The Placemaker's Advisor (formerly PDI Advisor)

Resources for free and low-cost economic development analysis, part 1

2011-06-07T13:50:00.001-04:00

If you need good economic numbers and analysis in a hurry, you should consider hiring a consultant or using fee-based services. (Among the most commonly used are Claritas, ESRI and InfoUSA, but we do not make any endorsements.)

But if you're willing to put a little time into it, there are plenty of free and low-cost resources that can help you get a pretty good understanding of your local economy. Federal and state agencies provide a wide range of free resources. In some cases, their websites will do simple calculations.

For economic research, you want to get information on consumer behavior and characteristics and business activity. This essay, the first of two, focuses on information about consumers.

For consumer information, some of the best free sources are:

American Factfinder. This site from the US Census Bureau contains information from the 2005-2009 American Community Survey (the best source of demographic data until all of the 2010 Census numbers come out). 2010 Census numbers can be found on American Factfinder 2. Warning: The new American Factfinder is difficult to use. Please go through the tutorial before using it.
The ACS' community profiles provide interesting overviews of incomes, occupation, and industry data, as well as lesser-known data (commuting time, language spoken at home, etc.)
The Consumer Expenditure Survey can help you estimate what people in your study area are likely to spend on various items. The CES, from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a survey of spending patterns on a wide variety of things, from mortgages to shoes. Unfortunately, the spending categories are not detailed. You wouldn't know, for example, how much individuals spent on movie tickets. But you could find out how much they spend on "fees and admissions" and develop some ideas from that.
One interesting feature of CES is that it has tables showing spending patterns by geographic region, education, race, and other demographic characteristics.
The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis also has information on consumer spending. While in some ways more comprehensive than what is found in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, BEA's free analysis is done at a national level.
One of the more unusual studies of consumers is the Multicultural Economy series from the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth. This annual study explores buying power -- i.e. disposable income -- for ethnic groups in the United States and every state. You have to pay for the full, current report, but as of 2011, the executive summary of the previous report was available free.
Psychographics is more valuable than demographics, which is why research companies can charge good money for it. Psychographics combines information about demographics (age, race, income) with information on spending habits (based on such things as magazine subscriptions). While you can't get a full psychographic report, you can get a little information from the "My Best Segments" pages from Claritas, a fee-based provider. The online form tells you the five top psychographic clusters in a particular zip code.

You can use these numbers from these sources to show how much income or expected spending there might be in your area. It won't show you the whole economic picture (although, to be fair, no amount of research will), but it can give you a head start. And the money you save on getting consumer information you can use to get more out of fee-based services or economic development consultants.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Director, Professional Development Institute

If you know of any additional free resources for consumer information, please feel free to share that information with us. We'll update this essay as appropriate.

How to get smarter about the things you know

2011-05-23T16:07:00.000-04:00

How smart are you about the things you know explores different levels of expertise -- from being aware of a topic to understanding the topic intimately. This, the second part of the essay, focuses on strategies you and your organization can take to increase your expertise.

(If you didn't already, please read the first part of this essay. Otherwise, much of what follows won't be as strong.)

Cost-effective ways to better knowledge:

Webinars, videos, short seminars, traditional conference sessions (that is, a moderated panel of speakers), newspaper or magazine articles, blogs, community discussion boards.
In-house strategies: Invite speakers to share their knowledge with your group, or invite staff to conduct presentations on their own areas of expertise.

Cost-effective ways to better comprehension:

Workshops of a half-day to a day, longer seminars that focus on single set of topics, books, self-paced courses and video tutorials.
In-house strategies: Create or maintain a library in your office, reward staff for becoming "resident experts" on various topics.

Cost-effective ways to better application:

Training programs that indicate what skills are to be learned and provide opportunities for participants to learn from someone who can evaluate their work. (Because some people apply the word 'training' to any kind of learning, it is important to know what skills will be taught and how. Also, opportunities for staff to practice their skills under real or realistic conditions. (Any skill can be forgotten if it's not practiced.)
In-house strategies: Provide staff time to train their colleagues. Reward efforts made by staff to seek in-house training.

Cost-effective ways to better analysis:

Deep learning courses, such as college or graduate courses (or BOCEP Deep Learning courses), or executive learning programs; speaking at conferences or leading workshops; organizational or group retreats focused on problem-solving.
In-house strategies: Reserve time at staff meetings for collaborative problem-solving and peer coaching on difficult client matters.

Cost-effective ways to better synthesis:

Studio courses, volunteer projects, or any other kind of learning experiences that challenge participants to create -- not just find -- solutions to problems.
In-house strategies: Synthesis is what happens when participants "learn while doing." For this to be a good learning experience, directors and managers must be open to allowing participants to make mistakes. If that doesn't happen, participants will simply apply what they already know, but are unlikely to integrate new information.

Cost-effective ways to better evaluation:

Sabbaticals, extended programs such as degree or certificate programs, extended retreats.
In-house strategies: The best way to get to this highest level of expertise is to create an environment that encourages a large amount of reflection. Unfortunately, this is almost impossible in organizations that focus on getting the most productivity from staff at the lowest cost.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Director, Professional Development Institute

How smart are you about the things you know?

2011-05-06T11:10:00.007-04:00

There’s a big gap between knowing a little bit about a subject and being such an expert on it that you can evaluate it and create new solutions.

Overestimating how much you know can be embarrassing (you can sound foolish next to an expert), expensive (if you take on an assignment that you’re not qualified for), and – if you’re a AICP urban planner, unethical. (See B12 of the AICP ethics code.)

Underestimating how much you know can be costly (you may miss out on opportunities because of your lack of confidence) or cause you to waste your time trying to re-learn what you already know. (How many times do you need to really need to go over the fundamentals of smart growth?)

If you’re an executive or director, not knowing what it is your employees know, or don’t, can cause significant risks and costs to your organization.

How do you know what it is you don’t know? Here are some tips.

First, some learning theory. (Don’t worry, it will be short.) According to Bloom’s Taxonomy ofEducational Objectives, there are six levels of knowing:

Knowledge – the ability to recognize a subject and its parts. If the subject is urban design, someone with knowledge is aware that urban design has an impact on the quality of places and that it involves streets, public spaces, trees, etc.
Comprehension – knowing the concepts and details of a subject well enough to explain it to someone else.
Application – the ability to apply your comprehension to a problem. Example: Deciding what type of tree to put on a truck corridor.
Analysis – the ability to examine or deconstruct a subject to make inferences or generalizations. In other words, knowing not just what works, but why.
Synthesis – the ability to combine information in different ways to solve problems. If you apply a particular solution to a problem simply because you have seen it done somewhere else, you are Applying. To come up with new or innovative solutions, you need to Synthesize different types of information and adapt it to the problem.
Evaluation – the ability to make critical judgments based on your analysis of the subject and your awareness of other information relevant to the subject. Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was an evaluation of the way planners thought about placemaking. She analyzed activity in spaces that were affected by urban design programs, as well as activity in unprogrammed areas, the mindsets of placemakers she had interviewed or observed, and synthesized various pieces of information to challenge us with a new way of looking at how we do our job. Anybody can have opinions; it takes a lot of thinking to evaluate.

Education and organizational development theorists have produced a lot of useful information about how to apply Bloom’s Taxonomy. There are a number of good free resources available on the Internet. To save you time, here are a few questions you can ask to get a good sense of how much you know about a subject.

If you can confidently say yes to these questions, you probably have achieved the learning level.

Knowledge: Have you heard of it? Can you identify and recall the components of the subject? If the subject is an activity, can you identify and recall the sequence of steps used to achieve the objective? Have you been able to discuss a subject without someone who is equally or more knowledgeable making valid criticisms of your assumptions?
Comprehension: If you were presented as an expert on a subject and asked, under threat of embarrassment, to explain a subject, could you do it? Can you illustrate the concept, through drawing or metaphor? Would you feel comfortable generalizing, based on what you believe you know? Have you done this successfully?
Application: Do you know what tools or inputs are used to solve a typical problem associated with the subject? Have you applied your knowledge successfully?
Analysis: Could you write a report that draws general conclusions about the subject, based on your examination of the evidence. In other words, could you write a report that could be used by someone else to address another problem in that subject? Can you explain why strategies that have worked with another problem have not, or would not, work with the problem at hand? Have you done this successfully?
Synthesis: Can you adapt tools and strategies to create new solutions to distinct problems? Have you connected knowledge you gained from outside a subject area to successfully address a problem in that subject?
Evaluation: If you were given a choice among several solutions to a problem, could you rank them in terms of effectiveness? Could you anticipate the negative consequences of each solution? Can you explain your evaluation so that someone with only a little knowledge of the subject can understand?

In the next essay on this subject, you will be able to identify the learning solutions that best meet your needs.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Leonardo Vazquez is the Director of the Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute, which provide training, coaching and other services to help build leaders for planning and public affairs in the 21st century.

To learn more, please visit the Professional Development Institute.

Help your unhappy employees go

2011-04-21T09:53:00.000-04:00

In the knowledge economy, the engine and energy of production are in the minds and hearts of employees. People who have up-to-date knowledge and skills can do more and better; those who are happier in their jobs tend to do more and better. If your job is to help other people be more productive, efficient or effective, it's your responsibility to help employees get smarter and be happier in their jobs.

Though there are plenty of low-cost strategies for educating and motivating employees, there is only so much a manager can do. If there are major problems that can't be addressed in an acceptable time frame, then it may be better for the manager to help the employee find another opportunity where they can succeed. A happy alum replaced by a productive worker can help your organization more than an unsatisfied, unproductive worker.

Some companies in the Silicon Valley are even making the opportunity to leave a fringe benefit of joining a firm. As The New York Times reported in "Silicon Valley Hiring Perks: Meals, iPads and Cubicle for Spot" some high-tech firms are offering employees classes on starting their own businesses.

Why does that make sense? Because entrepreneurs tend to want the freedom to control their time and create their own schedules. No matter how flat or progressive a company is, employees have to report to supervisors. The bigger the organization, the more likely there are to be policies and regulations that inhibit freedom.

What should managers do, and when should they decide it is time to help employees find new opportunities?

First, managers and organizations have to try.

An organization that does not provide reasonable opportunities for employees to update their knowledge and skill sets is one that, frankly, does not value their employees enough. There are plenty of low-cost ways to train and develop people -- but there is always at least a cost of time. A consulting firm whose managers say "You can go to free seminars and webinars, but you still have to have the same amount of billable hours" is not making any reasonable effort to develop employees.

And if an organization says it can't afford to train and develop people, it should not be buying new furniture or giving nice perks for its executives. Smart employees know that organizations reveal what they value by what they spend. If you spend more money on where you park your assets than on the people who made the spending possible, expect there to be widespread unhappiness.

