05.14.08

As Gas Prices Spike, Suburban Home Prices Fall

Wall Street Journal Real Estate blog picked up Driven to the Brink, released 10 days ago by CEOs for Cities.

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05.11.08

Universities Are Also Mobile

We've written here before that universities, often thought of as anchor institutions, are increasingly mobile. Now comes a challenging proposal from Greg Mankiw in response to Massachusetts legislators' study of a plan to levy a 2.5% annual tax on the portion of college endowments that exceed $1 billion. (Greg is a professor of economics at Harvard.)

He calls on Harvard to create a second campus in another move favorable tax state, move its endowment there, sell off land in Massachusetts, and even eventually move the main campus.

It's not an impossible thought. Unlikely, but not impossible, especially in light of the international expansion of many universities.

[Thanks to Rich Florida for flagging this item.]

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05.09.08

The New Covetables

Eames Demetrios spoke at Serous Play of the legacy of Charles and Ray Eames. Even though they made beautiful objects, they worried about our acquisitive nature. If status is defined as owning a new BMW, we are doomed to failure because we don't have the resources for everyone to acquire a BMW. They hoped instead for a new kind of status -- something they called "the new covetables."

For the new covetables, the coin of the realm would be effort, such as learning a language or learning to read a map. If I acquire a new language, such as Spanish, it does not diminish the value of of your acquisition of Spanish. In fact, my ability to speak Spanish may even make your ability to speak Spanish more valuable. And effort is available to all of us.

What a lovely thought.

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05.09.08

The World Is Such a Tasty Place

Speaking this morning at Serious Play, RISD’s President-elect John Maeda made a comment I love: “The world is such a tasty place.”

When conference host Chee Perlman asked John about his new role as president (and chief fundraiser) of RISD : “I grew up in a tofu factory in Seattle. I have a funny accent. And now I’m president of RISD. America?” at which point, John began to applaud. (echoes here of Barack Obama)

Chee also asked John why anyone should go to college. He replied, “I have no idea. I have to work on this.

“Going to college is not the last time you’re going to learn. There’s Google. Colleges need to encourage a lifestyle of learning forever.”

His goal now is to raise plenty of money for scholarships and make more free time for faculty and students to be more reflective. “The best creatives are free, who don’t live with constraints. And yet we are adding more, more, more requirements.”

John says he is asked if he is going to take RISD into the future. He confidently answers, “I want to bring the future back to RISD. The question is not how to make the world more technological. The question is how to make the world more humane.”

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05.04.08

Could the Power of Eds and Meds Be Waning?

A number of cities have conveniently relied on eds and meds to generate jobs growth. Business Week famously reported in September '06 that the only jobs growth the U.S. had experienced was in the medical field. And both industries are widely assumed to be “anchored” in place. These are jobs that “can’t” leave. You can just hear urban leaders breathing a sigh of relief.

But both industries also rely heavily on public funding. What if the funding dries up or declines precipitously? It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. Just read Tom Friedman’s column in today’s NYT.

But another possibility is that students and patients head to cheaper countries to get what they want. Medical tourism has been growing. And the photos in this month’s Fast Company of Bumrungrad International in Bangkok make the prospect much more real (and appealing), even to those not pinched for medical money. Bumrungrad now attracts 430,000 overseas patients a year – “the high school cafeteria person, the independent businessman, the doctor, the lawyer” who “can’t afford to pay $1,200 for insurance every month.” (I know the feeling. For my healthy 58 year-old husband, I pay right at $1000 a month, and the plan benefits are far from generous.) They go because prices are 90% off the going rate in the U.S.

Is this globalization’s next frontier? And if so, what is the next chapter in the creation of American jobs?

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04.15.08

What Happens When Thousands of Stores Close

Front page headline in today's NYT says "Retailing Chains Caught In A Wave Of Bankruptcies." Here's the lede: "The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are unleashing a widening wave of bankruptcies in American retailing, prompting thousands of store closings that are expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country."

Although the reporter throws downtown in as an equal sufferer, think about what's really happening. Linens 'n' Things and Levitz are staples of the big box scene. Zales, Lane Bryant and Bombay are standard shopping mall tenants. Foot Locker and Ann Taylor have a few downtown units, but compare their number with the suburban locations.

All of these chains are closing stores.

Now, add to the cutback in consumer spending and credit $4 a gallon gas. What happens then?

Cities that depend on retail sales taxes are in trouble, of course.

But could these store closings clear the way for new opportunities in neighborhood-size retail? Will Americans begin demanding more walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods?

And one more potential driver of new smaller retail: Cities that have never even considered transit (Houston) or have been arguing about it for years (Seattle) are now making major investments in transit systems. Transit systems often naturally create opportunities for neighborhood retail around their stops. (In fact, smart transit authorities are acquiring enough land so that they control the retail opportunities around stop and the revenue they generate.)

We clearly are in for real upheaval in retailing. And any upheaval creates opportunity. Could small format neighborhood retail be the beneficiary?

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02.19.08

Obama Adds "Cities" to His Stump Speech

I heard it. Senator Barack Obama had a nice mention of cities in his speech tonight in Houston, after another big win in Wisconsin.

