I attended a session led by Ed Everett (who is the city manager responsible for the awesomeness that is downtown Redwood City). In groups of 4-5, Ed asked us to think of all the ways that community is built, from the ground up. My small group had a really great brainstorm.  We talked about ways to force people to see each other; the importance of sidewalks and public meetings spaces, we discussed how one could implement a social gateway, we debated how one convinces community members to have a commitment to the community, we liked the idea of having food and culture centered celebrations. Interestingly enough, as we went around the room to the different groups, we found that everyone had a lot of the same type of ideas.

What can one do to build a community where none currently exists? We all seemed to realize that the best way to build community is to connect early and often, and to make connection easy.

How can you do this in your community?

*Create spaces where people can connect- Are there public meeting rooms, quads, town squares, gazebos, picnic tables, park benches, fountains, shade trees, church fellowship halls, rotary halls, sidewalks, front porches.

*Create events where people can connect- Festivals, block parties, cook-outs, community gardens, public movie showings, concerts, book readings, small dinner parties, sleepovers for children, vacation bible school, open houses, neighborhood meetings.

*Create community buy-in- Make sure everyone is invested in the success of the community, and wants to be a part of an active connected community. This creates a snowball where the community expects a level of interaction from the members.

I, of course, felt guilty because I didn’t bring my Doritos.

The first thing I noticed when we entered the deli was the sign on the door that said “No Begging.”  I should have taken a picture, but I didn’t think of it at the time.

We ordered and sat in a booth by the window.  Outside the deli, I could see a small group of homeless men. I’m sure they were asking incoming deli customers for money for food because most people either breezed by them without stopping or stopped momentarily before continuing on their way. Every so often, I would see someone bring in one or two of the homeless men in  and order them food. I also saw people order food and take it outside to them.

It was nice to see generosity in action.

My friend and I had a lot to talk about.  We were heavily engrossed in our conversation when a man approached us and asked us for money for food. My friend was very polite the first few times it happened. By the fourth time, he just shooed them away.

I sat there numbly eating my fried cheese. I was frustrated because I wanted to be left alone to enjoy my lunch with my friend.  I was frustrated because, despite the sign on the door, none of the deli employees seemed bothered by the homeless people begging inside the store.  I’m sure it was an everyday occurrence for them.

By the time lunch was over, all I could think about was how  confused I felt. I felt bad because the homeless people ruined my lunch. I felt bad because of the number of homeless people wandering in and out of that restaurant. I felt bad because I couldn’t help them all. I felt bad because I realized that the few things that I do for the homeless are a drop in the bucket when compared to the need.

I should have given myself a break.  The nature of community isn’t that some of us do all the work. It is that ALL of us do some of the work.  For some that means participating in the community garden, hosting a block party or having a friendly conversation with your new neighbors. For others it means picking up the trash off the sidewalk, buying lunch for a homeless person or volunteering at your neighborhood community center.

Big or small, we each have a part to play and a need to fill. Our communities need all of us to be involved. The good thing about community is that there is room for all of us.

When I was in middle school my uncle, who lived with my family, started to go blind.  It started slowly at first, and my mother and all the other adults attributed his weakened eye sight to getting older.  At the time, my uncle must have been in his mid- 40’s and bad eyes run in the family, so no one was surprised that he started needing reading glasses.  Except the reading glasses didn’t work.  In fact, nothing worked.

Finally, after much coaxing, cajoling and outright coercing my mother got my uncle into the car and over to Duke for a physical, including an eye exam.  They returned with thick-ass glasses that my siblings and I made fun of.

It wasn’t until a week or so later that my mom and my uncle apparently went back to the doctor to get the results of the physical.  They, of course, didn’t say anything to us kids.  And I wouldn’t have suspected a thing, if I hadn’t caught my uncle silently crying on our couch before my mom made him leave the room.

