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Density by design

As gas nears $4 a gallon and as the world grapples with global warming, more people are choosing to live close to where they work (or at least close to a bus or rail line that can get them to their jobs without a car). And many people who are done working, or close to it - namely the empty nesters of the Baby Boom generation - also are eager to live where they can forget about yard work and walk to restaurants, parks, and cultural events. A new wave of urban housing is catering to people who seek this lifestyle.

But the word "density" has a bad rap among many Americans. Say it, and people conjure images of ugly housing projects and boring tract homes. That's why Julie Campoli and Alex S. MacLean wrote and photographed a book called Visualizing Density - to show that density doesn't need to mean bad design. They are traveling the country to explain this message, and I caught up with them Wednesday at a program sponsored by the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho.

Asked to define density, people use negative terms including "cookie cutter," "boring," "isolated," "barren," "over-paved," "car-oriented," and "transient." But people also use more positive descriptions like "green," "varied," "connected," "timeless," and "pedestrian friendly." The latter terms come up when developers build environments that are high-quality (even for affordable housing), convenient, and have aesthetic appeal.

Density is definitely ecologically "green", but people won't move to a more dense neighborhood just because it's "the right thing to do," Campoli said. Instead, developments need to literally be green. "Satisfying people's need for green is essential," she added, noting that it can be done many ways, from courtyards and pocket parks to community gardens and even using green roofs and landscaped catch-basins instead of storm sewers for rainwater runoff.

Campoli pulled up a website for a Phoenix, Arizona, organization called South Laveen Against High Density. Its mission statement reads: "We will be reasonable but firm with misguided attempts to zone for high density cookie cutter housing." So what the group really opposes, she noted, is bad design - not high density. She recommended the Design Advisor website as a good source for planners and builders who want to create affordable yet well-designed housing. She also urged planners to encourage infill housing in existing urban areas rather than "new town" developments that often leap-frog over open space and demand long commutes.

Everyday Democracy has tools for communities that would like to address growth and sprawl, first by bringing a wide array of people together to discuss the issue, then to take action together on it. Click here to read stories of large and small communities that have taken these steps, and here to download a free copy of our discussion guide "Smart Talk for Growing Communities: Meeting the Challenges of Growth and Development."

April books roundup

It's time for our monthly roundup of recent books of interest to people who are working, organizing, and educating for positive community change. This month's selections include Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon; Fight  Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community by Bill McKibben and the Step It Up Team; and The True Patriot: A Pamphlet by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer. You can get these books at your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered below.

Slavery by Another Name tells how for decades after the Civil War, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, charged with outrageous fines, then sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. The practice was finally given up due to government embarrassment over possible enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II. Blackmon, a white man who is Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, started writing nearly a decade ago about how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines in the early 20th century. This book grew out of that reporting. (Order here.) Click here for more of Blackmon's writings on race, school resegregation (he attended Mississippi schools as they were integrated in the 1970s), baseball, and more.  You can also read an excerpt from the book and listen to a "Talk of the Nation" interview with Blackmon here.

Earth Day 2008 may be behind us, but many communities are eager to keep the momentum going. In Fight Global Warming Now, McKibben and his collaborators offer a hands-on, locally oriented guidebook for halting climate change. McKibben draws from the lessons of 1,400 Step It Up demonstrations held last spring, one of the biggest days of environmental action since the original Earth Day and one that came together in mere months. He pledges that proceeds from the book will go back into efforts to combat climate change. (Order here.) Another recent McKibben book - Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future - is recently out in paperback, and it's a good companion to Fight Global Warming Now. McKibben shares why, particularly in our current era of unequal wages and dwindling natural resources, "more" usually doesn't mean "better." He shows how communities around the world are building vibrant local economies where people work together to create more of their own food, energy, and even entertainment.

The True Patriot has been out for a few months, but it may be a good prism through which to view the rest of this presidential election year. "We believe all politics is fundamentally about morality," Liu and Hanauer write in the slim book's introduction. "What rules do we need to live a good life together? How should those rules govern the choices we make not only as individuals but as a community?" Written in the style of Thomas Paine's classic Common Sense, The True Patriot has a decidedly progressive philosophy but one that calls to conservatives as well by appealing to core American values, like sharing of sacrifice. In a radio interview, Liu said, "I think if you take these values seriously, you’re able to find a zone where people of both parties can come together and say, 'You know what? This is the essence of true patriotism: whether we are looking out for the next generation, whether we have a sense of obligation and responsibility, not just to ourselves but to those who are going to come after us.'" (Order here.)