The New York Times complained in an editorial this morning that presidential candidates aren't talking about "the nation's struggling cities." "The cities," they write, "have been the hardest hit as federal policies have failed or gone missing in education, housing, health care, jobs, transportation and environmental, to name a few."

Certainly, this Administration has not been friendly to cities, and there is no excuse for that, given that most Americans now live in cities and the metro areas they anchor. And certainly, in this campaign season, we've not heard many mentions of cities as an issue.

But isn't the economy an urban issue? Aren't good jobs an urban issue? What about a new energy policy? Isn't that an urban issue? Isn't health care an urban issue? Isn't minimum wage an urban issue? Aren't early childhood education and schools urban issues?

Maybe it's time for urban leaders to change the frame and change the way they talk about cities. Maybe it's time that we offer up cities as solutions to the problems voters identify with rather than as the problem (that, frankly, voters don't identify with)?

I've had the opportunity to be in direct and routine contact over the past five weeks with voters who have questions and advice on issues and strategies in these campaigns. In hundreds of calls from voters, not one -- not one -- has asked about cities.

For someone like me who is in the business of selling cities, I could take this as a real disappointment. Or I can take it as an opportunity to reframe the way we talk about cities to make them more relevant to voters.

Kudos to Senator Obama for mentioning cities in his speech tonight. And props to NYT for its advocacy.

But listening to a very wide mix of voters, I'm convinced we will have to find new and fresh ways to talk about cities and how we ought to be investing in them as a nation if we want to be effective in pressing our points.

More on this later....

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02.02.08

Communication Most Powerful

Presidential campaigns are always a study in communication, never more that this year with Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric. Today CNN ran a long series of clips -- live and taped -- from each candidate's stump speech, each of whom is effective in his/her own way, allowing an interesting comparison.

It prompted me to take a look at each candidate's web site to compare what's happening online.

Compare for yourself.

Barack Obama (with a strong blog that updates multiple times daily)
Hillary Clinton (with clear "5 Things You Can Do" on front page)
John McCain
Mike Huckabee (note the clear call to action with how-to instructions for calling)
Mitt Romney (with a nice "send a message from Mitt" feature here)
Ron Paul (which feels like a game show with its spinning $$ wheel)

Most campaigns are now trusting supporters to make calls to others from home using lists provided through web sign-up. Just think of the increased productivity this gets from volunteers. It is a fine example of the principles of Remix.

Most effective communication of the day from these campaigns: The "Yes We Can" video for the Obama campaign. Is this setting a new standard for non-political messaging, as well?

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12.23.07

Should All Public Housing Be Torn Down?

Unanimous approval this week by New Orleans City Council cleared the way for plans to demolish 4500 public housing units after a protracted fight between HUD and New Orleans residents, activists and preservationists.

I've seen preservationists stop some impressive projects. Even though I've lived in a historic landmark for 30 years, I can still react with skepticism when preservationists take up a cause. I haven't seen the New Orleans units targeted for demolition. But I've seen public housing projects (spent summers in those projects as a kid) demolished that didn't deserve it.

Did the projects need a new mix of residents? Yes. Did the units need updating? Yes. Did the units need better maintenance and inspection? Most definitely. But did they need to be demolished? Absolutely not.

In the name of HOPE VI, we've seen well-built, brick units with gorgeous mature trees fall, only to be replaced by ticky-tacky construction of some "new urbanism lite" design. Imagine what these units will look like in 10 to 20 years. It is not a pretty thought.

For a better idea of what to do with well-built public housing, check out Uptown Square in downtown Memphis. The former Lauderdale Courts public housing project, Uptown Square is an inspired reuse by Memphis developers Henry Turley and Jack Belz. Once home to Elvis Presley, the buildings are beautifully situated, solidly built and now quite successful as market rate units.

Certainly, some public housing projects ought to be torn down. But there seems to be little judgment or discernment in what may be wrong with the social side of public housing and public housing building stock.

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07.09.07

Can Cities Learn from T-Shirts?

Charlie Leadbeater's Remix tour has made us consistently curious about how mass creativity can work for cities. Are there clues to be found in the world of t-shirts?

Threadless is part t-shirt maker and part online community. Anyone can submit a design for a t-shirt. Users vote on their favorites and top picks get produced and sold on the site. Threadless's founders envisioned their enterprise as an entirely new, democratic model of production. But in a New York Times Magazine piece they recently revealed that, in order to continue to be successful, they've had to tweak some aspects of their venture. Namely, they've introduced an undemocratic feature: users whose shirts are frequently produced are now being invited to choose a few designs that will be printed regardless of their popular vote tally. In essence--leadership matters:

"Threadless celebrities, it turns out, are part of a new shift in the formula: letting winning designers select a certain number of shirts to be printed every month, regardless of the voting results. That doesn’t sound particularly democratic, but Kalmikoff says it will give designers 'more of an incentive to try different things.' That is, it will help offset a tendency of submitters to echo whatever has been winning lately. 'We envisioned Threadless at first to be this level playing field, where everyone gets an equal shot,' Kalmikoff says. 'But you start to realize that leaders and popularity and all those things are quite possibly an organic, natural part of any community.' What Threadless has done is try to keep exploiting the benefits of those natural tendencies while avoiding their potential pitfalls. Even a design democracy needs a few checks and balances."

