| Partnership for Regional Livability |
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A Conceptual Framework for the Next Three Years of the
Partnership for Regional Livability
Draft
For Discussion Only
9/22/99
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Vision: A Geography of Opportunity
II. Background: The Partnership for Regional Livability
A. Conception
B. Busy Being Born
C. Early Success
D. Initial Lessons
E. Challenges
III. Proposed Framework: Deepening and Expanding the Circle of Innovation
A. Goal One: Regional Livability in the Four Sites
B. Goal Two: National Learning Network
C. Goal Three: Building the Field
D. Goal Four: Secure Funding
IV. Structure and Competencies
A. Staffing
V. Outcomes and Assessment
VI. Budget
Attachments
I. VISION: A Geography of Opportunity
There is a new geography of opportunity in America: a new sphere emerging through which new and powerful forms of civic convergence hold promise to address long intractable problems; a new vision of the connections among the critical issues of our day that crosses traditional boundaries of thought and action and is spawning new coalitions and resourceful solutions; a new role for private and public institutions yielding fresh forms of leadership, innovative ways of working, and untapped potential for success; and a new project that is harnessing these forces into a powerful laboratory of democracy with promise to remake the face of metropolitan America. This geography is regional. This sphere is multi-sectoral. This agenda is livability. This role is as partner. This project is the Partnership for Regional Livability. 1
The Partnership for Regional Livability (PRL) is a new idea. And like most new ideas for social change, it is exciting and risky, because it promises to solve big problems but also threatens to upend the status quo. The Partnership idea is this: to accelerate and strengthen the development of regional capacities to address the problem of making America's metropolitan areas good places to live, work, and raise a family. And it does this by harnessing the assets already present in the regions; bringing together the existing leadership and resources into a shared process of learning, innovation and action.
The connections between unsightly sprawl, filthy air, dirty water, traffic congestion, dilapidated urban and suburban neighborhoods, inner city joblessness are on the national radar screen. What many citizens, activists, academics and politicians of all stripes have come to realize is that metropolitan problems require regional solutions. No single community - not even super-sized Atlanta or big-shouldered Chicago - has the resources or control over enough of the variables to solve these problems by itself. Neither state governments nor the federal government can dictate solutions. For one thing, they simply do not know what should be done. For another, the nation is firmly in a mood for devolution and localism, not top-down mandates. Moreover, experience has shown that in order to succeed long term, the leadership and the experience must be vested at the local level.
America has a complicated record of metropolitan-level problem solving. Many efforts in the past have foundered. Neither the local, the state, nor the federal level "owns" regions; they are unclaimed zones largely uninhabited by institutions. This is fortuitous, for it means that regions are a geography of opportunity: places where it is possible to transcend the factionalism that usually tears locals apart and to avoid the insensitivity to local conditions that often dooms federal and state efforts. Regions are places, therefore, where it is possible to craft innovative solutions to the problems of livability.
Yet, the nation currently has little of the regional capacity needed to take advantage of the opportunity. In some sense, the regional "operating system" has yet to be created. The pieces are all there; but they have yet to be assembled, they have yet to be programmed,
1. This document draws heavily from the text in Peter Plastrik's "the Hope of Regions: As Assessment of the Partnership for Regional Livability".
and they have yet to be networked. Much of the regional capacity that does exist is being built a circuit at a time. So far, though, this has been the work of relatively small teams of visionaries, isolated from each other, and making up each step along the way, with few mechanisms for sharing their learning or expanding its impact. Of course PRL is not the only effort around the country seeking to create larger linkages in the current ferment around regionalism. There are other important nationally oriented ventures underway around regionalism, from which PRL has much to learn. Still, there is as yet no single leader or primary driver of the regional livability agenda. The approaches vary, but each is laying an important groundwork in a still emerging field.
If metropolitan regions are increasingly an obvious theater for action, what remains to be seen is the play itself: how will regional capacities be built that create regional solutions with national impact?
