Table A Notes

Discussion 1

Reactions to the panel

• Optimal fragmentation principal - a certain degree of fragmentation and "chaos" acts in opposition to innovation (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
• Cultural change is needed.
  • We have a belief that all of our problems can be solved by a "pill" or by the government or whatever.
• The notion of lack of "political will" the notion hints at the idea that there is some quicker or easier political route... "If only they had the will, we'd see all this change!" Is there such a thing as political will? We can't see it, but we can see that there are interests; there are groups that push for one thing or against another.
  • Counterexample: graduated income tax. Politicians may actually be too "chicken" to approach it.
• When we talk about cultural changes, "where we've come from" becomes a very important note. Think about this in terms of children learning certain habits or ways of thinking from their parents (or are not learning these things from their parents). If family's food comes from a voucher or a Bridge Card, then that's what the children are going to learn.
  • We have to build a system of community support for our children.
  • Disparities perpetuate themselves. How do we break the cycle?

What are the most worrisome things about the economic downturn?

• Structural deficits - less funding available.
• Decreasing incomes leading to increasing crime leading to more need for cash to be spent on law enforcement, etc.
• Loss of jobs.
• Cuts to K-12, as well as higher-ed.
• Personal and individual suffering and challenges. Opportunities in Michigan are wonderful - there is tremendous potential. Barriers to entry into the business world are about as low as they can be.

• Notion of vacant land - Flint example - whose neighborhoods are being destroyed? Racial disparities.
• Supermarkets in city centers. Extremely important - walking to a market vs. having to get into the car and drive to the suburbs. Many cities no longer have supermarkets in their city limits...
  • Flint
  • Detroit
  • Kalamazoo

Discussion 2

Identify the old assumptions that continue to be played out in your communities. Consider assumptions about resources as well as about ways of operating.

• Concentrated power produces a desired result.
• Money will solve our problems.
• Placing services and institutions of structural "silos" - looking at healthcare as different from education as different from distribution of public services, etc. Answers are best found through specialization and individuation of structures.
• Stereotyping
• "Lumping" and "splitting" neighborhoods, classes.
• Tendency of people to rely on political solutions
  • One party has an answer over the other.
  • It takes political will to find the solution to a problem.
• Cradle-to-grave employment and benefits.
• Assumption of the "American dream" - a certain definition of a quality livelihood.
  • "Single-family" house with a lawn.
  • Have to have an automobile to get somewhere.
  • Have to have good neighbors in a good neighborhood.
  • We have had a certain idea of what "success" means.
• "More is better."
• "I deserve credit."
• Getting people into college is a guarantee of economic security.
• "The pie belongs to us."

What things do you think people engaged in the work of innovating and reinventing strong Michigan communities should keep in mind?

• Inclusivity
  • However, bringing everyone together can sometimes create a "cumbersome" animal - have to keep in mind that great innovations can occur between two people as much as they can occur among an entire hall full of people.
• We need a broader definition of community - so much is given to the geopolitical side of community - embrace regionalism.
• Chase people, not businesses.
• Preservation, and re-use, and mixed-use.

Table B Notes

Discussion 1

What part of the Panel most resonated with you?

• Participant 1

  • Michigan Ave. website: connects industrial heritage of Lansing information creative economy of E.L.
  • Trying to create a space to share ideas and previous case studies as well as conversation.
  • Need to transport ideas from today to broader community
  • Challenge of having racial and economic integration
    • easier to work with groups that already have an institutional base
    • need to define our communities
    • when communities don't have strong voice, they cannot look after their own interests.

• Participant 2

  • E.L. micropolitan community. Nothing like the rest of Michigan
  • East Lansing: diverse, multicultural
    • particularly schools
  • we need to define (redefine) our communities
  • people have their own realities. As leaders we need to help them redefine these realities to be more real.

• Participant 3

  • kids lacking resources, educational and familial
  • station to contribute

• Participant 4

  • particularly the idea that we need to create this change ourselves. No more "sugar daddy". Internal change.
  • we need to get rid of term limits
  • where does the lack of political will come from?

