I am not from Cincinnati originally.  So when I say I went to high school at Bishop Dwenger no one cares.  But I love Cincinnati, maybe only the way an outsider can.  I have lived here a long time and even though I am not from here people have been great to me, open and welcoming and gracious.  I think you get a bad wrap for being closed to outsiders by the way.  My daughter is growing up a real Cincinnatian, so I thought I would ask her what she likes about the place that matters to her, Clifton, and this is her take on why she loves her neighborhood.  

Hi, I'm Rachel. I live in Clifton and I'm 11. I have lived here since I was like 1 and a half and I go to Annunciation school on Clifton ave. I love where I live. My friends are really close and so is just about everything else you would need, like Skyline and IGA and Skyline and the Mediterranean place and Skyline and Toko Baru and Sitwells. You'd think I lived under a rock (if you live in suburbia) I mean because I've never been to Buffalo Wild Wings or Donato's or Chipotle or Olive Garden or Dominos or .....well, I could go on and on. But the reason is because I have every thing I need right down the block. i mean Adriatico's  instead of Donatos and Habenero's instead of Chipotle and Biagio's instead of Olive Garden. My bff's dad runs Immanuel Daycare and we hang around there and sometimes we walk up to IGA and get Monsters and Mallow Cups. Even my lame brained brother has a good time and he can't be happy to save his life. I feel so comfortable and safe in my neighborhood and we all know each other from somewhere. I live on the busiest street around and you  know how some kids have to go to sleep in total silence? I can't go to bed WITHOUT the sirens and the cars whizzing past.

One of my favorite things is the old Clifton school which they converted into the Clifton cultural arts center (ccac). Every Wednesday night they have a little local band playing for  a few hours and all the families come and bring blankets and chairs and listen. The kids run around and play tag and the grown ups sit and catch up and listen to the music. another cool thing at the ccac there is the Clifton performance theatre  and in that I have taken dancing, singing and acting classes all taught by moms and dads in the neighborhood. Another thing is I can not tell you how many times I have hiked the woods in my backyard every inch uncharted. I have gone from a 2 year old at apple tree to a soon to be 6th grader at Annunciation who is in all the school plays with Isaiah. I love Clifton.



So thanks Clifton and Cincinnati for Rachel's childhood.

The Community Building Institute, where I work, is a partnership between Xavier University and the United Way of Greater Cincinnati.  The Institute is based on the principles developed at Northwestern University by John McKnight and Jody Kretzmen.  They learned through lots of observation that when communities work on change and improvement by focusing on their assets, their strengths, they are more successful.  When John McKnight explains this to you it seems so logical.  One should always lead with their strengths right? That's how Procter & Gamble does it, they sell Tide by telling you how great it is at whitening your whites and protecting your colors (which it is).  So why then when we talk about the neighborhoods we live in, the City we live in, do we first and almost always lead with what's wrong; how bad crime is, how the houses on the block have gone downhill in the last few years, what's wrong with the neighbors?

What John McKnight and Jody Kretzmen realized was that many people who cared about cities and city neighborhoods were coming at the task of revitalization all wrong, and had been for decades.  It was a "deficit-based approach" that really took us all down the wrong path in terms of trying to make the places we love better, more livable, more beautiful and more accommodating.  I am a planner by training and I absolutely get how to do the deficit-based thing.  We all do, in planning school we learn how to do an existing conditions analysis which means figure out what's wrong and then tell everyone how to fix it.  Social workers get this too.  They conduct a needs assessment on their clients to figure out what's really wrong with them, so they can help.  This is a very clinical sort of approach to the world.  Evaluate our subject, identify the problem and then - fix it.  

What this approach fails at, is that it does not respect the assets and values of the places we are working, or the people we are working with.  We characterize urban neighborhoods as the sum of their problems, not the sum of their gifts.  

So what happens if we turn the tables?  Focus first on what is working, what is right and beautiful and successful about the places we live.  I spend a lot of time in Evanston and Norwood because Xavier lives in those neighborhoods and we are neighbors with the people who live there.  Let me tell you about Evanston.  Did you know that Evanston has a neighborhood school; Hoffman elementary whose performance level on the state report card last year was "effective" and they have the most awesome principal you would ever want for your kid, and Hoffman kids visit Xavier on a regular basis?  The community council president is truly an inspired leader who can get City Hall's attention anytime she needs it.  During the foreclosure crisis housing values overall in Evanston continued to go up, and there are over 100 households working on home improvements as part of a home improvement loan program sponsored by the community council and supported by the City.

In Norwood there is a very active citizens on patrol group that is both helping reduce crime and helping integrate new residents into the community.  Norwood has a wonderful stock of historic homes and is attracting a new group of young, creative-class residents, with kids, who are supporting the community and reinvigorating schools in neighborhoods where most of the kids can walk to school.  Norwood also has a high home-ownership rate and low foreclosure numbers.  

So these may not be things you knew about Evanston and Norwood because this is not the way we typically tell the story of these two places.  But the descriptions I have given are just as true and real (probably more true and real) than the stories we generally hear about these two places.  

So what if the first part of all the stories we tell about the places we love were the good parts of the story? Wouldn't that change the middle and the end of the story?  When people first talk about asset based community development they say "yeh but you are ignoring all the bad stuff, you can't ignore the bad stuff, to wish it away."  Right, I have been around the block a few times I can recite the bad stuff in my sleep, it's the good stuff we have been ignoring for the past three decades.  I say let's give the good stuff at least equal billing.

