GLUE PODCAST ALERT! Did you know that we spend $70 billion of federal dollars every year on transportation? Did you know that that money is disproportionately used in rural areas and exurbs? Did you know that in some cases, states get more of that money when their citizens drive more?
The federal transportation bill is up for reauthorization every 5-7 years, but gas prices, our nervous economy, and growing awareness of the relationship between transportation decisions and environmental impacts might make next year’s reauthorization a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reverse the backwards incentives and priorities that exist in the current bill.
Next week we’ll host two conference calls with Kate so that you can ask her questions and give her feedback. RSVP to GLUEteam@gluespace.org if you’d like to call in on Tuesday, 10/14, at 7:30 pm EDT or Wednesday, 10/15 , at 12:30 pm EDT.
Until I worked for NYC’s Tug Pegasus Preservation Project in 2004, I didn’t understand the extent to which poorly, un- or under-used urban waterfronts interfere with a city’s vitality. Maybe that was the beginning of my passion for industrial cities (I guess it was only possible after I left Pittsburgh).
Most, if not all, GLUE cities have a waterfront of some kind, and they have been integrated into the urban fabric with varying levels of success.
Erie, PA is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake port, and home to one of my favorite beaches in the world. Some fascinating, if long overdue, conversations are taking place there about the future of the city’s waterfront.
John Elliot, the Executive Director of the Erie Redevelopment Authority, deserves our praise and continued attention as he tackles a comprehensive plan for Erie’s core.
For information about last night’s Port Authority meeting about the Bayfront Land Use plan, visit global erie.com.
And if you’re an Erie resident and want to keep us posted on waterfront development issues, email me!
Infrastructure may not be a glamorous issue–but our cities’ crumbling infrastructure is downright ugly. See the below message from friends in Chicago, and meet us there on 11/17 to talk about solutions:
Rebuilding and Renewing America: Infrastructure Choices in the Great Lakes Megaregion / An America 2050 Forum Monday, November 17, 2008 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 E. Wacker Drive, Chicago
Freight congestion, aging bridges, insufficient mass transit, brownouts, soaring energy costs, flooding, and polluted waters – all news in recent years, and all partially the results of continued strain on our nation’s infrastructure. At the same time, the need for an economic stimulus is greater than ever. The presidential election in November 2008 gives us a fresh opportunity to set a new agenda for infrastructure investment in the Great Lakes megaregion to revive the flagging economy and to compete globally.
Join Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council and New York’s Regional Plan Association on November 17th to identify and prioritize strategic investments in transportation, water, and energy to be included in a national infrastructure plan, authorization of a new surface transportation bill, pending climate change legislation, and implementation of the Great Lakes Compact. Leaders from the Great Lakes business, civic, government, and academic communities are encouraged to attend and help define this emerging federal-regional agenda.
Invited speakers include Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
This forum is part of America 2050, a national initiative to develop an infrastructure strategy for America’s future growth, competitiveness and sustainability.
Register online here. There is a registration fee of $50 for the full-day event. If you have any questions, please contact Josh Ellis at jellis@metroplanning.org, or 312.863.6045.
This forum is organized locally by the Metropolitan Planning Council and nationally by the Regional Plan Association, which is grateful for funding support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
crosswalk needed; uneven sidewalk; vehicles allowed to illegally park in travel lane; large pothole; building without permits; dangerous pedestrian crossing; tree disease
No, it’s not magnetic poetry. It is a sample of the most recent non-emergency complaints entered on SeeClickFix, one of GLUE’s favorite problem-solving websites. Does your city have 311? Like 311, SeeClickFix allows citizens to record and track wrinkles in urban living.
Some tickets have been clicked in GLUE cities (Buffalo!), and we are looking to build momentum for this project in Pittsburgh. I just clicked a ticket along my daily bike route. Any burghers ready to click?
From the founders:
Imagine if everyone trusted and felt taken care of by their local government. We know there are already a lot of involved citizens and hard-working local authorities and service people. We seek to use the power of the internet to bring them closer together and reach even more people…
A few local governments have enough sophistication to run functional websites or 311 hot lines. Most do not have the resources to do much more than brochure-ware. Our site is a place for citizens from anywhere to give their local government a website that tracks local issues. No set-up time. No hiring consultants to study the issue. Just SeeClickFix.
We believe in the power of technology to promote:
Transparency - governments and most organizations work best when they conduct their business in plain view. We’ll do our best to do the same.
Collaboration - Three brains are better than one. And millions of brains are better than three. Our goal is to give everyone else the tools to accomplish what we never could ourselves. Open source software and wikis are good models for us.
Scale - We could have created a site that focused on our home town. Using the internet and all the tools others have created, we want to reach as many people as possible around the globe. Massive scale, please.
