Citizen-Guided Revitalization Programs:
The key to rapid renewal in a tough economy.

Most local and regional redevelopment plans aren't implemented,
or fail when they are.  Why? Most places are missing a P in the 5P's of Progress.
 

The following is an excerpt from Storm Cunningham's upcoming 3rd book,

ReCivilizing.

Most "intransigent" community revitalization challenges (including funding) can be overcome in a way that costs almost nothing.  The solution is to create an ongoing, self-funding revitalization program to support your plans, policymaking, and projects.

 

Lack of an ongoing program is the primary reason so many communities fail to revitalize, despite spending millions on plans and projects.

 

While everyone agrees that such a program makes sense, institutional and political barriers have stood in the way of actually creating one. The current economic crisis is dissolving those barriers as budget-strapped communities seek effective new approaches to attracting employers and investment.

The formula for resilient community revitalization--and large-scale natural resource restoration--can be summarized as P5 + P3 = R3.  A summary of the formula appears at the end of this article. 

 

Let's start with a couple of heretical statements. The first is designed to get planners' blood boiling. The second is designed to have the same effect on citizens, NGOs, and enlightened political leaders.
 

Heresy #1: Many communities have found that there are only two things worse than not having a comprehensive plan: 1) Not implementing the plan, and 2) Implementing it.

Interestingly, while the planning process takes a lot of hits in this analysis, planners themselves almost universally support this analysis. The current system--with its lack of support/implementation programs--is the major problem for planners, too.

 

Heresy #2: Redevelopment projects and planning exercises shouldn't have to engage local stakeholders.

 

They also shouldn't have to explore ways in which to more-efficiently integrate the renewal of your natural, built, and socioeconomic environments. Why?

 

Because that engagement and integration should already be in place, via a permanent, citizen-owned revitalization program.  Effectively engaging all of your citizen, non-profit, academic, business, and government stakeholders is a labor-intensive process that takes a significant amount of time. It's wasteful and counter-productive for each new project or comprehensive plan update to have to start that process from scratch.  Why "citizen-owned"? So that the program doesn't fall apart with each new political administration.

 

 

Let's back up a moment for some perspective.

 

Community leaders often seek a simple insight that will put their city or region on the path to sustainable economic growth, increased quality of life, and enhanced environmental health..."revitalization", in other words.

 

Contrary to what common sense tells us, such a universal lesson does exist.  Here it is: Plans, projects, and policies are unlikely to revitalize your community, until you have a collaborative, ongoing renewal program to support them.

 

Let's start by putting renewal projects in their place. Ideally, projects implement plans, which implement a program, which implements a strategy, which implements a vision.

 

Another way of saying the above is that projects not supported by plans are more likely to fail. Plans not supported by ongoing programs are more likely to fail. Programs not based on a clear, concise strategy are more likely to fail. Strategies not based on a vision of the future that's shared by the community are more likely to fail. Using that as a guide, how many "points of potential failure" are present in your community?

 

Revitalization programs differ from renewal projects in three key characteristics:

• DURATION: A program is ongoing, or very long term, whereas projects normally have end dates measured in months, or a few years. (Note: Duration isn't enough: having a 30-year plan or 30-year project doesn't mean you have a program);

• SCOPE: A program addresses the entire community or region, whereas a project normally focuses on a specific property or asset;

• PURPOSE: A program has softer, harder-to-measure goals, such as inspiring confidence in the community's future (to attract investors, employers, and residents), reversing a decline, raising quality of life, enhancing overall environmental health, etc. A project's goals are usually more tangible, such as attracting a particular employer to a particular site, widening sidewalks to make a downtown more pedestrian-friendly, etc.

But, for maximum results, projects and programs should share three key characteristics:

• RENEWAL: They both should be based primarily on renewing existing assets (as opposed to sprawl);

• INTEGRATION: They both should take an integrative approach to the natural, built, and socioeconomic environments; and

• ENGAGEMENT: They both should effectively engage all stakeholders who will be involved in--or affected by--the activity.

The good news is that the civic renewal trend (also known as civil renewal in the UK)  provides an ideal way to launch and manage integrated, engaged revitalization programs (and the renewal projects the program supports).

 

 

Even better, Web 2.0 tools are now causing civic renewal to blossom. In fact, there's now a simple, highly-affordable web tool that makes it far easier for communities and regions to create collaborative, ongoing programs that renew their natural, built, and socioeconomic environments: "Civic Renewal" in other words.

