New Community Paradigms Require a Creative Community not just a Creative Economy

This blog’s last post, Art as a Path of Social Disruptive Innovation Towards New Community Paradigms began looking at the role of art in creating new paradigms for communities from both ‘community engagement’ and ‘economic development’ perspectives by citing a number of related LinkedIn discussions within both arenas. The idea is to crowdsource diverse ideas from a collection of professional and pro-amateur colleagues. The two groups are of similar size but have very little overlap. Only one LinkedIn colleague seems to belong to both camps, Della Rucker of Wise Economy. The discussion within each group though seems to begin reaching over the fence for insights from the other. Economic development is beginning to realize that it must expand its concerns to the entire community, not just the municipal revenue generators, and many in community engagement are realizing that clients need a seat at the table in deciding budgetary issues and that programs need to also be financially sustainable to be effective. The last post leaned more to the community engagement side of the equation.

From a more global economic perspective, the idea of art being a driver in municipal economic development ties in with the concept of Creative Cities as proposed by Richard Florida and related issues as to whether the concept can also be applied to non-metro locales. Although there is more affinity with the Florida perspective than with counterarguments proposed by his detractors, this blog has not taken a firm position. There is an even greater affinity with the ideas of Jane Jacobs as contrasted say with those of Alfred Marshall. However, these are complex issues and if one is to depend upon any one thinker as a foundation for future ideas then it would be Warren Weaver who originated the concept of ‘organized complexity’ in his 1948 paper Science and complexity(pdf).

Another group discussion among Economic Development Professionals raised a number of these issues in Development, Creative Class, Artists & Creative Clusters Addressing the Fuzzy Logic of the Appeal through a paper in the Oxford Journal of Economic Geography, Emoting with their feet: Bohemian attraction to creative milieu†. The discussion itself raised questions on the seemingly inevitable gentrification occurring after the establishment of an artistic milieu within a community. This is definitely a concern. One that, as was cited through ArtsFwd.org in the last post, is starting to be addressed by art organizations such as Fourth Arts Block in New York City. However, although such a connection can be made, the Journal of Economic Geography article, from my perspective, dealt more with the creation of ‘creative milieus’ as part of enhancing the dynamics of economic development in a community.

The study is dated from 2007. It is though, in my view, a more nuanced study of the issues than found in a standard Florida vs Kotkin debate, not jumping to the defense of one camp or the other. It honestly admits to being incapable of coming to definitive conclusions when appropriate. They point out that Florida's concept incorporates aspects of both Jane Jacobs and Alfred Marshall. It also points out weaknesses in current creative cities arguments such as the need to utilize an aggregate creative class construct that defines a class of nominally creative workers using broad occupational categories that, “conflates high human capital requirements with creativity and includes some detailed occupations with little requirement for either.” The study, therefore, asserts that “This indefiniteness does not allow concluding that a particular strategy for promoting the arts will increase economic dynamism.” The operative word here being ‘particular’ as in single, distinct and usually predetermined. The study still provides other important insights.

The reason that creativity is of such interest is the belief that stimulating the creative energies of a place will generate new economic opportunities that are sustainable and resilient, inspiring a number of initiatives to promote ‘Creative Cities' by trying to provide interactions within urban creative milieus that both energizes productive lives and fulfills personal lives.

The study differentiates between artistic, innovative and creative milieus while pointing out that one does not necessarily lead to the other. What differentiates a creative milieu from an artistic milieu is a greater diversity of knowledge. A creative milieu is a place where, “face-to-face interaction among a critical mass of entrepreneurs, intellectuals, social activists, artists, administrators, power brokers or students helps to create new ideas, artifacts, products, services and institutions which contributes to economic success.”

An innovative milieu construct would alternatively focus on the creative interaction among firms and their workers related to innovation and economic competitiveness and would further assert that members of the so-called creative class seek to permeate creativity in all aspects of their lives as consumers of artistic venues. The artists follow the economic generators, not the other way around. 

The factor of allowing knowledge spillovers, “between a diverse set of actors contributing ideas from a range of knowledge domains” that differentiates creative milieus from artistic milieus also characterizes a difference with an innovation milieu. A creative milieu is seen as a more difficult construct to precisely differentiate from innovative milieus through concrete identification of actors, structures and mechanisms.