What are you reading these days? What's next on your list?

Seeking environmental equity

Yesterday, we took a look at communities on the East and West coasts (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Port Townsend, Washington) where citizens are working to build sustainability and curb greenhouse gas emissions. Today, we focus on the Heartland, where an inner-city neighborhood is focused on environmental justice. From our website:

What began as a few people talking in a church-based dialogue has grown into a widening campaign for environmental justice in Indiana. The last two Saturdays of this month, the Martindale-Brightwood Environmental Justice Collaborative (EJC) will mark Earth Day with two mini-environmental conferences to help residents learn about ongoing toxic hazards in the community.

Martindale-Brightwood is a neighborhood in central Indianapolis with about 10,000 residents, most of them African American. As reported last year on our website, Scott United Methodist Church became a center of environmental justice activism when its minister, the Rev. Ray Wilkins, learned through an environmental analysis that a nearby business had improperly disposed of trichloroethylene, a toxic chemical that had possibly seeped into subsurface water flowing beneath the church property. The issue was discussed in a study circle, and participants went on to form the environmental group.

Now – as the “Voice to Action” conferences are held April 19 and April 26 – the EJC is working with a growing list of partners to raise awareness of the continuing toxic threats in their neighborhood. For example, the Indiana Black Expo and Marion County Health Department will be at the conference to test children for lead poisoning in a neighborhood where contaminated toys from China may be the least of parents’ worries.

Read more here. Also, have a look at the article "Environmental Justice for All" on the Utne.com website, which tells more about the emerging environmental justice campaign that leading activists are calling the civil rights movement of the 21st Century.

Earth Day, from sea to sea

Tomorrow is Earth Day, and we have examples of communities working to save the environment from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, hundreds of people turned out Saturday for the city's first Sustainability Fair, an idea that grew out of the Portsmouth Listens program, which for years has used study circles (large-scale, action-oriented dialogues) to address important local issues. The fair featured hands-on activities like pond cleanups, a sustainability scavenger hunt, and vendors selling everything from organic food to worms for composting. From the Portsmouth Herald:

Bert Cohen, a UNH professor on sustainability and co-founder of Piscataqua Sustainability Initiative, started the fair with opening remarks on the importance of a "systems approach" to sustainability, where it is infused in everything that the community does.

The phrase "change happens one person at time" might be true, he said, but to address an imminent threat such as global warming will require more than one person at a time.

"That's probably not the way it's going to happen," he said. "It's going to be a network of people who bring everyone together to create change. That's what we're doing this morning."

Read more about the Portsmouth fair here, and see a profile of Bert Cohen here.

Meanwhile, in Port Townsend, Washington, study circles on climate change led to a climate action lab where participants decided to focus on cutting greenhouse gases from motor vehicles, since every gallon of gas adds more than a pound of air pollution to our skies. From the Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader:

The question asked at the first action lab meeting was, "How do we get people out of their vehicles?" recalled Anne Bishop, one of the participants.

"We were bouncing ideas off of each other," she said. "It was a fun evening." They discussed creating street theater, encouraging people to ride the bus, proposing stories to the paper, and even changing parking requirements in the city and county building codes.

Anne's husband, Dan, said that increasing ridership on the buses is "probably the easiest important thing that can be done in the short term."

Read more here, and check out the Seattle-based group 2People.org, which helped Port Townsend organize its dialogues. (Seattle also is home to one of the best transit blogs anywhere, the Seattle Bus Chick. For a transit blog near you, click here.) Watch for more Earth Day news tomorrow, and have a look at Everyday Democracy's resources for holding action-oriented community conversations about growth and sprawl.