So I guess the point of these ramblings is to illustrate how a focus on the positives can change your perspective and your assumptions about places and people.  I came to this idea a bit late in the game but it has had a profound impact on the way I approach my work.  I hope it helps you think about the places we care about differently, and lets all see what the next decades in Cincinnati could be.

There is a pilot initiative underway right now in Cincinnati called place matters.  It is a partnership between the United Way of Grater Cincinnati, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, SC Ministry Foundation, NeighborWorks, LISC, PNC Bank, Chase Bank, and US Bank to focus revitalization efforts, and investments in three important places; Covington, Price Hill and Avondale.  The idea is to deliberately focus on connecting the people who work on physical development, the people who provide education, health care and other services with local neighborhoods and the people who live in them to create a more desirable place.  If all these people who work in a particular area were working together would they be making more progress at improving the places they care about?  Yes!  We know this because in these three places where we have been working in this way we are making progress. Schools are getting better, kids are more ready for school, housing conditions are getting better and more people are out and about.

There is a group of unsung heroes in this story.  They are the professionals who work for the neighborhood support organizations (NSO) in these neighborhoods; Price Hill Will and Santa Maria in Price Hill, and the Center for Great Neighborhoods in Covington, and the Avondale Community Council in Avondale.  The work of neighborhood revitalization is work that takes committed, knowledgeable professionals to do well.  This is one of the key learning's from place matters.  We all understand the role of a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, or even a developer, but I think far fewer people understand the role of a community development professional. I want to highlight the work of all the committed hard working folks in these and other organizations like them around town.  They work long hours, and haven't had a full day until someone has yelled at them about something they can do nothing about, yet they keep at it usually for little pay.  The organizations they work for survive on shoestrings and often when they do their jobs really well they go unnoticed.

It is precisely this group of quiet professionals who make such a difference in the neighborhoods we all love and are trying to improve.  The voices and talents of residents and businesses and institutions in communities are the flesh and bones of a neighborhood. They are what forms the character and the history of a place and the vision for its future.  Then the NSO staff is the blood stream (sorry to go off in a medical direction but it seemed to work). The NSO staffs are connecting people to one another, connecting people in the neighborhood to programs and services they need.  Sometimes they are providing those services when none exist, sometimes they are working with others to improve what they do, sometimes they are looking for new sources of money (ok they are always looking for new sources of money) all to benefit the places they work.  Without this kind of dedicated deliberate, professional work neighborhoods often struggle to make change happen.

I have used the word professional a lot in this piece, intentionally.  I am trying to make the point that the work of the NSO staffs of the city and of our place matters neighborhoods, is just that, professional, and I want to raise up all those folks who work so hard for so little pay and recognition ( they are not a flashy bunch – they probably don't want more recognition, but maybe more pay) and say thanks for all you do.   place matters has again illuminated the importance of these folks and that is a good thing.  If you are lucky enough to live in a neighborhood that has a group of professionals working on your behalf to improve the place you live, tell them thanks and if you have an opportunity to support their work, do so.  Thanks guys, you know who you are.

Soap box blog
Liz Blume
Why I care about regionalism

I want to talk about regionalism for a minute.  Not the scary, uni-gov, czar in charge, too much bureaucracy, too much taxes, too much red tape kind of regionalism that many of us think about when we think about regionalism.  I want to talk about the kind of regionalism we all practice every day, the kind of regionalism that takes us to the grocery store two miles away, that has us taking our kids to the high school four neighborhoods over (because that's where we went), that sends our parents to the nursing home out on 275.  I would argue that we all live in a bigger "region" than our own neighborhood, or town or township, but we don't live in a place quite as big as the 15 county Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan Area.

Why pose this little scenario you ask?  Well I have sat at countless tables in Cincinnati with all kinds of good people talking about regionalism and how we can take a more regional approach around here, and after lots of talk we often come up blank.  Don't get me wrong, there are lots of examples of places and people in this town who are much more cooperative and "regional" than they want you to know.  I won't call them out here to protect the innocent.  We often blame politicians for not being regional, for protecting their turf, but I have been musing, there must be more to it.  If regionalism was popular they would be the first ones on the bandwagon.  So what is it about regionalism that we don't like?  I think we don't really get it and it doesn't really seem to make much difference in our every day lives so we don't really care about it.

I would like to make the case that it is precisely in our everyday lives that it makes the most difference, and why we should care.  How we arrange our days; get to the store, to work, to school, to our friends, to our kid's friends, (this is the mom version of our day) to the movies, is all about land use and transportation and regionalism, really.  But we don't see it because no one ever tells you that regionalism is about where they are gong to build the next grocery store.  Or where they are going to build the next hospital (which will spawn a skilled nursing facility, which will spawn a lovely senior community which is where you will have to drive five times a week when your mom moves out there!)

I would propose to you that we all live in places bigger than our neighborhoods, and that we all stand to gain by working collectively in bigger parts of the world than we currently do.  People in Green Township should care about the housing foreclosure mess in Price Hill, because their kids are still at Elder, and their mom still has the house everybody grew up in on Rapid Run.  People in Anderson Township should pay attention to the whole Eastern Corridor/ bike trail along the riverfront thing because maybe there could be another way into town besides Columbia Parkway on a rainy Monday morning someday.

So this long plea to you is to think collectively about what we like about regionalism, and how to re-frame the conversation so it makes more sense to us in our everyday lives.  This eventually gets us to a definition of the regions we actually live in and how we can work together to make our little parts of the world, our clusters of communities and neighborhoods, work better for all of us.