Enter the Partnership in 1999: Its members have watched and assisted fledgling efforts in many regions, and they concluded that three things would boost regional livability:
In less than a year, the Partnership has identified and engaged four regions, a distinguished group of foundations and policy experts, and a handful of federal and state agencies willing to collaborate on projects to solve vexing regional problems. It has brought together enough funding to get a process up and running. The expanded number of partners met in San Francisco for the first time in June. Much was being learned, even as much was being built. Much of it is fragile, and much of what will happen next remains a mystery. This is as it should be in the young life of a newborn idea.
Who is this partnership? It is: community activists, environmentalists, local elected officials, state government appointees, academics, policy entrepreneurs, foundation executives, federal officials, and planners united by a common set of values. All share a common concern for pressing problems back home, in America's great urban centers. All share a belief that achieving more livable communities requires a new alignment of idea, institutions and actors. All face daunting obstacles. The partners from Atlanta are under the gun to clean up that area's air pollution, as are those from Chicago. The partners from Denver want to connect poor, inner city job seekers to jobs sprouting in distant suburbs. The activists from San Francisco's Bay area hope to prevent sprawl into the countryside, while attracting private investment for housing and businesses in impoverished neighborhoods. The federal folks from Washington want to respond to these regions' efforts - and reinvent the federal system in the process. The foundations hope to expand the effectiveness and impact of their investments in social change. As a group, however, they all believe that innovation is key; that they can be more successful working together, systematically breaking down old boundaries and establishing new linkages and new approaches to achieve their long held goals.
In many ways, the partnership is nothing more - and nothing less - than the sum total of the values, the passions, the skills, and the commitment of its members. Little is formal. Little is predetermined. Nothing is mandated. Nothing is institutionalized. Little is static. The mechanics of the partnership merely create an environment where the learning, the synergy, and the action become uniquely possible. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, this deliberate but unusual arrangement has produced surprising results in a short period of time: laying a groundwork for an effective national network of successful and broad-based regional collaborations with the vision, the know-how and the credibility to make America's cities and suburbs fairer and better places to live for this generation and those to come.
The next six months will seek to build the on the core site, as we then gradually expand our purview to (if convinced the PRL will add value) …..contribute ? ……
II. BACKGROUND: The Partnership for Regional Livability
A. Conception
In early 1999 a small group of national and local foundations led by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, federal officials led by the Council on Environmental Quality, and veteran community activists associated with the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) launched a short-term "partnership" to scope and pilot ways that regional initiatives can improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas. In exploring this agenda, the partnership sought to forge "new inter-regional connections for dialogue and rapid learning" and "new connections between regions and federal agencies."
The partners' essential insight was this: that regionalism is ripe to be nationalized. They saw beyond the different contexts of the many regions in which local activists are building regional visions, agendas, and capacities, and envisioned both a national interest in responding to the regions and a commonality across regions. One participant noted the "critical mass of interest and experience nationally…grounded in multiple efforts underway in regions as diverse as South Florida, Cleveland and Portland." They saw a new way to enable the emergence of regionalism. They saw a vacuum and determined to start filling it - by helping to build the capacity of regions and creating a "national learning network" among regions, states, and federal players.
They also believed the federal and state governments might be able to help local civic and policy entrepreneurs implement regional agendas; and that if entrepreneurs in many regions learned from each other, it would accelerate all their achievements. "Each region has something to learn from the others," wrote Partnership founders. No region "has adequately 'cracked the federal code' in a way that enables the federal government to be a participant in regional initiatives locally and as an intentional multi-purpose investor."
Unlike many nationally oriented efforts, the partnership began with a fundamental shift in orientation: rather than ask how communities could implement a predetermined national agenda, the partnership reversed the equation and instead asked how foundations, and federal and stage agencies, could work with local civic and policy entrepreneurs to implement the regions' agendas.
The partners agreed to start with four sites - more would tax their fledgling capacities - and selected Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, and the San Francisco Bay Area as places to develop projects. The idea was to develop regionally based projects that would attract the interest of other regions, of other foundations, of states, and of federal officials in Washington. Projects had to be regional in scope, linking the interests of inner city, county, and suburb, and the product of a broad coalition of local stakeholders. They would need to offer all stakeholders new ways to solve persistent problems. And their impact would need to be measurable.