A few weeks (or months) later mama took me out for a walk (we still take each other for walks when we have “controversial” aka bad news to share).  It was then that she told me that my uncle was HIV positive and that the disease was what caused him to lose his vision.  I reacted badly and said some pretty hurtful things.  (Give me a break, I was 11) After my mother gave me the look (you know the look), she informed me that he was still family and we would support and take care of him.  She told me that we had to be more careful about washing our hands, and dealing with other body fluids.  My uncle was prescribed what looked like oodles of colorful pills to take every day and he had to stop smoking. He continued to live with us for a little while after that, until again I caught him crying.

That time, mom just called my siblings and me into the family room and told all of us that my uncle now had AIDS.  He moved into a hospice for AIDS patients soon after.  My uncle lived in that home for at least a year or more (it all gets blurry to me). We visited him at least once a week, and got to watch him and a whole bunch of other AIDS victims die.  His fight wasn’t an easy one, and towards the end my mother stopped taking me and the other kids to visit him.  She thought it was too disturbing.

Other than her weekly visits, I only remember a few times when my mother was called to her brother’s bedside.  One was the night that he went completely blind and found himself alone, staring into utter blackness, another happened when one of the other men in the home died (who had come to live there shortly after my uncle) and the last occurred on the night that he died.

My mother recounted the story (or at least his speculation) on how my uncle contracted HIV, but that story doesn’t really matter here.  She also told me of conversations that they had discussed his live and regrets.  She says that he would often dissect his life to see where he went wrong.

I always thought that that was the saddest part of my uncle’s short battle with HIV and AIDS. Even in the end, he equated his being gay with having AIDS. He didn’t “come out of the closet until the beginning of the end and it seems that he still had problems with who he was and how he lived his life.  This, of course, was at least partly to blame on his upbringing, his relationships, and the shame that was still associated with being a gay man in the 1990’s.  I wondered why he never got tested before.  Was it shame? Fear? Lack of education?

My life is riddled with people I wish I could have gotten to know better over the years. People whose stories I wish I could have recorded in some way. My uncle is one of them.

I don’t really know how telling this story is related to the overall mission of this blog, but what I do know is that other people like my uncle exist.  People who feel isolated. People who have health problems they don’t know about. I also know that where we live and how we live affect our outcomes; social, political, economic, educational and health.  Complete communities, which encompass all areas of our lives, support residents allowing them to have full, rich lives.  And we can’t have complete communities without adequate local, affordable healthcare.

I would like to think that the conditions under which my uncle went untested for AIDS for many years (and would have continued to, had he not had those vision problems) no longer exist but I know too well that they do.  AIDS isn’t like cancer in that early detection saves lives (At least I don’t think so) but with the right medication, he would have lived longer, giving me time to grow up and take an interest in him and his life.

Furthermore, who knows how things would be different if whomever my uncle contracted the disease from had been educated about the sexual risks they were taking, and had used condoms.  Now scale that up and think about all the other people who could be saved with proper sex education and access to free condoms.

Luckily, in the county where I grew up, things have changed for the better.  At the local health department, students could get free condoms, birth control and STD testing.  I hope adults without insurance can get the same benefits.

Unfortunately, other areas aren’t as progressive as my hometown.  Even in the city of Atlanta, population 537,958, finding a health department that does STD testing can be a miserable experience. Just this summer, I wanted to have a physical without health insurance. The only option I could find was a Planned Parenthood, if the City of Atlanta has health departments, their web presence is deplorable.  At the local Planned Parenthood, guess who I shared the waiting room with on the day of my appointment? Young gay men and teenage girls. And if the looks on their faces were any indication, they weren’t getting any good news.  It just breaks my heart because it could easily be much different.

Some would say it is unpractical and certainly unprofitable to have plentiful local healthcare in easily accessible areas in and around our neighborhoods. But we already know the difference it makes when folks have easy access to healthy food and more education. (We get healthier, smarter folks) In the same way, having near-by healthcare options and comprehensive sex education can also improve the quality of life of residents.

Social Media. Does your organization need it?

 Do you have customers, clients, or citizens or other audiences with which you want to communicate?

 Do you wish your message could reach a wider audience?

 Do you sometimes need to get information disseminated quickly?

 Are you looking to engage and enable your base? 

Do  you want to build a community?