 

This author’s definition of civic renewal is “an ongoing, partnered process of renewing a community’s natural, built, and socioeconomic environments, guided by informed, empowered citizens”. 

 

More on that in a moment. Let's first make sure we understand the problem before we get to the solution. 

 

Like most folks, I used to believe that planners, redevelopers, economic development agencies, and policymakers were the ones who made community revitalization happen.  In a few cases, that's been true. But then I discovered the civic renewal trend, and it completely changed my perspective.  Those professions are often actually impediments to revitalization. 

 

This is often through no fault of their own: they are all about projects, tools, policies, and plans. The civic renewal trend is now putting community renewal leadership where it belongs, so those vital groups are no longer asked to do something they lack the knowledge, resources, or mission to accomplish: creating ongoing revitalization programs.

 

The Question.

Policymakers love simple solutions and black-or-white answers to complex problems.  They want an economic growth strategy that works no matter how good or bad the national or global economy might be...no matter how tight their local budgets might be. They want to know "What's the SINGLE thing we should do that will turn our local economic, societal, and environmental problems around?"

 

Knowing how multifaceted the regeneration process is, I've resisted offering simplistic advice to such unrealistic questions, until now.  For the past decade, my work has focused exclusively on helping cities and regions create comprehensive, collaborative revitalization.  This means renewing their natural, built, and socioeconomic assets together, while effectively engaging all the stakeholders. It's complex stuff, obviously.

 

The Answer.

There is, in fact, a single factor that determines success or failure more than any other: whether your redevelopment and restoration plans and projects are supported by an ongoing revitalization program. All are needed:

• Without a plan, projects can't "be all they can be";

• Without projects, plans and programs produce little;

• But without a program, even the best plans and the most successful projects probably won't get your community where it wants go.

   

I say "probably", because communities occasionally implement a well-designed, well-executed redevelopment project that does, in fact, produce sustained revitalization.  But this only happens when they are lucky enough to get the timing perfect (this is almost always accidental).  It's time to stop relying on such luck.

 

The Problem.

Hundreds of millions--possibly billions--of dollars are spent by communities and regions worldwide every year on comprehensive plans.  Most lie dormant until they're obsolete. Of the few that are actually implemented, shockingly few achieve their aims.

 

Why?  Because a comprehensive plan must be supported by a comprehensive program, if it is to have any realistic hope of success. A comprehensive plan without a comprehensive revitalization program is like a curriculum without a university.  Writing a curriculum is easy compared to the complexity of ongoing functions like teaching, testing, engaging parents, marketing, and fundraising.

 

But this is where communities (and institutions, such as development banks, whether community or multinational) drop the ball. Most communities and regions have planning departments, but few have departments dedicated to creating and maintaining an ongoing program that addresses the renewal of their natural, built, and socioeconomic assets.

 

Without such a program, plans suffer from insufficient public participation, insufficient private partnering/funding for implementation, and insufficient support by public agencies at all levels. What communities end up with are often ad hoc processes in autocratic, technocratic, plutocratic, or even kleptocratic forms. Even well-intentioned redevelopment processes often devolve into one or more of those dysfunctional forms over time, in the absence of a collaborative, ongoing program to guide and monitor their evolution.

 

Why do communities spend so much time on planning, and so little on implementation?  Commissioning a plan is a guaranteed "win" that political leaders can tout: they've "done something".  Announcing the completed plan is another guaranteed feather in their cap. It's in implementation that the risk of failure occurs, so leaders prefer the safer path of simply creating a new plan (or updating the old one) every 5 to 10 years.

 

The problem isn't just plans without programs: it's also projects without programs. In between the endless planning ritual, political leaders tend to focus on projects, rather than ongoing programs.  This is primarily because projects fit within election cycles, whereas ongoing programs span administrations. It's also because projects are visible, whereas programs are nebulous and intangible. Programs can be made visible by marketing efforts such as downtown banners (but too many communities just buy the banners). 

 

Redevelopment projects are like delivering a load of firewood: they deliver immediate benefit and can provide a short-term blaze of renewed confidence in a community's future. But a revitalization program is like planting a forest: it will provide firewood ad infinitum if properly managed. But it's not projects vs. programs: if your community needs "firewood" now, by all means dive into a project. But don't expect it to deliver maximum long-term benefits without the support of an ongoing revitalization program.

 

Revitalization programs that are primarily political initiatives are fragile. It's quite common for incoming political leaders to kill programs launched by previous administrations so the opposition party can't claim credit for successes that occur during their tenure. Political leaders should definitely be engaged, and should be given the opportunity to take credit for a program's successes, but a sustainable revitalization program is one "owned" and supported by all local stakeholders, not just the government.  

