A Morning in Providence

Notes from Charlie's summary in Providence...

What we are discussing today in Providence is how to create an appropriate civic culture and the capacity to a changing industrial place and in a place where civic culture has been compromised.

The new culture needs elements of:

Post-industrial: Web 2.0, software, networks
Anti-industrial: Eliminate hierarchy
Pre-industrial: The commons, the older ideas we draw upon.

Goals and vision: What puzzle is Providence a solution to? What collective undertaking are you engaged in here? What is holding this place together?

Who is Providence for? We aspire to having a flexible network with loosely joined pieces. But the city must work for people with families, people on low incomes, It must work for people who want to make money. There is always a danger that we talk to ourselves. Test your ideas as harder challenge for people who don't share our values.

Is this strong or weak? Maybe what we need is good transport, good health, good schools -- the fundamentals. But maybe that stuff is weak because it is slow and cumbersome. How do you make small things add up to something? How do the small things infiltrate the system? How do you scale it?

I like the metaphor of finding the spots and putting oxygen tanks on it.

Top-Bottom vs. Immersive. It comes all over you. In a washing machine the top is always changing. So think of policy, action, ideas, culture as washing over each other. Think of leadership, social innovators, business and culture as constantly interacting.

video by: Christopher Reyes

  

Yule Heibel, May 23, 2007

Nice -- I like how Leadbetter wove in references to David Weinberger's "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," which of course resonates with another of David's ideas: that markets are conversations. If you substitute the word "cities" or "communities" for "markets," the pitfalls & the promises of the truism become quite apparent, too. "Immersive" suggests many "conversations": it's the people, right? People talking, mixing it up: that's what makes the community, the city. That's the promise, but there's a pitfall, insofar as there's a hardscape underpinning it all. In markets, that hardscape is profit & capital, in cites it's streets, transportation (infrastructure), architecture, buildings (housing) -- literally hardware. And money. Somehow, the top-down stuff is often "hard" and related to money (especially in terms of investment, taking risks), but it's bereft of soul if it's without the immersive quality of conversation, and all those small pieces loosely joined. I like the goals and visions questions! Ditto the post-, anti-, and pre-industrial elements. Lots to think about -- thanks for posting! And I see there are about half a dozen other entries before this one that I haven't even caught up with yet...

Link: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/

Frymaster Speck, July 3, 2007

Yule, I invite you to engage with the group where this was taped - Providence and Beyond - via our wiki.

Link: http://pawtucketri.blogspot.com/

Post a Comment

Name:* E-mail Address: URL:

Comment*

Please type the word below*

Please leave the following field blank:

*Required fields (your email address will not be published)