Ostrom, the Commons and the Green New Deal

In the course of this effort to find new community paradigms, there has been an ongoing, albeit unexpressed, tendency to gravitate towards what can be viewed as a cluster of three thought leaders, all of whom are women. All three are seen as being clustered around the concept of positively addressing and engaging complexity.

They are Donella Meadows, who has an NCP wiki page, Jane Jacobs, for whom though I haven’t yet built a wiki page, is foundational to Placemaking and the work of Project for Public Spaces particularly her ideas on organized complexity and, although until now neglected despite growing awareness and appreciation, Elinor (Lin) Ostrom.

The initial resource for this post, through Marginal Revolution University, was Elinor Ostrom | Women in Economics. The reason for the current focus, in addition to an understanding that the environmental resources introduced in the last post are not enough on their own to face the wicked challenge of climate change, is due to a question asked on both Twitter and the Facebook group The Ecology of Systems Thinking, “Wondering how Elinor Ostrom's ideas could be applied to the Green New Deal and scaled up to be applied not only nationally but globally?” The result of which was several additional useful resources and an enlightened, educational discussion.

With the world’s climate being considered as the ultimate commons, Ostrom’s Eight Principles for Managing a Commons can be seen as a counter to Garrett Hardin’s more pessimistic perspective on the Tragedy of the Commons problem, which is a systems thinking archetype (number 2 in the list). ”Unnecessary tragedies, like ozone holes and national debts, greenhouse effects and urban air pollution are examples of the Tragedy of the Commons”. In these examples provided by Daniel Kim, two different Causal Loop Diagrams display how the archetype works. As he points out, “Perhaps the trickiest part of identifying a 'Tragedy of the Commons' archetype at work is coming to some agreement on exactly what is the commons that is being overburdened.”

Upon closer examination, Hardin’s approach seems less a top-down means of command and control to the benefit of greedy landlords and more an understandable concern regarding how to address unsustainable population growth. The primary point of disagreement is that Ostrom ”challenged the presumption that rational individuals were helplessly trapped in dilemmas.” 16:04

The above quote is taken from the primary resource for this post, Ostrom’s 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences lecture at Indiana University in which she goes over her basic ideas discussed more fully in her Nobel Prize Lecture paper, on polycentric governance complex economic systems, and the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (24:14) and of particular note, ”Demonstrated that complexity is not the same as chaos in regard to metropolitan governance” (21:13 & 22:13).

A number of her other ideas expressed in the lecture were found especially noteworthy.

“The rules that we use to govern a university, a private firm, a water resource, or any kind of problem need to fit the socio-ecological area or field that they are supposed to control. Having one kind of rule that will work everywhere is a ridiculous kind of thinking.” (17:05)

“The second is that polycentric systems with multiple scales enable a fit between human action situations day to day situations and nested ecological systems.” (17:34). Ostrom seems to use the term situations and the complex environments in which they occur in a manner similar to Russell Ackoff’s idea of messes and others in systems thinking.

So likely any top-down systems, even those well-intentioned such as the Green New Deal, at least in its present form without far more bottom-up policy and technical input, could be suspect.

“Panaceas are dysfunctional” 17:52 I have no doubt that she would have included any specific instance of her own systemic approach and any derivatives, directing attention to the first principle listed above.

“The internal would be actors who are in positions that can take action in light of information that they have and how much control they can take and their net benefits and outcomes and then choose outcomes.” (26:35)

“And when they made decisions anomalously and there was no communication, they did what the theory predicted Just as we found in the field that when it was very big and they couldn’t communicate they over-harvested. All we had to do was introduce the possibility of face to face communication, which is referred to in-game theory as cheap talk, doesn’t make any difference, that enabled them to increase cooperation greatly, and then we allowed them to design their own sanctioning system and they went up to 90% of optimal, a fantastically positive result…” (36:42)

What has to change then is the framework in which these complex interactions occur making the transformation into new paradigms for communities possible. The most important requirement, trust.

“We find that learning to trust others is central. You cannot have a small, medium or large or very large governance mechanism that works over time when people do not trust one another.“ (41:17) This point was also emphasized within the Ecology of Systems Thinking group. The issue considered by the participants is whether the networks of trust could be expanded or scaled up to be effectual against wicked challenges such as climate change.