Harder for many managers is dealing with employees' emotional states. It's easy to identify skill sets and places where employees can get them. But sometimes employees themselves aren't sure why they're unhappy, or what motivates them. Also, if the employees' issues are due to problems outside the office, managers can be rightfully concerned about going into areas of psychological counseling that they are not equipped to handle. (If your organization has a human resources department, trained professionals there should deal with employee emotional issues. If there is no HR department, the executives and directors of the firm may have to learn enough to diagnose problems they can't handle themselves. Organizations without HR departments should be aware of human resources consultants.)

You can start by simply asking employees what they like, or don't like, about their job and the organization. But be aware that if an employee does not trust you, or you are part of the "don't like" column, the employee is not going to be candid. If you don't already have a good relationship with an employee, it is better to let someone else ask the questions.

It's useful to know what employees value most. One way is to ask them, after they complete their lists of likes and dislikes, to identify, in order, what they would be willing to give up if they had to, and what they would be willing to get rid of if they could.

Another tool for understanding what motivates employees is Career Anchors. It is a tool developed by management guru Edgar Schein that helps those who use it better understand what they want in their careers. People who value independence above other things will probably be unhappy in rule-bound bureaucratic organizations. People who value stability more might find it too stressful to work for a small, tight-budget nonprofit.

There may be other tools that your human resources colleague or consultant might recommend as a better fit for your situation.

When you have a better understanding of what most motivates employees, determine what you can change, and what you can't. If what can't change in a reasonable period of time is important to the employee, then it is time to help the employee find new opportunities.

Having the talk with the employee is difficult. The employee might think that he or she is going to get fired, and you are providing a subtle form of advance notice. If that is not the case, make it clear. If it is the case, let the employee know what he or she can do, if anything, to change the decision.

Then through your contacts, job boards, or other ways you're comfortable with, help the employee find a new opportunity in an organization that can help yours. If the employee goes to a competing organization, the employee's new supervisors would look down on that person helping you in the future.

Encourage the employee to stay in touch. Or better yet, create or expand an organizational network to include alumni. Some large law firms, like colleges, have their own alumni organizations. These help maintain good relationships and generate good leads.

There are three ways that people in knowledge-based industries leave their jobs:

They lose their motivation, which reduces the energy they put into the job and makes them less creative, productive and committed to resolving problems.
They lose their interest, which leads to distractions and mistakes.
They spend more time away from work, either voluntarily (coming in late, overly long lunches) or otherwise (when the stress causes illness or injury, increasing the number of sick days used)

If unhappy employees are going to leave, help them go in ways that benefit everyone.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP, is the Director of the Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute at Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. The institutes offer continuing education courses in leadership and management. Learn more about the Professional Development Institute, The Leading Institute and upcoming courses.

Buchanan v. Warley reveals the double-edged sword of zoning

2011-04-11T12:55:00.001-04:00

On April 10, 1916, a case began in the U.S. Supreme Court that set some important limits to zoning regulations. The case, Buchanan v. Warley made it clear that local governments could not engage in racial zoning -- that is, regulating land uses based solely on the race of the property owners.

If you never heard of the case, don't be surprised. The histories of urban planning we learn in school often tell an an untarnished story of early planners bringing order to the chaos of the early 20th century. Buchanan v. Warley reminds us that while land use regulations were doing good in some cities, they were also being used to deny African-Americans in the south (and Chinese-Americans in California) full and fair rights and opportunities.

In the early 1900s, cities across the United States were using land use regulations to, among other things, prevent buildings from being so big and bulky that their residents and neighbors could not get good air circulation and light and to protect residential areas from smelly, noisy factories. At the same time, cities like Baltimore, Louisville and other places in the south created land use regulations to keep African-Americans isolated and away from White people.

In Louisville, Kentucky, where the Buchanan v. Warley story starts, the city created an ordinance that prevented African-Americans from moving into neighborhoods that were majority White, and vice-versa. The reason for this ordinance, Louisville's representatives told the Court, was to prevent the kinds of "civil disturbance" that would arise if White and Black residents were allowed to live in the same neighborhoods.

(Notice the reliance on 'protecting order' -- which is the basis for a lot of zoning regulations then and now.)

Charles Buchanan, who was White, sold a house to William Warley, an African-American. Because most of the people on the block were White, Warley could not legally occupy the house. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that while Louisville had a right to enact regulations to protect public order and provide for the general welfare, the city's ordinance violated the 14th Amendment rights to equal protection of individuals under the law.

Of course, that didn't stop cities throughout the United States from using planning -- or planners -- to promote segregation. In fact, according to historian Christopher Silver in The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities, "After 1917, cities preferred to engage professional planners to prepare racial zoning plans and to marshal the entire planning process to create the completely separate Black community." He adds that when regulations couldn't enforce segregation, "data supplied by planners made it possible to monitor and influence land use trends based on social criteria." Pioneering planners such as Robert Whitten, Harland Bartholomew, and Morris Knowles (who prepared the groundbreaking historic preservation plan for Charleston, South Carolina) all created plans for their clients that promoted and enforced apartheid, Silver says. Some of these planners defended their actions by arguing that keeping races in separate areas of a city would help everyone because single-race neighborhoods provided social stability.

Today, planners are more aware and sensitive to issues of social and economic justice. But Buchanan v. Warley reminds us that planners and the tools of planning can be used as much for denying opportunity as it can for promoting the general welfare. It's good to keep in mind when leaders of a wealthy, fast-growing municipality suddenly warm up to plans for increasing open space.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

References:
C. Silver, "The Racial Origins of Zoning in America," from Manning Thomas, June and Marsha Ritzdorf eds. Urban Planning and the African American Community: In the Shadows. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1997. Chapter available at: http://www.asu.edu/courses/aph294/total-readings/silver%20--%20racialoriginsofzoning.pdf

Author unknown, "Buchanan v. Warley," in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchanan_v._Warley

Successful bike and pedestrian planning starts with change leadership

2011-04-05T11:40:00.001-04:00

Shape minds to shape streets. Build support and alliances before building bike lanes.

Those were two of the key messages from Gil Penalosa, who works around the world to help cities become safer and more inviting for walking, bicycle riding and taking public transit. Gil, the Executive Director of 8-80 cities and an international planning consultant, gave an inspiring speech on April 4 at the Municipal Art Society in New York.


Example of a bicycle lane

While he showed the usual collection of design images and people enjoying public spaces, he said the keys to success in this work are as much psychological as they are physical.

To get to the point where you have success stories to share, places need:

A sense of urgency
Political will
Leadership at the community level
Broad partnerships

The key work of placebuilders, to begin with, is to shape how people think about open spaces, pedestrian areas, and bicycling. Gil called it "changing the chips," likening the human brain to a computer.

For example, in several of the cities he's worked in, Gil said that skeptics used similar arguments. The arguments, and usual answers are paraphrased below:

It's too hot or It's too cold. (People walk and bike where it is safe and enjoyable to do so, no matter what the weather.)
That's not our culture. (It's not until enough people do it, and then it is. In Copenhagen, Denmark, where it gets very cold, 38% of residents use bicycles.)
That may work for them, but we're different. (Individuals are unique, but people are similar around the world.)
In developing countries: Bicycling is for poor people. In developed countries: Bicycling is for louts in lycra. (where bicycle lanes are safe and useful for people of all ages and incomes, people of all ages and income bike.)
The streets in Europe were designed for pedestrians and bicyclists. (Actually, most of these pedestrian and bicycling streets were redesigned in the last 30 years.)

These concerns can be addressed and overcome, but they require placebuilders to be engaged in public conversations with a broad array of leaders (not just elected officials), as well as members of the various communities affected by the plans.

Gil did offer some physical design recommendations on activating public spaces and making streets better for pedestrians and bicycle riders. Among them:

Design first for pedestrians, then bicyclists, then cars.
Design public spaces so they are active in bad weather, as well as good.
Design spaces so they are comfortable, inviting and safe for people 8 years old to 80.
Separate pedestrians from bicyclists, and bicyclists from vehicles using dividers. Bike lanes tend to be abused by vehicle drivers, causing some bicyclists to go on sidewalks.
Turn the lights that illuminate streets towards sidewalks, so pedestrians and bicycle riders can get more light.

Gil's success in cities around the world provides a valuable lesson to those placebuilders who think that change happens first with physical design. Sustainable design starts with sustainable change leadership.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute offer several ways to planners and placebuilders to develop their leadership skills. Get our newsletter to find out about upcoming events and courses.

Image source: "Segregated cycle facilities," Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregated_cycle_facilities

Making smart choices for your career in placemaking

2011-03-28T13:51:00.000-04:00

Whatever sector you’re in, this economy is getting more and more difficult for urban planners and placemakers. Government cutbacks are eliminating public sector jobs and consulting contracts that support private sector planners. Nonprofit organizations are seeing more competition for grant money.

If you’re in a difficult situation, or are simply unhappy with your job, analyze your career – and yourself – with the same rigor you would put into a placemaking project. The work you put in to yourself can help you find the place and job that’s a good fit for you. Here’s how:

Choose your role in the placemaking field. Do you prefer to be a neutral analyst, a change agent, or an advocate for an issue or community? The 'neutral public servant' will probably be happier in a public sector position, while the change agent might find things more comfortable in a nonprofit community development organization. For more on the different roles urban planners play in society, read John Levy's Contemporary Urban Planning.
Understand the differences among sectors. Working in the public sector traditionally has been more stable than in the private sector. But public sectors can be more rule-bound and slower to change. The nonprofit sector can be a welcoming alternative, but working there can mean having less direct influence on development, and nonprofit jobs tend to be sensitive to funding trends.
Know yourself and your career anchors. What is more important to you now? Stability? Lifestyle? Service? Independence? One of the best tools to help you learn more about what you want in a job is Career Anchors Online, by management guru Edgar Schein.
Understand institutional cultures. In general, larger organizations tend to be more rule-oriented than smaller ones. Transportation planning and civil engineering organizations tend to take fewer risks than community development organizations. To learn about specific organizations, ask for informational interviews. Be aware that people may not be aware of their own institutional cultures, so you might have to ask questions about this topic in different ways.
Choose your trade-offs. What are you willing to give up to get what you want? What opportunities might you lose if you take the one in front of you? In almost any job, there are things you might not like about it. Are those important enough to give up what you do like about the job?
Build your capacity for success. Keep up with trends in the placemaking industry (At a minimum, you should subscribe to free sources of information, such as Planetizen.) If you’re oriented towards technical analysis, build your skill set in emotional intelligence, leadership and cultural competency. If you’re more of a “people person,” get smarter about technology. You don’t have to become a technician, but you should know how to use the right technology to get things done faster and better. Become more knowledgeable in the economic development and environmental science. Those are two of the things your clients or elected officials are probably thinking about. Build professional development into your career. If you wait until you need it, somebody else may get that job you want.
Remember this: Anything you can do from your desktop can be done by someone else around the world, and probably for less money

This essay was adapted from “Making Smart Choices for Your Career in Planning,” a presentation PDI Director Leonardo Vazquez gave to the Regional Student Forum at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission in March. To get a free copy of the presentation, please contact Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu. To get the presentation, you must either subscribe to the Professional Development Institute newsletter or agree to receive emails from PDI.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Sustaining the arts and creative placemaking through tax increment financing, Part 2

2011-02-28T19:04:00.000-05:00

Some philanthropists like to have their names attached to theaters or museum galleries. But as far as we know, none of them try to get their names put on an office copier or an accounting position.