The study warns that it takes more than bringing together a diverse set of creative agents in a particular place as this may not generate enough interaction across domains to result in a creative milieu.

The study did indicate that evidence of even a weak creative milieu which helps ensure a city’s attractiveness to artists also serves as an important indicator of its ability to retain and attract creative workers. They see their main contribution as empirical confirmation that a relative surplus of Bohemians is likely to reveal a vibrant creative milieu.

They did find suggestions of interesting connections between newly founded entrepreneurialism and creative milieus within non-metro locations. One means of measuring economic dynamism due to a creative milieu is the generation of new products and services created through net firm formation. The study asserts that despite the difficulties identifying the components of a creative milieu, such as greater human-scale interaction, better restaurants, and other factors, creative milieus appear to have increased entrepreneurial dynamism in their non-metro counties sample. Such a claim could not be made though for the metro sample of their study.

They stressed though that their findings, “of a strong creative milieu in non-metro counties did not resolve the debate over the importance of local arts communities to regional innovation and competitiveness.”

In contrast to more conventional studies examining the geography of innovation, the study's explanation of regional performance does not rely on particular quantifiable metrics such as human capital, R&D spending, transportation or infrastructure regarding a location of quantities in a place but in devising a proxy variable in calculating a more complex function for a particular quality of place. The non-metro results are more likely to demonstrate what is a place’s and its community's true contribution to economic dynamism where it is, “not conflated with the density of creative agents randomly ‘rubbing elbows’ in the city”. It is not only a question of culminating creative types but also the nature of community networking and the means of engaging in that network within a larger and sometimes chaotic environment.

The study suggests that it is structural complexity that makes determining a correlation between enhanced economic development activities and a cultural milieu as an attractor difficult because precise identification is difficult. There is also a question of spatial dependence as through “the propensity for nearby locations to influence each other and to possess similar attributes”, a spatial lag in the metro equations might be an indication of the importance of clustering and agglomeration that might be swamping any effects from a creative milieu.

The study also suggests that the role of artists in identifying a creative milieu might be similar to indicator species in ecology studies in identifying complex environmental conditions. “In both cases, the environmental phenomena of interest are observable, although very costly or difficult to measure.” This could be useful though in overcoming some of the fuzzy conceptual logic issues found with the ‘Creative Cities’ concept. This is a different way of looking at the issues that when combined with a community engagement perspective could potentially bring about some new insights into creating new community paradigms.

Viva Local Economy Revolution!!

This blog has delved into a number of different concerns impacting community empowerment and economic development that don't fit the standard mold, systems thinking, complexity, radical community engagement and disruptive innovation.  It has done so by connecting with and benefitting from the experience and insights from a range of thinkers in different fields. One person of note based on the number of times she has been cited in this blog is Della Rucker.

Della Rucker, of Wise Economy and @dellarucker has been, as has been said before, an important resource for this blog and a source of many of the concepts developed here.  She provides a unique perspective having credentials in both planning (AICP) and economic development (CEcD) that she has applied to economic revitalization and constructive public engagement, concerns that are often found in conflict with each other. 

Della has now written a book The Local Economy Revolution: What’s Changed and How You Can Help.  I purchased the Kindle version and recently finish reading it. Not too surprisingly, considering how inline I often find her thinking is with mine, I enjoyed reading the book.  Anybody talking about revolution in the local economy is going to appeal to someone advocating for new community paradigms.  So it is easy to recommend the book, that though would not really be doing the book justice.

Della takes the ideas contained in the book beyond its covers in particularly meaningful ways.  What I mean by this is that she connects with a recent history that we all share, she understands the affect it has on communities and the people living in them, not only on institutions and related professionals.  She does so in a personal, accessible fashion that can connect with everyday “citizens aiming to make their communities more robust” at the same time “condensing complex ideas while not oversimplifying”, as was observed recently by Wayne Senville, editor of PlannersWeb.  

So she has both the professional credentials and the ability to connect with the regular man or woman on the street needed to create a bridge from where we are today to where we need to be in the future.  The challenge is that bridges to the future always need to be built going uphill. 