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05.28.07

What Seems Safe Isn't

Charlie Leadbeater summarizes his thoughts about our week of conversations on enabling mass creativity in Portland, Chicago, Providence and Columbus.

video by: Christopher Reyes

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05.24.07

Columbus Leadership

We are being hosted by CEOs for Cities member Doug Kridler at The Columbus Foundation this afternoon. Thirty locals from business, health care, nonprofits, government, and philanthropy have gathered to work through Charlie's ideas using their own experiences.

Charlie has gone right to the point: How do you orchestrate contributions by large numbers of people to solve problems? Is it possible to attack the opportunities and challenges the way Google or
eBay would attack them?

Think of an egg. For any issue area, there is a small core of that egg that represents the institution, such as police, schools, hospitals, performing arts centers. But the rest of that egg is outside the institution – learning, safety, health, culture. While the institution is fixed cost and hierarchical with budgets and
buildings, the rest of the egg is fuzzy and distributed and complex.

Who is responsible for the rest of the egg? No one. And the only way to influence the rest of the egg is through open source, collaborative work.

A study of eBay shows that it is easy to use and contribute, it is built on communities of interest (the core is eBay the company, but the rest of the egg is eBay the community), and eBay offers no answers, but does offer tools to its users so they may get their own answers.

So, again, how do you attack the problem like eBay? How do you orchestrate contributions by lots of people to solve problems?

As the discussion begins, CEOs for Cities member Bob Milbourne, who leads the Columbus Partnership, suggested that vouchers may be tools that encourage greater contributions. Yet, they are fought by the institutions we call schools. How do you keep these new approaches from being killed by the institutions that feel so threatened by them?

Sherri Geldin, Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts, asked, "How do you take social challenges much more complicated than eBay and create a platform that works?"

Charlie's response was to tap into existing motivations. How do you motivate children and parents to want to learn? That's probably as important as quality teaching. Without understanding users' motivations, it is unlikely that you will design an effective platform. If you start with what users are interested in first and use that as an interface to get people into conversations, a good answer will likely result.

Lynn Greer, who co-chairs The Columbus Foundation's Greer Foundation, urged us to think about breakthrough change. All of our systems are imploding on themselves. Incremental change is not enough. We think of education happening in a box. But young people don't. How do we move to breakthroughs rather than incrementalism?

County Commissioner Paula Brooks pushed back. "The county provides social services. What happens when we merge getting the expert advice with self-determination?"

Charlie responded, "It doesn't mean you do away with professional engagement and risk assessment. But if you think about addiction, you know that unless you find the user's motivation to get better, you'll
just have a continuing cycle of addiction and treatment.

"We are stuck with public systems that are dysfunctional but familiar. What I am proposing seems riskier, but the pay-offs can be much bigger. But clearly if you just give money to people without support, without a plan, you'll have a mess. But with support and with a plan, we can get something much better."

Doug Kridler: "I don't feel like the question is how we become enlightened and create this. The question is, are we going to be smart about how we tap into it? Because it's already out there.

"We're not fully used to the fact that this is our time. Are we going to leave the community a better place or are we going to wait for the people to show us the way?

"This is a reality that people are communicating this way."

Nancy Kramer, Founder and CEO, Resource Interactive: "To underscore Doug's comments, it is important to recognize that this is here. This is a tidal wave that we will ride successfully, or it will wash over us. It is a matter of how we are going to navigate this world."

Pat Loskinski, Executive Director, Columbus Metropolitan Library: "People are more involved than ever before. It's just not happening at the Kiwanis Club. We have to understand that this is boundryless."

Health empowerment zone. How do we uncouple the resources we do have? And how do we help them get resources from other places? How to reate the pressure to get the resources closer to people?

Paul Bonneville, who founded ColumbusRetroMetro, urged us to put Connect at the top of the list. There is a gap in understanding and using the technology available to connect people.

Curt Steiner, Senior Vice President for University Relations, The Ohio State University: "If you provide cash to people they show up. We pay people at Ohio State to engage in health practices. People show up to give blood for a fee. How can we use rewards to motivate people to participate? How can we get institutions to collaborate to do the best thing for the community? They have no incentive to do it. But they ought to. The motivation likely will have to come from outside
the institutions."

Michael Wilkos: "The lack of civic and public space in so many of our neighborhoods is a problem. Virtual space is no substitute. People in neighborhoods are not connected through church or work. How do you
build community in our post-WWII lives?"

Bob Milbourne: "These are not mutually exclusive. The Internet is powerful. One theme of this is the solution to all of these problems we are trying to grapple with – how do we attract technology workers, retain young people – will involve technology. If we all spent more time using the Internet to connect to all of these people, we would be better off."

Doug Kridler: "Good ideas can come from everywhere. They are not the exclusive province of those in skyscrapers. And we need good ideas in order to thrive. They won't be shared by people who have them if there is not trust. One does not engage in the effort if there is not trust. The role of the convenor is still important. We're not going to text message our way to community progress. What if we were to set
forth the idea of becoming the listening capital of the world? If the premise stated earlier that to get to creativity you need communication and you need creativity to get to progress. And to have
communication, you need trust."

What if each of our institutions became the best institution in its field in listening?