One of the things that makes sustaining the arts so difficult is that it is harder to get funding for the back office operations -- that is, general operating support -- than for specific projects. As a result, organizations that should be spending more time building their organizational infrastructure are instead doing the things that bring them attention from funders.

That's why the arts can benefit from a revenue stream that doesn't rely on a private funder's particular interest. In the previous essay on this topic, I talked about how Allegheny County and the state of Colorado generated hundreds of millions of dollars for arts through a sales tax initiative. More interestingly, Allegheny County is able to increase the amount going to the arts because of this revenue model.

I argued that states could develop a funding pool without raising sales taxes. What states or districts can do is to reserve a portion of taxes above a base for the arts. (This is a model known as tax increment financing [TIF], which is used in most of the country to support big development projects.) This money can help support creative placemaking activities that not only benefit the arts, but also make communities more attractive for cultural tourism and businesses that rely on highly educated workers. As the arts improve the quality of place, attracting more shoppers and workers, people spend more money, and more support goes to the arts, and the cycle continues.

This fund can help to support the kinds of activities that are less likely to be supported by private foundations and corporations, including:

Organizational development and administrative activities that help arts organizations become more effective.
Place marketing efforts and collaboratives, such as arts councils. While individual organizations may want to support local arts councils and efforts to market their communities, they need to support themselves first. Also, the current funding environment (some win grants, others lose) furthers competition that may make it harder for some organizations to work together.
Arts events and festivals. Some of the larger arts events generate enormous returns on investments to their communities. The WaterFire event in Providence, Rhode Island, attracts about 1 million visitors and $25 million in private spending per year, according to Tom Borrup in The Creative Community Builders Handbook. But most small festivals need to build their audiences over time to have these kinds of numbers. The TIF can invest in these events and festivals as they build their audiences.
Public art and street art activities. These can help attract people to commercial areas or encourage shoppers there now to stay longer (which can generate more consumer spending.)
Interorganizational mergers and partnerships. There are a number of people -- funders and even arts advocates -- who say there are too many distinct arts organizations. The TIF can provide incentives for organizations to engage in long-term partnerships or even merge.
Arts activities in underserved communities. Some places -- Manhattan in New York City; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Asheville, North Carolina -- will always get more funding because funders spend more time in these places. The TIF could be a catalyst for arts-based economic and community development in neighborhoods and towns without large and influential arts organizations or strong advocates.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Sustaining the arts and creative placemaking through tax increment financing, Part 1

2011-02-22T19:00:00.002-05:00

It seems like everybody involved in creative placemaking is talking about funding cuts to the arts. Well, maybe not everybody.

In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, (which includes the city of Pittsburgh), the county's Regional Allocation District is planning to increase its allocation to arts and cultural activities by 2%. This is thanks to a creative way of funding the arts -- through a portion of sales tax revenue. The District gets revenues from half of a 1% sales and use tax in the county, and distributes it to arts, cultural and entertainment facilities and parks throughout the county. Though the amount of the tax may seem insignificant to a shopper, it has translated to more than $2.3 billion since 1995. In fiscal 2011, the Regional Allocation District Board is expecting to give $81.1 million.

Colorado does something similar with its Scientific and Cultural Facilities District in the Denver metropolitan area. This fund -- based on a tenth of a percent of sales tax -- distributes about $40 million per year to around 300 organizations in seven counties.

Sales taxes are a great way to support the arts and creative placemaking. Governments don't even have to create new taxes to make this funding system work. Through a process known as tax increment financing, arts and cultural organizations can get a portion of any sales taxes above a certain baseline.

Here's how it works. Let's say in 2011, ABC County collects $100 million in sales taxes. That $100 million is the base. In 2012, because of an improving economy, ABC County collects $110 million in sales taxes. That additional $10 million goes to support arts and cultural activities. A government agency wouldn't have to wait years for the money to pile up. It could float a bond that could be paid for by increased sales tax revenues.

Most states have tax increment financing programs (TIFs). But, like in New Jersey -- where it is called a Revenue Allocation District -- TIFs usually go to support big development projects. So in New Jersey, a TIF could help build a big performing arts center, but provide no funding to support its operations. This is a big problem -- not just for arts organizations that struggle to keep the lights on, but also for the municipalities and leaders who sometimes use a lot of political capital to get these big projects built.

And of course, most arts activities happen outside of big theaters and cultural centers. Some, like public art and street art, generate no or little money.

New Jersey uses a form of tax financing. A portion of the tax that guests of hotels and motels pay goes to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, which distributes revenues to arts organizations. (Arts Build Communities is one of many grantees supported by this fund.)

Why should the arts be singled out for special treatment with a portion of sales tax? Because arts and cultural activities are proven generators of economic activity. According to several economic impact reports, the arts bring people to downtowns and other places, where they will spend $8, $10 or $20 per person on top of the ticket prices. As you can imagine, this is good for nearby restaurants and stores (especially the smaller businesses that have little money for marketing.) And it's also good for high-tech and information industries, such as pharmaceuticals. They want to attract the best educated and most creative people to come up with the next product to generate billions of dollars. And what do creative people like? To be in places and with other people who are creative.

It's a virtuous circle: more arts activities and artists tend to generate more money for restaurants and stores. And all of these provide a windfall benefit to companies that want to attract educated and talented employees.

That's why a hotel/motel tax is a good start, but not enough. A portion of sales taxes from businesses that benefit from arts and cultural activities could be used to support the arts and creative placemaking.

How the money is distributed, and for what purposes, determines whether the sales taxes generate a good return on the investment. That's the subject for the next part of this essay...

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

To learn more:
About the Allegheny Regional Allocation District
About the Scientific & Cultural Facilities District
About the New Jersey State Council on the Arts

Arts Build Communities and the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offer several courses on creative placemaking, including economic development through the arts, programming cultural uses, and cultural heritage tourism planning. Learn more about our upcoming courses.

Do you have the right personality to market through social networking?

2011-02-03T14:06:00.001-05:00

In today's economy, being smart is not enough to get you interviews, contracts and opportunities. A lot of your competitors know many of the same things -- or more -- than you do. To stand out, you have to show that you bring a distinct quality that your clients value.

Social networking can help.

Sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn make it easy to create a place on the Internet for yourself or your organization. The hardest, and most important parts of this work are in how you establish yourself online.

Determine a persona for your site. What makes you distinct, and why would someone want to connect to you? You may want to do some competitive analysis before you start. For example, if you're smart about an unusual but valuable topic such as transfer of development rights, see if anyone else is actively writing about it in a blog or a social networking site. If they are, how could you write about it differently? (Maybe you could take a different approach to the same, or you could write from a different angle. If the other writer is casual, you could be more academic, or vice-versa)

Give that persona a personality. How do you want your readers to think of you? As the smartest person in the world on a subject? As someone who just tells it "like it is?" As edgy and not afraid to be controversial? Think about who you want to be your clients, and what kind of voice they would respond to.

If the site is for a division or organization, talk with the other members of the organization about what the shared voice of the group should be. This will make it easier for different members of the organization to contribute to the site.

Communicate early and often. Figure out things to talk about to stay on the radar screen of your readers. Don't have anything to talk about this week? Check out a news site, such as Planetizen, and offer your thoughts on what you read. If the topic is interesting enough to talk about it with a colleague, it's probably interesting enough to put on the Internet. Writing can be a lot of work, so if you're not used to writing often, try posting once a month. Then do more as your schedule allows.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Tips for arguing respectfully and productively

2011-01-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

Tips for civil disagreement

It’s unfortunate that it takes a tragedy to get so many people in the United States talking about the kind of language we use in policy and strategy arguments. Here are some tips that can help professionals engage in arguments that are more likely to be both civil and productive.

• Focus on the topic, not the person. Personal attacks rarely get the other person to change their views or behaviors. More often, they get met with other personal attacks or angry silence – neither of which helps.

• Know that the argument may be about more than the thing being argued. In a community that has been abused or ignored by previous developers, a community’s opposition to a proposed land use might be more about anger with developers than with the proposal. If an argument is generating more emotion than would seem reasonable, there’s probably more there that you need to explore.

• Do not assume you know the person’s motivation. When someone makes a personal attack, it is sometimes because that person thinks he or she knows what lies behind the other person’s objections.

• Seek to understand before seeking to be understood. Make sure you’re hearing the other person correctly. (One way is to put the person’s comments in your own language and saying something like “did I get that right?”) If you’re getting it right, but the other person isn’t, ask the person if you could clarify your remarks. (Don’t say anything like “Did you understand what I just said.” That can sound patronizing.)

• Understand the other person's logic and the reasons for their emotions. Too many professionals think that others reject their ideas because they don't understand them. In other words, if the professional could "teach" opponents about a strategy, the opponents would agree with the planner. The problem is sometimes the professional's education -- he or she hasn't learned enough about their audience's perspectives and mindsets. Most reasonable people make rational decisions according to their own views of the world.

• Use a zipper strategy – find the areas of agreement and build up from there. In most communities and organizations, people want many of the same things. Talking about what they agree on can help opponents think of themselves more as collaborators than enemies, and build creative solutions that neither group thought of before.

• Acknowledge your areas of newfound agreement. You can do this formally in contracts, or informally through reminders in future conversations.

• Be confident, courageous and creative. There are times when avoiding an argument might be a good short-term strategy. But avoidance over time usually leads to frustration, and eventually more problems. Have the courage to both present your views and be willing to consider those of the other person. Be creative enough to collaborate with your opponent and see solutions that neither of you initially imagined.

• Give, and request to get, respect for your opponent's views. If you refuse to acknowledge another's views, you can not get to a point where you can understand the person. (Hearing enough just to beat down an argument doesn't count.) It's also important that you speak from a position of strength by asking others to understand your views.

All of the above assume that the participants are willing to listen to one another and are, for the most part, honest. Sometimes this isn’t the case. In those circumstances – and you should test your understandings to know if you’re in those circumstances – you might need to take more aggressive (but not violent) approaches. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate Monday, knew there were times when a loud demonstration worked better than a quiet conversation.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Catalytic leaders need to be seen to be heard

2011-01-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

Leaders don't need to stand on soapboxes, ride white horses, or be at the front of the line to be effective. Good leaders use the quiet conversation and strategic questions as much, or even more than, the "big speech." But one thing all leaders need is to be present. Or more specifically, to be visible to their audiences. Technology makes it easier for even the busiest people to be more visible leaders.

