3. Ambitious-Start with what we have and work together entrepreneurially to make it the best we can imagine.
This is the kind of vision embraced by the sustainable communities movement, and increasingly, converging with business community practice, by coalitions in which business leadership is "rolling up its sleeves with the rest of us.163 The vision being embraced here is quite different from that of the other two categories. Generally, the idea is one of flexible, inclusive, "just in time" social capital custom-tailored to the problem or area at hand. Places where this kind of emergent capacity is becoming complex and sophisticated include Chicago, where at least thirteen separate regional campaigns are in regular dialogue; Pittsburgh, where a multi-decade effort to turn around that region's steel-based economy responsibly appears headed for success; and the San Francisco Bay Area, where the civic community has successfully adapted learning and organizational approaches from the private sector to the challenge of what is increasingly being called "civic entrepreneurship." 164 Imagining GovernanceDeToqueville is best remembered for extolling the virtues of small town government in America; in volume 2 of Democracy in America, he marvels at the ability of Americans to organize new institutions flexibly around goals ranging from education to business development.165 John Kirlin at USC has remarked, "Increasing the value of place is, I believe, the primary function of governments. The highest place value is found in sustaining collective discussion concerning the future of the affected populations."166 In conversations with over 1,000 civic leaders in twelve metropolitan areas in 1997 and 1998, the Metropolitan Initiative found that while "smart growth" and "livable communities" were strong emerging themes, a rallying cry common to urban, suburban and rural communities might be characterized as "sustaining existing communities."167 At the beginning of this section I remarked on the pace and creativity of the community-based development finance movement. David Halberstam, in studying the economic trends which changed America after the second world war, remarked on the pace of economic innovations which made it possible for business startups to be replicated easily and rapidly.168 Apparently, we've been able to do for small community developers what McDonald's does for would-be hamburger stand operators. Given the pace of the trends which challenge communities and regions, we need to be able to appreciate the value of rapid learning and rapid replication in many other fields as well. It is unlikely that today's governmental structures by themselves will similarly rise to the rapid pace of change which challenges all of us. The arbitrariness of administrative geographies can't hope to deliver the performance necessary to address the geographies of natural capital, such as watersheds and airsheds, nor can government easily contain growth within boundaries.169 Perhaps by marrying the best of what America's economic, social and political systems have to offer, we can invent new venues for engagement which can stimulate people to recognize common assets and challenges, set goals together and work through the choices to achieve consensus, and strive to invest in these envisioned futures in ways that embody performance tracking and continuous improvement. J.B.S. Haldane, in a paper entitled, "On the Importance of Being the Right Size," once pointed out that the human organism is exactly intermediate in size between the electron and the spiral nebula, the smallest and largest existing objects.170 This, he suggested, gives man a privileged position in the world of nature. Tony Hiss has suggested that the amorphous idea of region may represent the largest size that people can cope with and the smallest unit necessary for effective action.171 Two generations of "regionalists" have suggested that centralization may be necessary to combat "fragmentation," and in the case of infrastructure law, we've observed regulations overly restrictive of local community priorities in the name of "regional significance," and barriers between communities, government and business in the name of "joint development."172 The analysis presented here suggests that regional significance can be assembled as meaningfully from a large number of small efforts, as from a small number of large ones. Much as ecological thinking is influencing the practice of economics to consider the aggregated value of activities at the level of watershed or habitat, (which interestingly is being called "expanding the asset boundary").173 Perhaps we need to learn to recognize the value of assets that are owned in common including the kinds of tangible and intangible assets accounted for in this brief paper. In long term studies of "what works" in fields ranging from community policing to local market development, the ideas of collective efficacy and mutual gain are gaining respect.174 "Ensuring sustainable communities" will require "learning to sustain," which in turn will require learning to "do it together."
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