Managing change

Lesson One: It’s All About Land Use

May 28, 2014 By Otis White

OK, that’s an exaggeration. Some things about local government aren’t about land use—public education, for example, and some local services, such as sanitation and public health. But it’s astonishing how many things in local governments do touch on land use.

Some of these things are obvious, like zoning and building permits, downtown renewal efforts and neighborhood development. But others are not so obvious, such as transportation, parks, sports arenas, and festivals.

Transportation is a good example. During my years as a city hall reporter, I never heard city officials talk about the connection between transportation and land use, except in a broad, economic development context. Oh, sure, they talked at length about highways, sidewalks, roads, and transit on the one hand, and the need to turn around parts of the city on the other—but not once (in my presence, at least) did a mayor, city council member, or even a planning director connect the two. It wasn’t until the 1990s that I heard local officials talk about using transportation to shape the places they passed through.

Today you can hardly avoid the subject if you’re a reasonably perceptive reporter talking with reasonably cognizant local officials. The growing awareness of how transportation shapes land use is why there’s such interest these days in bike lanes, walking, and transit. These forms of transportation concentrate land uses, as opposed to cars, which spread them out. Denser land uses create livelier urban environments. And livelier urban environments change how people interact with place—my description of the central issue for local governments.

And transportation is just one of those things whose connection to land use is more appreciated today. Take parks. Until the 1990s, most local officials saw them as urban amenities. And if you go further back in urban history to the 1800s, they were seen as beneficial to public health. (That’s one reason Central Park has long been described as “the lungs of New York City.”) But shapers of land use? That’s a more recent understanding, dating to the building of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996 and Millennium Park in Chicago in 2004, both of which dramatically raised property values and the density of land uses around them. (And, not to put too fine a point on it, created new interactions between people and places.)

I could go on. Even schools and sanitation have a land-use aspect. Ask any residential real estate agent what effect a good neighborhood school has on nearby property values. And sewer line extensions are, along with transportation improvements, the greatest predictors of future land uses.

So how are land-use stories played out in local government, and how could you cover them in new and interesting ways? Well, you know the traditional stories: “NIMBYs” vs. “greedy developers.” You have the neighbors in bright T-shirts at zoning board or city council meetings, waving signs, and complaining loudly about being overrun with traffic. And on the other side, lawyers in blue suits with architectural renderings, property tax projections, and the promise of lawsuits if things don’t go their way.

Who is right here? The side that promises the best possible interactions for people and place—which could be the neighbors or the developer . . . but is likely neither. That’s because neighborhood associations too often stand for the status quo. They don’t want to improve their neighborhoods; they want to preserve them in amber. And while developers favor change, their changes are often the wrong ones, ones that will diminish the interactions of people and place by creating parking lots, inward-looking buildings, and streets with no sidewalks.

So if NIMBYs and build-and-run developers are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of change in your city—almost equally wrongheaded—who then is rightheaded?

Ah, there are your stories: Who in your city is talking about and working toward a more interesting and attractive urban environment? What are the elements of their vision? What have cities or suburbs similar to yours done to create these environments? What were the obstacles they faced? Who in local government shares the vision? Who opposes it and why? What is the government doing today to create livelier places? What is it doing that hinders such places from developing? (Hint: Check city parking requirements for new retail, office, and residential properties.)

Other story ideas: What is the state of transit in your city? Do transit officials work alongside city officials in planning denser environments? If so, how? If not, why not? Are there developers who want to create walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented developments? (Hint: There almost surely are.) What do they see as the barriers to livelier streets and neighborhoods? What do local architects say?

Are there business improvement districts in your city? (If you don’t know what they are, Google the term.) If so, which have been successful, which have not had much impact, and why? If there aren’t BIDs, why haven’t they come to your city? What about Main Street programs? (Again, Google the term.)

Is gentrification happening in your city? Why did the gentrifiers move to some inner-city neighborhoods but not others? (Take an evening and knock on doors.) Given what you’ve learned, what is the most likely next neighborhood for gentrification and why? (Interview some real estate agents under age 40.) What has been the reaction of longtime neighbors to the newcomers? Is there a backlash?