• Participant 5

  • anomaly
  • college educated parents help kids know they need college
  • concentrated child poverty (Midwest, people of color, low-income)
  • challenged by industrial shifts
  • redefine Detroit's culture
    • reinvent itself as an international entertainment center
    • need to prepare the next generation to be job creators
      • need to start that in early childhood
      • *younger generation has different perceptions
    • how disparity drives the region, either positive or negative. Need to examine the achievement gap.

Three Most Worrisome Impacts

• Divisiveness, hatred, and incivility stemming from disagreement (at the local and national)
• Less support for other's ideas
• Anger
• Fear
• Lack understanding (we reap what we sow; policy)
• Conversations are inappropriately focusing on race. Everything is not about race.
• The racial divide seems to have less to do with income.
• The poor are being blamed for being poor.
• Elected leaders have failed to create an atmosphere for growth
• Term limits have limited our choices for political representation. It also decreases legislative productivity.
• There are huge holes in the safety nets. Those in need are having trouble finding.
• Young and educated talent are leaving Michigan.
• There is a lack of leadership and vision guiding our communities. This extends beyond the political level.
• There has been an erosion of the family unit.

Discussion 2

Old Assumptions

• The "old" normal was a good place. Was the "old" normal even real? Did everyone value the new normal?
• Promoting constant growth in population, income, economic activity, and land use.
• Automatic decrease in services with decrease in governmental revenue (makes the situation worse). This cannot go on forever. Creating an opportunity cost at the same time.
• Deferring investments needed for long-term growth ("race to the bottom")
• Too much spending. Need to replace it with investment and increase the rate of return
• Smokestack chasing
• Crony capitalism
• The "over"production model. Using consumption and production as a measure of success. Need to focus less on producing stuff and more on producing good experiences and values.
• Blaming the poor. Believing in pulling yourself up by our own bootstraps.
• People most effected are not apart of the conversation. We need a best practice in engagement, particularly a feedback process. We have a non-inclusive process (different from exclusive).
• Independent individualism. We need to realize we are all connected and inter-related.
• Regionalism is apart of the new norm.
• Silo effect; organizations are having a turf war. Need more collaboration.

Principles for operating in the new normal

• We need a space to connect various forms of expertise.
• New collaborative models and consultation (need to bring more and different people to the table)
• Model of Inclusion
• "Set-aside" funds in the governmental budget
• Lifelong education. We should promote education even beyond high school.
• *Sustainability imperative. Social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
• The public sector has a responsibility
• Diversification of economies and industries
• "Place-based" investments
• Rewarding smart growth
• Accountability in the incentive program (i.e. PA 198 Tax Abatements)

Table C Notes

Discussion 1

Introductions: (Points of interest in the earlier discussion)

• Participant 1

  • It may take us, Michigan, 15-20 years to catch up, and our reputation of lagging behind the trend, from other states. People like to go with winning States, which is a huge formidable challenge to compete for industry.
  • We have smart people that know what needs to get done and have creativity. Log jam of creativity at upper levels of politics.
  • What are pitfalls in the future?

• Participant 2

  • John's comment from the student at Kalamazoo- sustainability won't happen in Michigan.
  • Trying to find opportunity. Message being sent, have to dig and work to find work. So retain recent grads with family, or something else stable. If they have friends, they may stay in Lansing.
  • Rehabilitation funds in work, work hard to get dollars out to provide support in housing.

• Participant 3

  • Conditions that enable- Michigan's conditions that disable, the nature of how, as communities, we come to discuss the issues in debate, winners and losers, use different approach to inspire creativity.
  • "It's Imagine"- we're so stuck in a vice that doesn't allow us to imagine. Kalamazoo had conditions that allowed them to imagine, necessary
  • Brain drain- around forever, each child develop at different stages. High School Graduates not ready to leave, University graduates at different stages for different people. We need to make our places that are inviting, family, institutions of higher learning.

