There should be community bulletin boards in commercial districts (and other places)

Flyers on a light pole, 2100 block Highland Drive, Sugar House, Salt Lake City.

It's so much harder to find about community events and such with the decline of traditional newspapers.  Some alternative weeklies used to publish lists, some much better than overs, others maybe just a feature listing a couple.

One such feature, sadly no longer a part of the editorial program of the Salt Lake City Weekly, led me to participate in a canoeing event on the Jordan River ("Canoeing on the Jordan River, one of the events from Latino Conservation Week in Salt Lake County").  ... that was before I was sick, and I biked there--it was about 8 miles away.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a feature listing select events, but it doesn't come out until Saturday.  

Now you have to subscribe to all kinds of feeds to get that information.  I can't even get through a day's email, so I don't do much social media--in itself bad because if I republished entries on Instagram and Substack I'd have way more readers--since blogs have been supplanted.  If only I could afford to pay someone to do it for me....

These days, libraries are good places for posting this kind of stuff.  And that's about it.  The Millcreek Public Market on the ground floor of the City Hall has a pillar that people post flyers on, just like light poles.  That's about the closest to community bulletin board I've seen in a civic building other than libraries.

Commercial places with a more community vibe, like coffee shops, certain restaurants, local food stores, etc., have bulletin boards

I hate to admit that I haven't read any Jurgen Habermas. He introduced the concept of the “public sphere." Based on an analysis of coffee shops in the 1800s England and France, "he theorized that democracy emerged and could continue to exist in a healthy form only if there was a space that was outside the control of the state, where deliberation and the exchange of ideas could freely occur."

In 2011, "Community cleanups (and other activities) as community building and civic engagement activities," seeming about cleanups and such, I also wrote about spaces for community organization and protest, and listed a variety of ways to communicate beyond the traditional media.  From the piece:

I am thinking along this kind of framework, from the personal to the group, but somehow the other dimension of support/expression vs. opposition and resistance needs to be incorporated:

- individual expression (graffiti, letter to editor, social media))
- group/community (block party, mural, neighborhood parks, street fairs, community media, smart mobs, pirate radio, etc.)

- community bulletin boards and community media -- providing space for such in civic and commercial spaces, e.g., bulletin boards in parks, libraries, etc., and do you have to get permission to post things? 

- public assembly (Hyde Park type speakers corners, public squares in cities, college campues, etc.)
- resistance/opposition, including suicide bombings in public space/transit infrastructure, what the IRA did in their London bombing campaign, wilding, riots, also celebrations, i.e., college sports related, that get out of hand, etc.). [Note that in Planning in the Public Domain, Friedmann distinguishes between radical practice, which accepts the existence of the state; and revolutionary practice, which does not]

Left: Bulletin board, Lamplighter Coffee Roasters, Richmond, Virginia. 

Right: concepts from Planning in the Public Domain.

2. Planning for community spaces in libraries and recreation centers, for meetings (yes we do that already), but what about spaces for community organizations located in libraries and other public buildings, bulletin boards sure, but how about galleries for local artists and other exhibitions, or spaces for regular exhibitions (that could rotate around the city) on community issues?  

3. What about having some funds available, like what the Humanities Council of Washington does, for community curation projects, for projects on urban issues, etc., that can then be shown in such facilities?

Urban Sustainability traveling exhibit, Montreal at a farmers market, 2010.  Sponsored by the Écomusée du fier monde. 

(The ecomuseum concept is worthy of a separate blog entry of its own.  At that one, I found a copy in the public communications area of the executive summary of the then Province of Quebec bicycle plan, "Making cycling a mode of transportation in its own right," while not necessarily transformational for Canada, certainly was wrt the US.  It's out of print and off the Internet but I'm trying to track down a copy.)

4. Or something I've said for about 5+ years, that all libraries should have collections of materials specific to their communities. The Georgetown branch of the DC Public Library has the "Peabody Room" which is a focused collection on Georgetown. But all libraries could have a filing cabinet full of stuff and finding aids.

5. Public squares, pocket parks, etc., in neighborhood commercial districts. E.g., I will take some responsibility for failing to advocate for this in the H Street NE revitalization plan, or for not thinking of the need for an expanded public space around the 2nd and N Streets NE exit at the New York Avenue Metro station in NoMA.

6. Having funds to support community festivals and events, even on a smaller scale.

7. And micro funds to support micro community projects. (Although ANCs do have some funds for this.)

8. How Arlington County government agencies exhibit in force at the Arlington County Fair. Or how some Baltimore City government agencies exhibit at Artscape.

In 2020, I wrote a series about building blocks for commercial revitalization, including "Part 2 | A neighborhood identity and marketing toolkit (kit of parts)."  I list what I think should be all of the elements of a complete identity program for commercial districts.  That has two relevant items:

3. Include directory/place/events identification signage at transit stations and in bus shelters. 4. Include directory/place/events identification signage at public buildings in the area such as libraries, schools, parks, human services offices, etc.

But I didn't specifically list a community bulletin board as a distinct element.  In 2018, in "Why not post outdoor Community Information Boards at public buildings and sites?" I mentioned kiosks and bulletin boards.

Bulletin board at the Queens Plaza bus station, Liverpool.

Bulletin Board, Mount Pleasant Plaza, Washington, DC.

Community bulletin board behind Hampshire Langley Shopping Center on Kirklynn Avenue, Takoma Park (Takoma Langley Crossroads). It might be that the big board is run by the shopping center. The smaller box to the right is managed by the community association.

Bulletin board at the Rhode Island Avenue pedestrian bridge trailhead, Metropolitan Branch Trail. Most are bike related.  I believe this was put up by the DC Department of Transportation. A community Little Free Library has been placed to the right of this sign.

Kiosk in Adams Morgan at the corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW.

Information board, Sligo Creek Trail, Montgomery County Maryland.

I've been thinking again from a public communications need in an environment with limited options, that public parks should have community bulletin boards too.  

This is something I will put on my long list of projects to pilot at Sugar House Park.

But I wrote about that too. I can't find a photo, but there is a community information board at every park site in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Good article in the New Yorker about political organizing

-- "What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting" 

Distinguishes between "mobilizing" and "organizing," and grassroots determination of agendas -- "as Mao put it, letting one thousand flowers bloom."  Organizing is about creating leaders that do, while "mobilizing" is about showing up to something.

When I talk about this, I've never made the distinction between mobilizing and organizing, but I always talk about what might be thought of as "long range planning," that for meeting X you already need to be setting up "next steps" and meeting or action Y.