“But the important thing was if it didn't work you could exit and exit turns out to be a very important, powerful, possibility for citizens and if you have only big units, how do you exit?” (19:52)

Ostrom finishes with the “idea of reform” (43:55) and in particular for me the idea “We must learn how to deal with complexity, not just reject it”. (45:01).

The Ecology of Systems Thinking discussion extended the political and economic perspective of the Tragedy of the Commons problem to a more biologically based orientation. A recommended article by Dr. David Sloan Wilson connects Ostrom’s work with evolutionary biology and in doing so establishes cooperation as a viable evolutionary strategy and points out major transitions becoming higher-level organisms in their own right, such as the rise of the first bacterial cells, multicellular organisms, eusocial insect colonies, and human evolution.

Part of the debate, delineated by the disciplines of physics and biology, was on the initial starting point and slope of the trend between population, population density, and food that brought us to our current predicament and applying that to predict a future course of either potential transformation or inevitable destruction. Having only cursory knowledge, I did not take a side. Another topic was on the increasing complexity inherent in wider circles, larger groups, or higher levels of polycentric governance which from my perspective I saw as similar to Dunbar's Number. Here is an RSA video of Dunbar explaining his theory.

Past NCP posts looked at the scaling of networks based on Dunbar's Number applied to Asset Based Community Development, as well as the concept of carrying capacity being applied to communities. These will be returned to for closer examination and likely some revision in future posts already begun raising new questions and some simmering old ones.

According to Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development, the average person has fifty-one other persons in their associational lives but he argues that we each need one hundred fifty persons citing Robin Dunbar, the originator of Dunbar's Number.

The number of 150, according to Dunbar "refers to those people with whom you have a personalized relationship, one that is reciprocal and based around general obligations of trust and reciprocity." Cormac asserts that these need to be friends and neighbors, not other service users, professionals, or even family. “It comes down to how many unforced and unpaid for relationships of acceptance we have in door knocking distance.” Including ”family” in the latter group should have been questioned back then more closely as kinship is a primary basis for Dunbar’s number.

There is not, however, a single Dunbar Number but rather a scale of numbers, of ever-widening circles of connection constrained by a cognitive limit because this limit is a direct function of neocortex size, and this, in turn, limits group size where stable interpersonal relationships can be maintained. This cognitive constraint or gap needs to be overcome, logically to my mind, by some systemic means. The working hypothesis is that Asset Based Community Development can contribute to this but doesn't seem to solve it on its own.

Elinor Ostrom’s work cannot in my view be said to be mainstream which is actually part of the reason she appeals to New Community Paradigms. Her work continues through the Ostrom Workshop now the cornerstone of the beginning of a new NCP wiki-page.

Some Complex Questions for ABCD about Carrying Capacity

In the accompanying NCP post, Cormac Russell’s post on Nurturing the Carrying Capacity of Communities is credited with being an inspiration and here a primary source for attempting to bridge ABCD with dynamic complexity. One premise for this is that communities of all types are dynamic complex systems, another is the concept of carrying capacity which refers to a system's resilience and receptivity before it begins to degrade or the equilibrium population or the number of members a system can support, particularly as it can be applied to communities. The previous post is from more of a complex dynamics perspective while this one will be based more on questions asked of Asset Based Community Development.

Cormac has said before that community should be thought of as a verb rather than as a noun but for this purpose, we need to categorize types. Most geographically placed, politically defined by government type communities such as cities or towns are usually composed of a number of diverse socially and often demographically defined place-based communities, neighborhoods, of differing levels of influence. These neighborhoods have experienced years of working with different public and private institutional agencies which have provided services of one kind or another under the auspices of a governmentally defined entity but not at equal levels. In addition to these but not necessarily separate are other types of community that can extend beyond geographic boundaries. From here on, when speaking of communities, it means the later or neighborhoods and smaller social based communities. 

The carrying capacity of a local community depends upon good stewardship of that community’s welfare which ideally requires nurturing at three levels with correct sequencing that discovers the underpinning capacities and which functions in a way that does not harm the social capital of the community. The result of good stewardship in times of crisis should be sufficiency and abundance, not scarcity and abandonment.