Nancy Kramer: "Read (and absorb) Kevin Kelly's article on Wired on retrospective of Internet as a source of inspiration. It lays the groundwork for the network part of the conversation."

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05.24.07

Radical Innovation

Charlie Leadbeater's thoughts so far on how urban leaders can promote radical innovation and provide a platform for citizens to collaborate, create, and contribute.

video by: Christopher Reyes

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05.24.07

Providence: Olneyville

After our morning session at Providence's New Commons, we toured Olneyville, where beautiful old mill buildings house retail shops, industries, artists, and homes...or sit empty. Olneyville is the crucible for the challenge that Providence leaders asked Charlie to address:

"Providence has experienced a shift away from an industrial economy. It has all but lost its industrial base. The artist community has occupied the numerous deserted industrial spaces left by the loss of the industrial economy. We have a hugely talented and active artist community that is nationally recognized, but gets little recognition at a local level. Hence, the artist community is in stress. There is very little link between the ‘creative economy’ elements of web, design and software sectors, and artists and artisans....
Providence is struggling with the development of its ‘next economy’, and is looking to see how it can link the above conditions to: a) a better way of leveraging its RISD, and especially keeping graduates in Providence; b) create work for dislocated workers who have been left behind with the loss of industrial jobs; c) leverage the significant immigrant population in Providence and Rhode Island: immigrants have always been a primary force in innovating new economic growth – how can Providence facilitate this?"

photo by: Christopher Reyes

Mayor David Cicilline joined Charlie and other Providence leaders for a discussion at The Steelyard, a mill transformation effected by Clay Rockefeller and Nick Bauta that "offers arts and technical training programs designed to increase opportunities for cultural and artistic expression, career-oriented training, and small business incubation." Sitting on the rooftop deck overlooking the mills and, in the (near) distance, downtown Providence, we discussed ways of tapping into the creativity and community spirit of a broad swathe of citizens in order to define and implement a plan--or, as Clay suggested, a platform--for Olneyville's mill spaces.

photo by: Christopher Reyes

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05.23.07

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

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05.23.07

eBay for Cities

It's not a new idea to CEOs for Cities. Larry Keeley at Doblin has made the power of platforms central to work with innovation teams from our member cities. But as we sit here in Providence today on Day Three of our Remix Tour with Charlie Leadbeater, I keep asking myself, what is the equivalent platform to eBay for cities? What would a platform for mass citizen participation look like that would have the utter clarity of purpose, the nature of participation and metrics of eBay?

Cities are awash in so-called "citizen participation" that could be better described as "citizen opinion sharing." A few people show up at public meetings and complain. People organize to prevent a zoning change in their neighborhood. And those forms of engagement can be valuable. But they can often devolve into endless conversations for people with the luxury of time to participate and an ability to stop things but not start things.

In Portland, we heard from Ryan Christensen, a successful clothing entrepreneur and founder of Same Underneath, who confessed that he had prepared to be a teacher not an entrepreneur. He hadn't gone to business school. But he pointed out that the cost of the mistakes he's made in business were about equal to the cost of business school. From his point of view, by starting a business he got an education better than an MBA, and it cost him no more.

(His story seems analagous to Charlie's metaphor of throwing a party for a 10-year old. Just do it, create some boundaries and keep a light touch.)

It strikes me that so many times we have no idea what we are accomplishing in typical community participation processes. In fact, many times, we don't even know what we are trying to accomplish. Our metrics are how many people showed up at the meeting. (But real outcomes? Forget it.)

I suggest again that we take the eBay platform metaphor seriously. So once more: What does the eBay platform for cities look like?

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05.23.07

Disengagement Is a Myth

Disengagement is a myth. Everyone is engaged in something. They just may not be engaged in your agenda.

Charlie says you have to understand the motivation for engagement -- why people are engaged. But you also have to understand what they are engaged in. It may provide clues on how to engage them in other agendas.

Create the conditions for other people contribute. If you have no ambition, no one gets off their backside to do anything. It takes people with drive to create a dynamic. But if they have selfish ambition, they won't allow mass participation to flourish.

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05.23.07

Some Questions

It is hard to innovate within any system. But the resources lie within the system. How do you get the resources to innovate that can then affect the system?

How do you start small but link it up with other things so that it adds up to something important. How do you create the right kind of scale for people to connect? What brings the smaller pieces together that allows them to have impact?

Is the U.S. Green Building Council that created the LEED system a model for the "connection" being called for?

If you don't have leadership challenging the bottom up, you don't get the momentum you need. But the more leadership you have, the more it can quash bottom up efforts. How do you achieve the right level of each?

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05.23.07

Complexity Theory Made Simple

Your job is to run a 10-year old's party. How do you run it?

The first thing you say is, "It's a party." That in itself tells you the context and how to act. You dress up, you bring a present, you have a good time. Then you set the boundaries. You don't throw Sam in the lake. You don't take Katie to the bedroom. Provide some attractors -- a game, some favors. Don't have too many parents in charge. Then let the children enjoy it.

Leadership should be more like creating a party and less like the typical corporate approach.

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05.23.07

Top Down Leadership For Mass Participation

The job of leadership is to create opportunities for bottom up creativity.

