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The Greatest Book About Cities Not Written by Jane Jacobs

July 13, 2011 By Otis White

This is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a book that many urban thinkers consider the greatest ever written about cities. It’s Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” and it is, indeed, an important work. Among other things, it showed us how to look at cities—particularly the interactions of street life—with greater appreciation.

“Death and Life,” then, is a great book. I recommend it highly. But I’d like to offer up another great book about cities, one published in 1993 with a bright green cover and cartoon illustrations. It was by a pair of Chicago academics and community organizers, John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight, with a title only an academic or a community organizer could love, “Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets.”

In 376 pages, Kretzmann and McKnight introduce us to a set of ideas as challenging to the conventional wisdom of community development as Jacobs’ critique was to city planning. Their premise: that every neighborhood and every community—even the most impoverished—is filled with human, organizational and institutional assets that should be inventoried and harnessed before seeking outside help.

I’ll explain more about their ideas shortly, but first let me tell you how I was introduced to this book. In 1995, I wrote an article for Florida Trend, a business magazine, about a city in South Florida called Delray Beach. My assignment was to find the place in Florida with the most committed and effective group of local leaders. I found it in south Palm Beach County, which was a bit surprising because that part of the state wasn’t known as civic minded. But a much greater surprise came when I got to Delray Beach. Leadership worked in Delray, I learned, in ways differently than any place I’d ever visited.

You can read the entire article on the Civic Strategies web site, but here’s the five-second summary: Delray Beach city government insisted that, before it responded to citizen complaints, citizens closest to the problem had to organize themselves, study the problem and assume part of the responsibility for solutions. This bracing attitude—you do your part before we do ours—was so contrary to how local governments worked, I struggled to find ways of describing it. I finally hit on calling it Delray Beach’s “responsibility revolution.”

A year later, I got a second surprise when I was researching a study of leadership in Los Angeles and dropped by the offices of an organization called RLA. RLA had been created four years earlier as Rebuild L.A. and was the political and civic communities’ reaction to the 1992 Rodney King riots. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley asked Peter Ueberroth, the organizational mastermind behind the 1984 Summer Olympics, to head the group, giving it the vague mandate of raising a lot of money and improving the riot-torn areas of South-Central Los Angeles. In short order, Rebuild L.A. became a political disaster, a high-profile piggybank with a 30-member board that served the interests of everybody but the people in the neighborhoods. (To see of how bad things were, read Time magazine’s article about the early problems of Rebuild L.A.)

By the time I visited RLA, Ueberroth was gone and so was the 30-member board. In their place was a quiet, confident Latina named Linda Griego who had been asked to clean up the mess at Rebuild L.A. and do something to improve the area. Griego wasn’t interested in high-profile fund-raisers or big-ego politics. She renamed the organization and focused on the community’s strengths. What she discovered as her organization inventoried South-Central block by block was that there was a lot more to the area than outsiders thought. She found dozens of promising but underserved retail locations and hundreds of small employers. Maybe the greatest surprise: South-Central was a honeycomb of small manufacturers, from print shops to metal-working establishments.

Griego organized these small businesses so they could support one another and negotiate with big businesses and city hall. And she produced corporate-style market studies, pinpointing places that a drug store, supermarket or discount retailer could thrive. She took these studies to chain stores that had never given places like South-Central L.A. a second thought and already had successes to show for her work.

In the space of a couple of years, then, I had seen examples from opposite ends of the United States of how to look at neighborhoods, including very poor areas, in a totally new way: not as hopeless victims but as places with assets—communities with the leadership and some of the resources needed to turn themselves around . . . if outsiders let locals take the lead. And once again, words failed me. I couldn’t come up with the right term to describe what Linda Griego was doing. I called it “grassroots networking.”

It wasn’t until the following year, when I was visiting the Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio, that I found the words I’d been looking for in a homely guidebook in the foundation’s library. It was Kretzmann and McKnight’s book, and the term they used was “asset-based community development.”

