CHAPTER ONE

Building the Foundation for Community Change

In a wonderful anecdote told by Gerald Taylor of the Industrial Areas Foundation, we begin to understand what this idea of change really means. The “Accident Ministry” was an outreach program for a rural church located at the end of a winding road. As traffic increased just before services and with little signage, the number of accidents began to increase. The congregation saw this as an opportunity to minister and administer to the affected parishioners. But as the ministry grew and volunteers became concerned about keeping up with the demand, the future of the Accident Ministry was in question. A meeting after services to discuss the problem generated this suggestion, “Why don't we just straighten the road?”

For too many of us a direct route to anything seems too hard. It is expensive, time consuming, and a little boring just to do what needs to be done. The glitz and rush of a new project or initiative excites people, builds hope, and creates a sense of possibility. What these efforts are less likely to do is show the whole scenario, all that it would take to really straighten the road and get the signs going in the right direction. This book and the seven leverage points proposed here are about the long haul. They provide a way for communities no matter their location, circumstances, or size to create change for better results. The book should stimulate a new conversation in a community, giving community members of all ages a different lens on the change that is needed, and provide a road map of sorts for developing the strategy to make it happen.

Knowing Where to Build the Road

Over the last few decades, there has been an increase in the “Top Ten” lists for communities. The music industry has benefited from the popular appeal of these lists for music buyers and radio airtime for many years. Getting on the list meant exposure and sales. Not surprisingly, the media and communities alike have been drawn into the plethora of community ratings that focus on a particular demographic group like the “best places to raise children” or the “best places to retire”—a pecking order of who's best on a range of criteria. Touted by local boosters as proof that one community or region is better than another, the rankings may be a point of local pride but they are only snapshots. They are not particularly helpful for directing an action agenda or understanding the threats and opportunities that a community may face. Community change requires new ways of thinking and acting. Citizens in each of the communities discussed here, and hundreds like them, have ideas—good ideas—that need to be understood, tailored, communicated, and acted upon. However, among this variegated landscape that we call community, there are no perfect ones. Even those with elaborate fountains, revitalized Main Streets, and robust economies still have issues to address.

In Change by Design, Tim Brown (2009) observes that there is not just one way to solve problems. He describes the nonlinear continuum of the innovation process around a system of steps that are iterative and circular. First, the Inspiration portion of the process defines the problem and the opportunity to be addressed. Second, the Ideation stage is the process of generating and testing ideas. And the third stage, Implementation, takes ideas to market and generates action. He argues that this is not a disorganized approach but rather allows for the kind of exploration that leads to new discoveries. This kind of fluid approach is difficult for some groups to handle. Times are so tough and demands so immediate that giving new ideas time to gel is counterintuitive. Too many of us want answers now; waiting for the long haul or not seeing immediate results is hard and frustrating.

The issues that concern us most in our communities are those “wicked” problems such as educational attainment, poverty, environmental degradation, and social and economic inequities. These problems were not created overnight and thus the “fix” will take time as well. What we see now is the cumulative effect of our inability to act and invest, not for a few years, but for generations. Solutions, while possible, will require hard work, more investments, and smarter ways to work. No quick fix or computer software will do it. It will demand skills, talents, and people that we haven't tapped.

How We Got Where We Are

As new ways of working are crafted, the context of the history of urban development and its modern-day implications brings a helpful perspective. Community members and policymakers often want the tested research, development, and implementation strategies that stay in straight lines and produce the expected results. Good luck with that! Communities are not programmable or predictable. They are embedded in systems and environments that act and react in different ways. Change of any kind works that way.

As communities and citizens look to one another for answers to the most compelling social questions of our time, they must look deep and wide. American communities range from Almena, Wisconsin (population 677), to Tupelo, Mississippi (34,546), to Portland, Oregon (583,776), to New York City (8.175 million) (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2010). The more than 311 million people who reside in America live in communities of all sizes and descriptions. Within this broad spectrum, all places share promise and peril. Extraordinarily poor people live on rural farms and in high-rise apartments. Economic downturns hit cities, suburbs, and small towns without favor. Although the nation's urban policy has never directed America's population to be spread among places of all sizes, that is exactly what has happened. Even with rural areas shrinking and cities expanding, America still has a variety of place and location. Suburbs are no longer just inner ring or outer ring. They respond to the central city and one another in unique ways and become cities themselves. Rural areas abut major metropolitan areas and are accessible to them by a short car or train ride or connect via broadband to the world. Small cities connect to other small cities to create regional presence.

Some of the early American cities that started strong have faltered; new places have sprung up seemingly overnight. In a 2013 analysis of the cities that have grown the fastest since the 2007–2009 Great Recession began, almost all are in the Deep South, the Intermountain West, and the suburbs of larger cities (Kotkin, 2013). Chula Vista, California, is one of those former suburbs now termed a “new city.” Once a suburb of San Diego, its population has grown almost 22 percent in the last decade. Likewise, Carmel, Indiana, is another example of the growth and evolution of suburban cities. Thirty-five years ago its primary role as a bedroom community began to change. Now the City of Carmel is home to over eighty-one thousand people, a 62 percent increase since 2004. It is a great place to live in part because of some key investments in quality of life. Carmel's metamorphosis happened because of its geographic proximity to Indianapolis, surely, but also because the area's leadership has attracted major employers and invested in quality-of-life attributes such as the arts, downtown redevelopment, and a nationally recognized public library.

Jefferson, Texas, in contrast, was the “Riverport to the Southwest” in the mid-nineteenth century, a bustling port where Mississippi River cargo boats loaded and unloaded. In a time before the railroads came to north Texas, Jefferson provided the only alternative for importing and exporting for the region. In its heyday, Jefferson was second only to Galveston in cargo tonnage shipped from Texas. Jefferson's decline was prompted in part by a decision taken by the U.S. Corps of Engineers in 1873 to remove a natural barrier on the Red River called the Great Raft, which dropped the water level in the port so that shipping was questionable and no longer profitable. The coming of the railroads completed the demise. Today, Jefferson is a quaint town that has built a premier tourist industry around the river and its prestigious past (City of Jefferson, 2013). The important variable is how communities managed their inevitable change, not the fact that the change happened.

What Is in a Name

The term community is used throughout this book to limit the use of stratifying terms such as urban, rural, suburban, region, or just city. Those are real and tangible classifications, but rarely does one hear, “I am working to make my suburb or region better.” People live in communities. They may be high-rise, low-rise, dangerous, safe, attractive, littered, or spread out, but people still live there and identify with them. Most business locators are less interested in the exact location of their new facility (city or county limits) and more in the overall business climate, quality of life, access to transportation routes, a qualified workforce, and a range of business supports. This is a regional conversation, not just a municipal one. Boundaries, from city limit signs to fire districts to backyard fences, don't tell the whole story. As the demands and opportunities for worldwide economic interactions have become more cemented into our psyche and way of working, traditional boundaries are less important. What hasn't changed, however, is the desire to have the best of both worlds in business location and expansion. While a corporation's decision to locate on one...