Leaders succeed when they convince others about the value of a goal and persuade them to act on those beliefs. The most successful leaders inspire and motivate audiences to commit their time and resources to a mission. But you have to practice what you preach. If you're not seen as being committed and willing to put in the same time and energy that you ask of others, you will lose credibility quickly.

You may have big ideas, but they have to hear them from you. You may be working hard on a project, but they have to see you working hard. If you're seen as invisible or out of touch, audiences lose their motivation quickly.

Audiences also get distracted easily. A lot of things call for the attention of our audiences. The busier your audiences are, the less space they have on their internal radar screens. The leader who pops up a few times a year to give a motivational speech probably shouldn't even bother.

For most of his career, Edward Blakely has been one of the busiest urban planners in the United States. He is one of the leading thinkers on local economic development, an active land developer, and has been an advisor to presidents of the United States and big city mayors. Yet, when he was Dean of a graduate school at The New School, he made time to attend the staff birthday and going away parties. His being at these events was a symbolic gesture to demonstrate that Ed cared about the staff. In universities, where staff are often seen as second-class citizens, this is important.

Being more visible is especially important when you're building or revitalizing a community around a mission. According to the Tuckman Theory of Group Development, people in the beginning look to a strong central leader for direction and guidance. This is the time when the leader needs to be most visible. If it means holding monthly meetings where the leader is sitting with one or two people, so be it. Over time, people are more likely to see the visibility as a sign of commitment and consistency, and will be more likely to be involved (if the mission is right for them.)

What are the best ways to become more visible?

Sometimes you need to hold more meetings. We're told that "everybody hates meetings." But what most people hate are the meetings that are seen as time-wasters. A meeting to present what someone can read in a report is a time-waster. A "team building" exercise for a group that is working well together is a time waster. The more people can get what they want out of a meeting, the more they will enjoy it. What do people want? Depending on the person or the circumstance, it could be getting solutions to problems, the chance to be heard, knowledge on something that will affect their jobs or lives, or opportunities to build connections with other busy people. If you're trying to motivate staff, have meetings where more time is spent on brainstorming than reporting. If you're trying to motivate volunteers, have guest speakers or discussion topics in the same meetings where you talk about projects.
Also hold events. Even in the most casual places, meetings often have formalities and protocols that can make some people uncomfortable. One way to get audiences to connect with one another -- a key to building social action -- is to hold events that are fun and relaxed. Turn one of the weekly breakfast meetings into an afternoon coffee hour.
Connect to your audiences through email at least once a month. Free group software and commercial email marketing providers (PDI uses Constant Contact) make it easier for you to stay connected with your audiences. You don't need to be inspiring every time. You can write about something in the news, and how it connects to your mission. You can give kudos to someone who has gone above and beyond. As long as what you write connects to the mission and values of your group, feel free to be creative.
Try social networking. Blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn aren't just for narcissists and pundits. They are a great way for people who are separated by time and distance to connect to one another. When it is impractical for community members to be together in person often, social networking sites can help to hold a community together.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Would you like to build your leadership skills? Become a Leading from the Middle Fellow. Learn more here.

Useful measures for culturally competent planning

2010-12-21T13:25:00.000-05:00

As with transportation planning or economic development, you need to have good information to succeed in culturally competent planning. (If you’re not familiar with the concept, please read about it here first.)

Here are some of the key pieces of data that you should get for culturally competent planning. Some of them, such as data from the American Community Survey, Census and local school districts, you can get before you start a project. Other data you will have to find from observation. Some of the deepest level data you won’t know until you’re well into the project.

So unlike in transportation planning, in which you can predict confidently the amount of time you need for information gathering, your budget and scope for information gathering should be flexible.

Data you can and should get before a project starts

Most planners get surface-level data about diversity – ethnicity, income, age, etc. To be more culturally competent, you need to drill down in the American Community Survey (ACS) and Census (both found through American FactFinder). Some of the data to look for include:

*Ancestry – When people report their first or second ancestry, they are describing what cultures they feel connected to. Respondents have the option of saying their ancestry is “American.” But in states like New Jersey, more than 90% of residents identify themselves of being of other ancestries. This information is most helpful in culturally-based economic development. If a community has a larger percentage of a particular ethnicity than neighboring communities, that community has an asset that can help distinguish itself from its neighbors.

*Percentage foreign-born – This is an important set of data for both community and economic development.

*Language use and proficiency with English -- One of the clearest ways to get a sense of the diversity in a community is to see the number of people who speak a language other than English at home and those who report not speaking English well. ACS data also tell you what families of languages are spoken and by how many people. When the terms “White” and “African-American” are used, the implication is that these are native-born Americans. Language use data can help you learn how many people are culturally Eastern European or Haitian.

*Moved from – Some diverse communities are “ports-of-entry” – places where new immigrants go when they come to the United States. Others are “striver or stepstone communities” – places where immigrants and others move to when they are moving up – or down – in their finances. For small communities and neighborhoods, you will probably need to interview social service and religious entities to learn whether the place is a striver or a stepstone.

Depending on the size of the area you’re planning for, you can get more detailed tables from the census that can tell you, for example, if one ethnic population in the town is predominantly wealthy while another is predominantly poor. (You can probably tell this through observations, but numbers help make the story stronger.)

*Ethnic population densities – How integrated is the community you’re planning for? Check out data at the census tract level. Running correlation or chi-square analysis can help you see to what extent race, ethnicity and income levels are connected.

*Income by race and Hispanic origin – There are people who, when they hear the term “African-American” or “Latino,” think “low-income” and about the issues associated with poverty. Wealth among African-Americans and Latinos is growing – in some places faster than wealth among Whites. Showing the numbers can help in changing perceptions.

*Ethnicities of children in the school system and languages spoken by schoolchildren – In many cases, local schools are where you first see demographic changes in a community. Because public schools are professionally and morally obligated to serve children well, and work in hierarchical systems that value data, you can usually find good statistical information in the schools.

Data you can get by observation

*Retail/business mix in older and less-regulated commercial areas -- One of the surest signs that a particular ethnic or cultural group is growing in an area is the presence of several new businesses catering to that population. (A single business is not a good indicator, unless it is large – such as an international supermarket.)

*Cultural icons and architecture -- People tend to express their cultural identity through food, traditions, art and architecture. A drive or walk through a neighborhood can help you spot touchstones of cultural identity, such as azulejos in Portuguese-American areas and Virgin of Guadelupe statues in Mexican-American neighborhoods.

Data you can get while immersed in the project

*Representation at public meetings -- How well does the makeup of the people who attend the meetings reflect the makeup of the community? (Spoiler alert – it probably doesn’t. Middle and upper-middle income Non-Hispanic Whites and African-Americans are likely to be overrepresented in meetings, except in communities with a history of collaborative planning.) The less representative the meetings are, the more work you should put into other forms of public outreach, such as focus groups and community events.

*Cultural patterns – Patterns of behavior and polarization happen over time in response to social, political and economic conditions and tend to be maintained by people who benefit from these patterns. Finding out why things are the way they are, and why they haven’t changed, often requires asking some difficult and deep questions. You will need to establish a good deal of trust with your clients and audiences to get candid and useful answers.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

To learn how to become a more culturally competent placebuilder, become a Leading from the Middle Fellow.

Planning for the growing wealth of diversity in the United States

2010-12-14T12:15:00.004-05:00

As the United States gets more diverse, ethnic and racial minorities are controlling more wealth. That has some significant implications for placebuilding in the 21^st century.

A multicultural shopping district along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York. (Image found through Creative Commons search. Photo credit: Vidiot)

According to The Multicultural Economy 2010 by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, ethnic and racial minorities together hold about $2.6 trillion in buying power, or 23% of the $11.1 trillion in buying power in the United States. Buying power in “multicultural economy,” as the report calls it, is growing rapidly. In 2000, the report estimated, African-Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and people of mixed races held about 19.7% of the nation’s buying power. The group with the biggest rise in buying power is Latinos. In real dollars, the buying power of Latinos rose from $633 billion in 2000 to $1 trillion in 2010.

These trends could have a significant impact in how placebuilders approach such issues as place-based economic development, cultural heritage tourism, housing and circulation planning, and community building. In addition to creating new opportunities, the rise of the multicultural economy can also challenge placebuilders to change their practices.

For example: Ethnically-based economic development strategies can help revitalize commercial districts that are seeing more empty spaces as more people shop online. Attracting businesses that cater to members of a large or growing ethnic group in the area can create a more loyal shopping base. Eventually, as with so many Little Italys or Chinatowns, successful business districts can attract cultural visitors, whose wealth would attract more businesses.

Sounds easy? It’s not. Small, independent businesses tend to be more fragile than established chains and franchises. Expect to get tense responses from businesses and residents from other communities, especially those that are losing political or economic power in the community. And the new ethnic communities will want their values and aesthetics represented. The design guidelines meant to make the town square look like a Norman Rockwell painting may need to be revisited – or scrapped.

So if you’re a placebuilder in this community, you might be doing more business assistance than pro formas, more conflict management than market analysis, and rethinking the ideas about prescriptive urban design.

Placebuilders should also work to avoid ethnic pride becoming ethnic exclusion. With a few exceptions, most ethnic commercial districts probably would not prosper in the long-term if they are perceived to be hostile to outsiders. Many businesses rely on at least some revenue coming from outside of the area. Those that don’t benefit from having neighbors that get good foot traffic. From a community development perspective, these ethnic districts will work better if they work more as gateways among cultures than as barriers.

In most parts of the country, African-Americans and Latinos tend to have lower median household incomes than Non-Hispanic Whites and Asian-Americans. So a strategy to build on African-American or Latino wealth could mean increasing housing densities and managing greater demands on roads and public transportation.

While there are a number of successful African-American and Latino commercial districts geared to working-class communities, the growing number of high-earning minority households creates opportunities to build more upscale ethnic districts. There are restaurants, boutiques and other businesses that serve these markets, and could help anchor these districts.

Another strong anchor is a set of public art, stores, restaurants and services (such as a music school) that is rooted in the arts and culture of the communities being celebrated.

But here again there are challenges. The strategy will probably work best in areas with large ethnic or cultural populations with struggling commercial areas. But it would likely involve gentrification of some streets, which could make placebuilders vulnerable to charges of elitism.

But there’s a good community building argument for having some wealthy ethnic districts. What message do low-income African-Americans, Latinos or other ethnic minorities get when they see wealth exclusively in what they would call “White” neighborhoods? Does this message help build the confidence and pride that lead residents to want to strengthen their neighborhoods? Or does the message encourage those most capable to leave – and take their financial, social and creative capital with them?