There are things for which communities have adequate carrying capacity to do best on their own. Outside agencies then should ideally facilitate such activities so that the carrying capacity of the community goes as far as possible. Instead, communities are often asked to scale these efforts to extend them beyond the community's boundaries. 

The warning that “Scale is Important but Who’s Scale Are We Talking About?” so as not to scale or grow beyond a community's own carrying capacity for the benefit of outside agencies becomes especially relevant as the community's carrying capacity and established predictable processes (the way it works) will likely be diminished and won't work the same way elsewhere. 

As suggested in the last post, complex dynamics can study a system from a boat on a river level, differential equation, or from an airplane level, iterated logistic map. One aspect of the iterated logistic function noted by the complex dynamics course is that chaos is not determined by a change in population nor in the annihilation (carrying capacity) number nor as a factor of how close the population is to the annihilation number but by the rate of growth. More precisely the rate of growth of a population system at a high enough level that is both bounded and subject to sensitivity to initial conditions.

A call for needing to remove barriers seems though to argue against a community having sufficient carrying capacity on is own taking us to the next level. That level which is beyond the carrying capacity of what communities can do on their own but could do perhaps with some help from outside institutions.  Part of the carrying capacity then has to come from outside the community but the agencies, working on behalf of those responsible for this, may be competing for resources which are then being distributed to competing communities. 

Outside agencies, institutional or otherwise, should then seek to be in a right relationship with these smaller social, demographic, cultural communities. However, it has been many of these very same agencies who have failed, are still failing and are now looking to systematize their failure as the new normal. The role of ABCD is separate from the provision of services and not meant to save institutional systems money and an imposed scaling from a base of community carrying capacity has been demonstrated to be unwise. Outside agencies though have different pressures from budgetary committees and such for imposing scaling on their efforts. These pressures not only can’t be discounted, they should be optimized to provide the best possible service with limited resources to the greatest number. There have been some successes in these partnerships, particularly with healthcare but while empirically verifiable as to what works, are theoretically less clear to me as to how they work.

There are then those things that communities need to have done for them by outside agencies.  They do not have the carrying capacity to do it on their own even with help or that help is never offered so that the agency maintains control. Agencies should seek to do those things in as transparent and accountable a manner as possible but they very often don’t. 

The power relationships of communities with outside institutional agencies has taken a new turn with agencies claiming that service delivery is neither sustainable nor ironically empowering. Austerity, defined by the agencies, means the communities have fewer outside resources available so have to carry more of the responsibility, including taking over care of those previously highly service dependent, a form of harvesting of the community's carrying capacity. The added incongruity is that these are the same agencies that eroded the carrying capacity of communities for decades, and are failing to do enough now to provide communities with the necessary support to build back up the needed carrying capacity. 

ABCD is based on the simple logic that communities can’t know what external supports they need until they first know what internal capacities or what social capital they have in defining their carrying capacity. A question for many communities then is whether they are even asking the question? ABCD seeks to change this by committing to re-seeding associational life at a hyper-local level (i.e. street level?). ABCD is about the strengthening of social capital within a community so as to save people from a life of institutionalization by creating community alternative to the (institutional) systems world.  The reach of ABCD though is arguably restricted by Dunbar's Number.

What leverage then is afforded to local communities or even those working in support of local communities to ensure that this is done properly? Even if this were accomplished, providing the proportionate support that does not displace or diminish local community power is a difficult balancing act with the best of intentions. We are beginning to attain the level of cities at this point and cities, as Professor Geoffrey West has asserted, naturally scale in terms of economies at a sub-linear rate in a sigmoidal curve for infrastructure having an analog to biology but scale at a superlinear fashion with socio-economic network factors  with each at a rate of about 15% in savings for the former and in growth for the later though not through the equitable distribution of benefits. Detriments are paid for in the form of socio-economic entropy which is also not equitably distributed. The catch is that the entire system is destined to collapse from the stress being generated without a major intervention or transformation of some type. These ideas are expanded upon here. It should be noted here that even though we have been using logistical equations to explain certain phenomena they are still considered qualitative explanations in the sense of being caricatures and not deeper quantitive analysis. 