Foundations played a crucial role in helping to pull this off. As investors in social change, they provided risk capital to participants - flexible funding not subject to political approval, money that did not have to come out of hard-pressed community organizations' budgets. As civic leaders they convened or facilitated collaborative processes to bring together the diverse, sometimes-nettlesome regional, state and federal stakeholders. And as intellectual resources, they helped connect regions and partners to innovate thinkers and tools. Likewise, the national "feds" promised to "add value" by providing unusual access, as well as their knowledge, information, networks, research capability, and funding in innovative ways. The federal organizations sought to act under their existing authority - with no new programs or laws being sought - to learn how to become "place-based partners."
The Partnership's focus on concrete projects gave it three concrete tasks: 1) to help activists in the regions convene local stakeholders and come to agreements about which projects to advance; 2) to help the regions develop and implement significant projects that would demonstrate the Partnership's value; and 3) to help federal officials in many different departments get engaged, work in teams, and figure out how to contribute to regional projects.
Easier said than done, however. As the Partnership's process unfolded in the spring, predictable strains emerged along the way.
B. Busy Being Born
Despite the initial enthusiasm and preparation, the regional teams had a more difficult time than expected getting going. Organizing a consensus among many stakeholders in a region is painstaking work and it usually requires a great deal of time and credible, neutral facilitation. The Partnership's push to get regions to identify projects quickly caused stresses on the fairly modest capacities at the local level. Furthermore, the regions needed considerable help thinking through the content of their projects. There was no shame in this, of course; the projects break new ground and are extremely complicated. Still, it was slow and demanding work. Much of the assistance came from the Partnership's "circuit riders," experienced professionals familiar with many of the issues the regions tackled (transportation system design, pollution prevention, development of inner city labor and housing markets, and so on), and connected to many experts in different fields. They brought a knack for posing innovative, market-based approaches and for making surprising connections among seemingly disparate issues.
The Partnership's hope that local foundations would step up as investors in and facilitators of the local process was realized in three of the four sites. The Turner, Irvine and Donnelly Foundations played prominent roles locally. Somewhat belatedly, foundations seem to be emerging in the fourth site as well. All along the way there has been learning about the depth of commitment needed to realize a project of this scale. For the federal government, making the shift to a place-based approach led by regions has been espeically complex. With little training or practice, no one is sure how it's to be done. But that is precisely what the federal partners understood from the begiinning. "The federal government is not used to thinking this way," says Keith Laughlin, the Council on Environmental Quality's associate director for sustainable development and the Partnership's key federal player. The problem goes beyond new thinking. Working with the Partnership regions requires federal organizations to coordinate their actions across agencies - unnatural intercourse for Washington bureaucracies. It is also often difficult for federal organizations to keep their national headquarters and field staff on the same page. Yet federal officials working in the local area "can never have too much support from Washington," says Sunne McPeak, president of the Bay Area Council.
C. Early Success
It took some scrambling to pull together projects by late June when the Partnership pulled into San Francisco for its first full-scale meeting, but all four sites did it. Each region had one project cooking that demanded innovative solutions, and some had others on the back burners:
Unforeseen and exciting additional prospects have also emerged. Nothing better illustrates this than the development of the "Information Proejct":
These five projects passed the significance test for the Partnership; their success would significantly enhance the regions' livability. Moreover, as a group they "reflect the breadth and diversity of metropolitan efforts taking hold in other regions," says Bruce Katz, a Brooking Institution director. Each region had a wish list for federal collaboration on its leading project. And when they left the Partnership meeting, each had a specific process for developing relationships with key federal agencies.
For just a few months of effort, this was a good start for the Partnership. Any large claims - that it is reinventing the federal government or building a movement of regional activists, for instance -would be premature, however. There have been no miracles yet - only steady work for the Partnership and an intriguing glimpse of its potential.
