INVOLVING ALL IN TRANSFORMING CITIES

We are a small group of professionals from diverse disciplines — architects, planners, artists, community activators, writers, environmental planners, and leadership experts — who joined a think tank because we determined that our metropolitan regions must change and sprawl must cease. We are united in this goal. And we recognize that professionals and elected officials can’t do it alone.

We believe that changing and nurturing the public imagination is the only way to create effective change. We will put our trust in the collective intelligence of people whose insights and votes will expedite necessary learning and change. We see us all living better and more responsibly than we do now. And without the participation of everyone, talk about sustainability, equity, and justice rings hollow and presumptuous.

In democracies, change must arise from the people. Leaders in autocratic countries conceive of new cities and build them within a few short years. In our political system, such quick transformations are unimaginable. Everything moves slowly because we consider each problem from a swath of agendas and ideas. If we do not get our act together, we will be outcompeted and we will fall behind.

We will never be able to match the speed of change initiated by authoritarian systems. But if we do it right, our cities will have what many new cities lack: soul. When an authority puts a city in place, it lacks soul because it does not represent the spirit of the place. If we conceive of our future together, we will imbue our cities with the things that make us unique, and ‘local flair and flavor’ will begin to differentiate our largely homogenous cities from one another.

Our group believes that it is possible to engage many people in deliberating what needs to happen, as long as we have the courage to face the truths, commit to sharing ideas for what ought to happen, and jointly develop strategic directions that will get us there. Objecting to things is not enough. We want all of us to propose ideas that will make our cities thrive.

Our cities took shape when sources of energy seemed limitless, cars, and space became readily available, and we didn’t think twice about spreading throughout the land. We committed to highways, endless suburban developments, and luxurious homes. Along the way, we segregated our society into sectors of cultural sameness. This spread, or sprawl, has run its course and we are committed to stopping it.

Sprawl is wasteful. It damages the environment and destroys watersheds, forests, and arable land. It hurts our social and economic well-being. It draws sharp lines between the haves and the have-nots. It prompts lengthy commutes that rob us of valuable family time. These factors should wake us up, but instead, our highways remain jammed, we continue to spew CO2 into the atmosphere, and many are migrating to places farther and farther away from city centers.

We feel that finding solutions to sprawl is the most effective way to make meaningful change. The U.S. Surgeon General claims we have an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. We think that the most effective way to address this epidemic is to design places where people naturally bump into each other. Isolation breeds more isolation, but community interaction breeds stronger communities with healthier individuals.