Who bikes to work? What have they experienced? Who walks to work? What have they seen and learned? Who could afford to drive but chooses instead to take the bus? (These are called “choice riders.” Again, Google the term.) Why do they take transit, and what have they seen? (Hey, ride along with some.) What is the transit system doing to attract these riders?

Find the most successful public park in your city, in terms of usage. (If the parks department doesn’t have statistics, go out after work with a handheld counter and notepad and count the people.) What makes this park so successful? If it’s a large park, find a small one that’s equally successful on a per-acre basis. Again, what are its secrets? Call the nearest university with a landscape architecture program and interview some professors about what makes some urban parks successful and others desolate.

In which neighborhoods do people walk for exercise, entertainment, or to shop? (You may have to use the counter and a notebook.) Why do they walk there but not in the next neighborhood? What is the local government doing to encourage walkability? (Check sidewalk requirements.) If sidewalks are broken, who is responsible for the repairs—and does anyone actually enforce these requirements? What besides the sidewalks are the obstacles to walkable neighborhoods? (As a sidebar, interview public health officials about the connection between obesity and the lack of regular exercise—of which walking is considered the best.)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. What is your city doing to improve the way people interact with places? Where is it making these improvements, and why is it investing in these locations? What resources is the city bringing to bear on creating more interesting and attractive places? What have been the results, and what have been the responses by supporters and opponents, developers and residents new and old?

Now, stop a moment and think. Wouldn’t writing these stories be a lot more fun than covering the “NIMBYs” vs. “greedy developers” showdowns at the zoning board? Wouldn’t these stories teach readers more about their community and how their government works? Covering NIMBYs-vs.-developers stories is like writing about a baseball game that was played last year. Focus on land use and the forces that are changing it, and you’ll be writing about the game . . . before the players ever take the field.

This is one of a series of postings about better ways of understanding local government and writing about local politics. To read the introduction, please click here.

Photo by Dylan Passmore licensed under Creative Commons.

What Would FDR Do?

April 23, 2014 By Otis White

We usually think of politics in communities in two ways: as the “big-P” politics of campaigns and referendum—noisy, zero-sum contests that get lots of public attention—and the “small-P” politics of gaining approval for policies and projects. These are the nonzero-sum contests of compromise and tradeoffs that revolve around regulatory approvals, planning board and city council votes, and the occasional state law.

But there’s a third version, a kind of meta-politics that’s critical to progress but rarely gets noticed. It’s the politics of public opinion. How important is public opinion? Listen to Abraham Lincoln: “With public sentiment,” Lincoln said, “nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”

But how, exactly, do you mold public sentiment? And are most civic leaders good at it? The answer to the second question is no. The answer to the first can best be understood by turning to another president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, second only to Lincoln, was the greatest molder of public opinion ever to occupy the White House.

Roosevelt’s masterpiece was changing American attitudes about involvement in World War II. Yes, Pearl Harbor was the defining moment, but by December 1941 public opinion had already changed greatly, as Lynne Olson tells us in her recent book, “Those Angry Days.” And that was Roosevelt’s work.

He could not have faced a more daunting task. There was a strict “neutrality act” passed in the mid-1930s that banned arms sales to any nation at war. America’s own military was a shell. (Weapons were so scarce that only a third of U.S. soldiers and sailors had ever trained with them.) Congress was overwhelmingly opposed to intervention, and so were the American people.

So what did FDR do? He bided his time (to the despair of the increasingly desperate British) as he set in motion several forces that changed public opinion. The most important: He quietly encouraged nonpartisan citizens’ groups to begin campaigning for American support for the Allies. Then Roosevelt (to all appearances) gradually acceded to their demands, first in asking for changes in the neutrality act, then in offering more generous aid to the British, then in lobbying for a buildup of the military, and finally in asking Congress for a peacetime draft. It was a step-by-step process that took two years’ time, with Roosevelt never more than a half-step in front of the public.

Today we would call this “leading from behind”: letting others be the point people for change as you remain in the background. It requires a secure person to lead this way. Secure in two ways: First, emotionally secure enough to let others occupy the spotlight. Second, secure in the messiness but ultimate utility of public debate.