In an 11-page introduction to the book, Kretzmann and McKnight explained that the traditional approach to low-income neighborhoods was understandable but wrong. As outsiders, we view these places as the sum of their problems: “crime and violence, of joblessness and welfare dependency, of gangs and drugs and homelessness, of vacant and abandoned land and buildings.” This causes us to conclude they are essentially hopeless: “needy and problematic and deficient neighborhoods populated by needy and problematic and deficient people.”

One result, they continued, is that we throw the residents a lifeline in the form of welfare and a mixture of social programs. These programs don’t solve the residents’ or their neighborhood’s problems; they “guarantee only survival and can never led to serious change or community development.”

What’s needed for change—for altering the fate of neighborhoods and the lives of people and not just easing their pain—is a new way of thinking about these communities, not as a collection of needs but as a wealth of assets that haven’t yet been identified, organized and made productive. What assets? They are “the capacities, skills and assets” of the residents and the neighborhood itself. And you find these assets in three forms, Kretzmann and McKnight say: in individuals, associations (formal and informal groups of various kinds) and institutions (from churches, businesses and schools to police stations and neighborhood parks). Most of the book is given over to showing how to find these assets and what to do with them once they’re found.

I knew instantly what Kretzmann and McKnight were talking about. Their notion of asset-based community development was the same as Linda Griego’s belief that South-Central L.A. teemed with productive businesses and potential markets, and what was needed were ways of harnessing this productivity and unleashing the potential. But there was also in the asset-based approach the wisdom of Delray Beach: that real change can’t happen until the community is a full-fledged partner in its own development—and not a supplicant. As Kretzmann and McKnight write:

. . . All the historic evidence indicates that significant community development takes place only when local community people are committed to investing themselves and their resources in the effort. This observation explains why communities are never built from the top down or from the outside in.

Yes, Kretzmann and McKnight are careful to add, outside resources are almost always needed, but these resources are effective only when requested by local leaders and matched by local efforts:

. . . Outside resources will be much more effectively used if the local community is itself fully mobilized and invested, and if it can define the agendas for which additional resources must be obtained.

OK, this isn’t great writing. In fact, at one point Kretzmann and McKnight caution that their book “is not a novel.” It’s meant to be read as a handbook, skipping from section to section as needed. But for community developers or others who care about cities, there’s as much wisdom here about the human assets of cities as you’ll find in Jane Jacobs’ descriptions of the physical assets.

There’s one more thing: The greatest obstacle to effective action in cities is the complexity of communities. People are frozen because they don’t know where to start. “Building Communities from the Inside Out” tells us not only how to make sense of places but where to begin our efforts to improve them. Literally. One of its final chapters outlines a five-step process: Map the assets, build relationships, mobilize for economic development and information sharing, convene the community to develop a vision and plan, and (only then) seek outside help.

If you want inspiring prose and a dead-on analysis of the physical assets and street life of cities, turn to Jane Jacobs, who probably did write the greatest book ever about cities. But if your tasks involve changing attitudes, peeling back layers of cynicism and apathy, and rallying groups to improve the places they live, then Kretzmann and McKnight have written the book for you. And by anyone’s measure, it’s a great one.

Photo of Jane Jacobs book ad by Pdxcityscape licensed under Creative Commons.

Citizens Are Not the Same as Customers

April 8, 2011 By Otis White

Analogies are a basic way we think and communicate. They help us see things in new ways and explain our experiences to people who haven’t . . . well, experienced them. Analogies, of course, draw similarities between things that aren’t really all that similar. So you could see life as a marathon, an election as a football game, a debate as a tennis match, and so on. (Needless to say, sports analogies are popular.)

We often use analogies to understand cities, too. But in doing so, we should be aware of the limits of analogies and the harm that faulty analogies can do. The ones that I think do the greatest harm are those comparing cities to businesses and citizens to customers.