• Participant 4

  • People leaving and then having places they want to come back to. If you are already down, how do you build that place they want to come back to when your resources are so stressed? Arts and culture, environment, etc. It's a challenge.
  • The fire department that's closest may not be the one to go to the fire. Multiple services in small area, at odds with one another.

• Participant 5

  • University communities. Like Benton Harbor, haves and have nots, and the mass discrepancies between that. We have virtue of better access, preparation and lack there of among the students that we serve. As funds are cut, access is diminished to get them there and once they get there.
  • Notion of building a denser downtown neighborhoods, young people, not here long term, and have a hard time to tolerate ones differences, age and lifestyles differences. Build city centers, and don't want change. Neighborhood increasingly urban, because of the density. How bigger significant situations play out in little community.

• Participant 6

  • Safety eroded. If there is a lag in industry and training, what are we going to do without a safety net to support these people reaching out and higher.
  • Why are things the way they are? Synergistic collision, and Proposition A, why is it still a problem. Never heard an adequate explanation for why we spend so much on prisons... What is it that keeping that in place? What's preventing those things from disappearing so we can make changes?

• General conversation

  • Answer in policy? Part of it. Positions that enable don't allow us to talk about it. So we can't have a discussion as a collective, as a culture, to move forward. Income inequality is the bigger issue behind these issues. Epidemiologist, study income and health.

Most worrisome impacts for MI communities:

• increase in inequality
• Family's not able to support selves due to income levels and education (point 1)
• public will- change in policy or change in practice or capacity to talk about issues?
• Integrated communities is place where things happen- challenge to overcome nostalgia, understanding. Need to capture creativity, leadership of youth into leadership now- bridge intergenerational divides.
• (Ground Rule) Notion not a quick easy fix- long term
• Environmental challenges in future and what MI's role and resources

Discussion 2

Drawing on board

• dissonance → status quo, innovate- nip/tuck
  • → transform, completely different
• Reframe, reflect, assumptions, bigger connect

*What are the strategies for identifying these assumptions?

Assumptions of Old Normal:

• Fear- changes will take away things we value, losses will be bigger than gains
  • Optimizing all positives-
  • Start with self- then to set of others.
• Communities
  • More education is better
  • Leaders have "the" answers
  • We need money to fix things
  • Growth is good
  • Consumption should continue to grow forever
  • We must buy our energies, instead of make our own.
  • Expansion to suburbs causes damages to city
  • Public transportation is for cities
  • Individual freedom trumps public good.
  • Individual freedom and public good are mutually exclusive
  • What goes downstream won't comeback to us
  • We have to watch out for ourselves
  • YOYO- you're on your own
  • Taxes are the only way to provide for ourselves and others
  • Government is evil
  • We are all in this together wait
  • Everything is accounted for in this economy
  • We are independent

What do you think people engaged in the work of innovating and reinventing strong Michigan communities should keep in mind? Operating Principle- New Normal

• no quick fixes
• no one, right answer
• building flexibility, adaptability, responsive.
  • avoid high cost, big, fixed.
• wealth will be redistributed- some people will lose some things.
• Less is more.
• Think locally- strengthen local systems
• Sense of place, communities, strengthens- blurring boundaries- people more connected
• Need new indicators- ex, new housing starts vs. reuse starts
• Reuse, no more planned obsolescence
• Blurring of boundaries,
• Living in the moment and not ruining future with our choices, think long-term
• Slowing down
• Being present with others (won't need as money band-aids)
• More understanding of each other, valuing own and others stories vs. big general-babble truths.
• All of us help each other lead not just rely on the leaders
• First listen: seek to understand
• Bureaucratic drag- slows down the whole process, diverts resources-
  • Limit/chose bureaucracy carefully- eliminate drag
• Consider quality first, not just context, neighborhoods efficiency community.