Agency interactions or what Cormac refers to as conversations, unfortunately, start and remain stuck on the third level, and without proper investment in community building they will remain there but there is little incentive to make that extended investment.  At the third level, the system being generated becomes entrenched leading to a form of top-down service delivery engendering an erosion of social capital and a high level of dependence on external resources that are now disappearing. The system is persistent and resilient even while failing to address the needs of its supposed beneficiaries. 

Many of the institutional agencies operate from a reductionistic top-down management framework,  segmenting members by age and condition, narrowing their foci to create a siloed management approaches,  youth agencies working only with the young, older people’s services working with only seniors; disability services serving only the disabled treating, as Cormac says, treating the community like a tangerine, emphasizing efficiency, through financial metrics, as equal or more important than effectiveness. 

Inadvertently, which is another way of saying with the unintended consequence of, having people being redefined or commodified as service users and patients and thereby defined out of community resulting in the consequent depletion of carrying capacity by the community that was supposedly being helped. Saying inadvertently is giving the benefit of the doubt for the initial intention and could imply responsibility on both sides of the issues. The continued maintenance or manipulation of institutional systems for the benefit of some at the cost of others is a different matter. 

This raises the question though whether ABCD actually addresses issues between different competing communities through democratic principles or simply focuses through relational consensus on the maximum carrying capacity of each community with special attention towards challenged ones? My question is who specifically is the "We" whom Cormac speaks of that needs to learn from communities what they can do and care enough about to do without outside help. Who is the “We” that not only helps communities determine what they can do with some support, and only then helps determine what external resources are needed but also helps in negotiating for them or enhances the carrying capacity of the community to do such on their own? 

It isn't the communities themselves, at least not initially and it is doubtful that it is the institutional agencies so there is presumedly a third sector or movement outside of these communities that is being appealed to beyond the already converted and serving and the interested, morally supporting but uninvolved readers. Is this unformed but more complex network of relationships addressed or is it left to other efforts such as Participatory Budgeting, Placemaking or other forms of direct democratic governance of community?

Cormac sees all of this as causing further atomisation (Irish) to people’s sense of community in what I interpreted as ending up being as a system of disorganized complexity. I am going to suggest though that ABCD also potentially features an atomization (USA) of a community but to the level of independent agents connecting in a complex fashion though in a system of organized complexity as defined by both Jane Jacobs and Warren Weaver. ABCD then becomes a necessary and even primary component of New Community Paradigms but not necessarily a sufficient one. Another bridge to be explored is how Asset Based Community Development could be utilized as a means of Disruptive Innovation. 

Finding Pathways for Vehicles of Change

This blog post is going to break from the current Systems Practice focus (most recent post first) of the last two blog posts to update the newest resource additions to the New Community Paradigm (NCP) Wiki. This time though it will also tie them to a location on the recently unveiled Kumu based NCP Wiki Map, that was rolled out over four blog posts and which now has a home on both the NCP blog and wiki. If this is the first time with the NCP Wiki Map then there is a tour which provides a general explanation. 

The NCP Wiki map seeks to develop connections or bridges across sectors. All of the updates in this post are part of or are in some way connected to the Places map but can be followed to Healthy Communities or to Community Ecology. 

It is the resources, available online, found in the New Community Paradigm (NCP) Wiki that are the vehicles for change. The NCP Wiki Map connotes possible paths that could be taken. The posts of this blog are but one rationale or mental model for taken a particular path or using the suggested vehicles, one among many possible. 

The State of Placemaking 2016, brought more than 450 dedicated public space practitioners, and policymakers to chart the future of the placemaking movement structured around ten major issues that converge in public space,  referred to as “transformative agendas.” Placemaking, as a determining aspect of Places, can be seen as being most comprehensively defined by the Project for Public Spaces (PPS).  

In the NCP Wiki Places map, the circled Project for Public Spaces is seen as arising from Places and being related to the more general Community Places. (double clicking a circled element opens up wiki page, clicking “On Kumu Wiki Map” at top of a wiki page opens up the map). It is the wiki page Community Places that contains the blog posts, near the bottom of the page, seeking to define the developing NCP mental model for placemaking.