 

The Solution.

An ongoing program is how a place gets a handle on timing, among other critical factors.  Revitalization is an intangible quality that emerges, seemingly on its own. Like pornography, few can define it, but everyone knows it when they see it. It can't be engineered to a timetable, but a process can be put in place that will make it far more likely that the revitalization "tipping point" will kick in at some point. This is the moment I call "critical renewal"; where revitalization starts feeding on itself, gaining its own momentum so you don't have to keep pushing.

 

Confidence in a community's future comes from having on ongoing program of renewal. Confidence in the future attracts investors, employers, and residents...even before any changes in the community are visible. As Avinash Persaud, chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited (London, UK) says “Money, in the end, is confidence.” The moment people stop believing in the future of the USA, a dollar bill turns into just a piece of paper. 

 

Likewise, confidence in a community's future is what turns derelict buildings and vacant lots into investment opportunities...restorable assets that revitalize, rather than liabilities that inhibit growth.

 

I've been researching, writing, and lecturing about restorative development since 1996, when I started writing my first book, The Restoration Economy (Berrett-Koehler, 2002)  [Amazon link]. The Restoration Economy was the first book to document the fast-growing new disciplines and industries that are restoring our natural and built environments. Those "restorable assets" can be considered the ingredients of revitalization. The "recipe" that turns those ingredients into actual revitalization was first documented in my 2008 book, reWealth (McGraw-Hill Professional). [Amazon link]

 

I've been working full-time in the regeneration field since that first book was published, and travel constantly to communities worldwide that are trying to revitalize. As a result, I frequently witness the tragedy of ambitious, well-designed redevelopment projects that either fail outright, or fail to spark ongoing renewal.  The culprit in almost every case is the absence of a comprehensive, collaborative, ongoing revitalization program.  Projects and plans must be seen as vital organs within the body of a living program: on their own, they'll likely end up as dead meat.

 

After over a decade of intimate, daily involvement in revitalization planning sessions, restoration projects, and renewal initiatives, one thing has become crystal clear: A project or plan focus often leads to failure, and always leads to wasted opportunity. 

 

In nature, all living systems constantly renew themselves; whether an ecosystem or a human body. (There's probably not a cell in your body that you had seven years ago: it's quite literally not the same body.) Cities are living systems, so why don't communities see renewal as a permanent, 24/7, systemic process, rather than an occasional activity?

 

The irony is that programs are cheap: it's projects that are capital-intensive. Nothing adds more value per dollar invested than the tiny amounts required by a revitalization program.

 

According to the "bible" of professional project managers, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Third Edition "A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually." If project managers worldwide are aware of this simple (and rather obvious) insight, why don't communities put it into practice? The major problem is that most people can't define "revitalization program". It's hard to desire something you don't even know exists.

 

The general public often assumes that planning, economic development, or redevelopment agencies are serving as a systemic revitalization program. This is almost never the case.  They are just silos: some productive, and others not so much.  Without a comprehensive, collaborative revitalization program even well-intentioned redevelopment agencies almost inevitably deteriorate into wasteful--often corrupt--playgrounds for the politically connected.

 

That's not to say there aren't inspiring examples of enlightened planners, responsible redevelopers, and program-oriented economic development agencies. But they (sadly) are far from common. Citizens must "own" the process of creating a better future for themselves. Revitalization should be done by communities, not just to them. 

 

An ongoing revitalization program is a community's "flywheel", capturing the momentum of each successful project, and using it to make subsequent projects easier to fund and launch. A well-designed program also captures the community's learning, and embeds those lessons in policy. These changes to the community's "renewal capacity" reduce bureaucratic roadblocks for redevelopers, increase incentives that attract what the community really needs, and enhance the community's partnering skills. Maybe more importantly, they restore hope and optimism concerning the future. 

 

 

Tools of Civic Renewal.

Research (and personal experience) has shown that information seldom changes behavior, but emotions and tools do. Emotions can be generated internally--such as witnessing the suffering of people we care about--or they can be injected from external sources, such as a charismatic leader.

 

But emotions can't be relied upon for lasting change. For that, you need tools. We could hear many motivational talks about communicating instantly, in writing, with anyone on the planet at any time.  But, until someone gives us email, we're not likely to do it. Once we have that tool, no one needs to motivate us to us it.

