IV. A Newer Geography of HopeThe preceding analysis suggests that social capital is the key to mobilizing and enhancing the more tangible benefits of communities. It is important to consider the scale at which various kinds of activities occur, how formal the boundaries are that either constrain or enable activities, and since the capital is social, who gets to be involved. Consider the question of just where communities are. From an administrative point of view, the United States is currently composed of fifty states, 3,000 counties, 24,000 municipalities and another 64,000 townships and special service districts, plus an unknown number of wards within these towns and villages.126 From an ecological point of view, the boundaries are much fuzzier and relate more to the distribution of natural resources: is the U.S. composed of a handful of geological regions, dozens of airshed transport regions, or hundreds if not thousands of riverine watersheds?127 And from the social perspective, home and neighborhood is where you have identity (Wendell Berry: if you don't know where you are, you can't know who you are). While much has been written about the "placeless" nature of the evolving information economy, it also appears that in many ways, the newer complexities of life require more face to face interaction than ever.128 Thinking About Small Places: Putting the Place Back Into MarketplaceWhat are some of the institutional forms that place-based initiatives take, and and what are the geographies that go with these activities? One is the arena of community economic development. During the past two decades, a new local finance industry has emerged, consisting of some 3,700 community development corporations, 7,000 revolving loan funds with $5 billion in assets, and a small but quickly growing number of community development banks and development finance intermediaries.129 These non-governmental organizations by-and-large invest creatively and effectively in real estate-based community development and, along with their funding and investing partners, have begun to recognize the emerging nature of their respective economies. However, a recent study by Alice Shabecoff and colleagues for the Joyce Foundation of the latent opportunities for communities, particularly in rapidly emerging environmental markets, found that the systems which successfully built the current community development industry are insufficiently market-oriented for community pilot programs by themselves to achieve market-scale potential.130 Another is in the effort of entire economic sectors. Some high-performance sectors that are becoming place-based include: (1) the revived thrift industry, which just experienced its most profitable year; 131(2) intermodal freight, including the 400 or so regional short line railroads on which all major shippers depend (in Chicago alone there are 900 jobs or more per year that are not being filled that pay excellent wages with modest training requirements); 132(3) scrap industries, now the major suppliers for all metal industries in the country;133 (4) local telecommunications providers of high bandwidth services without which cable TV, fast Internet service, or local telework centers are possible;134 and (5) electrical utilities, which are divesting themselves rapidly of power plant ownership in favor of building stronger customer bases in the communities they currently serve and thus are becoming increasingly place-oriented in their business strategies.135 Other signs of social asset building include the emergence of the National Community Building Network;136 a vibrant pair of church-based community organizing networks backed by the Industrial Areas Foundation and the Gamaliel Foundation, respectively;137 movements to build sustainable communities and to create indicator systems which show "genuine signs of progress";138 the effort by John Kretzmann and John McKnight to help "build communities from the inside out" by helping them take stock of their social assets;139 the growth of civic journalism and the recent approval by the Federal Communications Commission of very low wattage radio station licensing;140 the replacement of the old interstate highway authorization with the place-oriented Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 and its reauthorization as the Transportation Equity Act last year;141 the increasing willingness of families to transfer both inherited and earned wealth into endowed institutions such as foundations, libraries and schools;142 actions by Congress to remove apparent incentives to prematurely move from and/or sell property in the 1997 tax reform act;143 and the emergence of "smart growth" and "livable communities" policies and initiatives (during the last election, 72 percent of 240 ballot measures to save open space and other "green" resources along with almost $8 Billion in state and local conservation spending was approved).144 Much of this progress has been fueled by the efforts of community organizers, leaders and researchers to "disclose" a trend, an inequity or an opportunity that was heretofore poorly understood or "hidden."145 The efforts of university researchers to support community efforts to disclose the systematic flow of bank deposits out of their "home" communities to newly developing ones, a practice known as redlining, helped develop and support the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act.146 These reports on reinvestment are now available on demand in every federal depository institution in the country and over the Internet.147 Similar efforts around disclosing environmental risk after well-publicized tragedies at Love Canal and Bhopal led to the creation of a Toxics Release Inventory and a generation of newer efforts to clean up high risk sites and redevelop "brownfields.148 Emergent efforts around the country are developing new knowledge and awareness of tax base service inequities, transportation accessibility, pedestrian safety, and