Place as Social and Economic Engine was one of the first wiki bridge pages and an early basis for developing a mental model for NCP as defined by blog posts listed at the bottom of the wiki page. It was so named, again as an extension of the correction to the same erroneous presumption underlying placemaking, that the strata of the geographic community below the businesses, city hall politics and those residents connected with city hall were of secondary value. While in truth, it is the created physical attributes of a place that are the dynamic foundation or engine of the community’s social and economic generation.

Place as Social and Economic Engine is the home for Strong Towns, who introduced the newest addition VERDUNITY, a team of civil engineers, planners, and sustainability specialists with expertise in land use planning and zoning, municipal finance, transportation planning and design, stormwater management and green infrastructure implementation, and urban design and placemaking. They started VERDUNITY  because they realized that elaborate, expensive infrastructure projects were making things more economically fragile and unsustainable. This was a disruption in their way of thinking, of their mental models. They are now working on changing other people’s mental models of how they think about the way we have been planning and building our cities and neighborhoods. More will be said about VERDUNITY in a future post.

Place as Social and Economic Engine on the NCP Wiki Map is seen as a bridge between Place and Economics (access between Places and Economics via a link is in the narrative section to the left). 

The newest addition to Planning the Urban Landscape is New Urban Mechanics, a network of civic innovation offices that explore how new technology, designs, and policies can strengthen the partnership between residents and government and significantly improve opportunity and experiences for all. It could have arguably been put under Community Change Agencies but personal choice and only personal was that these programs were more closely related to the existing underlying physical, placemaking, and political infrastructure of a community. The related blog posts, again listed at the bottom of the wiki page, provide some perspectives on a past effort in Los Angeles history to redefine the larger urban landscape. 

Planning the Urban Landscape approaches Places from a broader perspective looking not from the build up of smaller changes over time but the accumulation of those changes overall. It is seen as a bridge between Places and Community Ecology. 

Under the wiki page Healthy Cities is the recent addition of Bridging Health & Community, an extension of  the previously listed Creating Health Collaborative which aims to transform how we approach health so that it goes beyond institutional healthcare and public health to include fostering community agency, strengthening the field of practice that bridges those in the health sector and those who foster community agency helping to establish the critical link between a community's ability to make purposeful choices and its health. Being able to measure differences in life expectancy by income across areas and then to identify strategies to improve health outcomes for low-income Americans would be a useful ability. Health Inequality Project uses big data to help accomplish this.

The bridge from Places to Healthy Cities, under the Healthy Communities map, is Planning for Healthy Communities. It could also be an element in the Pathways to Healthy Communities map and the Art and Healthy Communities map. Two specially constructed maps that put together a path that incorporated elements that are often placed in silos and considered distinct and separate. 

Taking a higher altitude perspective, the Wiki Bridges Map connects all the New Community Paradigm sectors, including Places, Healthy Communities, and Community Ecology, together. 

A closer look at the pathway for Places indicates that at under the current New Community Paradigm configuration, Healthy Communities and Places are well integrated together but Community Ecology is somewhat isolated. 

Could Bridging Health & Community and Creating Health Collaborative under Healthy Cities be integrated with New Urban Mechanics under Planning the Urban Landscape and extended from Places to Community Ecology integrating the two together more closely?

There are also other deeper pathways that could utilize the online resources found in the NCP Wiki. Under Project for Public Places (click the URL or double click the circled element to open the wiki page) is Agenda Spotlight: Placemaking and Health - Project for Public Spaces.

There is growing evidence showing that place impacts people’s health on multiple scales. From obesity and chronic disease to depression, social isolation, and increased exposure to environmental toxins and pollutants, the world faces very different health challenges today than it has in the past, and many of these challenges are directly related to how our public spaces are designed and operated.

It could be an important component of the Pathways to Healthy Communities map and naturally be expanded to be encompassed by Community Ecology. How it is used could be determined in a number of different ways depending upon the needs of a particular community. 

It is believed though it has not been adequately examined that finding specific potential pathways for the utilization of online resources will greatly help in the development of new community paradigms. 