Friday digest-open thread 1/11/08

So it looks like we may finally get the real national conversation on race that many Americans have been seeking for decades. In the wake of Barack Obama's rise as the first African-American presidential candidate to win the Iowa Caucus, news reports, blogs, and coffee shops are abuzz with his success and what it might mean for broader racial - and perhaps generational - politics in our nation. But in an essay in the current issue of Newsweek, Ellis Cose writes:

All the celebrating notwithstanding, Obama is still a long way from wrapping up the nomination, much less the election. For all his allusions to harmony and change, he has not yet demonstrated that we have ceased to be "a collection of Red States and Blue States," as he put it, but are one, united America. Indeed, in the end, the messages of change and unity may find themselves in conflict. For as beautiful as the dream of one America may be, the reality is of a country where income disparities are growing, not narrowing, and where the very privileged have less and less in common with those who are constantly struggling. Two generations after the major rights were fought and won, we are still a nation whose inner cities and barrios are full of people with no real sense of a better tomorrow. In an era when incarceration is seen, in certain neighborhoods, as the nearly inevitable fate of young men, talk of one, united, bighearted America can seem like something of a joke. Their problems will not be solved, nor their outlook notably changed, simply because America elects a new president—even one who is young, attractive, black and runs on a platform of national unity.

Against this backdrop of hope mixed with realism, the Study Circles Resource Center - soon to be renamed Everyday Democracy - is pleased to announce a new  Communities Creating Racial Equity initiative. As seen on the SCRC website, eight communities will embark with us on a process "aimed at helping communities create and sustain public engagement and community change on issues around racial equity." The communities include Stratford, Connecticut; Syracuse, New York; Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; Lynchburg, Virginia; Burlington, Vermont; Jacksonville, Florida; Sacramento, California; and New Haven, Connecticut. Read more here.

Meanwhile, back on the campaign beat, Rich Harwood of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation has advice for all the presidential candidates:

Now, the presidential candidates have discovered that "hope" is the coin of realm and that "change" is required. Campaigns have a way of dressing up ideas, proposals, and new directions in language and packaging that can appear to be citizen-centered and community-driven, but in reality remain very much about Washington and politicians and policies that touch the edges of change. But such words, and even the deeds that may follow, will only transform America if we're called upon to step forward to bring about new conditions in our communities, to tackle tough issues such as entitlements, or to pursue policy initiatives that inevitably will require serious trade-offs and sacrifices.

Read more here, and also consider downloading a print or audio copy of Rich's new essay, Make Hope Real.

In other news:

The community of Cortlandt, New York, is forming a diversity task force and plans community dialogues and outreach programs following a cross-burning at the home of a black family last November. Organizer the Rev. Adolphus Lacey of Mount Olivet Baptist Church in nearby Peekskill told the local media that the cross-burning "revealed an underbelly of underlying intolerance we want to deal with."

Climate dialogues have been launched in Port Townsend, Washington, and in other Puget Sound-area communities. Phil Mitchell, director of the Greater Seattle Climate Dialogues, describes the dialogues as "a grassroots, science-based process that aims to bring the whole community into this crucial conversation."

UU Allies for Racial Equity, building an anti-racism movement among Unitarian Universalists, will hold their annual conference February 1-3 in Memphis, Tennessee. The multigenerational gathering is for whites who share a goal of learning to work to end racism and being allies to people of color. Click here for more info and registration details.

Please add your comments on these stories below. And if you have a news tip or see a timely piece of commentary for the weekly digest, email it to us with the relevant links.

Friday digest-open thread 12/07/07

Sorry to be so late in posting today. There's plenty to report, so let's get right to it:

Two communities with brand-new dialogue-to-action programs held action forums last night. Click here to read about the doings in Lynchburg, Virginia, where 120 people have been working on racism and racial equity issues. Then check out this story about last night's action forum in Lewiston, Maine, where local youth and their adult allies expressed an interest in building a youth center and getting a youth voice on the school board.

Citizens of Brattleboro, Vermont, held an action forum this week, too, to conclude a round of discussions on poverty. Here's a story that ran earlier this week, before the forum. Just a reminder: Poverty will be the focus of this month's DemocracySpace water cooler, set for 1 p.m. Eastern next Thursday, December 13. Join us online at that time to talk with other organizers who are working to move their communities from poverty to prosperity.

The Iowa Caucus - the kickoff event of the 2008 presidential primary season - is January 3. But today is National Caucus Day, an effort to get people to spend a little time together talking about the candidates and what we seek in our next chief exec. Click here to see if an event is happening near you.

Speaking of the presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Barack Obama gave a major speech on public service this week, saying he'd promote policies - including a vastly expanded AmeriCorps - to help Americans of all ages give back to their communities. The plan would also "invest in the capacity of nonprofits to innovate and expand successful programs across the country." Click here to read the plan in depth.