According to Charlie, the best example of bottom up creativity without strong leadership that produces absolutely nothing is Lagos. The best example of top down strong leadership that gets things done but without any bottom up creativity is Shanghai.

The best example of top down leadership for bottom up creativity or mass participation was during Jaime Lerner's leadership in Curitiba, Brazil.

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05.23.07

The Five C's

Charlie is leading an interesting Cafe conversation about how you can encourage mass creativity.

Charlie says you have to have the following:

Core -- a problem, a puzzle, a possibility, a desire
Contribute -- the ability to contribute easily, the how, who, what, why
Connect -- a market, a space, a social network
Collaborate -- the conversation, both modular and granular
Create

The orginal model for mass creativity is cities, and our opportunity is to recapture that capability.

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05.23.07

Providence New Commons, Continued

The Cafe at New Commons is a highly structured process. After Charlie tells his story, the conversations will begin. Each conversation has a moderator, and each moderator has listened to Charlie with a particular focus. It may remind you of deBono's Thinking Hats, but the focus of their listening is different.

Here are their topics:

Focus - what did the speaker say?
Conditions - what is in the background? what makes this work?
Capability - what are the skills and abilities needed to make this work?
Connectivity - the social network that will be needed?
Value: what's in it for us?
Catalysts - what are the actions that can make it happen?
Challenge - what could cause this to fail?
Context - what surrounds this and what is this all about?

Then custodians among the participants document the conversations that will eventually turn into a charter for action.

You can follow the Cafe action on their wiki.

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05.23.07

Providence New Commons

Kip Bergstrom is the only economic development leader I know who is working intentionally to use networking to strengthen the position of a place.

The Remix Tour is in Providence, Rhode Island, today at the New Commons Cafe with 150 Rhode Islanders who are working on the city's future. We are seated at very crowded tables considering the words of Charlie Leadbeater.

photo by: Christopher Reyes

Charlie opened with his thoughts on creativity. "Our traditional view of creativity is that it comes from special people in special places. Basically, if you want more creativity, you have to have more creative people in more creative places," he told us. "But the more I've studied creativity, the more convinced I am is that that is not true."

"Creativity is collaborative not individualistic. It is cumulative, rather than resulting from a flash of brilliance. It is highly social. Creativity starts from asking stupid questions.

"Fundamentally, my view is that most creativity stems from conversations, and if you want to have a creative city, you have to have the capacity for conversations Many people have to be able to start conversations rather than waiting to be told what to start a conversation about."

So what is our capacity for mass creativity? And specifically, what is the capacity of Providence and Rhode Island for mass creativity?

That's the topic at this morning's New Commons Cafe.

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05.23.07

Chicago: Charlie's Reflections

video by: Christopher Reyes

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05.23.07

Experiencia

After a meeting with Mayor Daley in which education was the primary topic of conversation -

- Charlie toured Experiencia, an "an educational company that delivers unique, Immersive Learning programs providing exciting classroom curriculum, teacher training, parent involvement and all-day simulations in a state-of-the-art learning laboratory where students learn by doing." Experiencia's facility in Chicago (in an older industrial area) has two different programs, ExchangeCity and EarthWorks. Both involve a weeks-long curriculum that students' teachers carry out in their own classrooms, and then culminate in a day where they run a simulated city or shepherd a fragile ecosystem through various natural disasters.

Charlie met with Howard Tullman (Experiencia's Board Chair), Elaine Mondschein (Experiencia's President and founder), Craig Benes (Principal at Talcott Fine Arts & Museum Academy, part of Chicago Public Schools), Manny Sanchez (a partner at Sanchez Daniels & Hoffman LLP), and Marc Schulman (CEO of Eli's Cheescake, who also provided snacks, including the cake that Eli's developed specifically in support of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics).

Experiencia is unique because it mixes kids from different schools, parents from different communities, and leaders from the civic, corporate, and nonprofit sectors in order to co-create effective learning opportunities. They've demonstrated the impact their programs have on ever-important standardized test scores, but of equal interest to us is the way in which they've created a sustainable environment for learning that's unbounded by traditional systems but interfaces successfully with them.

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05.23.07

Full Circle

Full Circle is an outstanding example of how leaders can provide the platforms through which individual and communal initiatives can thrive. It's city-level co-creation in action.

Greg Sanders and Lee Deuben of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning built and maintain an open source database that community groups can shape and fill to match their individual priorities, from mapping the vegetable gardens in their neighborhoods to preserving a particular type of greystone architecture. As new partners join the initiative, Greg and Lee tailor new fields in the database to their partcular projects; the partners then rally their communities to take part in the mapping, planning, campaigning, and creating processes. When all of these are collaborative and participatory processes, the benefits are myriad: stakeholders are identified and cultivated, new leaders emerge, a variety of viewpoints are incorporated, and community is built as data is collected. This is an incredibly efficient initiative, as no effort (intentional or not) is wasted.

photo by: Christopher Reyes

One Full Circle partner is the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. They've identified two interesting strategies. First, they take advantage of the particular talents (often overlooked) of Little Village's heavily-immigrant population by supporting community gardening initiatives. Second, they involve eager youth in their Full Circle mapping: during the summer, local kids go door to door surveying property owners on a number of different issues. Not only do they meet their neighbors, but the kids ultimately begin to ask, "Why are we collecting this data? What does it show? Where is our community strong, and where is it weak? What should be our priorities as a neighborhood?"