Creative Discovery on New Community Paradigm Pathways

The last blog post continued to explore the new Kumu map of the New Community Paradigms (NCP) Wiki (the map is also contained within the wiki page). Here is a tour if this is the initial general introduction but this post does not depend upon it. The last blog post expressed the view that the NCP Wiki Map was not so important on its own but as a tool for creative discovery, an idea which will be explored further in this post.

Actually, it is not the NCP Wiki Map itself that is the basis for creative discovery; it is instead the Kumu program at its foundation and the application of systems thinking in the use of that tool. Still, the NCP Wiki Map is believed to be a pretty good example of what can be done with Kumu, especially when applied to complex community issues as is being attempted here. 

It should be made clear though that New Community Paradigms is not endeavoring to become a large organization or movement. It is intended to be designed as an expandable and evolvable template that a group within a community could use to leverage potential community resources. 

The last post also spoke of getting ahead of myself. In the post previous, I had jumped from dealing with planning and placemaking within complex systems (of greater community involvement) to contrasting complicated top-down management systems and complex community governance systems, as had been discussed in past posts, and then jumped back to planning in the context of creating healthy communities. The point and a rationale behind this effort are that not only is organizing information gathered over time challenging but disseminating that information in a coherent manner within complex social networks, especially when others are unfamiliar with the concepts, can be a daunting undertaking. While examining "complexity" and its relation to community building and development has been of interest since the early beginnings of this effort, it was wrong to jump back and forth without more context.

There are then three separate concepts about which people have to be persuaded to invest time into understanding, Kumu mapping, systems thinking, and community issues (actually a host of concepts filed under new community paradigms). This obviously is not going to be for everyone, to be truthful, not even most people. Most don’t need to be experts though in all three, actually not even particularly in any one of them but they would have to have some knowledge and more importantly would need to be able to collaborate. I believe though that, in the hands of even a small number of people working together, it could begin to make a difference. 

After the confession, it was a matter of discussing the resources to be found under the recent Planning for Healthy Communities wiki page and connecting to the mapped element for it (use the “On Kumu Map” link at the top), and other elements of the Places and Healthy Communities maps (also accessible from narrative sections to the left) and then clicking on the related Asset Based Community Development element moving next into its own map then back to the wiki (use the URL near bottom of the element’s narrative section or double click the element within the map). 

This continued in the next post with exploring  Community Design, and Community Arts (both under Places, mouse over the listed text) with Healthy Cities and began tying them together (needs to be repeated, clicking a map’s white space reveals underlying map).

The Places map may be the most complex appearing of these maps but is basically a collection of eight related issues (put the mouse over the center Places element within the map to highlight first degree connections) which bridge over into other sectors. The Healthy Communities and Asset Based Community Development maps aren't that complex on their own. Individual elements though within these maps can appear in other maps and all can be connected. Hopefully following element paths into different maps will generate new ideas, new connections could be developed. 

The last blog post also attempted to create a mental model of “Artistic Thinking” as pathways of connections, the first, being the Art and  Healthy  Communities Map. The mental models for the current configuration NCP Wiki Map were developed through the related blog posts found in their most closely related wiki page. Although blog posts are not always the defining basis of the mental models for all of the map elements, connections were not created unless what could be seen, and better yet delineated in writing, as establishing some meaningful relationship. These then helped to define the NCP Wiki Map’s structural level connections, especially the bridge elements connecting substantially different elements and sectors together. 

These new sets of pathways were then enhanced further after publishing the blog post introducing the ability to highlight or focus on certain element or groups of elements. As explained in the Art and  Healthy  Communities Map narrative, going through the different levels of focus new elements appear.

This is where this being a solitary endeavor, due to my introvert and introspective nature, runs into its limitations. Having everyone already learned Kumu mapping is the best solution but until that can be taken for granted it seems necessary to provide explicit instruction on issues such as white space or determining focus. 

This is being attempted, in different ways, with the two new pathway sets. Further directions are provided in the hope people will learn Kumu directly and figure out how to navigate on their own or the other way around, both work. The hope again is that the map can be designed so that groups of individuals with different interests and backgrounds could work together and create common collaborative maps but that's not happening here yet. Instead, this is more at the level of explorations, if things work, and experimentation, if they don’t.