Before beginning, let me say that I like business. I’ve owned several businesses in the last 20 years, and before that I was a business journalist. So mark me down as a fan and beneficiary of capitalism. Further, I think cities can learn a lot from the ways businesses approach things. In many cases, cities and their leaders suffer from a lack of focus. If there’s anything successful businesses do well, it’s retaining focus. Finally, there’s a great deal written about business that’s relevant to cities. So if you’re looking for new approaches to common civic leadership issues—like finding good ideas, developing young leaders, managing crises or dealing with difficult people—you’ll find much of what you’re looking for on the business shelves of bookstores or in the pages of Harvard Business Review.

And, in truth, there are times when citizens can be seen as similar to customers. In the early 1990s a popular book, “Reinventing Government,” urged government leaders to do just that—regard citizens not as constituents but as valued customers and use what corporations know about customer satisfaction to make it more pleasant dealing with government agencies. (If you’ve found it easier in the last 20 years to renew a driver’s license or apply for a permit, you can thank this book.)

So if it helps deliver services that are cheaper, better and faster, then I’ll all for using business analogies. But here’s where I grow wary: the relationship I have with where I live should be far deeper than my relationship with Apple Computer, Ford Motor Co. or Coca-Cola.

Let’s start with the basic analogy that citizens are like customers. Yes, in receiving city services like garbage collection, water and sewer, and even police and fire protection, we’re like business customers in the sense that we want the greatest value for the lowest price. And don’t underestimate the importance of these services in making citizens happy. If you’ve ever spent a long day at city hall trying to get a business license, or waited an hour for the police to show up for a traffic accident, then you know how poor service makes you feel about a place. And keep in mind that the majority of city governments’ payroll and budget is in the delivery of direct services to citizens, so money saved and satisfaction gained by doing these things right can have a huge impact.

But beyond this point, the business analogy breaks down. If we’re sometimes consumers of city services, then we’re also part-owners of the city, especially if we own a home or rental property. Does that make us like shareholders in a corporation? Well, in the sense that we want asset growth (that is, the value of our property to rise), yes. But, in truth, we really don’t own homes like we do stocks. Homes aren’t just financial investments; they’re comfort zones, objects of pride and self-expression, and centers of family and social life. Stocks are impersonal financial instruments; homes are full of meaning, much of it connected to the community around it. I’ve bought and sold plenty of shares, but I’ve never found a way to use a share of Ford Motor for hosting a family dinner or organizing a block party.

There are other roles that citizens play. If you want to use another business analogy, here’s one: the citizen as employee. In companies, employees create the goods or services that the company sells. In cities, much of the community’s value—what it “sells” to visitors, prospective businesses and future residents—is created by its citizens. Think about it: If you’ve been impressed by a city’s lovely neighborhoods, creative festivals and parades, or thriving economy, you’re looking at things the citizens themselves brought about. Yes, government often plays a supporting role, but it’s usually a portion of what the citizens are doing for themselves.

So even if you’re partial to business analogies, you quickly realize that the citizen-as-customer works only in some instances, and there are other times when you could see citizens as owners or employees. And there are yet other ways that citizens relate to cities that no business analogy can cover. Take identity. Yes, there are some companies that inspire great loyalty among customers and employees (think Apple Computer or the sporting-goods retailer REI), but these are rarities. Identifying with the place you live is the rule.

Doubt it? Remember the old “Seinfeld” episode, where Elaine is assigned a new telephone area code, 646? She tries desperately to convince people that she still lives in Manhattan, home of the 212 area code, but can’t. Finally, she finagles her way back to a 212 area code because living in Manhattan is so important to her she can’t bear for people to think she lives anywhere else.

Why does all this matter? Because one of the greatest problems civic leaders have is understanding the potential and power of citizenship. When we compare citizens to customers, we are selling them way, way short. It’s like comparing life to a marathon. Only in the most superficial way is life like a marathon. And thank goodness for that. Otherwise, we’d be out of breath all the time.