D. Initial Lessons
As anticipated, PRL has provided a rich venue for learning about a wide range of topics - from regionalism and multi-sector collaboration, to the redesign of federal assistance, to the specifics of transportation, workforce, air and land use in multiple sites - and for testing many fundamental assumptions about regionalism and livability. Some assumptions have been confirmed. Others have proved overly optimistic. While still others have not yet developed to a point where they can be assessed. Some of the preliminary lessons include:
E. Challenges
The Partnership faces many challenges. It has not yet built a "critical mass" of federal and regional partners and investors. It has targeted very tough, slippery problems - air pollution, traffic congestion, urban joblessness, disinvestment in poor urban and suburban neighborhood, lack of affordable housing, sprawl - but still has a limited capacity to develop innovative solutions. It has engaged some federal officials in this work, but does not have a strategy for achieving the fundamental reinvention of the federal system that regionalism may require. Meanwhile, a change of administrations is looming, potentially changing the dynamics of federal participation.
Moreover, there is an astonishing amount to learn about how to operate effectively at a regional level. It is not just a matter of transferring what we know how to do at the national or community. It requires the creation of new capacities to produce new solutions to big problems. No wonder, then, that questions tumble from the lips of every member of the Partnership:
These questions form the basis for a learning agenda about regional livability. They can be summed as a single inquiry: What is the "operating system" of vision and values, capacities, relationships, and tools that regions can use to appreciate their economic, social, human, and natural capital? No one has the answer to this - yet.
Yet the Partnership also has an enormously powerful asset: its highly motivated players in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Washington are developing a network for sharing information and support, while initiating important experiments and learning from them. Because they are driven by a compelling, shared vision - the Partnership idea - they are well positioned to take the crucial steps the next year is bringing. For as the century turns they will have to get the network to critical mass, develop practical tools and solutions regions can use, cement the federal-regional relationships, and garner enough investment to ensure they have the staying power to deliver on the Partnership idea's initial promise.
III. Proposed Framework: Deepening and Expanding the Circle of Innovation
The challenge of the next three years for PRL to is to demonstrate that the five core projects (the four sites and the information project) can begin to yield on-the-ground gains in the four regions' livability, while also contributing to the progress of the movement nationally around regional livability. Success with the five projects in isolation, however noteworthy, is simply not sufficient if their impact does not extend beyond the boundaries of the four metropolitan areas. Thus a threefold framework for PRL's future is suggested below: it is centered fundamentally on facilitating the success of the core sites, but also seeks to use that experience to create a learning network among key regions, and to contribute to the development and shape of the evolving field of regional livability. The proposed framework seeks to capture many of the benefits of expanding the number of project sites, while also limiting the intensity and the scale of work involved to those services provided by an effective learning network.
The framework proposed below serves as a way to think about the challenges and the opportunities PRL faces over the next three years. It is not yet a workplan, nor does it reflect fully developed strategies. In fact, part of PRL's strength has been its ability to evolve and to seize opportunities. Under this framework, the core projects will continue to receive the concentrated attention of the Partnership, particularly over the next six months, along with efforts to secure adequate funding. As that work matures, however, the on-going substantive work of the core projects serves as a basis for the second and third goals, which are to engage and exchange insights with a larger network of emerging regional players and the broader field. The information project in particular will provide a testing ground for adding value and thus will serve as cornerstone for building broader network learning.
Given the recent learning being generated in a variety of venues- in the core projects, through efforts in other regions elsewhere, and the developments within the larger field - a threefold agenda promises a faster transfer of relevant information, broader generation of innovation and activity, and potentially greater impact in terms of policy and politics.
Moreover, given the timeliness of the particular moment - with high federal interest, new technology centered and growing in regions, ongoing experimentation in local governance, potential openings for a bipartisan agenda, and a convergence of activity and institutions around the livability and regional agendas - a more ambitious stance seems not only wise, but compelling.
The interaction between the PRL core sites and additional regional sites is a two-way transaction, of course. Since many regions are already involved in collaborative change, the work in the core sites will also be nourished by the learning from other regions. Although the content of the five projects will be used to organize learning, the process of collaborating effectively will inevitably become part of the discussion and of the value added. Finally, the experience and learning from the site projects and the network activities will be translated and communicated to strategic audiences to help define, position and build the field.