Two other new sets of pathways, Pathways to Healthy Communities Map and the Collective Impact within NCP Map were also created for the post, as working at the mental model level of the Systems Thinking Iceberg Model. 

Because it involves the entire larger overall NCP Wiki Map, the initial Pathways to Healthy Communities Map is apparently complex. However, by clicking on “Focus on Pathway” the specific specialized map is focused upon or by moving further down to the second paragraph of the narrative section one can also choose to only highlight it.

Further down the narrative section, the narrative approach is integrated with the graphic elements of the map. Unlike maps such as Places, there is more than a collection of related objects underlying the map’s organization. The connections cross over different sectors influencing each other. One can follow these pathways by mousing over the text within the narrative. Additional directions can be found in the Pathways to Healthy Communities Map itself.

The Collective Impact map, on its own, is not seen as being directly subsumed or above other elements of the NCP Wiki Map. Rather, it is seen as being related to other elements. These particular displayed relationships, as configured within the map,  were based on my individual inquiries. Different relationships could be created, developed and evolved further by others. 

The Collective Impact within NCP Map, which is accessible through the main Collective Impact map, is of a different configuration. The map’s narrative provides access to greater focus or further down the ability to highlight within the map by passing over with the mouse. Selecting the Community Impact Focus Map allows one again to highlight or by following the directions select the specific map then proceed 1, 2 or 3 degrees out or clear the map to its original configuration. As the narrative for the map states, though, not all elements will be related meaningfully to but a number could be integrated into supporting Collective Impact efforts. 

It is still necessary though to visit each element of interest’s wiki page by double clicking on that element or clicking once to open up its narrative and then clicking on the displayed URL. There are then a variety of resources available though these are by no means exhaustive, undoubtedly more are out there. These are the building blocks for creating new community innovations by providing more in-depth information. There is not, however, any correct pathway or any right answers to be revealed.

The long term goal then is not to get people to use my map but to get people to build their own maps, using systems thinking approaches, preferably together with others in their community. The NCP Wiki Map is capable of being “copied”, what Kumu calls “Fork”ed (past tense?) and is licensed to fully authorize this (get to the NCP Wiki Map, three line icon top left corner, click, look for “Fork Project” left-hand column). 

Mapping Connections Between Healthy Communities, Planning, Placemaking and Asset Based Community Development

Now that New Community Paradigms (NCP) has a more effective map with which to find new pathways it is possible to go back and reconnect with some that may have been missed or left behind. In general, the trend has been away from institutions or more institutionally based systems and toward more complex systems of greater community involvement but this does not and should not mean abandoning institutions entirely. A greater emphasis on ground-up community placemaking should not mean an abandonment of a more traditional role of planning. It is the relationship between the two that should be redefined.  

This goes to a wider issue of the difference between complicated top-down management systems and complex community governance systems. Despite an obvious preference, at least if you have been following this blog, for the later, the need and benefit of the former are still recognized under the proper circumstances. It is the correct relationship between the two that needs to be defined. 

One area in which this could be seen as being helpful is Planning for Healthy Communities, a new page under the NCP wiki. We are using the term “planning” in the sense of the American Planning Association, the foundational, professional, educational oriented organization behind city hall planning departments across the USA. It is able to suggest policy on a national scale and in the case of the Planning and Community Health Center, focuses its efforts on projects and policies that prioritize active living, food systems, and health in all planning policies.

Many local governments have begun Planning for Public Health by including goals and objectives that promote healthy choices of where to live and how to get around, the ability to access healthy foods and opportunities for physical activity, which affect broader issues of social equity, clean air, and water, and more into their comprehensive plans. More specifically, Plan4Health Projects and Initiatives are launching across the United States in neighborhoods, cities, and counties. Plan4Health supports creative partnerships to build sustainable, cross-sector coalitions.

“Local coalitions consisting of American Planning Association (APA) chapters and American Public Health Association (APHA) affiliate members are committed to increasing health equity through nutrition or physical activity with each coalition seen as being dedicated to meeting the needs of residents where they live, work, or play.”