Photo by Victoria Pickering licensed under Creative Commons.

How a City Creates Citizens

January 14, 2011 By Otis White

A while back, I tried my hand at defining a purpose for cities: Cities exist, I suggested, to create citizens. And who are citizens? They are people who take responsibility for their communities. If a city can do this, it’s as close to a silver bullet as you can find because:

Cities get much better as they create more citizens. Just about every problem in a city is easier to manage if citizens will step forward to help, from social ills and unresponsive government to a struggling local economy. So, just as businesses must focus first on creating customers in order to achieve their other goals, cities should focus first on creating citizens if they want to make progress in any other area.

But how do cities do this? How can they help passive residents become connected, committed citizens—people eager to run for office, volunteer for citizen boards, vote in elections, serve as neighborhood watch captains, tutor schoolchildren and report problems? To answer that, let’s look at a place that does a good job of creating just such citizens and try to figure out how it does it.

The city is Decatur, a close-in suburb of Atlanta. I’ve known Decatur for years and even had an office there once. But I really got to know it last year when I helped with a visioning project that was part of a larger strategic planning process called Where to Next? There are a number of ways of doing visioning, which involves convening groups of citizens to think about their community’s future. The one we used in Decatur asked citizens to attend three separate sessions lasting two hours each, with each session focused on a different set of topics.

A good rule of thumb for visioning projects is to aim for getting at least 1 percent of residents to participate, depending on population. (It’s easier to get a higher percentage in a small town than in a big city. In New York, for instance, 1 percent would be 90,000 people.) Decatur has fewer than 20,000 residents, so the goal should have been to get 200 participants. In fact, organizers got 740, three-quarters of whom attended all three sessions.

But it wasn’t the numbers that convinced me that Decatur had cracked the code on citizenship. It was what participants said in those sessions. One theme I heard repeatedly was the feeling of connectedness and community ownership people felt there. As one person put it, Decatur was the kind of place where residents expected “a hello on the street, pride in the community, (the) ability to be involved and contribute.” Another added, “There are 66 homes in my neighborhood; I know 55 of those families.”

Even more striking, these citizens wanted more opportunities for involvement. There were lots of ideas about how the city government could help with this, from “volunteer expo” fairs to booths at festivals and neighborhood block parties where people could sign up for community activities. One group suggested a “sister streets” program, somewhat like “sister cities,” so neighborhood leaders in one part of the city could get to know leaders in another part—and trade ideas and assistance.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m accustomed to hearing participants in visioning projects say they want greater connectedness with their community. But I’m not used to them saying they already feel fully connected—and want even more involvement. So how did Decatur get to this enviable place?

Well, it has some advantages. Decatur is a small, densely developed city. It’s only 4.2 square miles in size and was built mostly before World War II, when houses were closer to one another. It’s easier to be neighborly when you are physically close to your neighbors. Decatur is also a well-educated place, a city where 62 percent of adults have four-year college degrees or higher (nationally, only 28 percent have bachelor’s degrees). As a rule, the higher the education, the greater the level of civic involvement.

But these things simply mean Decatur started with some advantages; they don’t explain how the city capitalized on them. And for that, the local government deserves a good deal of credit. Here are five things Decatur’s government has done to create citizens:

It has a great citizen-education program called Decatur 101. Classes are free, held in morning and evening sessions, and there’s usually a waiting list of people who’d like to participate. Offered since 2000, Decatur 101 has seeded the community with people who know how city government works, what the city’s history and most important goals are, and who holds elected and appointed office. Not surprisingly, graduates of this program are among those most likely to serve on citizen boards and run for office.
It has a surprising number of community events, two of which are its acclaimed annual book festival and beer festival. (Thankfully, these are separate events.) But they’re just the beginning. By my count, there are more than 40 festivals, concerts, events and parties sponsored by the city or non-profits, many of which are supported by businesses. There’s a serious side to this fun: Public events connect citizens to their community and each other—and open up numerous volunteer opportunities. These are keys to building citizenship.
It has a town square, where most of these events are held. I don’t think having a town square, main street, courthouse, central park or clearly defined downtown is essential to creating citizens, but it helps. That’s because community citizenship requires a larger sense of loyalty—to the city as well as a neighborhood, ethnic group, religious faith, political faction or workplace. And having a place where everyone in a city comes to celebrate—“neutral ground” that belongs to the entire community, not a neighborhood or private interest —helps build that larger loyalty.
Decatur has a full-time volunteer coordinator in city hall whose job is to match community volunteers with volunteer opportunities. Many of these jobs are helping with the city’s festivals and events, but others are ongoing responsibilities such as crisis-line volunteers, pre-school tutors and nursing home visitors. In the last 10 years, the city’s volunteer coordinator has built a database of 2,000 volunteers—10 percent of Decatur’s population—and helped move a generation of residents from wanting to serve to actually doing so.
It does a good job of communicating with citizens. Decatur doesn’t have its own daily or weekly newspaper. Its main news vehicle is a newsy, smartly designed newsletter published by the city and supported by local businesses. Called Decatur Focus, the newsletter is mailed 10 times a year to local households and keeps citizens aware of community events and what the government and their fellow citizens are doing.

Interestingly, though, communications was an area citizens thought could be improved. They wanted more frequent communications, delivered in new ways, mostly electronically. But they also wanted new types of information: about how to get involved, which problems to keep an eye on, what neighborhoods were doing to improve themselves, what could be recycled, how to take advantage of recreation opportunities and farmers’ markets to be more fit and healthy—and on and on. This is important because it shows that Decatur’s citizens viewed city government as more than a service provider; they saw it as a potential information resource —with innovative communications pushing out that information to citizens every day.

This may, in fact, be the highest level of citizenship a city can aspire to: where citizens tell the government, give us the information we need to make this a better place, help out where you can, and we’ll take it the rest of the way. Decatur is on the verge of reaching that level. Other cities should join it.

How the Internet Can Help Create Citizens

December 15, 2010 By Otis White

A few months ago, I tried my hand at defining a purpose for cities, an overarching goal that leaders could use to tell if their city was on the right path. Here was my five-word purpose statement: “Cities exist to create citizens.”

Not to generate economic gains (they do, but as a byproduct), or provide a home to the arts, entertainment or learning (again, byproducts), and certainly not to support a government (it’s a means to an end). I would argue that the real purpose of cities is to create a group of people who will take responsibility for their community. And it’s this willingness to accept responsibility that is the difference between a resident and a citizen.

I’m convinced if we could continuously widen the circle of people willing to take responsibility, we’d have happier, stronger communities and solve our most important civic problems. But before you sign on to my idea, consider the other side of that proposition: Why would busy adults willingly take on more responsibilities? Do they have time to spare for civic work? And if they had the time, how could we marshal their talents?

The answers I’ll offer come from my own experiences and from the frontiers of social research. I’ve been involved professionally in community decision-making and leadership development for nearly 20 years. Over those years, I’ve facilitated hundreds of meetings, from small groups of five or six to public sessions with hundreds of people in an auditorium. I’ve managed meetings with poor people who came because they feared losing a bus route, and weekend retreats where corporate CEOs worked on economic development issues.

Again and again, I’ve been impressed by how much time people are willing to devote to these meetings, from CEOs to worried bus riders.

I’ve also been struck by how seriously they take the work, which involves difficult issues of hope, scarcity and fairness. This isn’t fun stuff; it requires listening, understanding, searching for common ground and some degree of optimism and persistence.

So why are people willing to do this? Because, I think, community work exercises intellectual muscles that are rarely used otherwise. It allows us to use our talents and life experiences in thinking about important issues as we learn about the experiences of others.

