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Let’s
Imagine
I
want you to indulge in a little what-if imagining with me.
Let’s imagine that when the city of Albany decided it wanted
to do something to revitalize the Park South neighborhood,
its first step was not a Request for Qualifications to find
a planning consultant and economist to study the area, but
a neighborhoodwide visioning process.
Outreach would have been hard work. Along with fliering every
house, local residents would have been recruited to go door-to-door
talking with people, and directors of local institutions like
the Boys and Girls Club on Delaware Avenue could have spread
the idea through word-of-mouth. Imagine that the event had
child care provided, food, and possibly even a modest stipend
for participants who stuck the whole thing out, much like
is done with focus groups.
Imagine that the meeting was facilitated by a skilled third
party (i.e., not the city), who had expertise in helping citizens
articulate proactive visions for their communities. Let’s
say a complete report of stakeholders’ feelings about the
assets, problems, visions, and potential solutions of the
neighborhood was compiled, and that formed the basis of the
RFQ that was then sent out. Imagine a similar type of meeting
was held to review the resulting plan, with the promise that
nothing in it was predetermined.
Obviously I don’t know what would have been said in those
meetings. It is likely that the economists’ assessment that
a big catalyst project is needed would be the same, as would
be the planning consultants’ desire to capitalize on the neighborhood’s
urban design. But having been to several of the meetings that
have been held, I can imagine community members turning out
to inventory vacant buildings and lots and making their own
recommendations about where projects would be located. I can
imagine a vision that explicitly called for the preservation
of historic homes (or businesses) in the neighborhood, and
committed various stakeholders to seek funding sources to
make that possible. The vision may have expanded on the existing
pocket park to create a cultural center in the middle of the
neighborhood, combined with the stepped-up community policing
and code enforcement that has been promised.
Who knows what would have come out of it? I certainly don’t.
I wanted to play let’s pretend not to pick on the actual plan
for Park South, which is a complex proposal whose results
will depend largely on how it is carried out. I wanted to
do it because of the bewilderment and honest frustration of
the city about the resistance its plan is meeting and the
bewilderment and honest frustration of many residents who
feel that no matter what they say, the plan seems roughly
unchanged. And yet, it’s possible that something not all that
different on the surface could have won community buy-in if
all the stakeholders felt like they were involved from the
start and had real influence over the ground rules, terminology
and priorities.
Getting community participation and buy-in is hard work. That’s
why there is a profession—community organizer—dedicated to
it. Turnout by itself is not a simple thing. Turnout that
is diverse by race and class is even harder. But neither of
them are unplumbed mysteries. One-on-one recruitment, attention
to timing, child care. . . . All these things have been known
to make a difference. And then the holy grail of buy-in involves
something really hard: letting go of some of the control.
An organizer I heard speak once told a parable about a woman
who wanted to get to know her neighbors, and so she threw
a dinner party. Very few people came, and when she expressed
this frustration to those who did, they pointed out that she
had not consulted people about the time or place, that the
fancy cuisine was unfamiliar to most of her neighbors and,
besides, most of them had kids whom they couldn’t bring along
to an affair like this. Block party with a barbeque would’ve
worked better. It would achieve her stated goal, but wouldn’t
be under her control, and would be fundamentally different
from what she had envisioned in many other ways.
I’m paraphrasing liberally, but the story has stuck with me
through many years and surfaced over and over as I have heard
groups from church social-action committees to the Citizens
Police Review Board bemoan the absence of participation in
their endeavors. Now, complete relinquishing of control is
in some ways impossible and undesirable—if you give up control
completely you can’t work toward any particular goal. To strain
the boundaries of our parable a little, there will always
be someone on the block who doesn’t want to meet the neighbors,
or thinks it should only happen by everyone joining her cult.
But the more important lesson to remember is that when people
feel empowered, they often come up with some really good ideas,
and if they feel listened to, will likely back those ideas
up with some powerful commitment. Fifty heads are often better
than five, no matter how highly paid those five are, or how
helpful they may be in translating the ideas into workable
plans.
Especially when it comes to neighborhood planning, it should
be remembered that some of the most successful revitalizations
of the region—downtown Saratoga Springs and Troy—as well as
turnarounds as famous as Dudley Street in Boston, were both
bottom-up and piecemeal, supported by town government and
bigger investors only once they got going.
This isn’t to say that the city shouldn’t be involved in trying
to bring people together around the common goal of revitalizing
Park South. But its money may have been better spent on experts
in harvesting ideas and inspiration from those who know the
neighborhood best than on consultants whose idea of flexibility
is to vary the number of beds in a student-housing complex.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
maxel-lute@metroland.net
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