I don't fully buy the comparison between the anti-drug use organization DARE and MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  The author argued that by letting people set up chapters in MADD with limited guidance, they had a lot more agency versus a more top-down organization with control of messaging and agenda by people at the top.  

Can a top-down organization work?  DARE didn't because it turned out that research on its curriculum and methods found that it didn't diminish drug use, and that in some cases, even encouraged it.  But what if the agenda and curriculum worked?  Would DARE have been successful with the mobilizing model and top down control.

Protest against ICE after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by ICE agents.  Reddit photo.

The difference too between the two is that a more variegated infrastructure is created with the organizing model, providing the people at the top can be looser with control.

The article contrasts Democratic and Republican Party approaches, says the Republicans work it better because their only litmus test is whether or not you support Trump, not your position on guns, abortion, LGBTQ issues, etc.

It discusses the success of the Obama campaign, and how right wingers studied the model, and adopted and adapted it. 

From the article:

Ben Wikler chaired the Democratic Party of Wisconsin from 2019 to 2025. He recently told me that “Democrats should be learning from the Republicans about how to build small, socially interconnected communities.” Wisconsin had the tiniest swing toward Republicans among battleground states in 2024 because, Wikler believes, the state Party prioritized “neighborhood teams working year-round and socializing with their neighbors, to form real communities”—the same approach that governs Faith & Freedom. For liberals, he said, alternatives to church and the gun club include neighborhood organizations such as gardening groups and community centers. Whereas maga welcomes anyone wearing the red hat, Democrats often require people to use new terms on pronouns and race, and they can punish or exclude anyone who strays. “That doesn’t work,” Wikler said. “A movement needs people who feel safe with each other, who can hang out and talk about things besides politics. People who like each other. The Republicans are finding those people. The Democrats aren’t doing that enough.”

One problem, according to researchers, is that the left’s success in mobilizing large crowds may have caused leaders to misunderstand what spurs someone to become politically active in the first place. In the late nineties, the sociologist Ziad Munson began interviewing pro-life advocates, and he initially assumed that such people had been strongly opposed to abortion for years. “I was completely wrong,” he said. In fact, nearly a quarter of activists told him that they had been pro-choice when they attended their first pro-life event. A majority said that they had not had strong opinions about abortion. “But then something happened, like they moved to a new town or started going to a new church, or they got divorced and started joining singles groups, and the new people they met were pro-life,” Munson explained. “And so they found a community, and a sense of identity, and that’s when they became committed.”

Many leaders of local MADD chapters first sought the group out after their lives had been upended by a drunk driver, and they found that meeting other victims helped them process their anger and grief. Wolfson, the MADD researcher, told me, “They were mainly women who had never thought of themselves as public figures, and now they’re talking to legislators and spending time with people who understand them and making new friends. At that point, you’re all in.” The organization accepted everyone, regardless of ideological background (and drinking habits). “All you needed to join was to care about this issue.”

While not discussed in the article I think this is an element in anti-vaccination forces.  Besides the anti-science etc. people, a lot of people who made "mistakes" during covid, leading to death or serious and long term illness, if not of themselves, of people in the circle, need "someone to blame" other than themselves.

And they bind together over those beliefs.  

That becomes Anthony Fauci, Big Pharma--if ivermectin worked at reducing covid, Eli Lilly would have been marketing the hell out of it, hospitals, doctors, particular medicines and what they call "the protocol" which was remdesivir administered intravenously when hospitalized--they said it killed people.

Consistency and logic aren't part of the equation, such as the ivermectin thing--were the producers of ivermectin and hydroxychoroquine the Good Pharma and Pfizer and Moderna Bad Pharma?

Plus, you had people like DeSantis saying remdesivir was good, but don't get the covid shot.  Crazy.  FWIW, remdesivir helped me during my 8 day stay in the hospital as a result of my third and worst bout of covid.

From the article:

When researchers such as Munson look at today’s leftist movements, they often see the opposite approach. “The left has purity tests,” Munson said. “You have to prove you’re devoted to the cause. But that means that, once you join, you’re spending time with the kind of people you already know, because you already move in the same circles, and you’ve screened out people who might be ideologically ambivalent right now but might have become activists if you had welcomed them.”

Are they purity tests, some are like on trans issues--it killed me during the election to see ads from Trump saying "She cares about they/them.  We care about you."  But maybe at times it is more about logic and facts versus fabulism.  At least it is for me.

From the article:

The sociologist Liz McKenna, of Harvard, told me that movements succeed best when people feel welcome. A movement becomes sustainable when members feel empowered and find friends. “The left loves big protests, but protesting is a tactic in search of a strategy,” she said. There must be some shared core values among a movement’s members, of course, but the requirement can’t be that every value is shared. “Making room for difference isn’t a nice-to-have thing—it’s table stakes,” she told me. “The rallies are by-products of the community, not the goal.” Most of all, even though anger can be useful, a movement also needs to provide some joy. “Trump rallies are fun,” McKenna noted. “The Turning Point campus debates are fun.” For a long time, she said, the left was less fun and more angry, “and so the right was out-organizing them at every turn.”

Breaking free of neoliberalism

Jordan Himelfarb, Opinions editor for the Toronto Star interviews ("My dad used to run Canada’s public service. As the Star’s opinion editor, I asked him what he got wrong, how he turned left — and why he keeps needling me about my work") his father Alex, on his new book, Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge.

Neoliberalism is not unique to the United States or the UK, it is a world-wide phenomenon.

AH: You’re right that we are living in an age of crisis which itself ought to suggest there’s something very wrong about how we have organized ourselves. Add to that our collective tool kit to address those crises has rarely been weaker. The 1980s neo-liberal counterrevolution, when governments focused single-mindedly on growth and came to see their primary role as creating the conditions for business to prosper, stripping away as many barriers to profit as politics allowed, changed not just government but the country and for that matter us. 

Freedom — economic freedom and freedom from government — became a core value. Competition would sort out the winners and losers. Inequality was not only inevitable but right. Unsurprisingly, decades of flattened taxes, deregulation, privatization, offshoring and financialization — the neo-liberal policy suite — have led to increased inequality and insecurity — and a loss of trust in our public institutions. Just look at how few people vote irrespective of the stakes and how many seem ready to burn it all down.

JH: Your book is premised on the idea that neo-liberalism has created deep inequalities, constrained our collective capacity to meet big challenges and generally spread misery and anger by undermining solidarity and turning us against one another. If it’s so terrible, why does it persist? 

AH: Not that hate, exploitation and misery — even globalization — somehow didn’t exist “before neo-liberalism.” But neo-liberalism did upend the post-war settlement, when it seemed that capitalism and democracy could nourish each other, that high profits and high wages could coexist, that growth would benefit everybody. Instead we have corporate concentration and extreme economic inequality and insecurity. 

