At the turn of the century, the sum of urban poor greatly outnumbered the sum of suburban residents living beneath the federal poverty line[i]. However, much has changed in the physical location of poverty over the last decade, so much so that it may now be said that suburbs contain nearly as many high-poverty[ii] tracts as cities, and almost half of all of the metro area poor population living in high-poverty tracts live in suburbs. These neighborhoods have the potential to become areas of concentrated poverty in due time, which is why there is a need for them to be closely monitored. Suburbs face an uphill battle in combating this unforeseen problem, as they are ill-equipped and unprepared for this growing issue. Continue reading →
“Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations.” John Kania & Mark Kramer
The term Rust Belt hints at some of the pervasive problems of our great region. Here, we don’t need to be reminded of the need for innovative solutions to inner city foreclosure, neighborhood vacancy and blight, homelessness, unemployment, the achievement gap in education, fresh water contamination, health disparities, and much more.
And yet, despite widespread knowledge of the complexity of these challenges, many of us—including funders, social enterprises, governments and non-profits—continue to seek solutions in individual programs or organizations. It took much more than a single or even a few organizations to create these problems, and it’s going to take more to solve them.
Scaling up single, albeit innovative, programs and replicating them won’t be enough. Neither will short-term public-private partnerships or collaborations. What we need is something more powerful, adaptive, and sustained.
Collective Impact is a meme that began spreading with an article by John Kania and Mark Kramer in the Winter 2011 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. David Bornstein covered the topic shortly after in several New York Times articles. It is a method through which a group of key players from different sectors commit to a common agenda in order to solve a specific social problem. But it is no ordinary collaboration.
Collective Impact initiatives are long-term commitments marked by:
A common agenda
A shared measurement system
Mutually reinforcing activities
Ongoing communication
An independent backbone organization
In short, it is a method by which the whole can become more than the sum of its parts. Best practices of Collective Impact include:
Strive, an initiative that has brought together 300 education-related organizations in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region to develop common goals, evidence-based strategies, and shared metrics for regional impact,
The 100,000 Homes Campaign, which coordinates efforts to place the chronically homeless in permanent supportive housing,
Shape Up Somerville, a community-wide effort to reduce weight gain among children in Somerville, MA,
The Elizabeth River Project, a cross-sector initiative to restore the Elizabeth River in Portsmouth, VA, and
The idea of Collective Impact has taken off to the degree that is the theme of the upcoming United Front conference on October 6th in St. Paul, Minnesota:
Despite the clear benefits of strengthening the efficiency, knowledge, and effectiveness of an entire system that affects complex social issues—including the possibility of building viable and lasting solutions—the task remains daunting for some. In response to a reader who asked how to get top-level leaders to agree to volunteer time and resources, Bornstein wrote simply, “By getting the right people together.” Continue reading →
What is better than a “Top Ten” or a “Year in Review” list? The Notable Nine, of course. A whiz-bang combination of both, and yet unique in number, the Notable Nine have managed to multiple-handedly change the game in Northeast Ohio.
8. The Restoring Prosperity Report: A collaborative effort between the Greater Ohio Policy Center and the Brookings Institute, this report offers policy recommendations for improving Ohio’s long-term prosperity.
7. The Northeast Ohio Green Map: You can add sustainable organizations, initiatives and infrastructure to it too!
6. Water|Craft Urban-Infill Vol. 3: This book by the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative’s PopUp City is jam-packed with ideas on regional water issues and new urban design approaches to tackle them.
5. NEORSD Project Clean Lake: No one likes Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs), including the US EPA. CSOs allow untreated sewage to go into our otherwise beautiful watershed and Great Lake. The NEORSD is now going to do something about it.
4. Trust for Public Land: Taking the reigns for completing the Towpath Trail and connecting it to Lake Erie, the Trust for Public Land is making it possible to build a greenway through downtown Cleveland.
2. Reimagining Greater Cleveland: The Cleveland Botanical Garden is using the $167,000 grant they received from the Great Lakes Protection Fund to help transform vacant land in Northeast Ohio into ‘green’ infrastructure.
Here’s a list of federal funding opportunities that could be especially helpful for post-industrial communities that are willing to collaborate on a regional level to reinvent themselves.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Choice Neighborhood Pre-Notice
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development posted the Choice Neighborhood FY 2010 Notice of Funding Availability Pre-Notice to give potential applicants guidance prior to the actual Choice Neighborhoods funding notice that will be published this summer. The guidance offers advance details regarding the application process to compete for funds through this pilot program. More here.
Tiger II Discretionary Grants Program: Deadline August 23
The Department of Transportation is soliciting applications for the “TIGER II” discretionary grant program, a $600 million competitive transportation grant program for surface transportation projects. More here.
Sustainable Communities Grants: Deadline August 23
The U.S. Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development have joined together to award up to $75 million in funding–$35 million in TIGER II Planning Grants and $40 million in Sustainable Community Challenge Grants–for localized planning activities that ultimately lead to projects that integrate transportation, housing, and economic development. More here.
HUD Sustainable Regional Planning Grant: Deadline August 23
The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development is seeking applicants for their $100 million Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant program. The program is designed to create stronger, more sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering local innovation, and building a clean energy economy. The grant is part of the DOT, HUD, EPA partnership. More here.