Efficiency - Although paper has its place, there is a lot more room for the web and the mobile phone. Rather than re-invent the wheel, our site is built on open source software and Google maps.
UPDATE: If you want to know what you receive via email when you enter a “clicket,” here goes:
Thank You for reporting your clicket titled “potholes, unsafe for biking”
No one is watching this area for alerts that match your keywords yet. You can create a watch area for the person you feel responsible by going to www.seeclickfix.com/fixers and attaching their email to their area of responsibility.
No public officials are watching this area. You can create a watch area for the public official you feel responsible by going to www.seeclickfix.com/fixers and attaching their email to their area of responsibility.
Since when is GLUE talking about same sex marriage? OK, not so much, although guess what? I strongly support it. And why, in an election cycle drowning daily in poll after poll after poll, do we care about another one? Well, ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t your grandmother’s gallup:
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities sums it up nicely:
“Deliberative Polling ® employs social science to see what people would think about an issue if they became more engaged and informed.”
Wait a minute. Are Professor Fishkin (developer of this concept) and his zany acolytes suggesting that we might have different opinions about issues if we actually had information about those issues? Even more radically, is he suggesting that the process of discussing those issues with a random sample of people that likely have opinions different from our own might be a good thing? Buckle your seatbelts, I think that might just be what’s going on here.
“While traditional public opinion polls solicit intuitive responses from people who may not be informed on the topic, a Deliberative Poll represents “what the electorate would think if, hypothetically, it could be immersed in an intensive deliberation process” (James Fishkin, Democracy and Deliberation). A scientific random sample of the population will receive background information on the issues. The sampled individuals then gather in small groups to discuss and deliberate the topic amongst themselves and with experts and then respond to a scientific poll. The result of such a process reflects what the community as a whole would think about a particular issue or policy if that community had time to become informed about the issue. What is emerging from deliberative polling is nothing less than the development of a new democratic decision-making process capable of articulating the informed voice of the people and potentially raising that voice to the level of “consulting power” as a consequence of those deliberations.”
Can you IMAGINE the power of these kinds of conversations in “rustbelt” cities? We could talk more constructively about immigration, globalization, racism, taxation, or transit, to name a few. I read a lot this summer about the increasing popularity of fact-hating in American society. What a refreshing and powerful antidote.
For more information about Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy and its case studies (at least TWO of which took place in the Great Lakes region, around transit in Minnesota and healthcare in Detroit), visit the Center for Deliberative Democracy: http://cdd.stanford.edu/
For more information about Pennsylvania’s own foray into this work, visit the Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy: http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/caae/dp/
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I will be attempting to interview at least one community organizer a week. We start in Buffalo with PUSH (People United for Sustainable Housing).
From its website:
PUSH is a grassroots non profit community organization working to rebuild the West Side of Buffalo.
PUSH organizes residents to confront institutions that perpetuate poverty on the West Side and to create and implement an action plan for improving the neighborhood.
PUSH strives to create a democratic, action-oriented organization capable of addressing the lack of living wage jobs and poor housing conditions on Buffalo’s West Side.
Eric Walker is the lead organizer at PUSH. I talked with him on Wednesday, Sept. 17th.
Tell us the overview of the work you’re trying to do.
EW: There are two divisions of PUSH. One that drives us the most is community organizing, making sure that we go out and talk to people in the neighborhood about what they’d like to see change and inform them about what we’re doing. Organizing has four simple steps: identify a problem, identify a solution, find out who can give you what you want, and present your idea to them from a position where they’re likely to give it to you. Then we have to make sure that we create a pathway for decision makers to put our solutions into practice.
The touch, taste and feel component of our work is the actual housing – we’re rehabbing vacant homes for low and moderate income residents of Buffalo and using local labor to get the job done. We are responding to a need for quality affordable housing and family sustaining jobs.
How do you identify properties?
EW: That part was simple for us. We picked a place where there’s a stark contrast between luxury housing on one block and devastating conditions two blocks away. We wanted to capitalize on the stability of the neighborhood next door, and protect housing options for working families in the area they have called home for a long time.
We went out and talked to people about issues they were facing, where we needed to carve out space for people.
We chose the West Side of Buffalo, near the Historic Richmond corridor, where there is a lot of potential for the gentrification scenario to play out. This was a community based decision. As the neighborhood continues to improve, we’re putting our stake in the ground for people who might be displaced by changes there.
What does gentrification mean?
EW: First of all, it’s more about class than about race. To me, gentrification is a process by which neighborhood improvements don’t benefit all residents equally. In the trenches, the notion of how it often plays out is that when places become attractive for whatever reason, historical residents aren’t always considered in the vision for the neighborhood’s future. Ultimately, what happens in the creation of any space is a function of choice. Some people have the ‘flex-ability’ to take advantage of improvements to neighborhoods because they can follow them, they can choose where they want to live. Not everybody has that luxury. More and more people live where they live because they don’t have the means to be anywhere else.