• Summarized

  • listening and understanding as the basis of community building
    • taking into account one another's perspectives and circumstances as a habit of mind
  • Quality over quantity- changes metrics (how we decide what's good, assessable, what counts), or give up quantity and efficiency

Table D Notes

Discussion 1

What really resonated in what we just heard? Your community, your organization or institution with which you are connected?

• Hard to be statewide (in an administrative role). Perspective is a little different. The frustration level about political will and lack of leadership, huge frustration for the whole state.
  • Participant: Started program that was controversial, and did not find resources or leadership help with this. (Governor's Cool Cities Program). Schizophrenic leadership.
  • Partly it's the budget problems that makes doing things difficult.
• Another participant had a number of reactions:
  • First: you hear emphasis on high tech. Role in the economy: use computers to do things more efficiently, translates into a systemically marginalized segment of population. Not everyone can be a role player in a high tech economy. More done with fewer jobs. Creates larger and larger population that is irrelevant.
  • No matter how much work you do in growth of a high tech economy, doesn't help those people who aren't able to do the work.
  • Disenfranchisement of the people who are already here.
  • How do we fix economy and get back to the "party" we were having...
    • Better question: was that the party we were supposed to be having. Healthy economy: everyone has basic needs, is that happening in this "party" we're trying to save?
    • Sense that we're not in the right paradigm
• One participant took exception to the generalizations:
  • Don't think we're having a tangible conversation
  • We have energy, not being used in any sort of productive way
  • Schools, welfare, public safety, capital... it gets lost.
  • Conglomerate expectations are very powerful, rather than a new paradigm, perhaps not having the right conversation: what is important and how are we going about getting it?
    • FDR and Hoover administrations: lots of failures, very clear expectations. Not going to just allow things to happen, lots of things that matter now won't matter (term limits for example).
  • Needs to come with more fixed and tangible expectations, and with that a lot of things get fixed.
    • We spend out energy and we are wrong, what do we end up with?
• Participant: Integration across the board is important. Can't spark innovation and entrepreneurship when we continue to isolate ourselves (individuals, institutions etc.). Need to be working on creating space where people can interact with each other and have conversations.
  • Connectivity is important and lacking.
  • Places where spontaneous interaction and "spark" happens are where things happen.
  • Race, income, level of education ... people need to mix and work off of each other more.
• Participant: Has heard this presentation so many times, really beginning to believe what the presenters are talking about.
  • Like when single business tax passes when most of the legislature has been on the job for less than 6 months, there is clearly a problem with the representative form of government.
  • Things that jump out: term limits being huge piece of the problem
    • Racism, chasms between people, and we do not talk about these things
    • There is racism that nobody talks about, that keeps distance between people.
    • What are we doing with our resources? Where are we putting our energy?
    • No good solutions, very frustrating.
• Corrections vs. Education,
  • People become fearful and tighten their mentality instead of opening their minds
    • Media representation is difficult. Any change in institutions like public safety and corrections, education etc. is difficult because of entrenched interests.
  • More rural poor in the state of Michigan than there are urban poor... we don't think about that chunk.
  • All becomes a matter of how we are investing our resources

Things that come up from the presentation:

• Not in the right paradigm
• Not having the right conversation.
• Not being anywhere near the solutions
• System and structural problem.
• Politics get in the way of creating solutions.
• Decisions get more irrational, more knee jerk reactions as the downturn progresses.
• Sense of pulling back and isolation increases in the downturn. Everyone is more concerned with their own problems, makes it more difficult to work with people.
  • Turning on each other instead of on common issues or problems
• People look at 'less government' as the solution; we do in fact need our government. Continual disinvestment in government leads to destruction of local government.
• Not the right conversation, not the right paradigm: focusing on economy instead of quality of life for example.
• Long view, civic engagement, and leadership need to be part of the conversation.
  • Term limits
  • Having the right sort of political will and leadership and civic engagement.

Circular problem

• How do we pay (individuals and institutions) to create the environments that we need for higher quality of life to grow jobs in order to generate the economy to allow us to attain this standard?