One "danger" that's implicit in such daring systems: by supporting Full Circle, the city has provided community groups with more effective tools to make claims back on the city, from arguing for the closure of coal plants to campaigning for new parks. This potential for disruption keeps many leaders from embracing co-creation. But the long-term benefits are well worth it: Full Circle also engages new groups in their cities and gives them the ability to feel some ownership and responsibility for the places they inhabit. These groups may make claims on city government, but, newly engaged, they're also more likely to figure out a innovative and non-bureaucratic ways to solve problems themselves. Then, everyone's happy.

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05.23.07

Chicago: Breakfast with City Leaders

While our day in Portland was spent mainly interacting with initiatives that originated in the community, our day in Chicago revolved around city leaders' co-creation projects. After arriving into O'Hare at 5:06 am, we began with an 8:30 am breakfast with an impressive group of forward-thinking city officials, including Mary Dempsey (the Commisioner of the Chicago Public Library system), Sharon Gist Gilliam (the CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority), Sam Assefa (from the Department of Planning and Development), Paul O'Connor (the President and Founder of World Business Chicago), Sadhu Johnston (the Commissioner for the city's Department of Environment), Jim LoBianco (the Deputy Director of the city's Department of Human Services), Molly McGrath (from the Department of Budget and Management), and Ted O'Keefe (the director of 311 City Services). The breakfast was graciously hosted by Julia Stasch at the MacArthur Foundation, and convened in conjunction with Marilyn Katz from MK Communications.

Charlie kicked off with a description of his work in Essex. Facing a booming baby-boom population that will soon outstrip city resources, Essex is revolutionizing the way they "provide" city services by empowering individuals to design and execute care for themselves and their families. Similar initiatives are recounted in Charlie's Public Services 2.0 essay.

The main question that emerged: how can city leaders motivate people to co-create? Systems can be designed and implemented with users in mind only if those users are eager to engage. Part of the answer, it seems, lies in convincing users that their participation is needed and valued. Even that can be difficult when care services and "encrusted leadership" (a city leader's quote, not mine) have conditioned users to understand themselves as recipients needing to make claims and not participants able to engage.

But Charlie reminded us that it only takes a small core to kick things off: transformation is possible with even 1% or 5% understanding their role in more expansive ways. He uses an example from online games like World of Warcraft: "If you are a games community with a million players, you only need one percent to be co-developers. Imagine that working in education, or the NHS.

"Some sort of middle ground is going to be the most productive."

Finding that middle ground--between innovative leadership and bottum-up collaboration--is key.

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05.23.07

Portland Rebuilding Center

Shane Endicott envisions Portland’s Rebuilding Center, a building materials recycling hub that he founded, as “an integral part of the fabric of the city.” His ambitions extend beyond employing those with little experience to take cast-aways – from claw-foot tubs to old window shutters, resell them, and use the profits to finance innovative community building and repair projects. He sees the transactions that embody the Center as interactions that themselves communicate stories and create connections. And his model is entirely collaborative: he often shocks people who’ve rarely been asked for their ideas in the past to contribute. Shane’s ambitions don’t, however, extend beyond Portland. Other cities have clamored for him to setup centers for them. In open source fashion, he’s made himself and his staff freely available for consultation, he’s helped with business plans, but he hasn’t accepted lucrative offers to lead establishment efforts elsewhere. “We’re going to spread this idea by giving it away,” Shane says. The payback comes later: now, according to Shane, other cities have created models that he and others in Portland can learn from in return.

Thus, on many levels, the Rebuilding Center represents Portland's extreme commitment to re-using everything, from garbage to bikes (we had a great visit to the Community Cycling Center as well) to building parts...even to the unintended (but productive) consequences of people's actions and intentions.

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05.23.07

Portland - Boundaries?

A fundamental set of questions emerged in Portland around the tension between, on the one hand, the strength and flexibility that come with widely distributed resources and, on the other hand, the benefit of decisive and innovative leadership when it comes to making strategic leaps forward. Is a DIY culture fortified or fragmented?

video by: Christopher Reyes

What boundaries do communities need to collaborate and co-create? What structures are light enough to preserve individual autonomy but firm enough to make creative efforts sustainable? Such questions came to the forefront during our discussion with leaders from P:EAR (whose mission is to creatively mentor homeless youth through education, art and recreation), Disjecta (“an incubator, social and professional network, and community around interdisciplinary art”), City Commissioner Sam Adams, and Brad Maslin of BEAM Development. These arts organizations feel particularly acutely the need to support artists in various fashions, but also the danger of institutionalizing (and therefore stifling) their creativity.

photo by: Christopher Reyes

Sam Adams, who is working on developing a Creative Capacity Strategy for the city aimed at improving the basic infrastructure required for the arts of flourish, sees additional challenges (opportunities?) for arts and culture in the form of the internet: when most people, youth especially, he says, get their art through their computer monitor, where does that leave arts organizations?