And so finally to your question, I argue that neo-liberalism contains the seeds of its own perpetuation because it has undermined our collective tool kit — taxes have come to be seen as a burden or punishment, regulations as red tape and a drag on the economy, so too unions, while trust in government, in political parties, even in democracy continues to decline. Most significantly trust in one another — essential if we are to solve problems together — has been in sharp decline. So even as many have lost faith in how things are they have also, it seems, lost faith in the idea of the collective, in the possibility of doing big things together.

JH: So then, how, as you say, do we break free? 

AH: Ha. Big change is hard. But the stakes are high. (Italian political theorist Antonio) Gramsci recognized that in these in-between times when there’s a “war for position” the outcome is uncertain, things could flip this way or that. When asked if he was optimistic Gramsci responded with “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will” — optimism is a choice, despair is not an option. But there are many reasons for hope. Big change usually starts outside of government, outside of conventional politics — in civil society. And there are many people out there fighting for better. If they were to link up and find some common ground, see how their issues link together and to the larger public issues, who knows what’s possible. Research out of Harvard suggests that if 3.5 per cent of the population join together to fight — peacefully — for change, they almost always succeed. There’s no shortage of ideas and energy.

Repeating b.s. about everything being about race and class: bike infrastructure in Washington, DC

I owe Marc Fisher (I wrote about a similar controversy he fostered on historic preservation 18 years ago!, "Preservation takes it on the chin (updated)" 2006) thanks for getting me off my ass to write--I haven't blogged in months--although I had been on the cusp recently.  My "eating disorder" led me to consume not enough calories to be motivated to write and do other stuff.

His column, "The truth about bike lanes: They’re not about the bikes" asks the wrong question.  He writes about people complaining about the construction of bike infrastructure in their neighborhoods since fewer people are biking to work or in their areas.

The right question to ask is "in a city that was designed to optimize walking, biking, and transit" why don't more people use those modes?"

Ironically, GGW reports ("CaBi breaks all-time annual ridership record…in October") that DC's bike sharing system CaBi is experiencing record use.  I think that's ironic because it has taken 14 years to get to this point--the system was launched in September 2010 and has been expanding, albeit primarily in the city's core, where biking works best (more below on this).

At the same time this illustrates how change takes time, especially when you rely on trickle down--if you build it they will come, rather than purposive strategies that focus on increasing bicycling ("Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 18 programs," "Biking to Work Isn't Gaining Any Ground in the US | Bloomberg Opinion," Bloomberg) walking, and transit use by assisting people with making the change.

Versus

Fisher makes it out that this is a racial and social class issue, the same way he did about historic preservation.  Maybe I'm just a racist, but that's a facile take.  

Transportation demand management in the Walking City ("Transportation and Urban Form: Stages in the Spatial Evolution of the American Metropolis" Muller) is about optimal mobility.

Also see the book, Reclaiming our Cities and Towns: Better Living Through less traffic by the founder of the concept of TDM; he realized that fewer car users meant less demand for expanding roadways.  Since when is forcing car use pro-race and pro-class?  From the article:

Rodney Foxworth, a longtime civic activist who now leads an anti-bike lane group, says the city “has a bias in favor of bike lanes no matter whether residents or businesses want them, and a lot of these lanes are being installed in Black, low-income communities. There is a nexus between bike lanes and gentrification.”

I have written about making sustainable mobility about race with frustration for 18+ years:

-- "Urg: bad studies don't push the discourse or policy forward | biking in low income communities (in DC) edition," 2014
-- "The co-existence of streetcars and churches elsewhere ought to counter anti-streetcar arguments by churches in DC today," 2014
-- "Why not get a bike?: 'He walked 17 miles a day to work until a stranger gave him a ride and changed his life forever'," 2021

So again, not realizing the right questions, bike lanes aren't about bikes.  They are about mobility and people throughput, just like more people ride a bus take up less room than 60 cars.

If I could ride until 63--for me, riding more has only been hindered by the onset of congestive heart failure and I hope to be riding short distances again, finally, within the next few months--so can older people in DC.  

Plus, for each person shifted to sustainable modes, that's one less car on the road, one less competitor for limited parking spaces, etc.

Plus it's cheaper ("AAA: Your Driving Costs: The Price of New Car Ownership Continues to Climb").  --over $1,000 per month.  For us, not owning a car supported $100,000 of our mortgage.

If anything it's about applying suburban ideas about bicycling ("DC as a suburban agenda dominated city," 2013) or transit ("Transit notes #2: Anti-transit opposition a form of defending automobility as a way of life," 2016) to urban areas.

Difficultly of fomenting institutional change not just a problem for minorities

I joke that half the entries I write are about best practice, the other half about worse practice and poor decision making.  Plus to be fair to elected officials even in the best circumstances change takes a long time.

I joke that I didn't start understanding patience within community organizing until my 40s, when I realized a "fast tracked" transportation project takes 10 years.

Lately too I've been thinking about how "ur academic literature" that is really important for interpretation is kind of lost to history and not referenced by current pundits.

The three big examples for me are Exit, Voice and Loyalty, about how people stay or leave organizations in the face of conflict, Diffusion of Innovations about exactly that (and the spinoff work by Geoffrey Moore, which Rogers disavowed), and Alexander Gerschenkron's papers on "The Economic Advantages of Backwardness in Historical Perspective."

The latter writings are particularly relevant to the take up of electric vehicles, and how China is overtaking the US in terms of having the preeminent position in electric car productions.  (This will be the subject of a later blog piece, along with some issues.)  In the case of China, they don't have the same investment in legacy technologies, so they can leapfrog the countries that do.

Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon has a piece, "We are facing limits from diversity," about the difficulties minorities face in trying to "change" organizations.  As someone who has worked on such issues for 30+ years, it's hardly an issue exclusive to minorities.  From the article:

... I once assumed that greater inclusion would inevitably lead to equitable policies, because people from groups that had been unfairly diminished would see injustice more clearly than others and be more motivated to address it. I don’t think that anymore. 

 ... It’s rarely directly stated that, “If we add more people of color or women to institution X, that will move it leftward.” But that assumption is embedded in a lot of discourse. Democratic politicians who are White women or people of color often emphasize their connections to those groups, hinting they will be particularly strong advocates for those who share their identities. For example, in his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama argued his candidacy was an extension of the 20th-century Black freedom movement. 

