Debut of Institute Draws Coverage, Commentaries
By Patrick Barry
Published: April 30, 2010
The April 20 debut of the Institute caught the attention of city-watchers around the country and they are starting the much-needed dialog about how the community development field should shape its work in the coming years. Some excerpts:
Bob Van Meter and Joseph Kriesberg: Paying for the "glue"
"There should have been a bit more discussion about the importance of creating strong community based organizations that can make demands on the public sector and corporations on behalf of the low income communities. One of the central questions that has to be answered about comprehensive development strategies is how do you pay for the community organizing work, the glue, that does not fit easily into a programmatic box."
- from New Institute for Comprehensive Community Development Launches in Washington, D.C., by Bob Van Meter, Boston LISC, and Joe Kriesberg, Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporation.
Neal Peirce: Time to Think about Broad-Scale Solutions
"The very idea of an “institute” dealing with community development — however activist — seems worlds away from the hardscrabble, street-level efforts to upgrade neighborhoods I began covering in the 1970s. But maybe it’s the indispensable next step in the thrashing out of ideas, learning of necessity, taking on odds, that have been hallmarks of the community development effort from its start."
- from long-time journalist and commenter Neal Peirce, on Citiwire.net. Peirce and others just launched a new web site, citiscope.org that seeks to "enrich the global urban knowledge base with context-setting commentaries and periodic trend analyses."
Katia Savchuk: "Horizontal exchange" to spread lessons learned
"The Institute is a big step in the right direction. Knowledge gained through efforts on the ground is typically lost in little-read reports or at most shared with a small group of conference participants. Although they operate under a national umbrella, even the thirty LISC offices don't do a lot of horizontal exchange. The Institute has the potential to institutionalize lessons learned in hundreds of communities across the country and serve as a focal point for practitioners and researchers."
- from thepolisblog.org, whose contributors look at challenges and opportunities in urban areas around the world.
Alaina Beverly, White House Blog: "A Chorus for Change"
"The timing for this collaborative effort could not be better. As the White House Office of Urban Affairs works alongside the Domestic Policy Council to create comprehensive federal programming that will support sustainable planning and integrated initiatives at the local and regional level, who better to learn from than the community drivers who have a proven track record of creating resilient, vibrant and inclusive communities?"
- from the White House Office of Urban Affairs Blog.
Mandy Burrell Booth: News about "what's not broken"
"The problem with focusing solely on what's broken is that we sometimes miss opportunities to improve, expand on, and replicate what's working. Citiscope.org -- and another recently launched site, the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, which features case studies showing how communities across the nation are solving development challenges -- remind us that we're not a hopeless lot after all. What's more, we continue to surprise ourselves with wonderful ideas that, if shared, can help people living in cities thousands of miles away."
- from Metropolitan Planning Council in Chicago.
Joseph Kriesberg: Stimulate "demand-driven" community development
"This federal leadership is long overdue, but it comes with the risk that we focus so much on what these new initiatives can supply to neighborhoods that we will neglect the equally important work of building local capacity to exert demand on the larger private and public systems . . . The capacity to exert demand is key to achieving lasting and transformative change."
- from Thinking Out Loud section of Institute web site.
Ben Welle: "Groups are thinking differently"
Parks and recreation advocates are seeing the connections to comprehensive development efforts, writes Ben Welle. Trust for Public Lands has partnered on school playgrounds in New York City and playing fields in Newark. And a 2009 study shows how urban parks can support affordable housing.
- from City Parks Blog, a collaboration of the Trust for Public Land and the City Parks Alliance.
Posted in Notes from the Field