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05.23.07

Portland Salon: Small Initiatives Collaborating and Co-Creating

photo by: Christopher Reyes

Monday afternoon, we held a salon in Portland's Office of Sustainable Development (here's a view from the (green) roofdeck of this Platinum-certified building) with leaders from a variety of different organizations:

SOLV, a volunteer organization dedicated to enhancing community livability in Oregon and famous for its bi-annual beach cleanups.

The Oregon Museum for Science and Industry, whose representative had to leave early to prep for their monthly, very cool Science Pub.

Community Gardens, which offers access to gardening opportunities for residents of landless urban and high-density communities and schools, and education, community leadership and mentoring opportunities for current and aspiring gardeners.

The Office of Sustainable Development offers information, services, and practical tools to businesses, school, citizens and communities on issues ranging from composting and recycling to solar technologies and climate change. OSD staff collaborate with other city agencies to retain Portland’s number one ranking on the sustainable cities list.

OneEconomy aims to promote and use technology as an on-ramp to the economic advancement for low-income people and communities.

And, finally, the Oregon Bus Project. Here's what Kristin Wolff, an enthusiastic supporter, has to say:

How do we love thee...

The Bus Project is dedicated to hands-on democracy for the long haul. Launched as an effort to engage Oregonians--particularly young Oregonians—in the electoral process, the Bus Project is cultivating civic leaders and reinventing what it means to be a citizen in Oregon. Oh, and playing key roles in electing progressive candidates (“not left, not right, but forward”), too.

The Bus Project is building to last—it’s a new model of democratic practice. It is to political organizing what the sustainable business ethic is to the religion of quarterly shareholder return. Only way more fun.

There's a host of issues the Bus Project cares about affectionately dubbed, the six ‘E’s: education, environment, economy...you get the idea.

But what we love most about the Bus Project is its success in inspiring a generation of Oregonians who expect to change the world—starting with Oregon—for the better.

And I’m betting they (we) succeed.

Aren’t we happy there’s YouTube? These clips demonstrate the power of the Bus better than I ever could. Get your Kleenex ready, take a look, and then ring Alex and ask how you can climb aboard (the Bus is at work in many states and communities outside of Oregon).

Kristin Wolff [Full disclosure: I have been a contributor (of money and person-power power) to the Bus Project since 2003]

After hearing so much about the success and variety of Portland citizens' fantastic initiatives, Charlie asked each of the representatives at the salon to say what the biggest challenge is that they think their city is currently facing. Here's what they told us:

SOLV: How can Portland grow without its citizens becoming disconnected from the place's traditional small-town feel?

OMSI: The city needs more school funding.

Portland's Office of Sustainable Development: social inclusion - how do you engage all people in conversations about sustainability?

Community Gardens: "we don't take enough risks, we're too provincial, our viewpoint is too small; we don't push ourselves in terms of design."

One Economy: Portland's populace is unprepared to compete in a global economy, and the city is becoming a boutique city.

Overall, those assembled saw both the promise and the potential pitfalls of Portland's widely distributed leadership network, which has "not one visionary but a lot of visionaries." How can individual entrepreneurship be enabled while community ties remain strong? Maybe Portland has gone beyond Ayn Rand's Fountainhead fable and found a way to celebrate individuals as both autonomous and deeply rooted and connected.

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05.22.07

11:19 pm dep. PDX, 5:06 am arr. ORD

We're wasting no time whatsoever with Charlie Leadbeater on our Remix tour. About to board a red-eye from Portland to Chicago, I wonder how our days in these two very different cities will be similar. We'll find out soon enough: we begin tomorrow (already today there) with an 8:30 am breakfast with city officials.

We had dinner tonight with the initial members of a new CEOs for Cities delegation from Portland, and we're excited to work with the assembled leaders--from the Portland Development Commission, Portland State University, Portland General Electric, and elsewhere--on a variety of our initiatives, from Kids in Cities follow-through to our next National Meeting, in September in Chicago on "The Global City." But we ended the day recognizing the many things Portland seems to have gotten right. The city embodies a platform and process through which citizens can collaborate, create, and contribute. But Portlanders are worried that they're becoming complacent--a healthy worry, perhaps, as Portland, with all cities, faces significant challenges ahead.

photo by: Christopher Reyes

From the city where small initiatives have achieved collective success to the city of big shoulders...

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05.21.07

Portland: City of the Small

Oddly enough, one emerging enabler of Portland's success in empowering citizens to co-create opportunity, healthy environments, and strong communities seems to be the fact that the scale here is small. Prof. Ethan Seltzer, the Director of Portland State University's School of Urban Studies and Planning, opened the theme over breakfast at J&M Cafe this morning, saying that Portland has a "very fine grain," ensuring that people and ideas get mixed up and neither can avoid crossing boundaries. (Charlie's related quote of the day, so far: "Good cities are like washing machines," churning leadership and social innovation for the common good.) Joe Cortright of Impresa Consulting echoed the theme, saying that Portland's economy is driven by many small firms rather than a few monoliths. Also attending were Stan Curtis, a visionary thinker at IBM, and Wilf Pinfold, a key player at Intel.

What does this mean? Charlie says it's evidence that, "There are lots of little public private things happening all over the place." Ethan says it means that individuals feel more empowered to take risks.

video by: Christopher Reyes

Again, the issue of sustainability is key, however: operating on a small scale means that an organization (or a city) is likely nimble and entrepreneurial, but it can also mean that it's fragmented and fragile.

