Small-p politics

Lesson Six: The Secret of Government Success

September 16, 2014 By Otis White

It is often said that Americans don’t like government. While that may be true in the singular, we certainly like it in the plural. That is, we like governments—and lots of them. There are more than 90,000 local governments in the United States: 38,910 “general purpose” governments (cities, counties, towns), 12,880 school districts, and 38,266 “special purpose” governments.

If you dig around in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Census of Governments, you’ll find some interesting trends. After World War II, the number of local governments declined, due mostly to school-district consolidations. (Believe it or not, we have one-fifth the number of school districts we had in the early 1950s.) Then, in the 1970s, the trend reversed itself and the number of local governments grew, slowly but steadily. The largest number of new governments were special purpose governments (things like sewer, parks, and transit districts), but there was also growth in municipalities.

I’ve seen it in Atlanta, where I live, which in recently years has sprouted cities in unincorporated suburban areas, brand new cities with names like Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek, Peachtree Corners, and so on. Atlanta has a lot of governments, but we are by no means the most fragmented region in the country. That title belongs to St. Louis, where there are 90 municipal governments in St. Louis County alone—not including the actual city of St. Louis. These are mostly small places, anonymous even to those a short distance away. One, the town of Champ, has somewhere between 12 and 14 residents, depending on who’s counting. Not kidding.

If you look around your own region and start counting the governments, you may be surprised by how many you find. Keep in mind: It isn’t just cities and counties, but those rapidly multiplying special districts as well. And don’t forget the federal and state governments. Almost any big issue—transportation, economic development, public safety—will involve multiple governments. As a test, next time your district attorney announces the results of a major drug bust, count the federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies represented on the podium behind her. You’ll need a tally sheet to keep track.

Point is, we live in a country that believes power is best exercised by a herd and not a shepherd. And while your city may be the largest member of the herd, it is still dependent on others—and most likely lots of others—if it wants to do anything important. The word we use for this cooperation by interests not compelled to cooperate is collaboration. If you want to take your reporting to a higher level, try seeing this cooperation (or its absence) and reporting on it. In doing so, you’ll find yourself at the heart of what makes governments successful, which is their ability to work together.

Caution: I’m not talking about, well, talk. Government leaders are good at praising cooperation. After all, most of us have had it drilled into our heads since kindergarten that we should play well together. Words, though, are one thing, actions another, and your job is to find where your city hall is doing important things with others, where it should be working with others but isn’t, how the effective collaborations work, and who’s behind them.

To understand the mechanics of collaboration, you might begin with a couple of things I’ve written. One is on how collaborations get started (and, yes, talk is a first step but only a step); the other is about the central skill involved in putting collaborations together. (You have to ask the right way.)

Then just start looking around. You may be surprised by the number of collaborations at work in your region and their importance in getting things done. I wrote a book a few years ago about how one civic project changed a city; what I discovered was it was created by a web of collaborations involving state and local governments, a public university, a host of elected officials, and numerous interests outside of government. My challenge in writing the book was to figure out who put these collaborations together and how they did it.

That’s yours, as well: See the collaboration, then figure out why it works and who made it happen. The result, I promise you, will be some of the most insightful reporting of your career—and probably the first of its kind for your news organization.

So, how do you find collaborations? I suggest two ways. First is the way I suggested in Lessons Two, Three, and Four (on where civic ideas come from, the role of city councils, and the art of compromise): Identify some big civic improvements of the last few years and reverse engineer them. This time, instead of looking for the idea path, the deal brokers, and the key compromises, ask: Who was involved in this effort? Why did they cooperate? And how were they persuaded to join in? To make the reporting interesting, look for those who did the persuading and ask: What did they say and why did it work?

This will work for big civic projects, but you’ll also learn there are everyday collaborations in your region. To find these, you’ll have to ask around. Start with the city planner’s office (planners have a good eye for these things). If your city has a downtown business improvement district, ask the BID’s director. (Like planners, BIDs are usually good at collaboration.) And, of course, pay a visit to your region’s council of governments. (Don’t know what that is? Read this.)

Then just look in some likely places for collaboration. Does your school system work with the local government on issues like pedestrian safety or recreation? Does your mayor ever meet with mayors from nearby cities? What comes from these meetings? If your region has more than one transit system, how do they manage transfers, and how do they manage fare-sharing? As you ask around, you may find that there are organizations that help with collaborations. The most obvious are the councils of governments, but you may find that civic leagues, professional organizations, and municipal associations also help introduce government leaders to one another.