Flip Chart Contents

• Three most worrisome impacts of the downturn:

  1. Fear and contraction mentality and self protection. Not working together on common problems.
  2. We've got a system problem compounded by dysfunctional political dynamics.
  3. Are we having the right conversation?

Discussion 2

The New Normal - Transformative Thinking

• Identify old assumptions:

  • How does local government think?
    • What are the assumptions there?
    • Part of the assumption is that we can build our way out of it. More economic development fixes the problems
    • In this economy does that really work?
  • Quality of life resides in things and independence of experience
    • Meaning doing what you want to, go where you want, totally independent on relationships with other people
      • no value in community
  • Assumption about quality of life: think of it as describing community
  • If you bring in businesses
    • It will create jobs and bring people, retain and attract people.
    • People go to where the jobs are
  • You make a life in a job in something relatively narrow.
    • Job that makes money is how you have access to the rest of your life
  • Creative place making attracts talent
  • We expect quality education, playgrounds, and good roads ... entitlement.
    • Government will take care of it
    • "Someone else will take care of it"
  • Assumption too that, legislators will do the 'right thing'
    • The average person thinks that their government will do what it is supposed to.
  • The assumption that free market economy is good for everybody.
  • Poverty is something that people deserved because of A, B, or C.
    • Assumption that people are in complete in control of their own destinies.
  • Assumption that Democratic government allows the best intelligence to be brought to bear
  • Assumption that we'll always have enough resources
    • Enough of everything to go around
  • Assumption that American way of life is entitled to consume vastly greater resources than the rest of the world.
  • Assume that the United States is the greatest nation in the world
    • Quality of life is the highest in the world.
    • All this stuff makes us really happy

• What are some principles for operating in the new normal?

  • In the future prosperity is going to have to come more from people and relationships instead of material wealth
  • There will have to be more sharing resources, collaborating and consolidating
  • Small is beautiful.
  • Appropriate technology instead of high technology
  • The lifetime cost of upkeep needs to be factored in: as we expand infrastructure expansion, what are the lifecycle ownership costs?
  • Growing inequalities and gulfs between populations of people?
    • Need to empower people to gain access to things that they do not have.
    • Minimum standard
    • Basic needs should be human rights, not privileges
    • FDR proposal for economic bill of rights: guarantee basic infrastructure for everybody
  • Every member of society can contribute if given opportunity to do so, but if they don't have the opportunity they cannot contribute
  • Making it important to spend time on awareness building?
    • More speaking truth to power
    • More civic engagement
    • Everyone should be aware and engaged
  • Fear: leadership vacuum at all levels...
    • Penal system...
    • Change a person's own sense of value - "Lies that Bind" course by Anisha Freeman
  • Mindset change as a possibility for everyone
  • Promote people's potential instead of preventing their problems.
  • Have expectations from elected officials

Flip Chart Contents

• Old assumptions:

  • Quality of life resides in things and independence of experience>
  • Bringing in business and jobs is the path to retaining and attracting people
  • People go where the jobs are
  • Government provides the services necessary for a good quality of life
  • People are in control of their destinies
  • Free market capitalism is good for everyone
  • American style of representational government allows the best intelligence to inform important decisions
  • U.S. citizens are entitled to consume a disproportionate share of natural resources

• New Assumptions for "New Normal"

  • small is beautiful
  • appropriate technology instead of high-tech
  • Prosperity should be understood in new ways
  • More sharing, collaborating at all levels - neighborhoods, gov't, orgs, individuals
  • Consider life-cycle ownership costs
  • Everyone has the potential to add creative value to our communities
  • Civic engagement is central to community health
  • Mindset change is a possibility for everyone
  • Basic needs are human rights