I, as a working class person, don’t have a lot of choice about where I can afford to live. So unless there’s a strategy to protect place for those who don’t have a lot of choice, we’re back where we started - with people on the margins. That gets lost in discussions about neighborhood sustainability – the reality of choice, or lack of choice. People with limited incomes have to make tough choices all the time.
When we really care about neighborhoods, we put people first. Giving people options and making sure they’re a part of the outcomes is a big factor in motivating folks to work collectively beyond chronic problems.
What are your goals?
EW: Our members recognize the need to start small. We’ve got six units under our belt right now that are practical demonstrations of the comprehensive approach we take to neighborhood development:
1) Community decision making
2) Quality, affordable, energy efficient housing
3) Local hiring
What is your average day like?
EW: Most of my days are spent trying to mobilize community residents. Right now we’re working on a jobs and housing campaign.
At 8:30, I started prepping resident leaders to meet with officials from the city – getting them to commit to our housing platform. We went over talking points, rehearsed the meeting’s agenda.
Then I spent some time with the housing director and constituents to (DO WHAT?)
After we’re off the phone, I’ll confirm with partners who are participating in our October 8th rally to make sure it’s a success.
Then there’s working in coalitions: A state wide housing group, a national network of community organizing groups, an emerging green jobs coalition, and a local consortium of progressive groups all add a dimension to our work. Aaron and I can’t (and don’t want to) do everything so we have to make sure our leaders are ready to hold it down for us. Coalitions are a big part of building a network for change. When we show up in big numbers, people listen.
Later this afternoon, I will need to make sure our six person canvass team is ready to hit the streets. We will run raps (scripts for conversations at the door) and talk turf (where in the neighborhoods people will go).
From 2-4, I will supervise my canvassers during call time to community residents. From 4-8, we head out into the streets in teams to knock on doors and talk about PUSH’s work and the future of our neighborhoods. We come back, debrief, enter data, and go home to bed. Then we get up the next day and start all over again.
________
For more information, check out this ArtVoice article about PUSH.
Thanks to Anthony for suggesting we talk to Eric. If YOU have ideas about organizers GLUE should interview, email abby@gluespace.org.
This will be a useful website to revisit regularly as we try to track the play cities are getting in Presidential speeches and appearances. Thanks to Rachel C. in Pittsburgh for sharing this link with me:
Our mission… to reflect a new American narrative. From a 20th century of cheap energy, endless automobility, burgeoning suburbs, threatened cities. To a challenge-packed 21st century: fast-rising energy costs, perilous carbon emissions, deepening have-have not divisions. But a time of exciting promise, too: rejuvenated cities, new citistate-wide consciousness, more protected lands, the most urban rail starts in a century. Citiwire.net’s quest: to chronicle struggles, illuminate pathways to more vibrant, equitable, sustainable choices for grassroots America and citistates worldwide.
Living the dream, people. Living the dream (well… some of us). Let our peers across the country believe that, come here, fall in love, and GET TO WORK ON SOCIALLY EQUITABLE PROSPERITY.
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is pleased to announce a call for applications for fellowships being offered through our Comparative Domestic Policy program (CDP), jointly supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo and Bank of America. Fellows will be awarded a stipend of up to $10,000 per month, depending on project and location. The stipend will support a fellowship lasting approximately two to six months on the other side of the Atlantic, during which time fellows will research approaches to an urban/regional challenge confronted by both American and European cities and regions. The Spring 2009 Fellowships are intended to commence between March and June of 2009, ending no later than October of the same year. Up to eight fellowships will be awarded.
The CDP Program
Cities, states, and regions in both the United States and the European Union are grappling with similar economic and social challenges brought about by rising global competition and societal change, including urban disinvestment, energy costs and environmental quality concerns, social integration and changing demographics, and economic restructuring. Most of these policy areas are tackled at the local and regional, rather than national government levels, yet there are very few opportunities for civic leaders to meet, to observe new approaches to persistent challenges, and to exchange best practices in addressing these challenges effectively.
The Comparative Domestic Policy Fellowships provide practitioners and policy-makers working on these issues at the state and local levels the opportunity to meet with their counterparts across the Atlantic and discuss policies and measures that have been implemented. The Comparative Domestic Policy Program is also contributing to this exchange of ideas through the creation of a Transatlantic Cities Network which will focus on creating a framework for civic leaders to share innovative approaches to challenges affecting cities and regions, including urban economic development, sustainable development and energy, and changing demographics and social policy, with a particular emphasis on nationally significant cities and regions. The CDP program has three main components that underpin the Network: highly focused study tours, research fellowships, and seminars and policy briefings.