And this brings me to the single most serious mistake public officials make in trying to advance policies and change public opinion: They spring surprises. They announce sweeping policy proposals long before the public has accepted there’s even a problem. When they do it this way, they’re often shocked by the backlash

It is much better to do policy the FDR way: First, air the problem and its consequences. Then step aside and let others debate its seriousness and possible solutions. As the demand for action rises, step back into the discussion with a reasonable way forward. (And, yes, along the way you can do things to encourage the debate.)

Does this diminish your reputation by making you look indecisive? Well, Roosevelt was accused of that in 1940 and 1941. But reach in your pocket and pull out a dime. Which leader’s face do you find? Roosevelt’s or one of his critics’?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by UNC Greensboro Special Collections and University Archives licensed under Creative Commons.

The Opportunity: The Door to Civic Progress

January 13, 2014 By Otis White

For two years, I’ve been interviewing civic leaders for a podcast. I look for two kinds of people to interview. Most are leaders who’ve accomplished something strikingly successful in their communities; a smaller number are people who, through their experiences, have learned a leadership skill that’s valuable for others to know.

The format is simple. I introduce the leaders. We talk for about 15 minutes about their successes or skills, and I close by asking them for advice: If someone from another community asked how to take on a difficult project or master this skill, what would they say?

In the 23 interviews I’ve done to date, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about what civic leaders do and how they think. I’ve learned that most of their work isn’t heroic or visionary. It’s more like project management, as they move from one meeting, planning session, or presentation to another.

I’ve learned something about the motivations of these people. They seem driven to accomplish something meaningful, and communities offer an ideal stage for these achievements because civic projects often end with things you can reach out and touch—buildings, roads, and parks—things that will endure for decades. This concreteness and sense of permanence appeals to civic leaders.

And finally I’ve learned that despite the long hours of unpaid labor, the tedium of public meetings, and stress of occasional conflict, many of these people consider civic work an escape from their regular jobs. One civic leader told me away from the microphone that his project, which had occupied him for a decade and a half, was, outside of his family life, “the most fun I’ve ever had.”

These are valuable things to know. It explains why cities are undergoing a renaissance these days. Somehow cities have learned to attract and harness the work of these leaders more effectively than in the past. And it assures me that this isn’t a phase. People will always seek meaning in their lives, and if cities continue offering a stage for these seekers, they’ll be successful.

Interesting as all this was to learn, though, it wasn’t why I started the podcast. I’ve actually been looking for something else: the structure of civic progress.

This is an old interest of mine. In fact, I started this blog four years ago so I could think out loud about civic progress, how it worked, and how we could make it work better. Along the way, I’ve made some stabs at a grand theory. A few years ago, I created a map of community change showing step by step how leaders moved from awareness of a need to a widely accepted solution.

Most of the map still seems right to me, but I’ve learned from the interviews that an important element was missing. You can’t, I’ve come to understand, view civic progress simply as a process. You have to see it as a system as well; one that, in the right circumstances, can be mobilized as a process. Leaders, then, have three responsibilities: Make sure the system is healthy, learn how the process of civic progress works, and know how to transform the system into a campaign for community improvement.

And what is the spark that mobilizes the system into a process? I call it “the opportunity.” It’s not the same as a need nor is it necessarily a solution. It’s more like a path to the solution. If civic progress were a sport, we’d call it an “opening” the hole in a line of scrimmage that a running back sees, the pass a point guard makes to set up a score, the moves a chess master sees that lead in five turns to checkmate.

If this sounds confusing, bear with me. It’s harder to understand the opportunity in theory than in practice, and the interviews offer plenty of examples. Maybe the best was in my interview with Cathy Woolard, the former Atlanta city council member (and, later, council president) who stumbled across a transformative project called the Beltline and saw, in an instant, how it could solve many of Atlanta’s transportation and land-use problems.

Here’s how she describes that moment of insight: “It was literally the right day, the perfect council member, the perfect district, for me to be able to look at (this idea) and know immediately what the benefit would be to the residents of my district in particular.” Because she saw the opportunity offered by the Beltline and figured a way through a maze of political and bureaucratic processes, Woolard was able to move this visionary project from grad-school planning thesis to urban reality. Today the Beltline, a circle of trails and parks around downtown Atlanta, is being built, and the sections that are open are wildly popular with cyclists, runners, and strollers.