Just what would this mean practically? As an example, as Denver begins to implement its plan for its regional workforce collaborative, the experience and approach in Denver could also serve as the basis for a meeting of other regional leaders nationally who are also exploring regional workforce approaches. An exchange of ideas about content and process has potential to benefit both Denver and the other interested regions, building the capacity of both. It would also facilitate a more serious discussion about the kinds of policy and political changes needed in Washington and/or state capitals to enable these efforts to succeed in regions long term. Such a convening would also begin engaging a broader cross section of regions in the design, development and implementation of a "regional operating system", even as it provides a means for distributing that system. The content and issues of the meeting could be shared with a broader cross-section of foundations and policy makers to expand the circle of understanding and interest.
This framework assumes that PRL is not designed for permanent establishment. In fact, in order to retain its focus on the regional agenda and to remain responsive to the changing nature of the field, PRL should plan to dissolve in three years or, if merited, transfer its functions elsewhere. The framework below promises to bring the work to a point where PRL is no longer needed, with the relationships, learning and actions being sustained in multiple other ways.
A. Goal One: Regional Livability in the Four Sites
Support the development of regional capacity in the four project sites to successfully put in place innovative strategies for increasing regional livability and regional learning within three years.
Objective A. "Close the deals" between the feds and the four regions within the next year and begin project implementation. This will require a range of sustained facilitation and technical assistance services to the regions and to the feds, and a willingness to work well beyond areas of comfort. A timeline for the planning and implementation of the project and role and responsibilities should be completed by the end of the year. Renewed work on the standards of engagement and the roles and responsibilities of the partners should be completed soon.
Actions
Objective B. Build the capacity and commitment of the federal government to support the regional agendas in the four sites. This is a tricky passage, fraught with political risks and burdened by the ensnaring inertia of the federal machinery. So far, the Partnership has stayed under the "radar screen" of Washington's fractious political community. But without a political mandate, it is difficult to get the bureaucracy to move in new directions long term. The White House Task Force on Livability is a critical agent for facilitating this process.
Actions
Objective C. Support the development and piloting of the Information Proejct, and other crosscutting tools and innovations. Use the sites as potential resources for federal and state government looking to develop or replicate innovative regional ideas. In particular, look for those kinds of opportunities with promise to give regions long term and useable tools. Intended to enable rapid identification and use of existing geographic data and the analytical tools and techniques to support place-based decision-making, the information project is forming learning networks of community leaders in regions committed to acquiring the knowledge and assembling the necessary resources and commitments. Among the outcomes expected are the rapid identification, development, testing and adoption of decision support tools such as visualization; real time sharing of data, tools and approaches among regions; and enabling the creation of competent networks for citizen planning and citizen science at the local and regional levels;
Actions
B. Goal Two: National Learning Network
Establish a national learning network of regional practitioners that creates a chain of value and impact among key regional practitioners.
Objective A. Create a rapid learning and innovation network of regional livability stakeholders. Using the content and the processes of the four core sites as an organizing mechanism to establish a network of 8 - 12 regions that is supported and provided with a range of special services to facilitate learning and the achievement of regionally determined livability goals. In addition to meetings, sustained communications and the capture of learning, this might include inter-region and federal learning networks on special topics of interest, and other secial services and opportunities.
Actions
C. Goal Three: Building a Field
Use the learning and networks of PRL to shape and position the development of the field.
Objective A. Build the capacity and commitment of foundations to engage in regional livability and to help build the alliances needed to advance it.
Actions
Objective B. Prepare for engagement with the new White House and cabinet officials that the 2000 elections will bring, and the congressional leaders who can make or break most new ideas.
Actions
Objective C. Build the field's intellectual capital by capturing and disseminating learning and tools, and connecting innovative thinkers. Each pilot region has needed help, because they are tackling large, integrated, complex issues -- unstructured problem solving at its most perplexing. The feds face a similar challenge. But the Partnership has not yet assembled enough of an intellectual capacity to help regions and feds think about these problems. Nor has it begun to capture and consolidate learning in key sites around the country. Ultimately, the network's knowledge and the regions' practices should be developed into the "regional operating system" that regions use to move more rapidly up the learning curve.
Actions
D. Goal Four: Securing Funding
Secure adequate funding from foundation and government to sustain projects and field development.
Objective A. Encourage initial foundation partners to leverage their resources with other social-change investors to put together enough money to give the Partnership a clear three-year run at its target. The Partnership won't survive if it spends much of its energy raising funds. More important, secure funding it will allow the partners to build the capacity and do the work that is needed.