... Here’s the problem: Individuals, whatever their identity, usually don’t change powerful, established institutions, for several reasons. First of all, the minorities and women tapped to join such institutions are often chosen because they have signaled that they won’t disrupt the status quo too much. Many Black Democratic mayors and Black police chiefs have blocked efforts to increase scrutiny of officers or meaningfully reform police practices; they wouldn’t have gotten those jobs if they were going to push for major changes. 

... Second, even minorities and women who favor more progressive change are caught in a bind: Challenging the values of the institutions they are a part of would likely reduce their ability to advance, or even remain in their current roles. 

 ... The third and biggest problem is that minorities and women often simply don’t have enough internal power to change these institutions, even when they try. 

 ...Progressives should push institutions to fundamentally change, not just put more people of color in high-profile roles. The path to a consistently progressive Democratic Party is for the left to win primaries, particularly the presidential contest, and take over the party from within. A more diverse administration run by a centrist figure such as Biden isn’t enough. And when change is impossible, progressives should look to create or revitalize alternative institutions.

WRT institutional change, welcome to the club.

I did figure out some fundamentals when I did a bike and pedestrian plan for Baltimore County.  

(1) my job wasn't to be a bomb thrower but to figure out how to wend my way through the existing system and build support (at the first multi-agency meeting, a guy doing streetscape work did just that, criticizing all the other agencies--it was a good lesson) 

(2) build on existing best practice, reference it, building support across agencies.  

(3) work with advocates disappointed about not seeing progressive action from previous efforts, acknowledging that work, and how it led to the work that we're doing today.  Build on it.

(4) focus on preferred outcomes and look backwards at the system processes producing non-desirable outcomes as routine, and work on rebuilding the processes (process innovation) to generate preferred outcomes as a matter of course.

(5) make recommendations on elements like a Pedestrian and Bicycle Committee and sub-committees for political districts that were practical, and "opportunities for appointments" by elected officials.  

I was super proud of #5 and the sub-committees.  Because it would bring the executive and legislative branches together, with citizens, and a foundational agenda (from the plan).  The council districts did this have had way more progress on bike and pedestrian improvements than the council districts that haven't.

But one thing I didn't figure on... the County Executive gets to appoint the chair.  And he appointed a flunky, someone who worked for the Executive Branch, and therefore the Executive overly shaped the agenda and reduced the independence/objectivity/advocacy capacity of the group.

====

That being said, systems aren't about improvement, but about maintenance of the system.  See Planning in the Public Domain and to some extent Social Psychology of Organizations.

Flyer, Park City (Utah) Community Events for September 2022

 

 

 

This flyer is from Park City Utah, and was placed at the library.

 

With the decline of metropolitan newspapers, special city sections with calendars ("One more blow against community media: Washington Post drops Thursday "county" news special sections," ), community newspapers ("DC's community newspaper weekly, the Northwest Current, goes out of business," 2018), the cessation of printing of alternative weeklies ("Staff And Locals React To End Of Washington City Paper Print Edition," DCist) although fortunately not in Salt Lake City, it becomes that much harder to find out about community events.

 

In the old days, when I'd travel I would pick up community newspapers and alternative weeklies and weekend sections in local newspapers to find other things to do, along with visitor centers (there should be community calendars posted there too), etc.  We found cool things like a concert at a church in Germantown in Philadelphia, and riding ferries for free when they were first introduced in Queens, New York, etc.

-- "Community cleanups (and other activities) as community building and civic engagement activities," 2011

 

Bulletin board, Lamplighter Coffee Roasters, Richmond

 

The libraries have bulletin boards for flyers, and coffee shops, grocery stores, etc.  

 

Community Notice Board, Merseytravel, Queens Square Bus Station, Liverpool

 

I've argued there need to be bulletin boards/kiosks in commercial districts and at transit stations.

 

-- "http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2018/08/why-not-post-outdoor-community.html," 2018

I guess we need to go back to kiosks and telephone poles.  But in communities where most people get around by car, that isn't a particularly good method.

Yard signs definitely need to be added to the mix.

The City of Salt Lake uses yard signs, banners at parks, and for some issues, like budget hearings flyers, to get the word out, along with postings on NextDoor and Reddit, Twitter feeds, etc.

 

 Lately I've been thinking about more formal community information kiosks in public buildings, definitely libraries and city hall, and wrt schools, in the foyers of schools, or outside.

A now closed small branch of the Salt Lake County Library located in the City of South Salt Lake posted official notices for that city, as well as for the County Library board.  I don't know if they've brought that practice yet to the new Granite Library branch which has replaced it, although the Mayor of City of South Salt Lake sets up drop in information/meeting sessions there ("New Granite Library, Salt Lake County Public Library System")..

(I just realized that they blew it when designing this library by not including a coffee shop.)

 

It could be modeled on the transit information kiosks that Arlington County does, but I'm thinking a multi-sided kiosk.

 

 Another idea is community organization/volunteer fairs.

Tulsa Vision 2025 sales tax initiatives for economic development projects

I just found out that Tulsa has a sales tax add on program, modeled after Oklahoma City's pathbreaking Metropolitan Area Projects program, which has funded a variety of placemaking, economic development, and infrastructure projects over the past 25 years ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape").  

It took a couple of tries before the referendum was finally passed, which is not a surprise.  Early iterations called for funding specific tax incentive projects, like to retain an American Airlines maintenance facility. But later phases included funding improvements to universities and schools, and parks.

But it's not nearly as visionary as MAPS. But the most recent vote in 2016 made the funding stream permanent. And it's possible that over time, the vision component can grow.

-- Tulsa Vision 2025

The current slate of projects are more focused on creating civic assets with long term value ("Invested in downtown': Tulsa Arts District improvements among $816M in new projects," Tulsa World) such as the Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture and the Greenwood Rising History Center, which recounts the sad history of the Tulsa white riot eradicating the Greenwood neighborhood in 1919.

In turn these investments are sparking private investment in housing, mixed use, and office projects, helped surely, by Tulsa's position in the fossil fuels economy.

Tulsa Remote Worker Recruitment Program.  Something I haven't written about but have been meaning to for a couple years is Tulsa's worker recruitment program ("Do you work remotely? This program could pay you $10,000 to do so from Tulsa," CNN, "The Great Tulsa Mobile Worker Experiment," Bloomberg), which was started before the pandemic. 

Not unlike the artist recruitment program in Paducah, Kentucky ("In Paducah, Artists Create Something From Nothing," NPR), the idea was to recruit workers who didn't have to work onsite, who might be attracted by Tulsa's lower cost of living, especially of housing.  Since then more communities have created similar programs.

Called Tulsa Remote, and funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, a locally-focused foundation with funds derived from oil and banking, it provides a $10,000 "move in" bonus, and a variety of support programs aimed at easing the transition, promoting new business development, etc.