Then ask this question: Where should governments be working together—but aren’t? You can interview public administration professors at a nearby university for their suggestions, but the answers may be obvious as you look around. Transit systems, for example, need to work with city planners so they can anticipate demand. Well . . . does yours? If so, how? As children walk to schools, they need safe passages. How does your school system work with the city to be sure they have them? How do your city’s public works officials coordinate with nearby cities on things like snow removal and street resurfacing projects? What kinds of mutual-assistance agreements are there between your city’s police and fire departments and those in cities nearby? How well have these worked in crises?

As you get into these stories, you’ll see the hidden structure of government, the way things actually work day to day, for better or worse. What you’ll discover is that this world is different from what is discussed at city council meetings—and radically different from what is talked about in campaigns. And during the next election cycle this will present you with a challenge: Do you bring this new understanding to your political coverage? And if so, how?

A postscript: Every region needs collaboration, even places like North Carolina and Texas where city governments tend to be big and powerful. After all, there are multiple governments even in those places, from school systems and transit authorities to state and federal agencies. But in places with lots of smaller governments, as in the Atlanta and St. Louis areas, collaboration isn’t just a good thing, it’s critical.

Because it is so fragmented, St. Louis has worried about its government structure for more than a half-century. Over that period, it has made numerous attempts at doing something about it, including full-scale government consolidation referendums. In fact, it’s still at it, through an organization called Better Together, which appears to be mounting yet another attempt at municipal merger. Good luck, since every other effort has failed, usually overwhelmingly.

If I could advise St. Louis leaders, I’d tell them to stop putting so much effort into consolidation and invest instead in collaboration. There are two reasons: First, this is likely to be much more successful in the short run. Second, in the long run, collaboration may be the best route to consolidation. That’s because as long as local leaders don’t know one another or the strengths and weaknesses of the city next door, they’re going to resist combining anything. But if their police and fire departments start coordinating activities and their planning departments work together, they’ll build the familiarity and trust that opens the door to combining services. And when there are enough combined services, who knows? The voters may decide it’s time to take the final step and just merge the cities.

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 Vu Nguyen licensed under Creative Commons.

Lesson Four: The Art of the Compromise

July 15, 2014 By Otis White

I’d like to persuade you to stop badmouthing the “c” word. The word I have in mind is “compromise.” Done right, a compromise is a way of opening the door to change by reducing the objections of interest groups. And it is the closest thing in politics to an art form.

That doesn’t mean all compromises are good, of course. Some satisfy interests but don’t create much change. In fact, some compromises are designed just to paper over problems. (In Washington, this is called “kicking the can down the road.”) Others appear at first to be ingenious solutions but come apart because they aren’t sustainable. And some look so ungainly that even participants call them “ugly babies.“

But just as you can admire the creative process while sometimes not liking the art, I encourage you to step back and look at how your city hall arrives at these deals. Yes, by all means write about the bad deals and car-wreck compromises. But also develop a little curiosity about why some compromises DO work. Look for patterns in the way they are arrived at in your city. Figure out who your city’s compromise artists are. And by all means, don’t denigrate the art form.

Before we begin, though, a little perspective: If you’ve read the introduction to this series and the first three installments, then you can see some themes developing. Projects and policy ideas tend to flow into city hall from the outside. The city council is at or near the center of decision making, sometimes in the lead role, sometimes in the mayor’s shadow. And the central issues of cities have to do with land and how it is used by people.

This lesson is about the most important work that mayors and city councils (and sometimes others) do, which is creating compromises that allow projects and big policy ideas to move forward.

Now, please don’t charge out the door looking for these things. Major civic projects and big policy changes don’t come along every day. Most of what mayors and city councils do is routine: creating and amending budgets, approving small policy changes, making appointments or approving personnel changes, reviewing contracts, and acting as quasi-judges on zoning matters and development decisions.

But that’s why you should sit up when one of these difficult decisions does come along. That’s when talented politicians do their best work, bringing the interests together, finding hidden areas of agreement, plotting the way forward, and figuring out how to present the results in ways acceptable to other politicians and the public.

And they do this in one of two basic ways, by personality or process. That is, they personally hammer out a compromise, or they send the dispute through some sort of process that the combatants and larger community feel is fair.

