Growth / Development

The concept of “slow” is taking on new meaning. Its new use is probably best known in conjunction with the “Slow Food” movement, which is defined in Wikipedia as follows: “Slow Food...strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and promotes farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem.” There are organizations dedicated to spreading the concept, some with an international focus and others with a focus on a particular country, such as Slow Food USA.

Recently, I heard about another variation on this approach, called “Slow Money.” This concept, promoted by the Slow Money Alliance, is described as follows: “Founded by Woody Tasch, a pioneer in merging investing and philanthropy, Slow Money’s mission is to build local and national networks, and develop new financial products and services, dedicated to investing in small food enterprises and local food systems; connecting investors to their local economies; and, building the nurture capital industry.”

Many cities and towns are looking to Form Based Codes (FBC) as a way to combat the woes enabled by traditional single use zoning (e.g. the loss of historic neighborhoods, sprawling development patterns, increasing reliance on the automobile, to name a few). In a nutshell, FBC regulates how a building relates to its surrounding environment and less so on the building’s actual use (I’m oversimplifying here…for a better definition check out the Form Based Code Institute).

Many great communities share a particular DNA—the scale of the buildings, the width of the streets, the mix of uses, etc. Just as slight variations in DNA result in different people, slight variations in land use regulations can lead to different places. These differences can be essential to retaining what makes our cities and towns unique.

Two years ago, our Foundation issued a Request for Projects seeking towns in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain regions to experiment with us in developing a Heart & Soul Community Planning approach to local planning and decision-making. One of the towns applying was Acton, Massachusetts, a community of about 20,000 people about 45 minutes west of Boston. They put together a great application, but for our metropolitan-edge community we chose Golden, Colorado.

Well, a few months ago I was contacted by Justin Hollander of Tufts University, who told me that Acton had been so inspired by the goals of our RFP that they decided to proceed even after not being selected to work with the Foundation (got to love that!). Acton, he continued, had decided to use Second Life as one of its tools to engage its residents and provide hands-on planning opportunities focusing on a key commercial area called Kelley’s Corner.

I recently attended the inaugural convening of the “Intermountain West Funders Network,” which brought together a group of granting, operating and community foundations to discuss their interests and efforts in the fields of citizen engagement and land use planning. While there are funding networks in various regions of the country, there is none that spans the north/south Intermountain West region.

Joining the Orton Family Foundation in conceiving and pursuing the formation of this new network were Philanthropies for Civic Engagement (PACE) and The Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. During the two and-a-half day gathering, over 20 foundations shared successes and struggles, and perhaps most importantly at this nascent moment, began forming relationships and affinities.

The Maine Arts Commission has launched a new initiative called Creative Communities = Economic Development, which makes “substantial awards to communities that will allow cultural organizations to become strong partners in their communities’ development, leveraging collaboration between cultural, municipal and economic development interests.” Executive Director Donna McNeil says she was “tremendously inspired” by the Foundation’s Heart & Soul work in Maine (and by Bill Roper’s talk last year at the Friends of Midcoast Maine’s annual meeting). McNeil wants to give the arts and culture sector a voice in larger community economic development planning, where they are usually undervalued or overlooked.

The project will help put the State’s Quality of Place Initiative into action, “putting your money where your mouth is,” so to speak, by offering two $50,000 grants to Maine cultural organizations in partnership with a municipality. Successful applicants, “should be on the precipice of redevelopment with culture as a central player and demonstrate that these funds will function as a ‘tipping point.’” Other criteria include a commitment of leadership, collaboration, and public engagement, including youth.

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to tour more than a dozen progressive small towns and cities in western Washington state; I met many local officials and personally experienced some of their greatest achievements, primarily in the realm of the built environment. Many projects included mixed-use centers, walkable neighborhood designs that connected people to their downtowns and mixed-income housing developments. Some projects were brand new and others were designed to enhance historic charm and character. During the tour, however, I was struck with the realization that something was lacking: only a few of these places or project sites truly fostered intergenerational needs, and in particular the needs of children.

On CSRwire Talkback, Frances Moore Lappé disputes the contemporary notion that growth is bad. Lappé asserts, conversely, that growth is good, but that the real culprit is waste and scarcity. She describes the opposite of growth as “shrink, shrivel, decline, decrease, die” and suggests that no growth leaves an assumption unchallenged: “...that today’s economy is in fact defined by growth—ever expanding abundance.” Lappé urges us to shed ‘no-growth’ and ‘limits’ and to begin reframing “the challenge as that of aligning with the laws of nature to enhance life; and from there ask, What are the frames about human nature that drive the current waste and destruction within an economy driven by one rule, highest return to existing wealth?”

One of my favorite things about the holidays is having time for things that I never have time to do otherwise—fold the laundry, call old friends, catch up on the back issues of magazines stacking up in the hall. So as the snow tumbled down and piled up here in Vermont, I settled in with the March, 2007 National Geographic: elephants, cosmic explosions, sharks in the Bahamas, and sunny, lush, alluring, enchanting Orlando.