dean at New York University. And for all the good it did in these communities, the Montana Study’s organizers neglected to build institutional or political support. After Melby left, academics at Montana’s colleges made it clear they weren’t interested in tromping around the state, helping people with community problems. The Rockefeller Foundation declined to fund the project any longer, and the Montana Legislature said no as well.

Because it didn’t endure, some associated with the Montana Study thought it really hadn’t accomplished much, but others saw it for what it was: an astonishingly successful experiment in citizen engagement—and a remarkable instrument for energizing communities. One who was involved in the project, Richard Waverly Poston, wrote a few years later:

. . . The Montana Study is of the greatest significance to America’s small communities themselves, no matter where they may be. For here is a technique through which ordinary men and women can coordinate for their own welfare the forces of education, religion, government, economics, culture, and democratic neighborliness, and by this simple means can lift the whole level of living in America. And, as the people of Conrad and Libby have shown, it can be done without the presence of outside experts. Any group of civic-minded men and women in any small community who desire to improve their own town, and are willing to take the trouble, can of their own initiative utilize the techniques of the Montana Study.

When I learned of the Montana Study a few years ago and got hold of the two books about it and the handful of academic papers, it was like finding my own community work—and the work of others I’ve admired—sealed in a time capsule from another era. All the elements of modern-day citizen engagement are there: Seek a cross-section of the community, offer them a structured approach to learning, put them in charge of their own research and discussions, don’t direct but seek only to facilitate. In the end, ask them if they want to go further—and accept if they don’t. But know this: Once most people have been awakened to new possibilities and new ways of thinking about their towns, cities or neighborhoods, they won’t be comfortable with the old ways. And most times they’ll want to turn that new understanding into action.

That’s what happened in Lonepine and a dozen other Montana towns in the 1940s. It could happen in your city too.

« Previous Page

The Leader as Strategist and Persuader

Smart Citizen Engagement . . . and Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

Quality of Life as Community Glue

Planning Phase: The Slog of Civic Projects, and Why It’s Critical

The Montana Study and the Untapped Capacity of Communities

About Otis White

The Great Project

Follow Us on Mastodon