Transformation needs leadership, commitment, and focus

Newspapers tend to be important local forces. So newspapers are card carrying members of the growth machine. As Logan and Molotch state, newspapers are place-based institutions, and their success is fully dependent on the strength of the local economy. Because of this dependence, when things get really bad, newspapers can be motivated to step out of their comfortability and advocate for transformation.

In the past I've written about how the Philadelphia Daily News was doing this, as well as the Camden Courier Post (Camden 2015). Plus the Youngstown Vindicator was an early supporter of the Youngstown 2010 effort. Oh, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer had a massive series about the economic health of the region. Sadly the PDN initiative ("Rethinking Philadelphia") appears to be have dropped.

I bring this up because the Birmingham News in Alabama has an amazing series about the future of Birmingham, given the decline of their traditional industries (steel), called Birmingham at the Crossroads.

From the website:

Over the past year, The Birmingham News has explored critical challenges that face metropolitan Birmingham-Hoover -- race and trust, fragmented government, inner-city crime, blight in our industrial core, uneven economic growth, disparities between urban and suburban classrooms. People across the area agree: On each of those fronts, leadership is key to progress. Can someone or some group craft a vision that leads our communities forward?


I find this important, because it's not just about leadership, but how leadership works not only to craft a vision, but to engage the broader community in the process of creating and realizing the vision.

Gary Imhoff at themail has been writing about local democracy being democratic through the election cycle, and then autocratic afterwards.

I have commented for a few years now that civic engagement and participation processes in the city don't have much depth. Too often, it's about consulting or "listening," but not about fundamental involvement.

Originally published in Arnstein, Sherry R. "A Ladder of Citizen Participation," JAIP, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1969, pp. 216-224.

Without true involvement and engagement on equal terms, you can't effect change and transformation. And there is no question that transformation is necessary in order for center cities to continue to move forward, especially in Washington.