New Jersey is one of several states that are getting both wealthier and more diverse – and much of the growing wealth is due to diversity. According to the Selig Center, total buying power (in real dollars) grew 19% between 2000 and 2010. Only 7% of that was due to the growing wealth of non-Hispanic Whites. Ethnic minorities in 2010 have about 27% of the state’s $399 billion in buying power.

At least 32 of the state’s 566 municipalities are potential ethnic or multi-cultural power centers. These communities are either “majority-minority” or are have no predominant ethnic group. With the exception of major urban centers like Newark, Jersey City or Camden, many of these municipalities are caught in the middle between large centers that have more resources and get more attention from decisionmakers and suburban areas that have more wealth. These power centers can benefit from ethnic-oriented economic and community development that could attract attention and dollars.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The troubles with city planning? For one: long plans

2010-12-05T14:37:00.000-05:00

In The Trouble with City Planning, former New Orleans planning director Kristina Ford challenges planners to rethink their normal practices by highlighting the failures of city planning there after Hurricane Katrina. One of the biggest problems she sees: plans are unclear and confusing to the people who are supposed to use them.

The kind of complex, richly- detailed plans that would get an A in a studio course are the kinds routinely ignored by decision makers and communities we try to influence. The #1 job of a plan is to influence how decision makers act. If it is not used, it is by definition useless.

Many plans are just too long, take too long to speak to the readers needs, and have too many details in their text. This makes them a chore for elected officials, developers and community decision-makers. Plans should provide focus and direction. When they say too much, or try to make everyone happy, they fail. Consider the 2004 Master Plan for Maplewood Township, New Jersey. It recommends 17 “key objectives” which should be given “equal weight.” Some of them, such as providing affordable housing to young families and promoting housing that would not have an impact on the school system, are practically impossible to achieve at the same time. Some objectives are specific – such as promoting the town’s cultural center – while others are just vague aspirations – such as “preserve and enhance the general sense of community.” Oh, and you don’t even get to these goals until page 15.

Plans that proved to be more effective was the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program (CCRP) Plans for the South Bronx in the early 1990s. These neighborhood plans helped to generate millions of dollars in new investment and accelerate slow-going revitalization efforts. Today, the South Bronx is facing an issue that was too many unthinkable 20 years ago – gentrification.

By the way, the CCRP plans were written by the same firm that did the Maplewood Master Plan. I couldn't find an publicly-available online copy of the CCRP plans, but you can read about the plans' impacts.

CCRP lasted two years and each of the plans were short – around 30 to 40 pages. They were written in plain English, and had a few simple statistics and intentionally cartoonish diagrams. If they were submitted for a planning studio course today, they probably would have gotten a failing grade. But they were read and used by the community development corporations in those neighborhoods. (I worked for one of them). The CCRP plans provided clear guidelines for community leaders and developers to follow.

To be fair, it was the process, rather than the documents themselves, that generated enthusiasm among decision-makers. But that’s true of every planning process. What was different about the CCRP plans is that they provided clear guidance to leaders – and could more easily be shared with potential partners, funders and investors.

Another effective plan, by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, helped to further the city’s growth as an arts and cultural heritage tourism destination. Extending the Vision for South Broad Street branded this place as an “avenue of the arts.” Today, South Broad is developing into a district for high-end performing and visual arts.

The plan, which by design looks and reads more like a coffee-table book than a policy document, was quietly criticized by some professionals – especially engineers – as not being serious enough. But it worked.

It’s not just an issue of length. Sometimes plans have to be long, especially if they might be subject to legal scrutiny because they advocate eminent domain or strategies that might reduce property values in an area. But the best plans – such as the CCRP or Broad Street plans – make their points quickly and clearly, and use just enough statistical information and graphics to strengthen their points.

Long plans by their nature are intimidating. Ford talks about a string of long plans for New Orleans, including the Unified New Orleans Plan that would run to 2,000 pages. As much as I enjoy reading plans, I would want to be paid to look at something that immense. You can imagine how the stressed and overworked decision-maker would look at such a document.

So how to make a plan that both your elected officials would want to read and the wonky naysayers would find credible? Split the plan into at least two parts.

The first part contains the executive summary, a statement of goals (please, no more than 10), a set of strategies to reach the goals, just enough detail to indicate why the goals and strategies are important and reasonable, and images that can illustrate ideas more efficiently than can be done in print. Think of the busiest person you know, and write this part of the plan for that person. If you go over 50 pages, go back and see what you can cut.

The rest of the plan can be appendix items with as much detail and statistics as you’d like. Nobody other than a researcher, lawyer or critic is going to read this part. So, make sure your facts are straight and don’t sweat the writing.

But always remember: the ability of the plan to influence decision-makers depends more on the planner’s powers of persuasion than the ideas in the plan.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute offer several courses to help planners become more convincing and persuasive. These include Professional’s Writing Studio, a Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program Deep Learning course, and Leading from the Middle, a leadership development program for placebuilders.

How you finance the arts depends on how you define the arts

2010-11-14T09:46:00.003-05:00

In one of the most artsy towns in one of the most artsy areas of New Jersey, the South Orange Performing Arts Center is struggling to pay back a $3.9 million loan to the township. One South Orange official openly questioned whether SOPAC will ever be able to pay back its debt. This author has heard SOPAC called a failure.


South Orange Performing Arts Center

Well, that depends on how you look at it. As a business, SOPAC is not doing well, and might not for years to come. (The "bad economy" argument is not compelling. While we might expect subscriptions and donations to go down, local theaters should be a more attractive alternative to those who want to enjoy performances and save money.)

On the other hand, there are plenty more stores and restaurants in South Orange Village than were there in 2005, a year before SOPAC opened. (In other words, there were more places to shop, eat and visit in the worst years of this recession than there were in the best years before the crash.)

And SOPAC adds several benefits for South Orange and surrounding communities: A large event space, more opportunities to highlight community and student performers in a professional setting, and more choices for movies -- all within walking distance of the train.

So the question for South Orange and other communities looking to the arts for community and economic development is: Should an arts center be considered a business sector, infrastructure or a social good?

The answer can help determine whether a municipality supports the arts, or just allows it to happen. The answer also can help officials decide whether arts activities supported by communities should be managed by economic development, community development, or parks and recreation agencies.

If the arts are just another business sector, then a community should judge their success by their return on investment to the public. Nonprofit institutions don't pay property taxes, but they can give a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT). Community leaders should negotiate for a PILOT that covers the center's share of municipal services, plus extra to make up for the fact that a tax-paying business could be on the site. If, as in the case of South Orange, the community invests in a center, the community should demand that the center generate as much revenue as possible. But the center should be free to charge as much as the market will bear, without any consideration for community arts or events that wouldn't bring in much revenue.

If the arts are seen as community infrastructure -- like a road or a storm drain system -- then their success should be measured in how many businesses, revenue-generating development or self-supporting residents it attracts and supports. To make it work financially, communities could support the arts with some of the revenue that would be generated by new development. That's what Rahway did in March, when its City Council unanimously approved an $8.5 million bond to propel its growing arts district.

It can make sense to take on this much debt for large projects that generate enough revenue to pay back their costs That's why tax increment financing is successful around the country. (In New Jersey, it's known as a Revenue Allocation District.) But there are other ways to support small initiatives. Governments could reserve a portion of the added tax revenues or fees that come about because of the arts. Or perhaps Special Improvement Districts could dedicate a percentage to the arts from the revenues they receive from restaurants, shops and other businesses that benefit from all the people coming to enjoy the arts -- then staying to shop and eat.

Under the infrastructure scenario, cultural organizations and artists that receive support should be encouraged -- if not obligated -- to promote local businesses and projects who can bring more revenue to the municipality.

A third option is to see the arts like parks -- an overall benefit to society that are not expected to pay for themselves. School-based and community arts programs, small community theaters and the like are probably not going to be self-supporting over the long term. (Especially not in north and central Jersey, where there are so many options for arts lovers.)

In this view, the community supports the arts through its property taxes or other fees. As with other social goods, measures of success include the number of people served and how those people feel they benefit from the arts.

The responsibility of cultural organizations and artists in this scenario would be to serve as many people as possible, and especially those who do not have as much access to art.

The three options are not mutually exclusive. Larger cities like Newark and Jersey City might be able to do all three. But in smaller communities like South Orange and Rahway, the choices are more difficult.

By choosing among these options, community and cultural leaders can make better choices about how public resources should be spent, and reduce the type of controversy now facing initiatives like the South Orange Performing Arts Center.

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

For more on the SOPAC struggles, see this report in NJ.com

For more on Rahway's support for the arts, see this report in NJ.com

Photo credit: David Gard, New Jersey Local News Service. The image was published in NJ.com on October 10, 2010.

For the time being, make small plans

2010-11-10T11:49:00.002-05:00

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's souls and probably themselves will not be realized.

Attributed to Daniel Burnham, a godfather of American urban planning

Sorry, Mr. Burnham: Realistically, small plans may be all we can do now.

There is a lot less support for big infrastructure projects than there might have been two years ago. Consider: The recent election of so many fiscal conservatives across the country, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's killing of a new train tunnel to New York, and the loss of 14,000 architectural and engineering jobs in the U.S. the past year. (While the economy added 151,000 jobs in September, hiring was flat in the A&E field, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

There are still some pockets of support for big projects, but here are things you can do if you're a placebuilder in a place that wants you to help solve problems at the lowest costs possible:

Understand why people and leaders are reluctant to do big things in times of economic uncertainty and concerns about long-term debt. If you don't, you're going to have a hard time persuading communities and their leaders, and building their confidence to do more, and do better.
Frame community and local economic development strategies around small business development. The one thing conservatives and progressives seem to agree on is supporting the growth of small businesses. For example, if you wanted to do public art downtown, you would be better off talking about it as a way to attract visitors who can support retail businesses.
Encourage more public/private partnerships, and partnerships between business and community groups. This can help with small ticket items -- such as place marketing or business assistance centers -- that in normal times are done by public agencies. And no, it's not enough to just write that into a plan -- if you want it to happen, you'll probably need to do some matchmaking.
Get influential people and especially fair-minded representatives of small businesses on project steering committees and advisory boards. In an age when so many people are standing on soapboxes and shouting from their blogs and TV appearances, the quiet conversation can be quite powerful.
Have the courage to question your assumption about big projects. Do the critics have a point? Are there ways to move toward the same goals without large up-front investments? Note to New Urbanists, architects and civil engineers: Not every problem needs a design solution.

Be creative. You can think outside the box without having to build it.

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Leading Institute and the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offer great courses that build your capacity to do more in times of limited resources. Learn more.

Speaking up for community planning at libraries and recreation centers

2010-10-29T16:26:00.001-04:00

Two of the most common venues for holding community meetings are in town halls (or their equivalent in cities and boroughs) or large rooms provided by Town hall rooms and the open rooms of large religious institutions. But these may not be the best places to get people engaged.