Table E Notes

Discussion 1

Reactions to the panel - most worrisome issues

• Participant 1: What worries me is our societies ability to make progress in communities that are most left behind ... war on poverty ... if all of that work did what it was supposed to do, we wouldn't be living in communities today where minorities are still as disadvantaged ... dropping out of school ... people live within impacted communities only miles away and are unhinged
• People don't want to hear about other people's very serious problems
• If you don't have a lot of political power but you have the financial resources, you can still get a lot ... look at the most marginalized populations ... they don't have the political power and they don't have the financial resources. Talking about the AA males in correctional facilities you are talking about a marginalized population.
• No one wants to say that the issue is race ... instead we wrap ourselves around a geographic issue.
• Are we willing to put the money into communities that need it most instead of the program in general? Are we able to move away from the geographic model and say it's race?
• Participant 2: Looking at this from the perspective of a media source ... different resources, talk to more educated people. Always have to have well-informed people who are willing to have those discussions.
• When the business community enters an area, they are seen as charity
• Participant 3: Race issues have been part of discussions and conferences in CED that I've been to. What I'm hearing today, though, is about the political change.
• Impacts in terms of funding
• Talk about a knowledge-based economy
• Three most troublesome issues: policy that encourages a connection from the most disconnected whether they're disconnected or booming. It's also a policy that encourages creativity and innovation in its agenda. And then, maybe, it's policy that encourages high standards and values. Participant 5: we need to have systems and policies in place that promote equity. Differences between communities - highlight intolerance and those who are marginalized.
• Participant 4: Has the downturn made it harder to implement the policies? Participant 2: I see a lot more inflammatory statements and discussions that do not relate to what the real issues are. You see this in media a lot, too. If people are already feeling on the edge about certain issues, and somebody fuels their fire, you have even more issues with that.
• Participant 1: In the downturn, we look at things most approximate to us. The immediacy of the crisis prevents us from viewing or visioning the long-term.
• People give/donate more during tough economic times.
• Participant 2: When the price of gas went up, things changed for the automobile industry; people change their habits when it starts hitting them in the pocket book.

Discussion 2

Identify the old assumptions that continue to be played out in your communities. Consider assumptions about resources as well as about ways of operating. Which of these assumptions are especially problematic and why?

• Participant 1: If we do more and do it better is not a fair assumption ... in bad times people assume that doing more of the old will correct the problem.
• Getting to better times will benefit all ... Participant 1 believes that there is a marginal benefit but there is not structural benefit/change in those who are left behind. Rising tide assumption is that the change will benefit all people in the same way.
• Participant 2: Going along with what Participant 1 said, when times are good, we seem to lack momentum or the urgency to continue to work on the well-being of everyone. The old way is that while times are good we don't have much to work on. Dissonance is a creative place to be. Perhaps, the new way of being will be making the most out of the dissonance. There is so much momentum in people wanting things to be the way they've always been. The bad times are times to retrench, it is important to be productive, which many people do not recognize.
• There is a whole host of assumptions that if we look today, they're not true. There is the thought that GM will take care of me for the rest of my life. My benefit, what I had, will always be. Moving from that assumption, people still struggle with it. That entitlement attitude does not work. Used to work for Big Brothers, Big Sisters - and there is that whole concept of being taken care of. One of the kids responded to a question of, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" by saying that he wanted to be on welfare after watching how his mother survived under it.
• Pouring money into urban centers and there is no improvement ... urban centers are taking money and not returning it
• We use personal belief systems as the normal; you have to be willing to question your own belief system and you have to know the questions to ask.

What are the principles of new assumptions?

• Question authority - question the old assumptions; constantly be questions ourselves (Participant 2). Human nature causes us to want to be secure. Is consumption a good way to base an economy?
• People must be able to think about the greater good and not just the personal good.
• Idea of sacrifice.
• Personal responsibility and personal knowledge ... what makes us happy. There are too many assumptions that we can recover quickly (ex: we can win the economy and everything will be OK).
• Happiness in the future is a result of doing service for other people.
• Personal responsibility ... you can throw money at a problem or at a person, but personal responsibility must be taught.
• "The worst thing to be in a democracy is the permanent minority."
• Fostering understanding. Providing service and questioning authority.