And something else: It expands our connectedness. It is the most basic human instinct to seek connections with others. We’ve done this since we were children, in school yards, college dorms, workplaces, associations, religious institutions and clubs. Because of where we live and work, most of our connections end up being with people like ourselves. Community work—particularly when it stretches across an entire city—introduces us to those who are decidedly unlike us, and for many people it’s a profound experience. For the first time, they have a glimpse of what it’s like in other families, other neighborhoods, other lifestyles and other ethnic groups. And they never view things in quite the same way again.

When they try it, then, people recognize that community work is good for them—it makes them more complete and empathetic human beings—and they like it, for all its difficulties and frustrations. But it’s also time consuming, so how do people find the time for community work?

Here’s where the social research comes in. In his new book, “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age,” Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, says we only perceive ourselves as busier than ever. In fact, he says, free time is growing, particularly among the most educated people. In the United States today, Shirky writes, the cumulative free time of our 233 million adults adds up to billions of hours each year. What we’ve done with that time, alas, is spend it watching television. “. . . (I)n the space of a generation,” he writes, “watching television became a part-time job for every citizens in the developed world.” The average American now spends 20 hours a week in front of a TV.

But there’s encouraging news here, Shriky writes. TV is losing its grip. “. . . (F)or the first time in the history of television, cohorts of young people are watching less television than their elders,” he says. And it’s not just young people. According to a survey by Forrester Research, adults of all ages now spend as much time on the internet as they do in front of TVs. And while this doesn’t sound like good news—YouTube can be as much of a time waster as sitcoms—there’s a difference between the passive world of television and the potentially active world of the internet, Shriky writes.

On the internet, you don’t have to be a consumer, you can also be a producer. That’s how Wikipedia came to be. The most successful and comprehensive encyclopedia ever made (the English language sections alone have more than 3 million entries) was built entirely by volunteer contributors. Shirky estimates that, in its first seven years, 100 million hours of volunteer labor went into Wikipedia—writing, editing and correcting articles, supplying links and illustrations and so on.

At the same time, Shirky goes on, the internet is lowering the cost of organizing people. (For more on this, see Shirky’s earlier book, “Here Comes Everybody”.) Again, Wikipedia is an example; in no other age could thousands of people all over the world be marshaled to give their time and talents to such an undertaking.

Ultimately, though, we may find that the greatest potential for internet-assisted involvement is in communities, where people can learn about issues on the internet, get organized, raise money and volunteer their time online, and then meet face to face to do the work. It’s the perfect marriage of internet efficiency and low cost with the connectedness and concreteness of community work.

The potential for internet-assisted community organizing is almost limitless. I’m convinced it will be a major part of how cities will widen the circle of responsibility in the future, and in doing so create the citizens we’ll need for our communities to be successful.

Postscript from 2022: We’ve learned a great deal about the internet’s influence since 2010. The social media in particular have become fountains of propaganda and helpmates to radicals. So, it seems some of Shirky’s optimism of the early 2000s has crashed headlong into the January 6 insurrection, which was abetted by the innovations he praised.

But let’s take a breath here. All changes in media have unintended consequences. One of the first uses of movable type, after Gutenberg’s beautifully illustrated Bibles in the 1450s, was the printing of pornographic engraved images, which flooded Europe in the years after.

As we think about the internet today, then, let’s keep in mind that innovations’ good uses exceed their bad over time. And let’s preserve civic work’s greatest asset, its face-to-face meetings and conversations. Radicals, it seems, have a hard time with conversations; they do much better with speeches and manifestos.

The key to making the internet a blessing for communities is let the internet be a tool of invitation and communications—and not, at the local level at least, a tool of participation.

Photo by Felip1 licensed under Creative Commons

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The Greatest Book About Cities Not Written by Jane Jacobs

Citizens Are Not the Same as Customers

How a City Creates Citizens

How the Internet Can Help Create Citizens

About Otis White

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