Where you have a community meeting is critical. You want it to be in a place that's convenient and where the audiences will feel welcome and comfortable. If you work in a community where there's widespread distrust of government (or the community is divided along political lines), some audience members might be tense when they go into the room. (This is especially true if a lot of your audience members go to Town Hall only to pay taxes or fines, or to complain about the government.)

Having a meeting at a religious institution has a lot of benefits. The environment encourages people to be more respectful of one another. If community stakeholders are members of the institution, they will likely feel more comfortable there than in town halls. But people who are members of different faiths may not feel as comfortable or as welcome there.

In many communities, there are other neutral locations:

For small group meetings, consider using the local library. More and more, libraries are reinventing themselves as community service centers. Besides circulating books, many libraries offer computers with Internet access (which many people need just to apply for jobs), and provide space for other information services.
Check out a local recreation center for larger group meetings. These centers are often designed with large spaces for sports activities. It's often easy to add tables and chairs.
Local schools often have classrooms for small group sessions, large rooms for interactive sessions, and auditoriums for presentations.
If your budget can handle it, try using space in a local restaurant or catering hall. Because people often associate these spaces with happy events, the location can help put participants more at ease.

In any case, always check to make sure the places you consider are not controversial in the community. (It's best to check local blogs or discussion boards, or ask neutral sources.) If a seemingly neutral location is known to be dominated by a faction in the community that is in conflict with another, try to find a difference space.

For community outreach, where you say it can be as important as how you say it.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Knowing RLUIPA more important as communities get more diverse

2010-10-21T15:14:00.002-04:00

By Lora Lucero,
Guest contributor

Land use regulation, property rights, and religion – a potentially volatile mix in any community. Add to the brew the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA) and, depending on who you talk to, there’s either an explosion or a celebration. Some consider RLUIPA a shield to protect religious land use applicants (particularly minority religions) from the abusive, exclusionary zoning practices of local officials. Others view RLUIPA as a sword wielded by bullying applicants who want special treatment or want to avoid the land use regulatory process altogether. The truth probably rests somewhere in the middle.

RLUIPA was enacted by Congress in 2000. This year, Boulder County, Colorado has declared its intention to file a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Justices to declare the statute unconstitutional. Boulder County v. Rocky Mountain Christian Church. This will certainly be the case to watch if the Court accepts review.

RLUIPA cautions local governments not to “substantially burden” a religious land use applicant’s right to free exercise, but provides little guidance about what actions might constitute a substantial burden. Congress failed to define ‘substantial burden.’

No government shall impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person, including a religious assembly or institution, unless the government demonstrates that [the land use regulation is] in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest [and] is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest. 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc(a)(1).

Religious land use applicants have prevailed in “substantial burden” claims less than 25% of the time - pretty good odds from the local government’s perspective! The statistics, however, fail to account for two important factors: (1) the very high monetary judgments that the local government might have to pay if unsuccessful, and (2) the number of municipalities that capitulate when threatened with RLUIPA litigation to avoid the risk. In that regard, Congress stacked the deck in favor of the religious land use applicant because RLUIPA authorizes attorney fees for the prevailing land use applicant, but none for the local government when it successfully defends itself against a RLUIPA challenge.

Planners and local government officials must be informed about, and sensitive to, RLUIPA issues and proactively plan for the needs of religious land uses in their communities, just as they do for other types of development. The RLUIPA Reader – Religious Land Uses, Zoning, and the Courts is a good, practical resource. (Michael S. Giaimo and Lora A. Lucero, eds. RLUIPA Reader – Religious Land Uses, Zoning, and the Courts, ABA and APA (2009).)

In Chapter Ten, Vivian Kahn, FAICP, shares the top ten tips for planners to remember.

* Understand and appreciate RLUIPA’s scope and purpose.

* Plan for religious land use comprehensively.

* Audit your comprehensive plan and land use regulations.

* Work with applicants early in the development review process.

* Ensure that design regulations do not conflict with religious values and traditions.

* Incorporate strong findings in the record.

* Treat every land use applicant fairly.

* Don’t unduly burden religious practices.

* Provide alternate means of relief.

* Hold practice sessions.

Lora is a city planner and land use attorney in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is Editor of Planning & Environmental Law and, along with Michael S. Giaimo (Robinson and Cole LLC), edited RLUIPA Reader: Religious Land Uses, Zoning, and the Courts published by the American Bar Association and American Planning Association in April 2009.

In January 2011, Lora will be teaching “Current Trends in Land Use Law,” in the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program. The course provides a thorough discussion of RLUIPA and how planners and local government officials should prepare themselves to successfully address religious land use applications in their zoning regulations and development review processes.

In today's economic climate, everyone needs to be a rainmaker

2010-10-15T11:59:00.001-04:00

Now more than ever in our lifetimes, the job security of many placebuilders depends on their being able to bring in resources.

In the private sector, infrastructure spending hasn't led to widespread bumps in job hiring. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are about 21,000 fewer jobs in architectural and engineering organizations in the United States, compared to September of 2009. In good times, technical professionals who hate marketing and networking could rely on others to bring in the money. Today, any professional who is not overly busy doing billable work or generating it might be seen as a cost that a firm can't afford right now.

(The back office professionals -- mapmakers, researchers, and others who do little direct work with clients or communities -- are especially vulnerable. Technology is making it possible for others to do the same work at less cost. And that's not going to change, even when the economy fully recovers.)

To make things more difficult, the lean times are causing more competition. In strong economies, bigger firms can afford to turn away smaller jobs, confident that something else will come around. Now, they are chasing the smaller game. (This is especially tough for the mid-size firms, which might not have the resources of large firms or the flexibility and low overhead costs of small ones.)

In difficult economies, many nonprofit organizations tend to struggle with increased demands for services and reduced giving by foundations and corporate entities. Community based organizations, most of whom were created to address social issues, tend to spend more time on direct service and less time on planning.

The public sector has been a good landing spot for placebuilders who wanted to do good works without the risks and uncertainty of working in the private and nonprofit sectors. Not anymore. Since September 2009, around 249,000 public sector jobs have been lost, according to the Department of Labor's September 2010 jobs report. Placebuilders are especially at risk because unlike the work of police, firefighters, teachers and road crews, it is harder for placebuilders to show direct or immediate benefits from their work.

What if you have someone in your organization who is great at raising funds, getting contracts or retaining clients. Those people are going to be the ones in most demand from other places. It's a big risk to rely on just a few people for sustainability.

If you want to be seen as more valuable to your firm, organization or agency:

Demonstrate how your work can or does generate more revenue or helps the organization retain clients. Being smart is not enough. There might be plenty of other smart people who are willing to do your job for less money. Talk about the value of your work, and your organization's work, to everyone who might affect it -- elected officials, civic and business leaders, potential clients. Urban planners in particular need to be promoting the value of planning. Consider: If they don't know what you do or what value it gives them, why should they pay you to do it?
Always Be Marketing. If you're not writing proposals or meeting with potential clients, you should be looking for opportunities and being aware of trends or conditions that could pose threats or provide opportunities for your organization.
If you don't have experience in marketing or business development, learn how to do this work. It's more difficult and complex than it looks. If you think it's just putting a nice spin on what you already do, you need to learn more about this work.
Offer to get more involved in marketing and business development. Work with others in your organization who are good at getting contracts and grants. But don't just copy what they do -- find ways of marketing and business development that work for you and your organization. If you're uncomfortable asking your supervisors for this kind of work, volunteer to help raise money or write proposals for a nonprofit that you believe in. They are likely to appreciate whatever help they can get, and you can develop experience and a track record for generating revenue.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers several classes to help you get more contracts and grants, and retain clients. The next course in this topic is Business Development for Planners, running from November 3 to December 18, 2010. (Scholarships still available at the time of this writing.) Questions about BOCEP or the class? Contact us

Tips for collaborative writing

2010-10-06T15:34:00.001-04:00

Software like wikis and change-tracking features can make it easier for groups of people to work together on reports and plans. But the software can't help with the hardest part of collaborative writing -- the human side.

Team writing is hard because even similar people have different ways of communicating information, have access to different facts (which seem to come out at the last minute) and interpret the same information differently. Also, some people are comfortable writing in an organized, step-by-step fashion, while others do their best work in what seems to others to be a mad and maddening rush.

Here are some tips that can help you work better with your co-authors, and more importantly, keep you from wanting to grab their pens and stick it...

The team should decide on a way to write collaboratively. If you use a wiki - a document that allows for multiple collaborators -- or software features like 'track changes' in Microsoft Word, be sure that everyone knows how to use the tools. If a team member is not comfortable with a type of technology, it might be easier to pick someone to take that team member's work and upload it to the team document. Once the team has selected an approach to collaboration, every member of the team is responsible for knowing how to use the technology.
The team should create an electronic library of shared documents that all authors can use as a resource for their writing. The library should include all relevant plans, reports and memos, as well as raw information (such as data tables from government sources.) There are a number of services that offer file sharing, either free or on a monthly subscription basis.
Ensure that all members understand their roles and responsibilities. Members of the writing team have to know whether they are providing data for someone else to write, writing portions of the document, reviewing other people's work, or making edits themselves.
Make deadlines clear, and make them at least 20% longer than what the authors say they need to complete their work. No matter how well planned the writing project is, things are going to happen. Somebody might get sick or have a work/family emergency. Somebody is not going to get things done in time for any variety of reasons. Another reason for extending the deadlines is that the process of drafting -- or seeing others' drafts -- helps you see new connections and gaps and create new ideas. An extra few days can help you create a much better product.
The team should pick a lead author and final editor. The lead author's role is to bring everything together. The final editor's role is to make sure the work reads as if it were written by a single person. If only one person can fulfill both roles, plan some time for the lead author to step away from the document and come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. Editing your own work is difficult, because you tend to see what you expect to see, rather than what's there. That's why we can find typos and grammatical errors in others' writings, and miss them in our own.
Unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, the lead author should make the team document available to everyone to look at while it is being drafted. It is everyone's responsibility to read their teammates' work, and to alert the lead author to any factual errors, inconsistencies or new ideas that come from connecting the dots in others' work.
Everyone should respect the fact that everyone else has a different way of working. If you're the kind of person who can write over a long period and in steps, don't get so huffy about the people who get their bursts of inspiration under the stress of a deadline. But, if you're a last-minute writer, and others need your work to complete theirs, waiting for the spark of inspiration is not artistic -- it's rude. As with any relationship, the more everyone talks about what they need, what they like and what ticks them off, the happier they will be.
When it's all done, enjoy and celebrate the hard work. Even if you feel like you never want to talk to the collaborator again, go have a drink or a cup together. Whatever it was that drove you crazy about the other person's work, it probably wasn't that big a deal.
If you're going to work with the same people again, talk with them about how things can be done better. Remember to say first what you would do differently before you ask someone else to change their ways. If you're going to work with different people, reflect on your experiences and help your next set of teammates to work better.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers a number of courses on teamwork, writing and other aspects of professional practice. Please see the course catalog for more on upcoming courses.

