Cornerstones Blog

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to tour more than a dozen progressive small towns and cities in western Washington state; I met many local officials and personally experienced some of their greatest achievements, primarily in the realm of the built environment. Many projects included mixed-use centers, walkable neighborhood designs that connected people to their downtowns and mixed-income housing developments. Some projects were brand new and others were designed to enhance historic charm and character. During the tour, however, I was struck with the realization that something was lacking: only a few of these places or project sites truly fostered intergenerational needs, and in particular the needs of children.

I may have fixated myself on this point, but once it occurred to me, I found myself looking for the “youth elements” of every place we went. Where would young people gather in a place like this? Where would they play? Would they be able to walk or ride bikes safely? I tried to imagine what our future leaders—now children—might say about where they grew up, and whether they would reminisce about these places fondly or scorn them. Would they want to return? It’s hard to say. None of these small towns and cities mentioned their success as including community engagement or youth voices.

While on foot in one particular town, we professionals quickly noted how walkable, sustainable and “new urbanist” the place was. But determined as I was to test its kid-friendliness, I went in search of some—kids, that is. I wanted to ask them what they thought about the place. My investigation took me to a few parks, a recreation center and a groovy little coffee shop/book store that was owned and run by an entrepreneurial clutch of Gen-Yers between the ages of 13 and 19. All good signs. Yet this nonetheless seemed like slim pickings in an otherwise progressive, walkable, mixed-use community lauded for its great achievements. To add to my skepticism, a local official described the town’s median age of 55 as being overeducated and underemployed, and a local resident said it was a great town to raise a family, but that his children had since grown and moved away. My mind grabbed onto his words “moved away,” and I couldn’t help but wonder why others weren’t asking the same question I was: Why are youth moving away from these “progressive” towns?

At last I stumbled upon a group of youngsters who seemed to be, not just strolling casually, but walking deliberately around town. When I asked what they were up to, they informed me laughingly that they were tracking their journey in steps taken, which would then satisfy a physical education requirement at school. I asked what they thought about their hometown and if they thought they would stay, or return as adults. There was a general consensus that there wasn’t much to do in town, and several had grown attached to neighboring Seattle because it “has more to explore and lots of things to do”—an understandable lure for people of any age, but particularly the young. Overall, they seemed to want to talk more about Seattle than about where they grew up.

During the tour, I discussed this trend with a local official, and with some concern, he asked, “How do we change that?” But at the same time, he seemed to indicate his comfort in the aging community because it was calm and quaint. “Calm” and “quaint” I’ll give them. But for those of us on the tour, “progressive” (at least in part) means “sustainable.” And I believe sustainable also means “multigenerational.” It means “viable for youth and working families.”

How does our living democracy ensure the youth get a voice, a seat at the table? What pushes and pulls this phenomenon of youth flight, and what will the impacts be for the places they leave behind?

The Foundation recently held a convening in Seattle seeking input on the physical characteristics or manifestations of communities intent on articulating, acting on and stewarding their heart and soul. At the Foundation, we call this process “Heart & Soul Community Planning.” A couple interesting aspects of the conversation really jumped out at me.

The first was a statement by leading architect Mark Hinshaw, observing that how a community comes together and how it engages or interacts is as, if not more, important than the physical buildings or the environment. Second, there was strong agreement over the importance of authentic, diverse and continuing engagement of citizens in fostering and/or perpetuating a vibrant community. A few people even offered specific essential ingredients for successful communities.

In Millbridge, Maine, a local non-profit won federal funding to build housing for immigrant laborers. But local residents circled a petition and approved a moratorium on multifamily housing in order to keep immigrants out.

In Brooklyn, New York this fall, a local Hasidic community objected to safety issues and immodest clothing among cyclists on its neighborhood bike lanes. The Department of Transportation sandblasted the lanes—which guerrilla bicycle activists promptly painted back on.

And in Katy, Texas, when a local Muslim community purchased a piece of land and planned to build a mosque and school, one citizen responded by running pig races next door on Friday evenings, the holiest day of the week for Muslims (see Jon Stewart’s coverage on The Daily Show, below).

In 2002, author Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari decided to establish a place for students to go after school to receive writing instruction and finish their homework. Eggers and company found a building to rent located at 826 Valencia Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. The building, however, was zoned for retail, so they had to come up with something to sell in order to occupy the space.

A friend involved with the project mentioned that the inside of the building looked like the hull of a ship and jokingly suggested they sell pirate supplies. Everyone had a good laugh at that, but eventually the idea took hold. Today, in addition to a non-profit tutoring center for students ages 6 to 18, 826 Valencia—named for the building’s location—is also San Francisco’s only independent supplier of equipment for the working buccaneer: eye-patches, peg-legs, hooks, planks and, of course, means to combat scurvy.

In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity of having two different daily routines. I used to live in Quincy, Massachusetts and work in Providence, Rhode Island. My day-to-day experience outside of my job involved spending about two hours in my car on interstate highways in bumper-to-bumper traffic or whizzing by folks in the breakdown lane (yes, that’s legal in MA during certain hours of the day). Typically, I’d get home and throw a frozen meal in the microwave and settle into and episode of Law & Order. I’d fall asleep by 10 p.m. and do it all again the next day.

On CSRwire Talkback, Frances Moore Lappé disputes the contemporary notion that growth is bad. Lappé asserts, conversely, that growth is good, but that the real culprit is waste and scarcity. She describes the opposite of growth as “shrink, shrivel, decline, decrease, die” and suggests that no growth leaves an assumption unchallenged: “...that today’s economy is in fact defined by growth—ever expanding abundance.” Lappé urges us to shed ‘no-growth’ and ‘limits’ and to begin reframing “the challenge as that of aligning with the laws of nature to enhance life; and from there ask, What are the frames about human nature that drive the current waste and destruction within an economy driven by one rule, highest return to existing wealth?”

One of my favorite things about the holidays is having time for things that I never have time to do otherwise—fold the laundry, call old friends, catch up on the back issues of magazines stacking up in the hall. So as the snow tumbled down and piled up here in Vermont, I settled in with the March, 2007 National Geographic: elephants, cosmic explosions, sharks in the Bahamas, and sunny, lush, alluring, enchanting Orlando.

This might be a funny subject to take up in a blog, but in my recent reading of Margaret J. Wheatley’s excellent book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, I was struck by the following comment:

“At first glance, the World Wide Web seems to be a source of new communities. But these groups do not embrace the paradox of community. The great potential of a world connected electronically is being used to create stronger boundaries that keep us isolated from one another. Through the Web, we can seek relationships with others who are exactly like us. We are responding to our instinct of community, but we form highly specialized groups in the image of ourselves, groups that reinforce our separateness from the rest of society.”