Research

A little update from the underbelly of the Orton Family Foundation BlogFrog: we’re trying to lighten up.

Not quite a newsflash, I know, but critical in a number of ways. Orton Staffers, by and large, come from a land of case studies, research papers, periodicals and publishing houses. We’ve been writing essays all our lives (I’m not promising they were any good, but that’s moot in this case), and while the French word for essay—essayer—means to try, we don’t try out enough stuff on our blog. We don’t experiment enough or test ideas or ask enough questions. In short, we aren’t connecting with you in a way that elicits as much exchange as we’d like.

In the well-meaning spirit of legitimacy and professionalism, we revise and tweak and polish, then re-revise and hyper-tweak and over-polish, until our posts end up...well, too cautious, declarative and earnest and not at all spontaneous, inspired or experimental. We tend to skirt layered, issue-laden topics and avoid controversy altogether. In fact, I’m wondering if we’ve ever gotten around to actually expressing our opinions. Being considerate is one thing; being timid is entirely another.

On the flip side, there’s a fine line (or maybe it’s a fat line that just looks fine from inside our blogging brains) between spontaneous and vapid, experimental and baseless, narcissistic and personal, spirited and plain silly. After all, we’re a foundation with a national reputation and a history of helping small cities and towns build and revitalize vibrant, enduring communities; we’re serious about our work insofar as it really, really matters to us because it also really, really matters to the health, sustainability and livability of this country. So when you come to Cornerstones, you won’t be reading posts about what we did on our family vacations—unless, that is, they happen to inform our work and its impact on the ground.

You will, on the other hand, be finding posts that grapple with the challenges we face each day in our Heart & Soul Project Towns. You’ll find posts that look at land use planning through a new lens, and others that champion examples of truly innovative change. And you’ll also hopefully discover that what we’re really about is disrupting old, defunct, destructive patterns and fostering new, inventive, productive ones. In the land use planning and community development worlds, we’re all about causing a stir. So we’ll try to let a little more of our radical sides show and not worry so much about phrasing and tone. And research. And facts and sources. And what the academics might say or the lawyers or the...(you see what I mean).

So, this is me, brandishing my digital sword from the outer reaches of the blogosphere! (See? I’m even mixing metaphors—frogs...swordplay... Why not? OMG, we’re totally stepping out!) We have made ready for our advance into the messy, interactive, unpredictable yet rewarding world of online discourse.

“Onward!” my boss yells from his office amid stacks of CommunityMatters Conference planning materials.

“Tally ho!” our CEO shouts as he heads out the door on yet another bridge-building venture.

“Giddy-up!” and “Yee-HAW!” and “Right ON!” and “Boo-yah!” and “Let’errrrrrrip!” we howl from our Projects and Communications mounts.

Look for us out there in the Wild West Web, pounding our Orton flag into uncharted soil and scouting for friendlies to join our Heart & Soul mission to save communities across the country from suffering the slow death of chockablock, one-size-fits-all, character-deadening assimilation.

CHAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!!

I’ve attended leadership classes and listened to my most empathic friends explain that a critical element of all successful collaboration is finding middle ground or meeting people part way. No kidding. They also tell me earnestly that neither reasonable discourse nor clearly stated expectations nor chest thumping yield maximum results. I appreciate their good intentions, but that’s about as useful as being reminded I need the “right tool for the job.” Platitudes aren’t the correct tool for any job. What I’d really like is a trail map, however crude, that reveals the hallowed “middle ground.”

A full-on map is probably asking too much. So how about some waypoints? Those you can find. For example, it turns out that a person's perspective about time will influence their choices and behavior. In a May 2010 presentation to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, explains that perspectives on time can shape an entire nation. How people organize personal experiences, their perspectives about how long things last, and pace, among other factors, influence whether people are future oriented, past oriented or present oriented. Dr. Zimbardo suggests “many of life’s puzzles” and even conflict “can be solved by understanding your perspective of time and that of others.”

The Foundation recently held a convening in Seattle seeking input on the physical characteristics or manifestations of communities intent on articulating, acting on and stewarding their heart and soul. At the Foundation, we call this process “Heart & Soul Community Planning.” A couple interesting aspects of the conversation really jumped out at me.

The first was a statement by leading architect Mark Hinshaw, observing that how a community comes together and how it engages or interacts is as, if not more, important than the physical buildings or the environment. Second, there was strong agreement over the importance of authentic, diverse and continuing engagement of citizens in fostering and/or perpetuating a vibrant community. A few people even offered specific essential ingredients for successful communities.

The bulk of Orton’s Heart & Soul approach focuses on collaboration that develops the H&S “environment,” implements results through H&S project work and successfully defends against shortsighted threats to H&S values. This approach requires new behavior and thinking by emphasizing broad public participation, identifying shared values and reconciling values with priorities.

Stick with me now...

I was reading some old back issues of National Geographic recently and came across articles about some bizarre yet interesting places—Ski Dubai, an enormous indoor ski area, a beach in Paris that the City constructs along the Seine each year, and Disney’s beloved and reviled playground, Orlando. The stories of these places reminded me of Lyman Orton’s disgust upon hearing of a proposal to build a wildlife park on the side of a mountain in Weston, Vermont, which the local Planning Commission discovered was, in fact, permitted under the zoning bylaws at that time and which the Commission was powerless to prevent.

What does it mean that fewer immigrants came to the US in 2008 than in 2007, and that for the first time since the beginning of the decade, the total number of foreign-born people decreased? What does it mean that, while home values dropped, homeownership plummeted and foreclosures increased—especially among minorities—and more people (of all races) lived in overcrowded housing? What does it mean that fewer people got married and the number of uninsured children soared? Why did more people carpool and use public transportation, and less people move?

I’ve been reviewing the case study of Moss Point, Mississippi—a partnership between this Gulf Coast town of 16,000 (mostly African American) and the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) in Montpelier and have been really impressed by ISC’s work. Similar to the Foundation’s Heart & Soul program, ISC offers resources, coaching and training, and a certain methodology for community action and public engagement. They, like the Foundation, also serve as a catalyst for change.

Social Velocity’s blog has a new post today on boldness and big goals for non-profits. They argue that most non-profits are risk-averse and have trouble setting impressive, scary, crazy goals, and yet that’s exactly what they need to do in order to make serious headway. (Note: they don’t say how many could fail along the way.)

This makes me think about the risks inherent in the work we do at the Foundation. When you set big goals, you up the ante; it's inevitable that the risks involved are just as big—if not bigger. Towns, likewise, need to be willing to be bold. I’ve advocated strongly for our Project Towns to set some clear goals for attendance and participation at community events, and I think they’re often reluctant to do so for the same risk-averse reasons that Social Velocity discusses. It’s hard to shoot for 300 people at a meeting when the most you’ve ever had is 50; but attendance will never get close to 300 unless towns aim for more than what’s expected.