Planning for success in and through a BOCEP Deep Learning class

2010-09-17T16:14:00.001-04:00

BOCEP Deep Learning classes offer a lot: Resources, good discussions with professionals, opportunities to test your knowledge. To get the most of the class, with the least stress, it helps to get into good learning habits. Here's how:

1. When you're in the class, avoid the temptation to check email, answer the phone, or do other things that would make you lose your focus. Multitasking may be fine for simple things, but BOCEP Deep Learning courses are complex.

2. Schedule time for yourself throughout the week to work on your class. Of course you're going to get busy and deal with unexpected work or family matters. But the better you can schedule yourself -- and keep to it -- the better your experience will be. Here's a sample:

Friday: Review upcoming assignments and readings
Saturday/Sunday: Read materials for class that week
Monday: Read the lectures and questions from the instructor; think about your answer and start working on week's assignment
Tuesday: Respond to the first set of questions
Wednesday: Check class to see other responses; reply
Thursday: Respond to next set of questions
Friday: Check for responses and reply; complete assignment; review upcoming assignments and readings

Most BOCEP learners spend between three and seven hours per week on their course, including reading and assignments. (Please note: If you are taking a course for Certification Maintenance credit, you are ethically obligated to spend at least 14 hours overall in the class.)

3. Think of yourself as part of a learning team, and know that as you help yourself, you help your colleagues. Many of us are taught to think of learning as an individual effort. As a result, some people think it's no big deal when they stop participating in discussions. But it is important. Not only do you learn more by sharing your ideas, you give fresh perspectives to colleagues, who learn from you.

4. Remember that the more you put into the class, the more you get out of it. Yes, it would be a lot easier to sit in the back of a room watching a PowerPoint presentation. But if you take the easy way out, you will learn only a fraction of what you can learn in a BOCEP Deep Learning class.

If you can master these techniques, you'll see benefits beyond the class. These time and focus management skills are what help make professionals more effective and influential.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Measuring human needs for placemaking practice

2010-09-16T13:07:00.000-04:00

This essay is designed to help you put into practice the principles of human needs placemaking.

Before we do, let's recap:
Based on various psychological theories, there are four types of human needs:

Physiological needs -- Food, safety, shelter and the necessities for survival
Relational needs -- Connections to other people and groups who will support and nurture the individual
Self-actualization needs -- The desire to "be all you can be" as an individual and to have independence and recognition.
Environmental needs -- The desire to be in aesthetically pleasing environments, such as (for some) areas with a lot of greenery.

Everyone wants all four of their needs met. How much is "enough?" All individuals have their own standards, which they may or may not be able to express clearly to placemakers. The bottom line -- No placemaking effort can make everyone equally happy. (In fact, because placemaking efforts involve some change, whoever is benefiting from the status quo is going to be, at a minimum, inconvenienced.)

But though we can never reach the horizon, we can walk towards it and use milestones to measure our efforts. Here's how.

In surveys:

Imagine that all four needs are a continuum between "hell" (complete absence of a need) and "heaven" (complete satisfaction). You can use a range to mark the continuum. (Try using a range that's easy to understand, such as 1-10 or "Strongly agree to Strongly disagree"

Ask plain language questions that relate to the needs. For example, if you asked "How well are your safety needs being met," you'll probably get some blank stares. Instead, ask something like "How safe is it to walk at night in the neighborhood?"

It's unlikely that everyone's needs are met entirely within their own communities. If you ask, "Are there enough social groups for you in your community?" you will find out about the availability of social groups in a limited area -- not whether the person's relational needs are unmet. A better question would be: "Do you have easy access to social groups of your liking?"

Asking about access is important because children and seniors who can no longer drive, as well as people who don't own cars, have much more limited access than older teens and adults. Also, people who prefer not to drive, such as those living in downtowns or city centers, may expect that things should be more accessible by foot or public transit.

So it is also important to get key demographic information -- such as age, gender, ethnicity, and income -- to see if there are significant differences between the satisfaction levels of groups.

In focus groups and interviews:

These settings call for open-ended questions. (Save all of your limited choice questions for surveys.)

Ask respondents to say what they would like to see more or less of.
Then ask why what they said was the first thing to come to mind. (The 'gut response' tends to reveal more about the person's values and concerns. The longer people have to think about a question, the more likely they are to give you the kind of answer they think you want.)
Ask respondents to talk about what they would trade off. This will help you understand their heirarchy of needs. For example, if respondents are complaining about public safety and high costs, ask them if they would be willing to have fewer police and firefighters if it meant lowering their property taxes. The answer can tell you what the more critical needs are in the community.

As with surveys, pay attention to the differences in responses from people of different ages, genders, ethnicities or work status.

An example:

Here's a portion of an actual survey being conducted for a community plan in New Jersey. This survey is part of a complex needs assessment, which includes focus groups and one-to-one interviews.

	Strongly agree	Agree	No strong opinion	Disagree	Strongly disagree
I feel safe walking in this neighborhood. (physiological needs)
I feel safe walking on my street at night, by myself. (physiological needs)
It is safe for young people to walk around in this neighborhood. (physiological needs)
I can walk to buy what I need (groceries, household supplies). (physiological needs)
I have easy access to services my family or I need (such as banks and doctors. (physiological needs)
I have easy access to job opportunities. (physiological and self-actualization needs)
I have easy access to places for me or my family to play or relax. (environmental needs)
The schools in this neighborhood are good. (self-actualization needs)

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

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Learn better placemaking skills through The Leading Institute and Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program

Economic development for job growth? Size matters -- but not in the way you think

2010-09-10T15:02:00.000-04:00

A lot of economic development activities today assumes that bigger is better. That's why ED departments spend millions of dollars at trade shows trying to lure large firms to their cities, elected officials approve tax abatements for big projects, and redevelopment planners try to connect and clear small lots to make room for big companies.

But smaller may actually be better when it comes to economic development that generates jobs. A team of economists studying metropolitan areas throughout the United States between 1977 and 2000 found that areas with more small firms tend to have more job growth. "A 10% increase in the number of firms per worker in 1977 at the city level correlates with a 9% increase in employment growth between 1977 and 2000," write Edward Glaeser, William Kerr and Giacomo Ponzetto in their article, "Clusters of Entrepreneurship." Other key ideas and findings:

*Having a greater percentage of large firms actually reduces entrepreneurship.
*Low costs help increase entrepreneurship, but a region's amenities play a big role in the creation of firms.
*Entrepreneurs are more likely to be from the area where they create their business, and "local entrepreneurs operate stronger businesses." (p. 151)
*Places with a greater share of college educated workers tend to have more entrepreneurs.
*Entrepreneurs are attracted to places with a larger share of small businesses.
*Start-ups and small businesses are more likely to be labor-intensive than capital-intensive. That is, they are likely to have more workers per square foot.

There's not much practical advice in their article, but there are several implications for our fields. Planners and economic development professionals should:

Create a more welcoming climate for entrepreneurs by promoting business assistance and micro-entrepreneurship programs and preserving clusters of small spaces for start-ups. In other words, think of downtown development with one-stop business centers. "Small, decentralized suppliers and customers are more helpful or important for new startups than for expansions of established firms." (p. 161)
Support initiatives that encourage networking among business people, and encourage leaders of business associations and clubs to be welcoming to new entrepreneurs from outside the community. The research indicates the power of connections in building successful enterprises. People who grow up in an area are more likely to know and have friendships with others in the community, making it easier for them to engage in partnerships. But some places can become insular, especially if a new group of residents is seen as a threat to existing residents. In other words, if you see a growing population of _______, and nobody from that group is in the local business association, it's a problem.
Focus on the quality of place. The research supports the idea that the more desirable a place is to live, work or play in, the more high-value workers and entrepreneurs it attracts. In other words, a nice waterfront park might do more to generate jobs than a tax abatement.
Promote workforce development strategies that increase the number and percentage of college-educated or career-ready people in a community. Knowledge economy businesses need skilled workers the same way farmers need fertile land. Workforce development and quality of place solutions should go hand-in-hand. People who are more skilled and educated have more choices, and you want them to choose to stay in your community.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers two Professional Certificate programs in economic development: Cultural Planning and Development, and Economic and Community Development. The Leading Institute's Leading from the Middle program can help you be more persuasive and effective in working with stakeholders and officials to promote job-generating economic development. Learn more and find out about upcoming courses.

More sophisticated ways to use a team calendar

2010-09-02T08:58:00.001-04:00

Many groups and organizations whose members use shared calendars. They can be a great tool to keep busy team members informed, especially if the members aren't often in the same place at the same time. But having a team calendar is not enough to keep everyone 'on the same page.' Here are some tips, based on our experience, for making a calendar work better for your goals.

The Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute together are a combination of retail-oriented continuing education center, technical assistance provider and research center with three team members and a project list that runs eight pages. We use a shared calendar (in our case Google Calendars). Here's what works for us:

Use a calendar that any team member can access through the Internet. If team members having to be out of the office often for research, consulting or business development, having to go back to the office to check on others' availability is stressful.
Get everyone to want to use a shared calendar. Although the benefits may seem obvious, be aware that using a common calendar will inconvenience members who are partial to their own system. (Also, a shared calendar make some people who are insecure about their status in the team feel even less empowered.) Respect the individuals' preferences but make them responsible for sharing their information with their teammates. Get into the habit of checking the calendar, rather than with individuals, when scheduling important meetings and activities. This creates a greater incentive to use the calendar.
Encourage team members to post times when they do not want to be available as if they were meetings. For example, I try to reserve the first few hours of the morning to catch up on emails, organize my day, and be creative.
Encourage team members to note their tasks as if they were scheduled meetings. This will help managers and team members know what everyone is working on. How much time do you spend in meetings just catching up? When you see how team members are spending their time, you can get a better sense of how the project is progressing. Team members who may be skeptical of someone's contributions can see what that person is doing. As a fan of David Allen's organizing ideas, I schedule my tasks on the calendar the way I would meetings. I find it helps me get things done better and with less stress.
Use codes to let team members know if meetings or other activities can be moved. At PDI-TLI, we use these codes:

MV: Event or activity is scheduled, but can be moved.
TNT: Event is tentative (such as when you are holding several dates open while waiting for others to confirm their schedules.)
_________ in (location): This allows the calendar to be used as an in/out board.

Make the use of a shared calendar part of the ethics of team work. If your teammate is spending time trying to match your schedule with others, you are creating unnecessary work and stress for that person.
If you can't get the entire organization, department or division to use a shared calendar, start using it with trusted team members. Then market your success to encourage others to use the calendar.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute offer a number of courses and programs to help you become a more effective manager and leader. Consider getting a Professional Certificate in Leadership and Professional Practice; taking a Deep Learning course in project management, business development, and leadership; or building your leadership skills through Leading from the Middle.