 

And so it is with collaborative, comprehensive renewal programs. I've been advocating them for a decade in my talks, workshops, and books. Audiences and readers tell me it's the future, but they can do anything about it in the present without a tool designed to facilitate it.  Now that RevitalizFORUM is available, that future has arrived.

Civic Renewal: The Future of Redevelopment.

But even a tool like RevitalizFORUM can't solve the problem without sufficient public participation. Citizens and other local stakeholders must "own" the process of creating a better future for themselves. Having their RevitalizFORUM owned and controlled by an agency that isn't fully committed to effective stakeholder engagement will cripple its effectiveness.

 

On March 1, 2012, the solution to that problem will arrive at http://RevitalizNOW.com. RevitalizNOW! combines two fast-growing technology trends--"crowdsourcing" and "crowdfunding"--with the civic renewal trend (it could just as easily be called "civil renewal", "civic revitalization", or "civic regeneration")

 

Crowdfunding is a process of community engagement.

It’s about money, yes, but it’s about more. It’s a statement of democracy

for funding and getting capital where it’s needed in the community.

– Chiara Camponeschi, author of The Enabling City

 

Whereas RevitalizFORUM is a tool for creating a collaborative, ongoing revitalization program, RevitalizNOW! is a tool for funding renewal projects. Combined, a community should have everything it needs to create rapid, resilient renewal.

 

Related and peripheral trends/initiatives include design charrettes, collective impact, social entrepreneurship, L3C, and impact investing. As with most emerging trends, civic renewal is starting with a plethora of labels, as each community "invents" it locally, and as each researcher or profession newly discovers it.

 

Whatever it's called, the trend is towards citizen control of the renewal process. For decades (even before Jane Jacobs), citizens have begged planning departments and  redevelopment agencies to engage them in creating the community's future. In communities enjoying civic renewal programs, it's the citizens who decide whether to engage those agencies. As we're seeing in California (where the governor is trying to eliminate all redevelopment agencies as being wasteful and corrupt) and in many other places, citizens' level of trust in traditional redevelopment entities is fast-eroding.

 

The primary driver behind many democratic trends these days--most notably in Africa--is information technology. But it's not just cell phones and Twitter: the most important emerging technology is crowdsourcing, whereby citizens' input on virtually any civic matter is aggregated, evaluated, and reported.

 

Here's what Hilde Schwab of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship says about the crowdsourcing site, Ushahidi.com: "Ushahidi is one of the few social enterprises that has, in just a few short years of existence, dramatically changed the face of how individuals and communities can influence democracy and economic development around the world."

 

Former U.S. President Andrew Jackson, in his 1837 Farewell Address, said "Eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty."  Easily said; not so easily done, especially when those running your country own or control the news media. Now, crowdsourcing has arrived as the technology of eternal, 24/7 vigilance.  Since a collaborative, ongoing program is needed to reliably achieve community renewal, one might paraphrase Jackson thusly: "Eternal citizen engagement is the price of revitalization."

 

It's not just creativity and information that can be crowdsourced: resources can be also. If those resources are in the form of money, it becomes a separate-but-related technological and social trend known as "crowdfunding". More on that in a moment.
 

Citizens as "consumers" of revitalization services.

As the civic renewal trend continues to catch on, citizens will increasingly become the "consumers" of revitalization.  This will likely have a broad range of ramifications on the community redevelopment industry, effectively ending it in its current outdated form.

 

As consumers of revitalization services, we'll likely see the rise of the same kind of "ecosystem" of products and services we see in other consumer markets, and a shift towards similar practices:

• Ratings services and Standards. Citizens will want to know the actual success rate among a firm's clients. With the current planning industry, such numbers are unavailable. Planning firms avoid program involvement for the same reason politicians do: therein lies the potential for failure. Delivering a plan is a guaranteed success; implementing one isn't. Citizens will want some kind of "Consumer Reports" or "Moody's" for objective evaluations.  The emergence of both standards and success tracking tools will likely follow in short order.

• Marketing and Sales.  Planning firms currently market to planning departments, mayors, city councils, and redevelopment agencies. As a result, their "features and benefits" are geared towards what matters to those buyers. The rise of civic renewal will force them to sell features and benefits that citizens of all income levels (and other stakeholders) care about, which is not always the same thing.

• Research and Development.  Change the promises (marketing), and you change the product. Most consumer product firms have to major sources of innovation: in-house design and technical R&D, and customer-focused R&D (such as focus groups). One doesn't need to contemplate the emergence of such practices in the redevelopment industry for very long before one sees the earthshaking shift this would likely trigger.