If you answered “YES” to any of these questions, you need social media.

Click here to watch an amazing video: Social Media Revolution

Social media is the future of communication. People who would otherwise be at your meetings are now online. You have be BE where they are.  Other governments and non-profits are starting to pay attention to social media. Look here, here, here, here, here and here. 

A look at what Fairfax County is tweeting about.

Screen print captured on 9/20/2009

 Or Mayor Gavin Newsome

Screen print captured 9/21/2009

 These and other public officials are starting to use the  power of social media to keep their constituents informed about their programs, events and ideas.

I did my research so I had a few ideas about where I wanted to live.  But finding a place I love, in a neighborhood I can be happy in is easier said than done.  And I’m not the only one; I’ve found other home searching folks who are as confused and discouraged as I am.

We checked all the usual suspects.  The neighborhoods with  established reputations that promised a lively artsy, cultural and fun atmosphere and constant happenings. Let’s call these neighborhoods the “old goodies”.

What a lot of people don’t know is that hip, cool and trendy don’t come cheap, at least not anymore.  In the Old Goodies, I found rent on one bedroom duplexes in the upper $800’s and rent for two bedroom houses and townhouses starting in the $1200’s, and my dream home was $1785 a month.

All WAY out of my league.

I sat in my car trying to figure out how, why and when the price of rental housing in the Old Goodie neighborhoods got so high.  Then I noticed all the older couples, and the people walking their strollers, and the mommy cars.  And that’s when it hit me.  This is what gentrification looks like.  She drives a Volvo.

I wasn’t going to be able to live in an Old Goodie neighborhood. Most of the units were way out of my price range, and the ones that WERE in m price range were unrenovated, and in some cases uninhabitable.  I was sad, but I realized that I had bought into the REPUTATIONS of the Old Goodie neighborhoods.  I wanted to live in what I THOUGHT those neighborhoods were; where the cool, hippy, artsy (mostly single, young, and poor)people lived.  Where the rent was cheap, and the bars are open late. Where there is always something fun and exciting happening. Those places still exist, just not where I was looking.  Mostly because the people who currently live in the Old Goodie neighborhoods aren’t the people who made them cool in the first place. Those people are long gone.

The neighborhoods have changed in other ways as well.  For starters, back when the Old Goodie neighborhoods were home to artsy, hippy, creatives; the housing stock wasn’t great, the neighborhoods, weren’t entirely safe, and all those restaurants and bars were just getting started or didn’t even exist. It has taken years of establishment, and turnover, and investment to make the Old Goodie neighborhoods desirable.

The conundrum with gentrification is that neighborhoods do improve; housing quality, investment, safety.  We should celebrate that. Unfortunately, those good things usually lead to changes in the composition and the character of the neighborhood.  They become different places.  The old people (usually lower income) leave, and new people (with money) come it.

So where do people go when they are pushed out of their old neighborhoods? They move where the rents are cheap.

There are new up and coming neighborhoods that are becoming the NEW Goodies.  And it’s really exciting to see how these neighborhoods are changing. A dozen new restaurants have opened, several new art galleries have sprung up, lots have been redeveloped, homes and other buildings are being renovated.  The neighbors are out and about. The neighborhoods seem to be coming alive.

I hope these neighborhoods can avoid the traps that the Old Goodies fell into.  “Cheap rent” doesn’t coincide with “new and trendy” for long. The new blood has made these new neighborhoods popular, but popularity may come with a price.

“Should we move towards the aesthetic austerity that comes with increased economic responsibility, or can we still encourage the unfettered, platinum-kissed extravagance of boom times?”

My answer: Uh. No.

Let me explain.

The heart of the article asks the question: Should designers design for designs sake or should form really be about function?

 In my opinion, form follows function.

I want everything I own, sit on, drive in, drive on, drive through, play with, touch – use in any way-to be well and thoughtfully designed.  That doesn’t mean I need 18k gold chairs.  It means that I want the things I buy and use to be purposeful and pretty.