It is her ability to span between populism of community desires linked with fiscal and economic constraints facing those made responsible for economic development that makes her a viable contributor to new community paradigms. 

It is one thing to show that you understand the problems facing people, it is another to show that you understand the people themselves.  It is one thing to demonstrate you understand how to achieve economic success, it is another to demonstrate that you know the affect of failure. Della has lived up close, personally and professionally through the changes we created for ourselves over the last few decades which have brought us to our current fork in the road and has learned those lessons deeply enough that she can speak truth to the imposed challenges that must be faced.

Della’s writing style strikes me as being conversational in tone making her critiques more like advice from a neighbor.  She demonstrates that she understands what individuals from different sectors of economic development, politicians, public sector management, professionals, specialists, advocates and constituents are going through trying to cope with the complex, often termed wicked issues, we are all facing regardless of what side of the table we are sitting on.  She doesn’t take a pundit’s perspective on issues making a laundry list of mistakes made by others but instead considers them as missteps made in common and that must be addressed collectively. I never got a hint of blaming anyone more than anyone else, more of we are all need to get up and across the same chasm.

Perhaps more importantly, Della also serves as an example that can be followed by anyone concerned about the health and wellbeing of our communities. The roots of The Local Economy Revolution: What’s Changed and How You Can Help not only run deep, Della has also provided the means of extending beyond the cover of the book into the future.

So instead, I’m going to point you to this book’s web site: localeconomyrevolutionbook.com. There, you’ll find a growing and changing collection of articles, papers and other information that will help you build the toolbox that your community needs.

                                                                                                             Della Rucker

The very act of creating her book is an example of how we can start creating a better future. The book is made up, in large part, from her writings, such as her blog, and online conversations, as in LinkedIn. I had already been exposed to most of the ideas expressed in the book through Della’s earlier writing, particularly in her Wise Economy blog or had participated in some of the discussions. 

It is helpful though to have them organized together in a holistic and comprehensive manner.  I am still endeavoring to do that with many of the ideas that I have been pursuing. It is not easy as the journey can have false turns, lead to dead ends and one can have doubts about the path being taken.  Writing a blog might be the most viable method of scaling the precipice because one can take short bursts that add on to each other.  It is especially helpful when someone creates a pathway for you to build upon even if they may not consider the effort as noteworthy.  Della did that for me with her Wise Economy Manifesto. 

So I wrote a thing called the Wise Economy Manifesto, and in it I tried to encapsulate everything I was thinking. Which is usually a really bad idea. And while I thought at the time that the Manifesto part had a cool ring to it, now it strikes me as a little pompous. But like most of what we put on the internet, it’s out there, and it’s my own baby, goofy as it may look.

                                                                                                                         Della Rucker

Trying to encapsulate everything that you are thinking is not necessarily a bad idea, just a very difficult one to do well, particularly in the first attempt.  One reason is that we, using complicated oriented means of management, have silo’d these ideas, and the people who have to make them real, for too long. One primary goal of the New Community Paradigms blog is to create pathways along those unrealized connections.  The blog post, from August of 2012, Seeing Economy and Community as Ecosystem; Another Way of Shifting the Paradigm was the start of the journey in finding connections with Della’s ideas. Those basic ideas are still to be found in her new book.

● Communities are human ecosystems. 

● That which makes you unique makes you valuable. 

● We have to focus on cultivating our native economic species.

● Beware the magic pill. 

● Crowdsourced wisdom is the best way to find a real solution. 

● We who have the job of helping communities work better have to be brave.

Della tells us in the forward to her book The Local Economy Revolution: What’s Changed and How You Can Help  that 'change sucks'.  A succinct if perhaps obvious observation of the ‘duh’ variety, it is still a required observation considering the level of change that is going to be needed. Della focuses primarily on getting communities to see that changes, often difficult changes, are needed to enable our communities to create a viable quality of life and she doesn’t do it in a way that makes everyone run for the hills. 

I view the current situation with communities and economic development as being more dire as it is not only a matter of complex difficulty in the best of circumstances but is also constrained by opposition from those who seek to hold on to the old way of doing things because it serves to maintain their already established and even entrenched power.  I do place blame more squarely on the shoulders of politicians though see that all of us needed in building the bridge to the future.