You can see another opportunity in the interview with Scott Tigchelaar, a movie studio president who talked the small town of Senoia, Georgia into turning itself into a permanent film location. What triggered this, he said, was the sale of some land in downtown Senoia. Over the years Tigchelaar had used the town for movie locations (if you watched the 1991 movie “Fried Green Tomatoes,” you’ve seen Senoia). He feared a new owner would put up something that would ruin the town for movie shootings, so he approached the mayor and council with a deal: Create new design and zoning laws, allow us to buy the land and build some appropriate new buildings, and we’ll bring you a steady stream of movie productions, along with tourism opportunities. (It worked. Filming goes on year-round in Senoia, tourists flock there to see where their favorite TV shows are filmed, and the town has a host of new restaurants and shops.)

And then there’s John Turner, the businessman who helped restore a river through downtown Columbus, Georgia and, by doing so, turned a slow, muddy stream into roaring whitewater. Some had speculated as far back as the 1970s that Columbus might have world-class rapids beneath its downtown dams. But it wasn’t until Turner and others learned 20 years later that those dams were failing that he saw the opportunity to tear them down and create the longest urban whitewater attraction in America.

Opportunities arrive, then, when a long-felt need (to change land use and transportation in Atlanta, to preserve a small town’s unique economy, to do something about a neglected river) is connected with a sudden change in the environment (a visionary plan drops on a council member’s desk, tracts of land are offered for sale, old dams show signs of failing) and a way forward is seen (master the transportation planning process, get the city council to agree to design standards, gain government approval to remove the dams and alter the river).

And who connects these things and sees the way forward? Leaders do.

In fact, this is probably the most creative thing that leaders do in cities. Like great business innovators (think Steve Jobs) or talented politicians (think FDR or LBJ), great civic leaders see paths that are hidden to most of us and connect things others hadn’t put together. Not all civic leaders can do this because it takes a special mind to see an opening to success and a strong will to push an entire community through the opening.

If you’re not that kind of leader, don’t despair. There are other things civic leaders do that are critically important, such as tending the system and managing the process of civic progress. I’ll talk about these leadership roles in future posts.

For the time being, though, keep this image in mind: Civic progress is neither a system nor a process; it’s both. And the door between the two is the opportunity. Trust me on this. I had 23 great teachers who showed it to me.

Photo by lau.svensson licensed under Creative Commons.

What’s New in Cities . . . and What’s Truly New

October 17, 2013 By Otis White

Cities have been around for thousands of years, and most of their biggest issues are nearly as old: safety, sanitation, transportation, education, commercial development, regulation, and so on. We think of new and better ways of doing things, but for the most part we are, as technology critics so often put it, “paving the cow paths.” That is, we are merely making the old more efficient.

Every now and then, though, something truly new comes along. And if we apply old ways of thinking to truly new issues, we are going to make a mess. For the past three years, I’ve been trying to see what’s truly new in cities, and I’ve done it with some 19th century technology: a filing system. Every time I run across a newspaper article, nonprofit report, or academic study that describes something that seems new, I place it in the file. (I do it on my computer, but you could do it with paper if you’re so inclined.)

I decided recently to take a look at the file, starting with its first year, March 2011 to March 2012. (A little distance helps in spotting the new.) There were 77 items in the first year’s file. The vast majority, 62, were the result of changes in technology, four were economic changes, and 11 reflected some new way of thinking or living.

It didn’t surprise me that technology took up more than 80 percent of the new. We’ve long known that technology is a major driver of change. And, sure enough, some were of the “paving the cow paths” variety—the rise of public-safety cameras, apps that help people report service problems, the growth of electronic tolling. If you’re not a toll-taker, these aren’t technologies that will radically change your life. They just make old systems work better.

But some of the technological changes in the file will have a much deeper impact. There are apps, for instance, that make it easy for small groups to map every public asset in a neighborhood, dramatically shifting accountability. There is a whole new category of “sharing” activities made possible by smartphones, from bike sharing and car sharing to apartment sharing and even parking-space sharing. And then there are e-books.

The biggest mistake governments make is when they think of these things as business as usual. E-books are not just paper books in a new form. They will dramatically change the nature of libraries. And the “sharing” technologies will demand that local governments think in new ways about transportation and regulation.