PublicDecisions.com, which specializes in training for public participation planners and elected officials, has announced a full slate of online classes for the first quarter of 2008. Selections include "Involving Youth in Decision Making," a tongue-in-cheek "Ten Reasons Not to Involve the Public in Your Decisions," and "Managing News Media in Public Involvement." Click here for the full schedule.

The international conference on climate change in Bali reached its halfway mark today, two days after the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee passed a bill aimed at cutting global warming emissions by 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. The Bush administration remains opposed to mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and a House-passed energy bill stalled in the Senate today. But as Katharine Mieszkowski writes at Salon, the American public is now leading the way on the issue and it's looking more likely that the U.S. will be on board when the next treaties are written in 2009. Click here.

October book roundup

Here at DemocracySpace, we plan to post a roundup of a few notable recent books at the end of most months. This month's selections are Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad by Frances Moore Lappe; A Republic of Trees: Field Notes on People, Place, and the Planet by William Shutkin; and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. You can get these books at your local bookseller, or online, or at the links offered with each.

First of all, we are excited to announce that Getting a Grip will be the first selection for the Everyday Democracy Book Club, which will meet right here at DemocracySpace.org at 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, January 17. Barbara Kingsolver says, "Getting a Grip is not an ordinary book: it's more like a new pair of glasses, allowing you to see everything around you with greater clarity. Suddenly the world is more comprehensible, more manageable, even more beautiful. You won't want to take them off."

We look forward to talking online with Lappe that day and hearing about how we can all connect with our personal passions to create the sort of world that we want to live in. She will also discuss why she wrote about study circles - large-scale, inclusive dialogues that lead to change - in two recent books, and other ways she knows of helping everyday people discover their power. Frances Moore Lappe is the author or co-author of 16 books, including the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet, Hope's Edge, and Democracy's Edge. Mark your calendars now for January 17 so you won't miss this opportunity to share an hour with this visionary author, no matter where you live. (Ordering info.)

William Shutkin is a leading global voice in sustainability and social entrepreneurship, as well as the author of the acclaimed book, The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. Of his new book, Shutkin writes, "A Republic of Trees, as the title implies, imagines a new political order in which nature and society are seen as interdependent, as sustaining each other. It starts with people willing to become engaged, with an open mind and creative spirit, in the process of designing a better, greener, more sustainable future and the new models of social and economic development that will take us there." 

Bill McKibben says of A Republic of Trees, “We are in need of new technologies, yes, but even more in need of new metaphors. Bill Shutkin is among the very smartest people out wandering the frontier of social and environmental possibility, the kind of guide we’ll be relying on in the difficult years to come.” David Baron says it's "a worthy successor to Aldo Leopold’s classic A Sand County Almanac." (Ordering info.) Shutkin also has a new blog devoted to the themes he explores in his books.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Dies and Others Survive by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is still building buzz since its release early this year. Picking up where Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point left off, the Heath brothers - Chip is a professor at Stanford, Dan is a consultant - spin tales about such marketing successes as the "Don't Mess With Texas" anti-litter campaign and Subway's "Jared" ads. More important, they offer lots of advice on how to help your good ideas get heard via "simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories." Yes, that spells SUCCES. Almost! (Ordering info.)

What are you reading these days?

Climate action conversations Oct. 4

Are there local solutions to global warming? Organizers of the National Conversation on Climate Action think so, and they're helping people in nearly 60 U.S. cities get together October 4 to discuss science-based solutions and action steps to solve the climate crisis.

World leaders met Monday at the United Nations for a summit on climate change - a preview of a much larger international conference set for December in Bali - and the United States is convening a meeting of the planet's top emitters of greenhouse gases on Thursday and Friday. But organizers of next week's National Conversation on Climate Action say that such large conferences often lack "the on-the-ground perspectives, experience and needs of local communities ... While they cannot solve the problem of global warming alone, local governments have an essential role to play through land use decisions, transportation planning, building codes, and their ability to pioneer innovative strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Click here for more information and here to see if there's a conversation happening near you. Hat tip to AmericaSpeaks for noting this in its September newsletter. AmericaSpeaks developed an action engagement guide for the hosts of next week's meetings.