While The Atlantic writes that such programs aren't particularly successful ("Moving Incentives Are Overhyped"), I'd argue that it doesn't cost much and it's always good to recruit people with talent to your community.  Of course, one challenge is then to be able to be open to their ideas and be willing to reshape the revitalization agenda accordingly ("Downtown Tulsa resident campaigns for food co-op," 2News Tulsa).

But it's true that not every place has the right conditions to support this.  People look at what Paducah did and say "people can work from anywhere."  But that's the wrong lesson.  Paducah focused on attracting artists who sell the bulk of their work at summer art fairs.  And Paducah is well located in the midwest, with great freeway connections within a day or two of many major fairs such as in Louisville, Ann Arbor, and Suburban Chicago.

---------

Best practice flooding mitigation. I have written about Tulsa's proactive response to its last major flood in 1984, resulting in 14 deaths--the city is centered upon the Arkansas River.  

They created an active disaster mitigation and resilience program, including buying out housing and other buildings located on flood plains ("Some innovative disaster planning initiatives in Tulsa, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and Davenport Iowa").  

Flood waters cover the parking area of River Spirit Casino Resort on the Arkansas River on Friday, May 24, 2019. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World

Since then they haven't avoided flooding, after all the effects of climate change seem particularly pronounced compared to 1984, but the impact has been significantly reduced because of their previous active steps in disaster planning and management.  

Certainly, no deaths (cf. "2 dead, 20 missing after severe flooding in North Carolina," USA Today).

Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape

One of Oklahoma City's infrastructure projects is a streetcar route serving the downtown.  Photo: Doug Hoke, Daily Oklahoman.

The Congress for the New Urban's conference next year is in Oklahoma City, and in advance of this, the CNU's newsletter is running stories about various aspects of OKC's urbanism.

The most recent story, very good, is about how the city was sparked to act after a national survey said the Oklahoma City isn't particularly walkable and they used the construction of a new skyscraper as the fulcrum to drive through improvements to 50 blocks of Downtown ("How downtown Oklahoma City did a 180"). Also see "Oklahoma City showed how to transition to two-way streets downtown," Palm Beach Post.

It's a great accomplishment, no doubt.  

But I don't think it's an easy example that advocates in other cities can export to try to bring about similar changes in their own communities.  

In planning I joke about "Why can't we be like Portland?" when a citizen comes up to you at a meeting, talks/harangues about something in particular, and then at the end laments that our community isn't like Portland, Oregon.

But what they don't realize is that "Portland" isn't what they think it is, that the great initiatives that they've undertaken are the result of decades of hard, thoughtful, and visionary decision making that accretes -- it builds on and extends previous decisions and programs in a manner where the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

There are six cities in the US that consistently do multiple pretty amazing initiatives when it comes to urbanism:

• Charleston, South Carolina; where former Mayor Riley was one of the nation's leading proponents of urban design improvements (Riley speech on urban design)
• Hennepin County/Minneapolis; when the county realized they needed to invest in Minneapolis to staunch population outmigration to protect the county's revenue stream from property taxes.  Later Minneapolis developed complementary programs, and light rail was added  ("A County and Its Cities: the Impact of Hennepin Community Works," Journal of Urban Affairs 30:3, 2008).
• Oklahoma City
• Portland, Oregon; which starting with the decision to tear down a waterfront freeway in the late 1960s has taken many visionary steps and continues to be a pathbreaker ("A summary of my impressions of Portland, Oregon and planning," 2005; "Universities as elements of urban/downtown revitalization: the Portland State story and more," 2014).
• San Francisco ("Transit First Policy")
• Seattle (" 10 ways Seattle has blown past Portland in transportation moxie," Portland Oregonian)

Transformational Projects Action Planning.  But basically, they've adopted an approach that I now call "Transformational Projects Action Planning," that I wrote about first in terms of European cities like Bilbao, Dublin's Temple Bar district, Helsinki, and Liverpool, along with the German revitalization initiatives organized around the International Building Exposition (IBA) and the International Garden Festival.

-- "Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017
-- "Economic restructuring success and failure: Detroit compared to Bilbao, Liverpool, and Pittsburgh," 2014
-- "European Garden Festivals as a model urban planning initiative for Detroit and other US cities," 2014
-- "There has to be a better way to spend $1.85 billion on "revitalization" just to demolish buildings: The US needs its own version of Germany's International Building Exhibition, let's start with Detroit," 2014

Social urbanism is a comparable approach.  Another example of this kind of approach is "social urbanism" in Medellin, Colombia:

-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star

-- ""Utility" infrastructure as an opportunity for co-locating urban design and placemaking improvements," 2020

Other places do great things too.  Maybe New York City could be included.  They did a lot of amazing things under Mayor Bloomberg, and Mayor De Blasio left most of the initiatives in place and operating, but I wouldn't say the city has furthered the vision.

And there are smaller city examples too, some I've written about like Spokane, Greenville, South Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, Holland, Michigan, Edmonton and the arts.  Charlie often points out initiatives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Etc.

Plus, the city that helped to trigger the idea of TPAS is Toronto.  See "(Big Hairy) Projects Action Plan(s) as an element of Comprehensive/Master Plans," 2017.

Each has a back story that undergirds their jump from ordinary to extraordinary.  None are perfect.  Some are more visionary than others.  And the cities may have other problems like anarchism in Portland and terrible homelessness issues in San Francisco and Seattle.

The six components of a successful broad ranging revitalization program.  In writing about the various efforts, I concluded that successful revitalization programs, especially in those cities that were working to overturn serious disadvantages, were comprised of these elements:

• A commitment to the development and production of a broad, comprehensive, visionary, and detailed revitalization plan/s (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool);
• the creation of innovative and successful implementation organizations, with representatives from the public sector and private firms, to carry out the program.  Typically, the organizations have some distance from the local government so that the plan and program aren't subject to the vicissitudes of changing political administrations, parties and representatives (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool, Helsinki);
• strong accountability mechanisms that ensure that the critical distance provided by semi-independent implementation organizations isn't taken advantage of in terms of deleterious actions (for example Dublin's Temple Bar Cultural Trust was amazingly successful but over time became somewhat disconnected from local government and spent money somewhat injudiciously, even though they generated their own revenues--this came to a head during the economic downturn and the organization was widely criticized; in response the City Council decided to fold the TBCT and incorporate it into the city government structure, which may have negative ramifications for continued program effectiveness as its revenues get siphoned off and political priorities of elected officials shift elsewhere);
• funding to realize the plan, usually a combination of local, regional, state, and national sources, and in Europe, "structural adjustment" and other programmatic funding from the European Regional Development Fund and related programs is also available (Hamburg, as a city-state, has extra-normal access to funds beyond what may normally be available to the average city);
• integrated branding and marketing programs to support the realization of the plan (Hamburg, Vienna, Liverpool, Bilbao, Dublin);
• flexibility and a willingness to take advantage of serendipitous events and opportunities and integrate new projects into the overall planning and implementation framework (examples include Bilbao's "acquisition" of a branch of the Guggenheim Museum and the creation of a light rail system to complement its new subway system, Liverpool City Council's agreement with a developer to create the Liverpool One mixed use retail, office, and residential development in parallel to the regeneration plan and the hosting of the Capital of Culture program in 2008, and how multifaceted arts centers were developed in otherwise vacated properties rented out cheaply by their owners in Dublin, Helsinki, and Marseille).