But maybe the most intriguing items in my file were changes in beliefs, practices, and lifestyles. One was the rapid rise in people living alone in cities (that is, with no spouse or roommate). Is this just a very small family, or will solo living cause new demands on cities? I’d bet on the latter. One prediction: It will fuel the demand for safe public spaces.

There were others: Philanthropy’s rise in urban leadership, as well as new understandings about childhood development that may take us far beyond pre-K programs, back to the first two years of life. And, of course, there were the food trucks.

Worth repeating: Some of these new technologies and changes in lifestyle and belief will require governments to think anew. If you try to regulate food trucks as bricks-and-mortar restaurants, you’ll soon be in tears. It won’t work. You have to treat food trucks as a whole new category.

You won’t do that, though, if you haven’t developed the habit of seeing what’s new. I recommend a file. Just toss in everything that seems new to you and, after some time has elapsed, go through it and ask: Is this truly new, or is it just more asphalt on the cow path? If it’s truly new, then ask: How do we think about this new thing?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Alan Stanton licensed under Creative Commons.

The Coordinated Swarm

April 24, 2013 By Otis White

What would you rather face in a life-or-death situation: a charging rhinoceros or a swarm of killer bees? Well, every man for himself, but I’d take my chances with the rhino. The reason: I might be able to think of one quick move to avoid a two-ton rhino, but there’s no outrunning the killer bees.

And that’s what I sometimes advise public leaders to consider as they’re moving from planning to action. The temptation is to be the rhino, to see action as one great masterstroke. But an unanticipated obstacle (a lawsuit, an unexpected environmental review) or a determined opponent can turn your masterstroke into a long slog to nowhere. To change analogies, it’s like marching an army up a single road. If there are problems at the front, soldiers in the rear can only sit and wait.

The alternative is to spread out, to attack problems from many directions, not willy-nilly but in a coordinated fashion. It is to be a swarm of killer bees.

This sounds like simple advice, but I recognize that it’s hard to follow for two reasons. First, it’s not the way our minds work. Conventional strategic thinking commands us to find the most direct route from where we are to where we want to be—to march up that single road. What coordinated swarms call for is not strategic thinking but systems thinking.

The second problem is that a charging rhino is heroic, in its own way. A swarm of bees? Not so much. So there’s a natural appeal for leaders in the masterstroke, the single great achievement that will form their legacy.

So what does a coordinated swarm look like and how is it different from a masterstroke? The swarm is a set of relatively modest actions that attack problems and opportunities from several sides. Let’s say you’re trying to turn around a troubled downtown. The swarm might involve dealing with public safety, cleanliness, appearance, retail and development problems in ways that reinforce one another. That way, nuisances are dealt with as the streets look cleaner, new stores are opened as banners are hung, trees planted and sidewalks widened, and zoning issues are fixed as new developments are sought.

None of this is heroic stuff and may not even be noticed for a while. But attacking problems from many directions recognizes the complexity and interconnectivity of urban issues, as well as the cumulative impact that small, reinforcing actions can have. It also brings something vital to the earliest stages of problem-solving, which is momentum—the sense that something, at last, is starting to go right.

Interestingly, what sometimes follows a successful coordinated swarm is a masterstroke, a major action that changes the environment. For a downtown, it could be a new performing arts center or sports arena, a light-rail system or a major new mixed-use development. Masterstrokes can work in these cases because the swarm has lowered many of the obstacles and built confidence that leaders know what they’re doing.

I’ve seen coordinated swarms work many times in many places. (The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street program is designed around attacking declining downtowns from four directions at once.) But I recognize that their greatest impediment is that they force us to think about, well, how we think. To embrace the swarm, we have to understand systems and accept their complexity, playing by their rules rather than our own. They force us to enter the world of unintended consequences and feedback loops that amplify our actions, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad.

Learning to think about systems asks a lot of overworked city managers, mayors or downtown executives who are simply trying to fix bad situations. But turning a coordinated swarm of killer bees loose on a problem can be the most effective way to clear the way for the rhino that can smash through those final barriers.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by dcJohn licensed under Creative Commons.

« Previous Page

Lesson One: It’s All About Land Use

What Would FDR Do?

The Opportunity: The Door to Civic Progress

What’s New in Cities . . . and What’s Truly New

The Coordinated Swarm

About Otis White

The Great Project

Follow Us on Mastodon