Here are two examples of the personality-driven compromise. First, a small but telling compromise authored by Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle allowing ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft to operate in his city while offering taxi owners just enough to quieten their opposition. (Why is it “telling”? Because a mayor who can knock out a compromise like this in his first six months in office demands our attention.) 2023 update: Ed Murray was, indeed, a talented mayor who was undone after three years in office by a sex scandal.

The second, more sweeping example is Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s 2012 plan for reforming his city’s schools, which required that he get state legislative approval and the governor’s support after reaching a series of compromises with local business interests, educators, reform advocates, and labor and ethnic leaders.

The personality-driven approach seems to be the way most compromises come about, and in cities with strong mayor forms of government that’s what you expect to find. (Story idea: If your city has a strong mayor system and there are big disputes not being resolved, why? Does the mayor not consider these things important, does he not consider fashioning compromises as part of his job, is he bad at this work, or is there some other reason? What do others in the city say?)

The other way of reaching compromises is with a process. San Diego’s “ugly baby” compromise on housing was a “locked-room” process. Basically, the city council president sent the interests to a room and told them to come back with something they could all support.

Other processes involve task forces, which involve broader community interests, and mediation. Mediation was how Minneapolis resolved a difficult dispute over a light-rail line. In this case, you see the importance of fairness in a process. The compromise was reached after the mediator proposed it, but it was pretty much the same set of ideas others had suggested. When it came this time from a neutral party, city officials took it to heart.

Finally, there are those compromises that are so complex they defy easy description. Detroit’s “grand bargain,” by which it will exit bankruptcy in the months ahead, is a web of compromises involving a federal bankruptcy judge, the governor, the city’s emergency manager, state legislative leaders, foundation leaders, the mayor, business executives, Wall Street interests, labor leaders, and a host of others. Which parts of the bargain were contributed by leaders and which came as a result of the bankruptcy process? Hard to say precisely, but the biggest elements (including the foundations stepping in to support the art museum) were clearly the work of creative leaders.

So, how can you report on compromises in your city in new ways? Well, you can start by reverse engineering them. That is, you can begin with the deal, which is almost always announced publicly, then ask who was involved at each step and how each element of the compromise fell into place. I promise you this will make a great narrative that will tell you and your readers much about how your city works.

Then you can ask not only how the compromise came about but why. People usually agree to things involving sacrifice only because they fear an alternative. So what were the alternatives? And how were they presented to the different interest groups? (This alone may be a fascinating story, as you may see that the alternatives presented to one side were the opposites of what was presented to the other.)

Finally, you can revisit some earlier compromises. Some likely will have failed. Why? Were they too ambitious, not ambitious enough—or were they designed (consciously or not) for failure? If they were designed for failure, what were the design flaws? For those compromises that succeeded, again . . . why? Did the interests find the alternatives so frightening that they stuck with the bargain through good times and bad? Did participants discover over time that there was hidden value in this new way of doing things? Or did the interests just move on to other issues?

What about the personalities and processes behind these compromises? What makes some leaders good at crafting deals? Do they use a standard way (some leaders use anger and threats, others tend toward calmness and reason) or does each situation demand a different approach? If they sent the dispute through a process, what was the process? Why did it work? Why did people accept it as a legitimate way of deciding these things?

This is the heart of civic decision making as it plays out inside city halls. And it’s what makes talented politicians so valuable. Perhaps the best comparison is to business leaders who see markets others can’t and ways of reaching those markets that don’t exist yet. A book ghostwritten for Donald Trump called this “the art of the deal.” (There’s little evidence Trump was much of a dealmaker, but others in business are.) In politics, the compromise that allows progress while sustaining itself is the work of art.

Footnote: So why do reporters denigrate compromises? I’ll let others do the full analysis, but let me offer one theory. It has to do with nonzero-sum contests.

Huh? Most city hall reporters also report on political campaigns, and elections are zero-sum contests. (Google the term.) That is, every vote I get is a vote you have to overcome and exceed in order to win. There aren’t that many zero-sum contests in our lives. Sports, conventional land wars, card games, a few others.

Most of our lives is spent in a nonzero-sum world, where both sides can gain from a transaction and, sometimes as a result of cooperating, the pie grows. I hope your newsroom is a nonzero-sum environment, along with your family life, your relationships with friends, even your dealings with merchants. (If you’re happy with the car you bought and the dealer is pleased with the money, then voila. Nonzero sum.)