Oklahoma City: Metropolitan Area Projects as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning.  As discussed in the book Next American City by former mayor Mick Corbett, the city developed a recurring program of visionary public investment--they've since undertaken four different cycles--after initially being rejected by United Airlines in 1987, as the location for a large maintenance facility, which the city worked hard to land.

The then mayor kept badgering United Airlines to tell them why OKC wasn't picked.  Eventually they revealed that they sent a bunch of executives to OKC for the weekend, and they came back saying "we'd never want to live here, there's nothing attractive about the city."

From that point, it took them five years to come up with the idea of MAP/Metropolitan Area Projects, an infrastructure program funded by sales tax, monitored by a citizen oversight committee, with a detailed list of projects that had to be completed within a certain time period, focused on making substantive physical improvements to the community all focused on improving quality of life, such as an arena used to land an NBA basketball team, improvements to the Oklahoma River, the Bricktown Canal, and the city's waterfronts, refurbishment of every school in the Oklahoma City School District, a streetcar, etc.

They are in the final stages of MAP's fourth cycle (MAP4), and through this program, cycles, and projects, they've built a track record of "doing" -and accomplishing big projects.  

The Downtown Streetscape project as an example of serendipity.  Oklahoma City has created a program that incorporates what I call the "six components of a successful broad ranging revitalization program."

And the Downtown streetscape project is likely just one example of the sixth characteristic, the element of serendipity, the ability to do other visionary things in a complementary way, incorporating such projects into the existing planning framework.  

From the CNU article:

Oklahoma City, which ranked dead last in Prevention Magazine’s 2008 assessment of sizable American cities for walkability, soon after commissioned a report on how to improve conditions for pedestrians downtown. An initial analysis by Speck & Associates found that Oklahoma City’s streets were wide enough to handle two to three times the volume of traffic they carried. Downtown streets were largely one-way speedways, and Speck’s plan showed that the city could better use the space to support pedestrians, bicyclists, businesses, and urban life.

 

The city launched Project 180, an effort to rebuild all 50 blocks of streets in their downtown core, funded by tax-increment financing from a major skyscraper development. The name came from a $180 million investment in the 180-acre core area, generating a 180-degree turn in how downtown was conceived. “By right-sizing streets to meet real demand, we were able to calm traffic, double the amount of on-street parking, add a ton of trees and great a robust cycling network. Ten years later this is the project that I am most proud of,” Speck said to a meeting of the US Conference of Mayors. At the same time, the plan converted one-way streets to two-way, rebuilt three parks and most underground utilities, and installed new architecturally designed fixtures and street furniture.

The tax increment financing district financing mechanism is separate from the MAP program and financing system, but fully complementary.

Devon Energy Building, Oklahoma City.  Photo by Holly Baumann photography.

The "Transformational Projects Action Planning" approach makes multiple big projects possible.  I don't think Oklahoma City would have done this project if it would have been their first urban design project and on such a scale, had they not already laid the ground work for "transformational projects action planning" and the undertaking of big infrastructure projects.

The bad assessment they received on walkability was 16 years after the city passed the referendum to fund MAP, and 21 years after they were rejected by United Airlines.  

In the intervening years, taking the rejection by United Airlines as a community-wide call to action, they had implemented a large  number of projects already.  And some, like making the Oklahoma River a national destination for water sports like kayaking ("Revival of a River Alters a City’s Course in Sports," New York Times); "Oklahoma River's success has Oklahoma City bubbling with enthusiasm, pride" and "Development on the Oklahoma River continues with whitewater center," Daily Oklahoman), were serendipitous, not planned as part of MAP, but they developed as a consequence of MAP.

Oklahoma River.  From "RAPIDS: THE OLYMPIC STORY ON THE OKLAHOMA RIVER GROWS," Velocity.

With the Downtown streetscape program, they had the catalyst of a new large construction project downtown to leverage.

People saw the results of community investment in infrastructure, urban design, and quality of life, so even though they are a car-dominated community, improving the Downtown streetscape made sense.

Trying to get a community to undertake a project of this nature and scale is almost impossible when doing it on a one-off basis.

Communication breakdown in politics: busing and democratic socialism in Congress as examples

Probably the song by Led Zeppelin, "Communication Breakdown," is the first hard rock song that I remember hearing (I won't go into the details).  The song dates to 1969, and it was either in 1969 or 1970 that I am first conscious of it (although other less hard rock songs I remember from earlier include "The Israelite" and "I can see for miles" by the Who, both songs were on the jukebox of the restaurant that I lived next door to when I was in fourth grade).

Some of the lyrics:

Communication breakdown
It's always the same
I'm having a nervous breakdown
Drive me insane!

Two issues in politics right now that make me think about these kinds of communications breakdowns, which are often about "scoring points" and not about trying to work towards the best possible outcomes.

1. Busing. Sen. Kamala Harris scored points on Joe Biden in the Democratic Presidential candidate debates ("Harris takes fresh aim at Biden's debate remarks on busing, calls them 'revisionist history',").

The funny thing is that I participated in busing, in the Pontiac schools around the same time as Harris, when I was in sixth and seventh grade.

Pontiac was signature in that before the start of the 1971-1972 school year, a bunch of school buses were bombed ("Irene McCabe and her battle against busing," Detroit News; "5 Ex‐Klansmen Convicted in School Bus Bomb Plot," New York Times; CBS News coverage of the story and a demonstration").

I don't recall remembering the event at the time, but it's in my consciousness.  (I didn't go to school in the district until the Spring of 1971.)

Jefferson Junior High School has been closed for some time, and Pontiac, a majority black city in a county that is 97% white, continues to languish in the face of suburban wealth, not helped by its legacy as an automobile manufacturing city, of a make that is no longer produced.  

The city's decline in the 1960s and 1970s was a harbinger of the failure of the Detroit-based automobile industry in later decades.