“A shift toward democratic governance, together with unprecedented decentralization,

has had a profound impact on local governments worldwide..."

- ICMA (International City & County Managers Association)

 

Given the above analysis, it follows that a sure sign of a mayor who really cares about his/her city is if they have a long-term, programmatic focus: not caring that they are planting seeds of trees that will shade future mayors.

 

As a result, the civic renewal trend is indeed catching on fast (though it's nameless in most of the places in which its manifesting, due to both its newness and its grassroots nature). As it becomes more formally defined, fueled by a revival of desire for real  democracy (witness the "Arab Spring"). 

 

Until now, the civic renewal trend has been rather unfocused, manifesting in a broad array of forms.  The Occupy Wall Street movement can be seen as one form, but it started with citizens in community's nationwide demanding a place at the redevelopment table.

 

Governor Jerry Brown's proposed defunding of all California redevelopment agencies is an example of a top-down fix. Unfortunately, this current approach is like doing brain surgery with a shovel. California needs a statewide renewal program to fill the gaps created by defunding the local redevelopment agencies.  Such a program would use a simple checklist to identify the worthwhile local projects and agencies that shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater, if it wishes to avoid citizen outrage at undoing their good work. 

 

As we saw at the beginning of this article, the planning, project, and policymaking arenas are already "owned", with citizens limited to polls and protests. The next step is for citizens and all other stakeholders to actually own their local renewal program, rather than simply having a voice in it.  Then, citizens will be able to come to the table as full partners.

 

A Planetary Renewal Program?

Programs are the 21st century's greatest frontier. They are the vast new territory that is currently uninhabited, where we can create ideal community--and even planetary--renewal programs with a blank slate. 

 

What's this about planetary renewal, you ask?  The same problems suffered by community renewal efforts are suffered by ecosystem restoration projects and other natural resource replenishment efforts. The two most common complaints of ecological restoration experts (especially those working at the landscape level) are:

• The difficulty of integrating with other agendas that affect ecosystems, such as infrastructure, brownfields, heritage, etc. and

• The lack of ongoing support and funding.

Ecosystem restoration should always be programmatic. In these days of climate change and ubiquitous invasive species, one-shot restoration efforts seldom last: they require ongoing monitoring and maintenance.

 

Why not leave revitalization in the hands of the experts, you ask? 

If by "experts" you mean someone with an advanced degree or a professional certification, there are no revitalization experts. There are no Ph.D.'s in community revitalization, nor is there a certifying body. Universities suffer from silos as much as does government. [Prior to the publication of Rewealth (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2008), no one had even proposed an underlying theory of revitalization...or generally accepted principles...or a programmatic model. There wasn't even a formal definition of community revitalization!]

 

The few cities that actually have a revitalization program are thus hiring a "pig in a poke" when they choose someone to run it. They normally get someone who's an expert in a related discipline--like planning, or transit, or brownfields, or economic development--each of which is maybe 1% or 2% of a revitalization initiative.

 

The usual result is a planning or economic development program, instead of revitalization, which is far more comprehensive.  Only by engaging all business, citizen, academic, non-profit, and government stakeholders can a community create a comprehensive program of renewal, and get the boost in quality of life, environmental health, and economic growth that defines revitalization. 

 

It's not just a lack of qualifications that's the problem. It's hard to find a planning department or redevelopment agency these days that doesn't profess to be dedicated to stakeholder engagement: it's accepted as the way things should be. A few really are. But there's a chasm between rhetoric and reality. Most are quite comfortable with the status quo, and really would prefer to control the process as much as possible. Thus, the rise of Civic Renewal.

 

Readers of this author's earlier books, The Restoration Economy (2002) and Rewealth (2008), know that both works advocated strategies that integrate the renewal of the natural, built, and socioeconomic environments.  Both books also advocated strategies that do a more effective job of engaging all stakeholders.

 

But these inevitable changes were impeded by established disciplines and public agencies that profess a belief in integration and engagement, but seldom practice it. Now, the emergence of social media and other Web 2.0 tools is enabling citizens to make an "end run" around "the establishment", taking the revitalized future of their communities into their own hands. 

 

Thanks to the rise of civic renewal, it will now be up to the citizens to decide whether they want to engage these agencies, rather than the other way around.

 

Now, back to that formula: P5 + P3 = R3. [Sorry, but authors/consultants are required to invent magical formulae. Can't be helped: It's a law of nature...or of publishers, anyway.]

 

P5: Projects, Plans, Policies, Protests, and...?

If you've read this article, you'll know that most communities have projects, plans, but are missing the third "P" (program) to support them properly.