Actions
IV. Partnership Coordination: Structure and Competencies
Rather then create a new institution to promote regional solutions to difficult problems, PRL choose to avoid centralizing anything that could be done by regional, foundation or federal partners, and to assemble a loose network of actors to network and facilitate the activities. The project has largely functioned well with this loose but purposeful network of consultants keeping dozens of people and activities moving forward and connected in its startup phase. Although based in different cities, funded by different sources, performing different functions, and devoting different amounts of time to the venture, the current arrangement seems to have been sufficiently flexible to respond to the project's evolving learning, while also sufficiently disciplined to keep it moving forward.
PRL has not been a project that could be turned over to staff to execute. Its effectiveness has depended on the active involvement and leadership of the different sectors. The role of the network of consultants has been similar to the role of the project itself: to serve as a kind of incubator, a support system for early growth and development of a field. That said, the current coordination and administrative structure bears additional thinking in light of the propopsed framework. Although the role of PRL's staff is not supposed to change under the framework suggested above, the structural question for the project as it moves forward is this: Can a loose networked structure of consultants provide sufficient support for the sustained tasks outlined above? Or does the work require some greater degree of institutional support?
Similarly, regardless of the coordination structure chosen, the administrative approach (for the fiscal and secretariat functions) should also be reviewed afresh. Would a detailed set of performance standards assist in honing the administrative mechanisms necessary, or is a more formal structure required? Of course these questions are asked in the context of a project that is conceived as sunsetting in three years.
A. Staffing
Regardless of the organizational structure chosen, a number of functions will be required, thus the tasks below are described by function rather than as staff positions:
Partnership Coordination - Overall project facilitation, coordinates the relationship among the various partners, manages overall communication, project learning and consultants, identifies strategic questions, coordinates project management. At least a half time function and probably more depending on the scope of the project.
Regional Agents/Circuit Riders - Support the regional teams, translate overall goals and information to regions, negotiate resources needed, provide access to various partners, serves as coach, assist in identifying technical assistance needed, provides facilitation, offer strategic guidance, and prepare issue papers. Probably a team of talented and flexible people, well matched to the changing needs of the projects, but could be organized with more dedicated staffing.
Federal Liaison - Develops extended relationships among federal sectors, assists in shaping federal opportunities, provides training and translation, and develops project materials, and triages problems, assists regions with access. A critical resource, with unique relationships and knowledge.
Regional Learning Network Coordination - Designs and supports learning network activity, coordinates network planning, organizes network meetings, develops communication vehicles, provides information triage, connects network members to resources, coordinate site exchanges, support special taskforce activities. Could easily be a full-time position.
WebMaster - Creates and manages site. Could be subcontracted.
Regional Technical Assistance Network Resources - Respond to specific information needs, broker options presented, provide training, develop project materials, serve as strategic resource, support special task forces, assist with negotiation agreements, prepare issue papers, and help expand thinking and opportunities. A loose group of consultants with particular expertise who are called upon as needed.
Documentation - Analytic assessment and documentation of project development, and strategic advisement. A deeply experienced observer who brings both analysis and foresight.
Communications - Strategic positioning of the project, development and dissemination of materials. Subcontracted.
Secretariat - Supports paper flow, meeting arrangements, scheduling, conference calls, materials assembly, mailings, responding to information requests.
Fiscal Agency - Grants management and reporting, maitaining accounts, cutting checks, reporting.
V. Outcomes and Assessment
Outcomes and measures will need to be developed in close collaboration with the regional sites and the learning network. For assessment purposes, specific measures for each activity will be developed, including qualitative, process and content measures. The outcomes will be developed at three levels: the four core sites, the regional learning network, and the field. Questions pursued would include the following:
Sites
Regional Network
The Field
VI. Budget
This budget is a rough approximation of yearly expenses based on current outlays and demands, and the goals and functions articulated above.
Regional Site Technical Support 175,000
Regional Learning Network 125,000
Field Building 75,000
Project Coordination 75,000
Administrative 50,000
TOTAL 500,000
Last updated November 16, 1999.