And in my case, my experience was more about the white students bused into "the black schools" as opposed to African-American students being bused to "white schools."

I don't know exactly when busing started there as  there were African-Americans in my classes, and my neighborhood  and the area around the school was 100% white.  I presume African-Americans were bused to my elementary school.

For junior high, it was reversed, and the (white) kids in our neighborhood were bused to school in the city; the Pontiac School District boundaries extended into the small cities, towns, and townships outside of the city.

I was probably as afraid and as concerned about fitting in as Kamala Harris. Not just the race issue. It was a new school. There were older kids too. Etc. After school started though, it was just school.  It probably helped that I was smart, but I was no athlete, which certainly hurt my ability to bond with other boys.

It wasn't just a black-white issue though, it was a suburb-urban divide, an investment vs. urban divestment divide, and a class issue as well (e.g., I remember issues around the poor white girls living in Pontiac versus the non-poor white girls who didn't live in Pontiac), and those conflicts or differences in outlook, attitude, and experience went beyond race.

Probably it was tough on teachers and school administrators too, but at least it never came across as a problem for them in the way they handled us.

One of the things they were smart at doing was during the last week or two of school in elementary school, they took all of us on a "field trip" to the junior high school.  That should be done regardless, because of the transition from elementary to middle/junior high.  I don't know if schools do that these days.

I doubt that the school system did that before busing started.  But maybe they did.

Much of the coverage on the issue calls busing a failed initiative ("The Lasting Legacy of the Busing Crisis," Atlantic Magazine). As someone who was a participant, I don't think it had to fail, that it could have been used as a way to build an integrated school system.

Women and children stand in front of a bus, refusing to let it pass out of the schoolyard, as reporters look on during an anti-busing protest, Pontiac, Michigan, 1971. Many carry placards and appear to be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Photo: Tony Spina (? Detroit News).

But the issue wasn't with the kids at least not in my schools -- then again, my foster parents didn't seem to be racist, and I wasn't a racist white kid and I didn't see such outbursts in the actual school setting but likely it was a problem elsewhere -- it was with parents.  And of course, at that age, I wasn't going to public meetings where I might of seen the kind of attitudes that supported the demonstrations against busing.

2.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the new "democratic socialist caucus" and criticizing your supporters/colleagues (""Nancy Pelosi's renewed attacks on AOC aren't just disrespectful, they're dangerous," Guardian).  From the article:

There have been long-running tensions between Pelosi and the so-called “Squad” of new progressive congresswomen, which consists of Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. Things escalated sharply over the weekend, when Pelosi decided it would be a good idea to demean her colleagues in the New York Times. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn’t have any following,” Pelosi told the Times, referring to a border funding bill the Squad opposed. “They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

To begin with, Pelosi’s disparaging remarks about the Squad seemed like they were probably strategic. Now, however, the sustained attacks feel increasingly personal. “When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Post on Wednesday. “But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”

The election of "democratic socialist"/more radical Congressmembers in 2018, in particular Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib is causing some grief because challenges from "the left" to Democrats on various policies creates a lack of unity which is tough vis a vis the Republicans but also because not every Democratic Congressperson has the same level of seat security as someone from Queens New York or Boston might have.

While Guardian columnist Arwa Mahadi makes the point that because these Congresswomen are all people of color, it's especially dangerous when they are criticized by leaders.  Although to me -- with the proviso I am an old white guy -- it's more about youth and ideology.

This comes up a lot in politics. People who are elected tend to compromise and be pragmatic, because that's what they can achieve in a reasonable amount of time, while people like me are critical because we're getting less than half a loaf and are not only supposed to be satisfied with it, but ecstatic.

I write about what I call "the issue continuum," something I learned through observation while working for a consumer group in the late 1980s.

The group had Nader lineage and we worked with him from time to time. What I came to recognize is that there are all kinds of positions on the continuum of an issue, from conservative and traditional to very "progressive" or "perfect" and that by staking out hard core positions, you'd likely never achieve that nirvana, but by staking it out you got a lot more movement toward it in the end, than if you had been comfortable with a much less "perfect" solution starting out.

This is applicable to any issue, from support of biking, food labeling, regulation of emissions from power plants, gasoline excise taxes, etc.

And you have to measure the acceptability of reaction to certain outcomes in judging what makes sense.

E.g., President Macron didn't have good sense in pairing a gas excise tax increase with tax cuts for the wealthy.

I suppose my line "if you ask for nothing, that's what you get; if you ask for the world, you don't get it, but you get a lot more than nothing" is a more succinct statement of this observation.

Protesters in Colmar, north-eastern France, in March 2019. © AFP

With experience, I've gotten a lot better at positioning my arguments in ways that are more congruent with more traditional approaches, of outlining a pathway, etc.

But at 29 years of age, like what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is, and her staffers are similarly aged and equally driven, I didn't think that way. I was more oriented to achieving perfection, rather than achieving the best possible outcome taking advantage of particular opportunities present at that moment.

For example, with biking, elected officials who push it, get really frustrated when people like me criticize the achievements as inadequate, or why aren't we doing the Idaho Stop. They see any sort of criticism by "supporters" as a kind of betrayal.

That's what I think is part of what's going on with Speaker Pelosi.

Although I am more pragmatic as I age, although I continue to push for perfection -- otherwise I wouldn't still be writing blog entries in the face of plenty of lessons that the powers that be, ultimately don't care and aren't interested in improving practice and outcomes in substantive ways (although they give me plenty of opportunities to continue to hone my understanding of what can be better practice).

But I am driven not by ideology other than wanting the best outcomes on a foundation of informed civic participation and citizen involvement.

People who remain ideologues despite aging are not so similarly situated...

Innovative US Mayors, has their time passed?

Charlie calls our attention to the Financial Times special section on Cities published last week and the article "Why city mayors are stepping up to tackle global problems: Urban leaders are challenging populist positions on climate change and migration." From the article:

[using Milan as the example] Since City mayors confront everyday management problems — such as how to handle traffic or waste disposal — their offices are focused on pragmatic problem solving, not ideology. More important, cities tend to be on the winning side of technological innovation, at least compared with the hinterland. It is no surprise that the political tenor of mayors is more progressive than elsewhere. “Everyone keeps talking about populism versus non-populism, but I think the key label is cities versus countryside,” says Mr Sala. “In the countryside voters are going to the right, but in the cities they are more progressive.”

Whatever the reason for the trend, it is unlikely to disappear soon. Moreover, as city leaders spread their (relatively more competent) policy wings, they are rising in visibility and ambition.