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05.20.07

Innovation as Conversation

It's Day 1, or perhaps Day 0, of our Remix tour, and already Charlie Leadbeater--despite the umpteen hour flight from London to Portland today--has provocative things to say. Over dinner tonight at Jake's (a local fixture, says our fabulous organizer Kristin Wolff), Charlie offered this observation:

"Innovation is conversation." ...conversation between different people with different interests, bumping in to one another and ultimately collaborating. It's the type of thing that cities might enable effortlessly. But what if they put effort into facilitating such conversation / innovation? What would platforms to convene different perspectives and cultivate new ideas look like at city scale?

An inherent tension in such efforts has become quickly apparent, however. Portland is a beautiful city, and seemingly overflowing with citizens ready to step in, cross boundaries, work together, and achieve success on a variety of fronts. But is this (rosy) status quo sustainable? Those who give of their time and resources to incubate arts organizations, make city streets safer and more vibrant, generate economic opportunity for people with disabilities, etc., currently do so out of a wonderful spirit of community and volunteerism, it seems. (We'll find out for sure tomorrow when we visit with a wide variety of community and city leaders.) Without sacrificing their decentralized, organic (non) structures, how can cities provide these initiatives with more stable foundations (that acknowledge, for example, the necessity of health care and meeting living expenses for their workers)? The internet companies--eBay, Wikipedia, Google, Craig's List, YouTube--that embody this model have so far succeeded by providing a platform and worrying about how to monetize it later. Can cities do the same?

An aside: on the plane ride over I read the New Yorker review of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Steven Shapin, the reviewer, summarizes: "Above all, [author David] Edgerton says that we are wrong to associate technology solely with invention, and that we should think of it, rather, as evolving through use....Learning how to make new technologies is one thing; learning how, as a society, to use them is another. Old technologies persist; they even flourish. In that sense, they're as much a part of the present as recently invented technologies. It is said that we live in a 'new economy,' yet, of the world's top thirty companies (by revenue), only three are mainly in the business of high tech--General Electric (No. 11), Siemens (No. 22), and I.B.M. (No. 29)--and all three go back more than a century....Our obsession with innovation also blinds us to how much of technology is focussed on keeping things the same....Knowing about technology is not the same thing as understanding the scientific theories involved. Just as innovators commonly understand the fundamentals of a technology better than subsequent users, so users can acquire knowledge that would never have occurred to the innovators. In 1817, Thomas Broadwood, a vastly successful English piano manufacturer, visited Beethoven in Vienna and, shortly after, sent the composer a top-of-the-line instrument. Which of these two men understood the piano better--the craftsman-entrepreneur whose product adorned drawing rooms throughout Europe or the deaf genius whose works are a glory of piano repertoire?...The piano is one thing to a pianist, another to a piano tuner, another to an interior designer with no interst in music, and yet another to a child who wants to avoid practicing. Ultimately, the narrative of what kind of thing a piano is must be a story of all these users. It's a narrative in which we turn out to know a surprising amount about the technologies that have infiltrated our lives, and in which knowing only as much as we want and need to know about them is, in a sense, to know a lot. 'The Shock of the Old' is a necessary reminder of just how important things are in our lives, and how important we are in the life of things."

On our Remix tour, we aim to understand how innovation as conversation works--or can work--in cities. What's better, perhaps, is that our investigation is user-based, and takes the needs and contributions of everyday people as primary.

video by: Christopher Reyes

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05.20.07

The Remix Tour Begins

We are on our way to Portland to begin the CEOs for Cities Remix Tour featuring Charles Leadbeater. Our goal is to develop a richer understanding of mass creativity and how it can be enabled to solve problems and capture opportunity in cities.

Throughout the week, we’ll be looking at examples of mass creativity in play today in Portland, Chicago, Providence and Columbus. Our goal is to document what’s happening and the principles that underlie the examples we find and get a better sense of how to stoke the movement.

I just read the Time excerpt from Al Gore’s new book. It’s titled "The Assault on Reason," and in it Gore suggests that the Internet is the solution to reactivating engaged citizenship. He may be right, and certainly, the man has been prescient about many things (including the power of the Internet when most of us had never heard the word). But I’ll be interested to see if we find that engagement depends on more than technology and blogging.

Charlie is sitting one row behind me so we haven’t been able to use the plane trip to start the conversation, but I had my Charlie TED Talk loaded onto my video iPod so I listened to that. I was temped to show the flight attendant to let her know she was serving a bona fide big thinker. But I resisted, realizing she would probably think me nuts.

At any rate, we’ll get the conversation started once we land in Portland and begin in earnest tomorrow when we start with breakfast with my favorite Portlanders, Joe Cortright of Impresa Consulting and Ethan Seltzer at Portland State University, at the J&M Cafe (a must visit on your next trip). Also on our Portland itinerary are meetings with City Repair, Disjecta, P:EAR, the Community Cycling Center and the Rebuilding Center. We plan also to drop in on a meeting with the Sustainable Building Network. (Portland does so many things well.)

Special thanks to Kristin Wolff, a special lady (and especially talented networker) who has coordinated our Portland visit.

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