The problem for some reporters and politicians is that they have trouble making the transition from the artificial world of zero-sum elections to the more common world of nonzero-sum government. Put another way, they can’t believe that a compromise where no one walks away with a clear win isn’t . . . well, fishy.

If that is so, then every successful marriage, enduring business, and long-term friendship is fishy. Because like good compromises at city hall, they too live in a nonzero-sum world.

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 Cabinet Office licensed under Creative Commons.

Lesson Three: Seeing the Unseen City Council

June 24, 2014 By Otis White

Here’s where I deliver the poli-sci lecture I never got in college, the one titled “Introduction to Local Governments.” There are two types of local government, and if you are as puzzled by your city council as I was as a young reporter, it may be because you are looking at one type and expecting the other.

The type you most likely have is a council-manager form of government, where there’s a full-time city manager and a city council that includes someone called “mayor.” The one you may be expecting is a mayor-council form of government (sometimes called a “strong mayor” system), where the mayor functions both as political leader and government executive, the way the president does in Washington.

What’s the difference? Well, to begin, there’s that city manager person, who is probably a professional (in the sense that she went to college, possibly studied public administration, and may hold a certificate or two). But in truth, mayor-council forms of government have such professionals as well.

The real difference is the manager’s relationship with city employees and the city council—and the city’s council’s role in public policy.

In council-manager governments, city managers are hired—by city councils, of course—to run governments the way CEOs run corporations or superintendents run school systems. That is, with a free hand, more or less. If things work as they should, a council member’s only contact with city employees will be through the city manager or at city council meetings. (Story alert: If council members are phoning city employees directly, that’s a management problem and could be an ethics violation. Call your state’s city managers association or a nearby university’s public management department to find out why.)

Another important feature: When it comes to proposing budgets, suggesting changes in city policies, or offering new ways of structuring city departments, it’s the city manager who proposes and the council that disposes. That’s why she sits at the dais along with the council. She is constantly bringing them things to consider.

Let’s turn now to the other type, the less common mayor-council (“strong mayor”) form of government. Here the mayor is the one who is the full-time employee with responsibilities for administration and proposals of policy and procedure. AND he’s elected—not beholden to the city council for his position.

I won’t get into the strengths and weaknesses of the systems. It’s an interesting subject but not relevant for most city hall reporters. After all, you have the system you have; your job is to understand it. (If you are interested, I can point you to a good book: “More Than Mayor or Manager: Campaigns to Change Form of Government in America’s Large Cities.”)

Where I would focus your attention is on the city council, which may be the least analyzed yet important part of city government. This may seem like an odd statement because, as a city hall reporter, you’ve probably sat through countless council hearings and meetings. (I did as well.) And you’ve reported what council members said and did. You may have interviewed every council member at one time or another.

But here’s where your reporting may have fallen short: You probably haven’t tried to understand the council as a political body—how it makes decisions, who brokers compromises and deals, how the deals come about, how rewards are offered to those who go along and punishments meted out to those who don’t. And here’s a key insight: These things happen differently in council-manager systems than in mayor-council ones. And they happen differently in places that elect council members by districts than in those that elect them citywide.

Places that elect their councils citywide (and until recently that included such big cities as Detroit and Seattle) tend to have councils that work on consensus, a bit like the ruling party in a parliamentary government. After all, everyone represents the same interests and has pretty much the same power.

District elections change that calculation. People in the southern parts of the city may be very different from those in the northern, with wholly different concerns and interests. So consensus becomes more difficult in councils elected by district, and brokering becomes more common (these are deals where you get what you need, and I get what I need—even though what you get and I get may be different and unrelated).

When you have brokering, you have brokers. Who are they on the city council you cover? How do they work? When the council casts split votes, are the splits predictable? (City council votes are one of the easiest things to analyze since they’re public record.) What do the patterns tell you about politics in your city? Are the divisions ethnic, economic, geographic, generational, ideological, partisan . . . or some combination? If you go back further in time, have some council members drifted from one faction to another? If so, why?

Interview the council members. When they are divided, whom do they look to for compromises or deals? Is it the presiding officer, the mayor (who may or may not be the presiding officer), a factional member or two, a senior council member, or someone outside the council?