But what is equally notable is that even when mayors are not vying for national leadership, they are increasingly flexing their muscles to move into policymaking areas that used to be the preserve of national governments. In the US, for example, the Democrat mayors of cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago have pushed an aggressive “green” agenda — in contradiction to President Donald Trump’s policies.

Indeed, the cities have been so united in this direction that some quietly lobbied to join the Paris Climate Change Accord in their own right, as quasi partners — although the accord is supposed to be between nation states (and the US has withdrawn).

US cities have also collectively defied Mr Trump on immigration policy, and taken a different stance on internet regulation, too (San Francisco, for example, became the first city to ban facial recognition technology in May). Some cities are also trying to set their own export and investment strategies. In London, Mr Khan has made no secret of his desire to remain in the EU, and has called for special exemptions for London from the Brexit rules if the UK eventually leaves the EU.

This is important stuff, but in some sense it's more social policy than programmatic, although environmental policies (buying green energy, promoting transit) are both social and programmatic.

But I feel like the earlier period of "innovative mayors" has peaked.

There is always talk in the US about how "states and localities" are "laboratories for democracy" in that innovations can be "piloted" at a level below that of the national government, and in turn influence the federal government in terms of creating new programs and helpful policies.

A great example of this is how the "Obamacare" program is based on a program created by a then Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney--later a presidential candidate and now Senator from Utah.

Governing Magazine is a trade publication featuring these kinds of best practice stories.

One-way "innovation" when it's supportive of deregulation.  However, these days this opportunity is often "trumped" by ideology.  It seems that Republicans are fine with devolving authority to states when it supports deregulation and conservative policy making and not supportive when states and localities aim to strengthen regulatory oversight and progressive policy.

For example, one of the reasons that the EPA was "out to lunch" on water problems in Flint, Michigan is because for all intents and purposes, regulation of sub-state water and sewer authorities has been delegated to states, and many states are somewhat lackadaisical about this.

Another example is King George County, Virginia.  It happens they've been out of compliance with water and sewer regulations for years, the system is now on the point of bankruptcy, and somehow the State of Virginia never really noticed ("King George paying a price for years of neglect of water and sewer systems," Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star).

Then again, there is California, a national leader on energy ("California, the clean energy leader," San Diego Union-Tribune; "U.S. Climate Change Policy: Made in California," New York Times), although this is an illustration of the space created by progressive national leadership, but also the ability to have strong regulations.

States vs. localities.  Of course, plenty has been written about how many state legislatures pre-empt actions by cities.  For example, before tobacco regulation became much more prevalent, pro-tobacco business legislatures like Virginia's forbade cities from passing anti-smoking ordinances.  These days many states are passing laws pre-empting cities and counties from passing "plastic bag bans," etc.

Term limits make it hard to embed innovative practice.  A big problem is that most mayors seem to last from one to three terms maximum (of course there are exceptions).  And two terms for Governors.  And successors tend to define "innovations" not as supra-superior policies deserving of continuation, but as "something that my predecessor did and instead, I need to create my own policies and programs and hype them."

Smart growth land use policy is a great example.  In Maryland, it was introduced by a Democratic Governor, so the Republican successors have de-emphasized it whenever possible.  In Massachusetts, it was introduced by a Republican Governor (again, Mitt Romney) so it was repudiated by his Democratic successor.

In DC, programs and practices are regularly reversed, scuttled or left to sputter by Mayoral successors, such as the public housing rebuilding program New Communities or the separately created Anacostia Waterfront Development Corporation--programs initiated by Mayor Williams.  Mayor Fenty absorbed all city-initiated development corporations into the Deputy Mayor's Office of Planning and Economic Development and New Communities has never had much support by Williams' successors.  Each mayor puts forth their own "commercial district" initiatives.  One mayor supported streetcars, his successors not so much, etc.

Another example is how during the Obama Administration, many cities were creating new positions of "innovation officers" and units, often around information technology, but not only. Philadelphia was a prominent example and the function no longer really exists. The same is true for many other cities.

It seems like the innovation officer position and office time has passed, although Mayor Garcetti in Los Angeles did hire Christopher Hawthorne, then the architecture writer for the Los Angeles Times, to serve as the city's design director.

-- "Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times architecture critic to become Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles" 2018
-- "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method ," 2012

Mayors want the credit. The thing is, to have innovative programs, you need good staff, especially directors, and there are many instances where Mayors don't like to spread credit around. A perfect example is the policing innovations in New York City implemented by William Bratton. Both Bratton and Mayor Guiliani wanted the media attention, accolades, and credit for the successes. But ultimately Bratton reported to Guiliani, who fired him.

It's hard to be innovative when you're broke.  Many cities are pressed by legacy infrastructure which costs a lot to fix and maintain and have pension costs that usually are unmanageable, and lack the ability to significantly grow revenue streams.  Big cities also have to deal with the rising cost of dealing with "the homeless."

The tail wags the dog.  Some "innovation" especially in the mobility space like ride hailing or autonomous vehicles, is being spearheaded by the private sector, forcing cities to catch up, but often they aren't leading the process.  And at the end of the day, how transformational is the practice, and does it create more value rather than less?

Maybe best practice is being embedded as standard procedure?  Smart city initiatives, resilience in the face of climate change (although the Rockefeller Foundation just junked its 100 Resilient Cities initiative), "apps for democracy," open source government -- New York City recently created an online app that automatically checks for eligibility for government programs ("New York City Demystifies Social Service Benefits Screening," Government Technology), rather than having people go to various offices ("Police rip toddler from mother's arms at benefits office," AP News)"), clean energy initiatives, stormwater initiatives, etc.

Mayors as systems integrators.  One of the ways I think about this is how in a city or county government, where myriad agencies are responsible for various goals and objectives, and perform in what many term "silos", mayors and county executives have the ability to be "systems integrators" and bring the various actors and programs together to cut through the knot and create something more transformational.

It's easier in small places?  West Sacramento, California ("Small City, Big Goals: How an Unconventional Mayor …," Governing), Carmel, Indiana (The GOP Mayor Pushing Climate Change Policies," Governing), Greensboro, NC and Spokane, Washington (past blog entry), Charleston, SC, etc.

It's easier in big places?  All the stuff that Mayor Bloomberg did in New York City.  Or maybe that was just 'cause he was rich?

-- The Bloomberg Legacy (website)
-- "Bloomberg's Bruised Legacy," New York Times

Maybe we should be focusing on the design method?

-- "Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore" way," 2008
-- "Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method," 2010
-- "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012
-- "Illustration of government and design thinking: Boston's City Hall to Go truck," 2013
-- "World Usability Day, Thursday November 9th and urban planning," 2017