EDA Innovation in Economic Development Competition: Deadline August 27
The Economic Development Administration announced funding for projects that advance innovation, boost competitiveness, and create jobs. Grants will be given to innovations in commercialization, regional innovation clusters, global export promotion, and green technology. More here.
When I arrived at my desk after the launch party for the Northeast Ohio Green Map, there was a letter waiting for me. I opened it with some degree of excitement (my name and address were handwritten – always a good sign) and found inside a thank you note from one of the attendees of the event that attracted dozens interested in mapping the region’s sustainability assets online.
The note, the turnout and the feedback at the launch party made me feel as though what we are working on here is, in fact, needed and rejoiced as a tool for community asset mapping in Northeast Ohio. What an extraordinary feeling to have after working on something that you believe in.
During the event, the back room of the Treehouse shrank as people continued to pour in during the presentation, and I was relieved that the bar didn’t have as limited a supply of beer as we had of Edison’s pizza.
This is an open-sourced asset map (read: inventory of our communities’ strengths) of all the sustainability organizations, initiatives and infrastructure in Northeast Ohio, and we need your knowledge and participation in order to make this map the rich community tool that it has the potential to become.
Join us for the launch of the Northeast Ohio Green Map!
5:30-8pm at The Treehouse, 820 College Ave., Tremont
Join us for this Mapping Party to celebrate the launch of the Northeast Ohio Green Map. The Treehouse will supply the beer, we’ll supply the food, and you supply the knowledge of our communities’ assets and opportunities! Bring your laptop and we’ll start mapping Northeast Ohio’s sustainability organizations, initiatives, and infrastructure together.
Asset mapping could help organizations and individuals of all kinds—including non-profit, for-profit, governmental, academic and public—to find one another, connect and collaborate around regional sustainability. Continue reading →
Eleven months ago, over seven hundred people from diverse sectors and industries came together for three days to talk about making Cleveland a more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable city over the course of the next ten years. Those three days were named the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 Summit.
During the summit, participants divided into over twenty-one working groups in which they would address vacant land, transportation, local food systems, education, healthcare, renewable energy, business innovation and much more. One of those working groups came to be known as the Collaborative Campus.
Although almost a year has passed since the original summit, many groups have struggled to find the resources necessary to move toward immediate action. The Collaborative Campus Project, however, is underway.
It provides, based on a massive community engagement campaign that I was lucky enough to take part in, policy recommendations to transform Ohio’s economy in a way that is both environmentally and socially just.
The short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations cover innovation, human capital, infrastructure, quality places, educational spending, local government collaboration, state programs and investments, and competition for Federal funding.
But how do we go from holding a report of quality policy recommendations to catalyzing implementation?
We might learn from what Pennsylvania has accomplished since the publishing of their “Back to Prosperity” Report (also done in collaboration with Brookings).
At the recent Rebuilding the Cities that Built America conference in Youngstown, Joanne Denworth of Gov. Edward Rendell’s Office of Policy in Pennsylvania noted that although they have made great progress in PA since the publishing of their smart growth report, there were also set-backs.
Of them, she recalled the push-back from rural communities that made policy implementation on behalf of city improvement difficult. She also informed conference-goers that PA now faces the impending environmental degradation associated with the exploration of oil sands, which could set them back significantly from environmental progress made since the height of industry in the area.
These are not easy issues to solve. But by exploring them and thinking through potential solutions, we may come closer to successful implementation of necessary policies in order to make our region more socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable.
On March 30, Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, came to Cleveland to talk about her work to “green the ghetto” in South Bronx. Watch the video below to learn about how she and her community have tackled social and environmental injustices, while simultaneously creating economic development opportunities for their neighborhood.
How can we bring some of these tactics to places like East Cleveland, East Liberty and pretty much anywhere in Detroit?
This Tuesday and Wednesday I went to a conference for Smart Growth in Pittsburgh. At the conference, a local documentary filmmaker – Chris Ivey – presented a few clips of his documentary series: East of Liberty.
East of Liberty covers some raw topics that developers interested in urban renewal don’t like to talk about much: gentrification and low-income residents. As plenty of post-industrial Great Lakes cities (not just Pittsburgh – where East of Liberty was shot) draw up plans for revitalizing their urban cores, we must take into account the current residents of those spaces.
Here’s a promo for the film:
Why does gentrification hurt communities?
While it may seem that bringing in new businesses and nicer apartment buildings is good for these cities, they often raise realty prices and property taxes, pushing low- and moderate-income residents out of the newly developed spaces. Often, no alternatives or quality low-income housing arrangments are made for these urban refugees.
What are solutions?
Urban renewal does not have to mean gentrification. Low- and moderate-income people deserve safe and family-friendly neighborhoods as much as anyone else. If we want to re-develop existing communities, then we should engage the people who live there in the planning process and offer low-income housing options in those developments.
In areas where developers work on integrating housing of different price ranges (think of the west side of Cleveland), there can be a rich diversity that renders vibrant neighborhoods.
And if you’re worried about safety, then invest in a quality police force that will protect all of the residents who live there.
Renovating the Rust Belt 