This more dismal perspective, however, can be put aside for now.  Before one can have a revolution to overturn entrenched institutions one needs a large enough force to lead into the future. It is never enough to just talk about being against something on this side in endeavoring to create a bridge to a new future.

Most such attempts in creating a new future start on the far side of the chasm providing some vision of a shiny city on a hill, too often with no real means of crossing the span and, more often than not, no real grounded connection with this side of the chasm. This is where Della excels by taking what could be multiple complex concepts and making them not only more comprehensive, understandable and approachable but also initially, potentially addressable.  It will get more complex and difficult but Della provides a good foothold to begin the ascent.

My biggest worry is that not enough of the right people are going to read the book and those are people who see the need for new community paradigms to be created, the people who comprise the community.  It will be great if local politicians and administrators read the book and even better if they do something about it but in too many cases they will merely flatter it and then ignore it.  This is my general review of Della's book, but as I wrote above, in future posts the ideas in the book should be examined closer to truly pay tribute to her effort and to continue building that bridge to the future.

The Problem with the Future is Getting There and It will need Disruptive Innovation

As was anticipated, I have risked placing my self into a conceptual corner in an effort to apply Professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation to the public sector by means of community governance. The specific reference to the theory is necessary as an operational term synthesizing both the idea of disruptive and of innovation going beyond the mere addition of both ideas together. The objective is to stay true to the theory’s principles while arguing for its viability as a strategy for meaningful change. 

First, there is the fully admitted reality that even if the concept of disruptive innovation within the public sector is viable, in any aspect, that achieving it will not only be difficult but actual occurrences are likely to be few. What this post will attempt is to provide some insight why the perceived need for disruptive innovation in the public sector and how the realization for the need was arrived at. 

There has also been some push back or questioning of the notion that certain ideas or programs in the public sector arena, whether developed within the institutional system or outside it, are not disruptive. One example being Code for America. 

Code for America can be considered a disruptive element or perhaps it would be better to term it a disrupting element. It could potentially be considered a so-called disruptive technology for the implementation of an actual disruptive innovation, but it cannot be considered a disruptive innovation in its own right as defined by Christensen’s theory. 

The difference is that the type of disruption made possible by Code for America, through what has been referred to as sustaining innovations in recent past posts, can be thought of as at most rebellions to which current often entrenched local governments sometimes acquiesce. If not, the rebellion moves on to a more favorable target. These rebellions, regardless of how often they occur, do not seem able to coalesce into the type of revolution needed to truly bring us into a twenty-first century economy. Such a revolution needs to be transformative, as non-destructive as possible, at a level of social evolution. The current crop of disrupting applications through sustaining innovations will not reach the required tipping point by waiting for enough local government institutions to become self-enlightened enough to create the change themselves or in D.I. terms self-disrupt or for community advocates to put together the necessary components to overcome entrenched city halls. 

Disruptive Innovation is put forward as a means of revolution through redefining the community relationship of power to scarcity and abundance and the process by which change in the system is implemented. 

Disruptive innovation is a potential organizing principle that could energize a number of different approaches, including among others, radical community engagement, placemaking, community ecology, economic gardening, participatory budgeting, design thinking, systems thinking, and even adaptive complexity systems in redefining our communities to reach a critical mass needed for transformational change. Yet, as with many other innovative approaches to civic institutions, alone they remain not capable of creating the necessary momentum. They do have the potential though and have provided fuel to the creation of a strategy incorporating disruptive innovation as has the many interactions with professionals in a variety of different fields. 

Among these are those with Della Rucker of Wise Economy, who has been featured in this blog a number of times, in particular Seeing Economy and Community as Ecosystem Another Way of Shifting the Paradigm, and Looking for Non-Experts to Create New Community Innovations then Make sure They are Disruptive. She has been an important element in developing new ideas within this blog.

Back in May of this year, I had a conversation on Twitter with @DellaRucker, starting with my re-sharing of her observation regarding people’s willingness to participate in a community’s positive disruption and the resulting pushback from city hall through a City Crackdown on Tactical Urbanism. Tactical urbanism can be seen as a potentially disrupting combination of community governance with placemaking. Potential because some cities quickly quash such efforts but others, most notably New York, have now taken the concept from tactical to strategic.