• Projects: If you don't have actual renewal projects, nothing much will happen. Projects are primarily the domain of private developers and designers (architects and engineers). But even the most enlightened design firms are restricted by the RFPs/RFQs they respond to, which seldom specify integrated, engaged redevelopment. A renewal program helps your community improve its bid process.

• Plans: If you don't have plans (neighborhood, city, regional) to integrate those projects and give them direction, you'll miss-out on many potential efficiencies and synergies. Planning is primarily the domain of planners and public agencies.

• Policies/Politics: If your policies still encourage sprawl, you won't make much headway. Telling private redevelopers that you're rolling out the red carpet for them won't pay off if all they find is red tape once the arrive. Don't make them spend months or years getting exceptions to zoning and building codes that aren't redevelopment-friendly. If you want your downtown revitalized, you must make it easier and more profitable to do projects there than in the greenfields. Use policymaking to foster a local renewal culture. Policymaking is primarily the domain of elected leaders. But politics is what they usually focus on...

• Polls/protests: The domain of citizens is primarily in polling (such as voting), and in protesting when they feel they are being ignored or abused. A renewal program helps your community avoid citizen protests and lawsuits that delay revitalization.

• Programs: An ongoing renewal program is your community's "flywheel", capturing momentum and building confidence in your community's future (which attracts investors, residents, and employers). It helps your community reach tipping point of "critical renewal", where revitalization becomes self-accelerating. An ongoing program makes your projects, planning, policymaking, and polling more efficient and effective.

P3: Public-Public, Public-Private, and Private-Private Partnerships.

You probably know that P3 is usually used as shorthand for public-private partnership.  Partnering is the key to getting redevelopment done in resource-deprived conditions.  But I also include public-public and private-private partnerships under the P3 designation. Partnering among various levels of government--city, county, state, and federal--can be just as important as partnering between public and private. What's more, private players often don't have the all the resources needed to move ahead, so encouraging private-private partnerships can also be crucial.

 

R3: Rapid, Resilient Renewal.

Rapid, resilient renewal can be seen as the "universal goal" of communities, regions, and nations:

Rapid: Elected leaders need results in time for the next election, so fast results are key to getting their support. But excessive focus on speed often decreases the quality of results.

Resilient: Stop-start, piecemeal regeneration often fails to inspire confidence (see above). Regeneration should be a permanent process, not just something your community does when it's in pain. An ongoing revitalization program is the key to resilience.

Renewal: Bringing all of your "restorable assets"--natural, built, and socioeconomic--is the key to economic growth that simultaneously enhances both your environmental health and your quality of life. Revitalization, in other words.

 

To Recap:

Your renewal projects can be considered the stuff (assets) and activity of revitalization.

Your renewal plans can be considered the direction of revitalization (must be based on a strategy that is based--in turn--on a shared vision of the future).

Your renewal program can be thought of as the people (and institutions) of revitalization.

 

If any of those are missing, your community is unlikely to achieve rapid, resilient renewal.

 

Creating a citizen-owned, citizen-guided revitalization program is the blank slate communities need to create truly leading-edge solutions. Planning, projects, and policymaking are all well-defined arenas, and their turf is already "owned". Only in the arena of ongoing programs will cities find the virgin territory to create an ideal process, unencumbered by turf wars, politics, silos, and the other common barriers to progress.
 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^End of Book Excerpt^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

 

RevitalizNOW! is a new crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, crowdmapping, and crowdleading tool that enables all local stakeholders to guide their local revitalization program. It also allows them to crowdfund local renewal projects, a vitally-important capability in these days of tight local, state, and federal budgets. See http://RevitalizNOW.com after March 1, 2012.

 

I spent six years researching spectacularly revitalization successes...true "back from the dead" stories of community resurrection. The results were published in my 2008 book, Rewealth (McGraw-Hill Professional). [Amazon link] 

 

That book is where you'll find a "universal" blueprint for an ideal revitalization program...a reliable framework that will save your community or region from having the "reinvent the wheel".  You'll also find real-world case studies of cities that have taken the programmatic approach, and that have achieved rapid, resilient renewal as a result.

 

But if you don't have time for a 400-page book, and prefer a one-sentence secret for bringing places back to life, here it is:

Comprehensive plans and redevelopment projects often fail--and even successful ones seldom achieve the community's dreams--without a Civic Renewal program to support them.

 

Storm Cunningham is CEO of REVITALIZ, LLC in Washington, DC.

[Last edited: November 19, 2011]