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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.