One line of internal inquiry at the time was how to move from a tactical perspective of disruption, using tactical urbanism as an example, to a more strategic approach to disruption utilizing Professor Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. At that point, the concept which has been introduced more formally over the last three posts was still in the preliminary stages, still being formed and molded for the most part in forums directly dealing with disruptive innovation in the private free market economy. Such an approach when applied to the public sector would, however, be a part of what Della has termed an ecosystem or what I see as a systems based platform for a paradigm shift of both community and economy.

The next day, Della shared with me, Building and Connecting Communities for the Future in the Futurist magazine of the World Future Society, via another thinker on Twitter (a seemingly paradoxical idea for some) @SandyMaxey. For some reason though, despite trying to put not too negative of a spin on it, I had issues with the article. It has taken me this long to both come to grips with and to be able to state why, while at the same time putting forth a possible alternative, disruptive innovation.

The Futurist article asserts:

So economic developers will now need to expand their focus beyond creating jobs to building better places in which to live, work, play, and run a business. And it means developing their citizens into a Future Forward Workforce—i.e., agile workers who can take advantage of opportunities anywhere in the world without abandoning their communities, and who can move in and out of the three types of economies at will. 

Undoubtedly, there is a need for change and those suggested directions are possible and viable, but there is no stated engine or source of momentum provided in the article for the transition to take place.

There is absolutely no argument with the proposition that the global economy, whether considered in totality or as an aggregate of local, regional and metropolitan economies of which it is comprised, has changed and that the traditional approach to economic development, and I would add community governance, no longer works for optimal benefit.

Also agree with the stages of economic transition from Industrial Age, to Knowledge Economy to Creative Molecular Economy and though some of their claims it could be argued are overstated, especially manufacturing, I don't have any disagreement with their elements defining a Creative Molecular Economy.

My primary disagreement is with the unstated or unexamined assumption that we can or will be able to passively transition from a materialistic economy into a transformational society, that this will be a matter of inevitable evolution rather than purposeful decisions. Disruptive innovation, admittedly, does not provide paint by numbers steps to implementation but it does provide an organizing principle and momentum.

The article does provide a possible framework for future deliberative democracy through a 'Mobile Networked Governance for the Creative Molecular Economy,' which could be an avenue through which community building ideas, sourced through the community, are nourished and brought to fruition but the article, at least implicitly, puts the community into a passive role.

Economic development professionals should not presume to develop their citizens into a “Future Forward Workforce” as if they were a passive commodity. Any redefinition of economic development through community building will have to involve the community, not as passive recipients but as active creators.

This is no longer a matter of economic development but a larger matter of community development in the most expansive sense of the term. This requires new systems or platforms for systems needing to be created but those now in power benefitting from existing system are not incentivized to change and those with the potential incentive don't have the power.

A call for reinventing economic development as a profession rings hollow if those called on to make the change have neither the controlling power over the existing system, this would be the often entrenched politicians, nor any real means of empowering those for whom and by whom the change should be made. Visionary leaders of this transition seem to arise out of the ether but in reality the current system will continue to regenerate itself and work to stop those that would change it unless enough momentum can be created to overcome this. That momentum cannot come from the economic development profession alone. It will require transformation of and by all social components, economic development, community development and all other sectors of the public sector and our means of community governance incorporating policy and politics.

Community paradigms as a set of community relations

The relationship between new community paradigms efforts and existing city hall governments, including their political and public agency elements has been raised in past articles concerning other matters but not directly addressed. This needs to be clarified further not only in relation to city hall but all components of a community as a new community paradigm would not be possible if just one component of a community were to undergo fundamental change, all do, both individually and collectively.

A community taking a new community paradigm approach as its path for future growth would not be dependent upon institutions, though it could and would use them. The glue that holds a new community paradigm approach to community building would be a concept of civil society. This concept of using civil society as a platform for new community paradigms was discussed last month on this blog. Taking some relevant definitions from that post, as put forth by the Australian Centre for Civil Society, first what it is not:

The term does not refer to 'politeness' or 'civility' in public life, as important as this is.