This is one of the reasons that the high rise housing projects of the 1960′s were such a failure.  Communities needed to house large numbers of people, inexpensively.  Instead of thinking about form and function, the “project” was born, and many aspects of well-designed communities (eyes on the street, yards for kids to play, increased social networks, beauty i.e. the people) were not even considered.

Form and function matter to community and economic development in other ways. If a project isn’t well-designed and built with the end user in mind, all the glitz, glamour and promotion that your department can throw at it won’t convince residents and visitors to spend their time and money utilizing your mess.

Success depends on thinking about the who, what, when, where, why of design.

• Who: Who is our target customer? Are we targeting more than one group of people? (Hopefully, yes)
• What: What does our target customer want to see and do? What is our niche?
• When: Are we redeveloping in phases? Can residents and visitors enjoy our redevelopment even if it isn’t completely finished? Are we planning on day, evening, and weekend traffic in our project?
• Where: Where do we want people to go? How long do we want them to stay? Are they walking or driving?
• Why: What is our purpose? Building community? Economic development?

Answering these questions causes you to think with the end project in mind. It makes you answer the question: What does success look like for us?

Government and non-profits that undertake economic and community development projects must balance design with economic responsibility.  These entities do not have the flexibility to take risks in the same ways as private companies.   However, they still cannot afford to skimp on design. Without proper design, you will likely find yourself explaining to the “powers that be” why your community and economic development efforts are failures.

What do you tell a town that is facing increased urban blight, skyrocketing crime rates, neighborhood abandonment, high unemployment, brain drain, etc, etc?

My Sustainable Development professor in the Business School posed this question to our class every day. During each case study, after each lecture, at least once a week.  As a consultant, planner, administrator, what do you tell your board to do?

As the resident MPA interloper and loudmouth, I would often say the first thing that would come to my mind.

Merge with another town…..

Find a business niche…..

Get a community college branch nearby, educate and/or retrain workers…..

Redevelop the commercial district…..

Shrink the town…..

Flint, Michigan is one example of, probably, hundreds of cities that are dying; high unemployment, the foreclosure crisis, and young people and families moving out of town have left whole neighborhoods in decline.  Last year I drove through neighborhoods in Detroit and observed that on many streets, for every occupied home there were three or four that were vacant and boarded up.

I was saddened by the sight, especially as I’d always thought of Detriot as the quintessential city.  As I drove out of town, I started to brainstorm ways that depressed communities, like Flint, Detroit, and many others around the country, can regenerate themselves.

One way is to cut off the parts that aren’t working and concentrate on the parts that are working.

Otherwise known as planned shrinkage.

I think Flint has the right idea. This method is not without its problems, as the article suggests, but with a transparent, deliberate, democratic process the community could be left much better than where they started.

What should a city that wants to shrink do?

• Decide which parts of town are viable and worth saving.
• Relocate residents into those viable parts of town.
• Concentrate community and economic redevelopment only in viable areas
• Demolish old (unviable) areas
• Create greenspace rather than brown or grayfields

What would a city have in the end?

• Increased Diversity: Planned shrinkage can be used to create mixed income, mixed use neighborhoods with local serving commercial and entertainment districts.
• Increased Density: If Flint and other cities can redevelop and shrink quickly, and retain current residents, they will be left with more people in a smaller area (duh).  Which, to me, is the definition of a city.
• Lower service delivery costs: Police patrols, garbage truck routes, public schools, social and health services are among those costs that will go down with fewer miles of town.  Governmental capital costs for things like water and sewer expansion will also decrease.
• Recaptured Greenspace: By demolishing old buildings and going back to nature, the community will have more trees, room for parks, healthier air quality, and all those other good things that come along with not living in a sprawling concrete jungle.
• Diversified business portfolio: What do small retail businesses need to survive? People to shop in their stores. More people in a small geographic area signals to potential businesses that there is a viable, nearby market for goods and services. And when those businesses come into town, they can stay in businesses, and attract more businesses, which increases sales taxes, property taxes, etc.
• Vibrance: There is something to be said about full storefronts, people on the street, and a visable community.  Smaller, dense, busy communities are the kind of communities that attract visitors and residents.