employment matches and mismatches. Each of these knowledge creation efforts is supported by a constituency interested in building a sense of urgency around local threats, missed opportunities or both. These efforts are further building the sense of connection between Big Systems and the Small Places they purportedly serve. However quickly these improved policies and understandings are helping to address the barriers referenced above, we have a long way to go. The high levels of risk and uncertainty involved in developing inner-city and now older suburban markets mean that start-ups are much slower than desirable, resulting in a vicious cycle of waiting. Polling clearly shows consumer desire for safer and cleaner products and more accessible communities.149 Businesses also express the desire to operate both profitably and responsibly. Everyone wants to eliminate poverty. But the connections do not get made fast enough, so the potential benefits remain largely unachieved. Approaching Regional Significance: Coordinating, Empowering, or 'Entrepreneuring'?The concept of sustainable development has given rise to a variety of definitions, and increasingly, these definitions include the concepts of place and community. It is arguable that there now exists a sustainable communities movement in the United States, with self-selected initiatives and/or staffed coalitions thriving several hundred jurisdictions to date, and new ones being created almost continuously150. Many of these initiatives are as small as rural villages, while some (e.g .,"Sustainable Seattle" or "Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee") encompass entire metropolitan regions. All attempt to be comprehensive in their outlook, with multi-issue agendas the rule rather than the exception. Over the past several years, in surveying the scope of practice included under the rubric of sustainable communities, I've observed that there has been considerable innovation in how communities to decide to act collectively. These initiatives have a common goal of seeking what might be termed collective efficacy-they anticipate and adapt with an orientation toward the future; set goals collectively and try to keep score; value performance and flexibility over pre-structured approaches; do not shy from taking on what are considered to be driving trends and indeed seek transformative solutions; respect ecosystem roles and ecological logic; value mutual gain; and in short, try to learn and improve continuously as a community.151 In acting this way, genuine innovations have arisen. Examples range from new kinds information-sharing and learning networks, to strategies to balance regulatory flexibility with performance and accountability, to new forms of financial institutions and even new financial services products and markets. The pace, creativity and dynamism of these usually informally- (as opposed to governmentally-constituted) initiatives stands in contrast to the kinds of initiatives structured by local, state and federal governments, and helps frame the challenge to local government leaders considering their own futures.152 A review by the author (in consultation with the National Academy for Public Administration and the Brookings Institution) of practice in jurisdictions across the country suggests a taxonomy of major strategies being advanced in the name of regional well being. The three major categories are: (1) regional strategy as intergovernmental coordination; (2) regional strategy as representative of the interests of all communities and people within that region; and (3) regional strategy as market-linked and community-responsive.153 Most communities' governments spend significant time with the first of these and are struggling with (in the face of both mandates and incentives from the federal government, e.g., the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act and its successor the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, and devolution of national authority to the state and metropolitan levels) just how to make the second of these work. Most communities' independent initiatives start with the third strategy and seek to add value to place through both governmental and non-governmental (including both private economic institutions and non-profit community organizations) partnership efforts. Let's examine the differences in these approaches and look at their potential reconciliation. If, as suggested above, the pace of change facing communities and regions demands a more dynamic and performance-based set of approaches than those typical of today's local governmental initiatives, then it may well be that local government's best futures are dependent upon assuming new roles, strengthening some that are undervalued (setting performance standards; providing information critical to issues and resource transparency, market development and value capture; providing new incentives for collective investment activities, such as credit enhancement, economic valuation of environmental and community improvement, technology access), and minimizing those which may hamper regional and community performance, (e.g., subsidization of unhealthy trends and less-than-desirable development patterns; structural under-representation of dis-enfranchised and older communities; revenue distribution policies that contribute to fiscal disparities; capital budgeting which leads to premature write-off of long-term assets). In this context, we can consider the potential for local government to evolve in ways which (1) build local knowledge and help convert intangible assets such as a sense of place and ecological integrity into tangible and motivating assets; (2) develop systems to support rapid learning and collective initiative for mutual gain and continuous improvement, and (3) support an enterprising and entrepreneurial culture of value generation and local value capture over the long term.
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