There’s something else about district elections that’s important. Districts often usher in something called “council member prerogative,” where the council defers to the district representative on issues relating exclusively to his district. (For a glimpse of how prerogative works in Philadelphia, read this.) What does it mean? It means the council member is pretty much the boss of his ward. If you need the city’s permission to do something in that district, such as rezone property, you need that member’s blessing or you can forget about it. Does this suggest any stories to you? It should.

If district elections change how city councils work, then mayor-council governments change things even more. This has to do with the mayor’s independence, which comes from two sources. First, he’s elected separately from the council. Second, the city charter in a strong mayor form of government almost certainly spells out the mayor’s duties, and they’re likely to be . . . well, strong.

Hold on, though. Don’t council-manager governments also have mayors? Yes, but they usually fail one or both of the independence tests. That is, they’re either not elected independently (they are selected from among the council members), or they are given few powers other than presiding at city council meetings and representing the city at ceremonies.

Compare that to a strong mayor system. These mayors manage the city bureaucracy, propose budgets, and may even have veto power over council decisions. But their greatest power may lie simply in their sense of the job and the council’s sense of its job. To understand, let’s go back to the poli-sci lecture.

In a council-manager government, the responsibilities for leading the city are divided between the council and city manager. The manager is usually the “inside” leader and expected to offer proposals on improving government performance. But it’s not common for a city manager to accept responsibility for the larger city—the place whose central issue is people and places and the interaction of the two. That usually falls to city council members who are, after all, elected by that larger city.

In a strong mayor government, the mayor assumes both sets of responsibilities. That is, he’s both inside manager and outside leader, the one who worries about government efficiency, police procedures, and budgets, but also downtown renewal, neighborhood revitalization, the city’s image, economic development, social unrest, and a dozen other things.

Where does that leave council members in a strong mayor system? Some seek to be issue entrepreneurs, searching for problems or opportunities the mayor isn’t working on. A few take up the role of political brokers within the council. But most are happy just to tend to their districts and let the mayor worry about the big things. (If you’ve ever wondered what Chicago aldermen do with their time, read this to find out.)

And what does this mean for you as a reporter or blogger? I hope it leaves you with newfound interest in your city council as a political body. Why do people run for council in your city? Where do they devote their time once elected? If the council has at-large members, do they work in different ways than district members? What happens to council members when they leave? Do they run for higher office, and are they elected? Of the past five mayors, which served on the council at some point? How does that compare with cities similar to yours? (Call a local government expert at a state university—or just do a little Internet research.) If your city’s council is a dead-end political body, why?

If it’s a council-manager form of government, who looks for projects to improve the larger city, the realm outside the city government? (As I explained in Lesson Two, most of these ideas originate outside of city government, but at a point someone in government has to become their champions.) Do members play predictable roles when a big project is proposed? Is one a blue-sky thinker, another a bottom-line worrier, another a let’s-get-it-done sort, and yet another the one who worries about its impact on the disadvantaged? How do they come to agreement?

If nothing else, consider this good training as a journalist. What you’re doing is making the obvious apparent—looking at something everyone knows something about but few truly understand or appreciate. This is what great journalists, like Robert Caro and, before him, John Gunther, did so well. And who knows? If you get really good at understanding how your city council works, we may ask you to move to Washington . . . and explain Congress to us.

Footnotes: One of the most interesting stories in council-manager systems is the role of the mayor. If she is given the title by a vote of council members, it signifies something. But what? That this person is a good representative for the city? That she’s good at presiding (which usually means she’s viewed as fair)? Or is it something else? Good questions for the mayor . . . and her fellow council members.

And nothing is more fascinating than a mayor who doesn’t know what kind of government he has—or knows but won’t accept it. You see this sometimes in cities with council-manager governments that elect their mayors independently or on county commissions with an elected chair. The mayor or commission chair comes to office thinking he’s in charge of management and policy development, only to find a council and city manager who won’t defer to him.

In Dallas, Laura Miller spent one miserable term acting like a strong mayor and berating the city council for not making her one. Miller never accepted her role. Occasionally, some mayors do and we say of them, after a while, that they’ve “grown in office.”

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 John Ramspott 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.

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.

Lesson Six: The Secret of Government Success

Lesson Four: The Art of the Compromise

Lesson Three: Seeing the Unseen City Council

The Coordinated Swarm

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

About Otis White

The Great Project

Follow Us on Mastodon