It refers to that part of society that is not part of the state, hence the term 'civilian' when used to distinguish a person in civil society from military personnel or state officials, or the notion of a civil offence in law which is an offence between persons in civil society rather than a criminal matter.

What is civil society in relation to new community paradigms?

The term 'civil society' refers to the relationships and associations that make up our life at grass-roots levels of society, in families, neighbourhoods and voluntary associations, independent of both government and the commercial world. Our aim is to strengthen civil society and empower people within it.

As was said in the post on Visiting Innovatitown and Parochialville, this blog is directed toward the individual citizen of a community who has decided to take on the challenge of creating fundamental changes in their community and is seeking resources to bring that about. It is being designed for someone who sees themselves as being a producer of democratic governance and the tangible public policies that come from that and not merely a consumer of those policies.

Civil society as a platform for new community paradigms provided some insights to possible relations with traditional institutional and bureaucratic forms of municipal government. This relationship could be anything from a full partnership, an uneasy alliance, to direct opposition. An effort to implement new community paradigms would, however, need to go further regardless of cooperation of the existing local institutional political power structure.

It would require its own organizational structure. It is not the intention of this blog or the related wiki to create the basis for such a structure. It will work to suggest templates but each community will have to find its own form of structure that works best for it. It would hopefully be based though on the ideas of Community Governance as put forth by the New Community Paradigms wiki.

There will be a change in defining a different role for the citizen or under the concept of civil society reverting to an older role of ‘voluntary participation‘ as opposed to 'volunteering' in one’s community.

Volunteer can be defined as 1. a person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking or 2. a person who performs a service willingly and without pay, which may imply placing one's self at the disposal of some institution. This raises its own set of issues but the focus here is taking on a role of greater active participation in not only achieving the community’s goals but defining those goals in an ongoing basis as well.

It seeks to answer the question from the post on Using Online Communities to encourage Direct Democracy for On-The-Ground Communities, How do we reach untapped "domestic reserves of energy" - people who don't vote, don't volunteer, or don't talk with neighbors? With the answer, It starts with participation, respect, and working together toward a common goal.

It does not require authorization or sponsorship by city hall as was shown in the post on the Better Block project, a demonstration tool that shows How to Build a Better Block by temporarily re-visioning an area to show the potential to create a walkable, vibrant, neighborhood center.

It does require, as was said in the post Second look at Making Cities Work, creating an environment from which there is more social capital from which to draw. This will require a good deal of voluntary participation from members of the community.

Voluntary participation is a better term, as defined in the post Civil society as a platform for new community paradigms, than volunteering as it is not limited to formal volunteering in a community through institutions but includes all altruistic forms of social interaction.

Voluntary participation, at its best, is a face to face proposition which means creating social connections within a community, helping to increase the democratic participation being sought.

It would also work to change the relationship with the professional workforce core of municipal governance, the planners, engineers, economic development professionals among others, who implement the supposed goals and objectives of the community.

This relationship has soured over the years because of perceived inequities between public and private compensation. There has also been the rise of a barrier of expertise between city hall and the community. This was touched upon in the last blog post Strong Towns and job creation - navigating between Scylla and Charybdis.

I hold to the belief that there is truth to the Strong Towns view that there has been too great of a dependency on government professionals. This is most often true when such a dependency is enmeshed in a bureaucratic or politically skewed system. A sizable portion of the responsibility of the problems facing communities needs to be laid at the feet of economic development and planning professionals. Individually, though, most people in government are endeavoring to make the community better.

The professionals in the field may complain that the layoffs, budget cuts and recent thrashings found in the media on too generous retirement benefits are unfair (and they are) but it is becoming an increasingly moot point because the fundamental nature of the economy and the interaction between government and citizens is changing.

Communities are either going to a commodified basis of government services in which employees work in a Mac’government role or communities will be pursuing some form of new community paradigms and government professionals will have an opportunity to participate in an emerging creative economy. Many of the old institutions will not be able to adapt to these changes. This will be explored further in future posts, in particular, the relationship between amateur community members and institutional professionals.

Finally, it means a change in working with and building strong relationships with other change-agent organizations and community groups. This is part of the reasoning behind the New Community Paradigms Facebook Connections wiki page. This aspect also needs to be developed further.