The American Planning Association’s Planning and Community Health Research Center has also partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Community Design Initiative, on the CDC - Healthy Places - Healthy Community Design Checklist Toolkit. This toolkit, which can help planners, public health professionals, and the general public to include health in the community planning process, is composed of four elements that work together to achieve this goal:

1. Healthy Community Design Checklist.pdf
2. Healthy Community Design PowerPoint Presentation.ppt
3. Creating a Health Profile of Your Neighborhood.pdf
4. Planning for Health Resources Guide.pdf

It is still, however, a generally top-down application of policy and may never be initiated or fully realized without the intervention of grassroots efforts as well as, as suggested by Paul Born, grass-top organizational efforts.

“In the early days of a collective impact approach, we often find that one of two mistakes is made. One is that we gather only the grasstops. That is, we think somehow it’s about shifting power. So we bring the powerful players into the room. The other mistake, almost as common, is that we don’t engage any of the power players because we’re afraid that it will be perceived as a grass-tops initiative.”

There is underlying data that can be gathered and used to inform all perspectives, Health-Impact-Assessment-Can-Inform.pdf, the State-of-Health-Impact-Assessment-in-Planning.pdf, and the HIA-Toolkit.pdf. 

Additionally, Project for Public Spaces (PPS) recently released an extensive report of peer-reviewed research and case studies, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, demonstrating the power of placemaking to improve health. 

"The Case for Healthy Places is already taking the public health world by storm, and we are confident that this is just the beginning of the Healthy Placemaking Movement!"

Before proceeding further, it should be advised that one could reach all of the following points on the Kumu maps and all others from within the New Community Paradigms Wiki Kumu map itself rather than open in multiple tabs or windows from here. Information on how to navigate through the map can be found through the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map Tour.

A new Planning for Healthy Communities wiki page means a new element on the New Community Paradigms Wiki Map. Wiki-pages are collections of resources related to that topic though are by no means exhaustive. In truth, they are merely gateways into essential, more in-depth studies of the area in question. Their corresponding map elements in conjunction with other elements graphically illustrate possible relationships. It will be noticed that some relationships are more explicit in feeding back to each other.  The idea underlying these mapped out relationships is to expand upon the concepts and avoid the siloing of policy thinking. 

More precisely the Kumu map Planning for Healthy Communities is within the Health Communities Kumu map. One can click on the map’s white space to reveal the fuller map underneath. Other Healthy Communities wiki page links are then displayed in the narrative section. 

Planning for Healthy Communities can be seen as a bridge between Healthy Communities and Community Places within the Places map. Clicking the map’s white space again reveals the numerous wiki pages, bridge pages and other related wiki pages from other wiki maps under the full Places map.

One returns to the collection of web links found on a particular wiki page using the URL within the narrative section of that map element, say Community Places, which focuses more on the community (as a geographic place) planning of building by the community (as social structure). 

Mousing over the highlighted Community Place element of the Places map or any map element shows those wiki pages most directly associated, other overlaying concepts of Place, the wiki focus page of Community Design, the closely related Project for Public Spaces, along with Soul of a Community, and the bridge to Healthy Communities through Planning for Healthy Communities. 

A similar set of relationships exists with the Healthy Communities element within the Healthy Communities map, including the bridge Planning for Healthy Communities and the related Asset Based Community Development or ABCD. It is the relationship of ABCD in this context that calls for the greatest need for future exploration. 

A short Twitter-talk with Cormac Russell on the CityLab article, The New Front Line of Public Health, on the growing number of community health workers taking a 360-degree view of the barriers that stand between their patients and better health, revealed an ABCD perspective.

“Relative to current malaise it's a quantum leap; relative to what's actually required, it's a mediocre shuffle in the right direction.”

According to Cormac, a significant shift requires seeing beyond healthcare and the proliferation of initiatives like Every Block A Village-Chicago Westside Health Authority.

All of these perspectives can be expanded structurally even further by going to the Wiki Bridges Map in which Planning for Health Communities can be found under *Places of the map’s narrative section. Again, click any white space to reveal the full map. 

More dynamic, complex relationships can be followed as pathways under the Wiki Bridges Pathways Map. Selecting Places Wiki Bridges, one can mouse over the narrative highlighting relevant pathways within the map connecting Places and its elements to other areas of the complete New Community Paradigms map. There isn’t any predetermined route, each group, organization or community determines its own course, preferably by making its own maps.