Networking to the hidden job market

2010-08-26T12:29:00.002-04:00

Editor's note: The following is a republication of an article that appears in the September 2010 edition of Northern News, of the Northern California Chapter of the American Planning Association. Courtesy of Northern News.

By Steve Piazzale, Ph.D.

“It’s who you know.” You’ve heard that one before, right?

Research tells us that 80 percent of jobs are obtained through
personal contacts, yet most job hunters spend 80 percent of their time
answering computer job board ads. So what can you do to get that job
you want and deserve?

All job seekers or changers need to get out and meet people. Start
by making a list of everybody you know who might even remotely
help you find out about a job or career in which you’re interested.
This includes former co-workers, employers, family members, friends,
customers, suppliers, vendors, professionals (such as your doctor,
lawyer, or accountant), members of your church and alumni—the list
is almost infinite.

Once you’ve made this list and are clear about the kind of work
you’re pursuing, start contacting these folks and clearly and succinctly
tell them what you’re looking for. Ask them if they have some time to
chat about what they do and your search strategy. It’s best not to
directly ask for a job because most likely they’ll just say they have no
openings. Instead ask for information—how to improve your résumé,
any additional training you need, specifics about current industry
trends, other people you could contact, what meetings you should
attend, and what you should be keeping up to date with.

Not everyone will give you new contacts, but slowly and surely
you’ll build a large network of folks with whom you can stay in touch.
The beauty of this is that none of your calls will be cold calls—you’re
always contacting people using the name of someone they know.
This network then becomes your eyes to the “hidden” or emerging
job market. By staying in touch with these new contacts, you’ll hear
about opportunities as they emerge and before they’re listed on job
boards, giving you first crack at them! Plus your contacts are now
beginning to know you and can speak to your qualifications, in
essence serving as a reference.

Bottom-line: get out and interact with people, attend professional
association and alumni functions as well as other get-togethers. This
might be a bit outside your comfort zone, but give it a try even if it’s
a bit at a time. I think you’ll find it’s well worth the effort. And
remember as Woody Allen once said: “80 percent of success is just
showing up.”

“Being able to do the job well will not necessarily get you hired; the
person who gets hired is often the one who knows the most about how
to get hired.” —Richard Lathrop, author of “Who’s Hiring Who?”
(1989, Ten Speed Press)

Steve Piazzale has a Stanford University Ph.D. in sociology with extensive
training in psychology, and is a career/life coach. His website is www.BayAreaCareerCoach.com

Connecting deep learning, leadership and social change

2010-08-19T13:32:00.002-04:00

Frederick Law Olmsted never trained as an architect. Jane Jacobs didn't even have a college degree. How did they become so smart about urban planning -- and so influential?

Frederick Law Olmsted,
urban planning pioneer

Olmsted and Jacobs were "deep learners." They were the kind of people who talked with and listened to a diverse range of people. They read a lot, and shared what they learned. In other words, they weren't the kind of people who were satisfied sitting in the back of a conference session hearing about what they already knew.

Then they shared their knowledge with colleagues in their writings, in presentations and through a lot of 'quiet conversations.' (Jacobs enjoyed having them at the White Horse Tavern in New York's Greenwich Village.)

Many people get frustrated when the time they spend in training doesn't lead to much change. They might blame the program, or continuing education as a whole. But often the problem is one of trying to use the wrong tool for the job.

No matter how good they are, conferences, webinars and training by themselves cannot create change. They can help give you a start, but that's about it.

Conferences and webinars are great when you want to get introduced to a subject or learn a little more about it. (That's of course if you pace yourself. One of the biggest problems conference participants have is trying to absorb too much at one time. They wind up learning less and less about more and more.)

But having knowledge doesn't by itself cause change. As the saying goes: "If truths were self-evident, we wouldn't need lawyers."

Jane Jacobs at the White Horse Tavern

Training sessions also are not designed to promote organizational or social change -- they are designed to help you learn new skills. Of course those skills may be valuable to promote change. Training is great for teaching skills that can be repeated regardless of the environment. How to use a software program, how to take pictures for a public presentation -- those sorts of things.

Training alone often fails to lead to behaviors that change social systems (e.g., organizations or communities). That's because your success depends on adapting those skills to the unique qualities of your environment.

As management guru Edgar Schein says in "Models and Tools for Stability and Change in Human Systems": "...New behaviors may not remain stable unless they also fit into the ongoing relationships and the work context of the person or group that has changed... The trainees come back full of enthusiasm only to find that their [organization or community] does not support the new attitudes and behavior. They are now [frustrated] all over again and thus will start a new change process that may well lead back to the original behavior." Read more of his reflections on managed learning.

(This is why The Leading Institute and the Professional Development Institute don't pretend to teach "the complete guide to..." or "everything you need to know.." in two-day workshops. If something so complex as leadership and management could be taught in two days, our world would be filled with great leaders and managers.)

To achieve change at a group, organization or community level, you need to learn at a deep level the conditions that cause you to think change is needed, and the constraints to making the change. And no, there is almost never a simple reason or a single person to blame. If that were the case, the change would have already happened.

This kind of learning takes time and reflection. You have to become aware. Then you need to test your assumptions. Then try the change and see what happens. Then reflect on what worked or didn't, and what you know now that you didn't before. Try something new.

You could do this on your own, as some people do, but you're better off sharing your thoughts with people who are different from you. As Jim Collins says in Good to Great and other writings, the most effective leaders are not the "geniuses with a thousand helpers," but the ones who open themselves to ideas from throughout their organizations, their clients and partners. Leadership guru Warren Bennis echoes these words in On Becoming a Leader. "Leaders are learners."

This is why we offer 5.5 week "Deep Learning" courses through the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program and why we encourage learners to learn from one another while they are learning the material.

It is also why Leading from the Middle is a four-to-six-month program, and not a weekend crash course.

If what you want is to know a little more about a subject or learn a new skill, a webinar, conference, or one-day training session should be fine. But if you want to cost-effectively manage change for sustainable outcomes, get deeper in your learning.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Photo credits:
Frederick Law Olmsted: Public domain photo found on Creative Commons
Jane Jacobs: http://www.futureofny.org/learnmore

Five key trends for local economic development in the 2010s

2010-08-12T13:55:00.002-04:00

Whether the US economy springs back or staggers its way to recovery, there are a number of trends that you can capitalize on for improving your community's economy.

The arts as engines for the creative and experience economies. According to a report to be published soon by Arts Build Communities, there was a 10% jump in the number of people working in the creative sector between 1998 and 2007. Most are probably not artists, but rather the people whose work supports the arts: administrators, blue-collar workers, manufacturers of creative products. The arts are at the heart of two other growing economic trends -- the creative economy and the experience economy. The creative economy includes scientific innovation and cultural products for export (Think Ipads, Droids and the new medicines you see on TV.) The experience economy includes all those retailers, businesses and places people are willing to pay more money to because of the experience they provide. (That's why the Mall of America has an amusement park in the center, and not just more chain stores.)

To take advantage of this opportunity, consider: Attracting and retaining creative sector professionals through place- and community-building efforts; place marketing efforts; providing more flex space; whether your community feels inviting to creative professionals

The growth of "free agent" nation. Self-employed workers accounted for about 30% of the job growth in the United States between 1998 and 2008. While the number of employees in businesses grew 10% in that time, the number of self-employed workers grew 26%. (See the County Business Patterns database for more information). In 2008, about 15% of 142.2 million jobs in the United States were held by self-employed workers.

To take advantage of this opportunity, consider: Business assistance and development strategies targeted to micro-entrepreneurs; live-work spaces clustered in downtown settings; cooperatives, and other structures that help businesses share resources.

Ethnic minority communities as emerging markets. Ethnic minority communities had about 23% of the nation's $10.7 trillion in buying power in 2009, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth. While the total amount of disposable income in the United States had been growing through most of this decade, the buying power of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and multiracial Americans grew faster than that of non-Hispanic Whites. Those trends are likely to increase as the nation gets more diverse.

To take advantage of this opportunity, consider: Place marketing and business development geared to ethnic communities; developing more culturally competent placebuilding and economic development professionals.

Green industries replacing gray industries. It may be a decade or more before alternative energy producers and manufacturers of green products become a major source of jobs in many communities. Placebuilders who plan for these uses now will have a tremendous advantage. Whether green or gray, industrial uses need large, affordable spaces and the ability to easily move large amounts of goods. (That's why so many 19th and early 20th century factories in city neighborhoods have become loft housing.)

To take advantage of this opportunity, consider: Preserving existing industrial and warehousing areas; landbanking; encouraging the transitional use of light industrial spaces as artisan work/live spaces, server farms, or retail/commercial storage facilities.

Transnational communities as market expanders. From classic port-of-entry cities to small farming towns, continued immigration is having a bigger impact on America. One of those impacts is economic: It is easier for money and goods to flow between countries. Communities that participate in transnational economies can significantly expand their market area while minimizing competition with its neighbors. In an age where the Internet and lower costs in other countries are challenging brick-and-mortar American businesses, this is a way for communities of any size to bring more wealth into its borders.

To take advantage of this opportunity, consider: Building relationships with immigrant groups in and around your community; encouraging the use of light industrial facilities for import, export or assembly of materials; promoting community building efforts that make immigrants feel more welcome in a place.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers courses and professional certificates in economic development, cultural development. Courses are offered between September and June. Learn more.

Talking points for connecting the arts and sustainability

2010-08-06T12:04:00.000-04:00

Two big trends in urban placebuilding today are arts-based planning and sustainability. Here are some talking points to help leaders and community understand how they connect.

But first, let’s get on the same page: “The arts” and “sustainability” are two of the most vague concepts in placebuilding. If your audience thinks the arts are just a bunch of weird stuff that only rich people enjoy, or that sustainability is about protecting every blade of grass, you’re not going to have much luck trying to promote either idea.

— The arts are all activities related to the creation, distribution or consumption of products or experiences that are valued for their aesthetic qualities. In other words, if someone is willing to pay more for some object or experience because of how it looks or makes them feel, that “thing” is some form of art. That means that the opera and the classic car show are both artistic experiences.

— Sustainability is a set of practices by people or groups designed to promote the long-term sharing of resources with future generations. This includes reducing demands on the environment, promoting economic opportunity, and increasing social equity. (Remember the 3 E’s of sustainability: Environment, economy and equity.) If you run into a deep ecologist just wants to focus on environmental protection, let them know people decide whether to go or stay green. If you don’t take care of people and you don’t enhance quality of life, they’re not going to be too worried about protecting trees.

(Presentation tip: Show a pie chart or triangle to show the relationships among the 3 E’s.)

How the arts (and artists) can contribute to local economies

— The arts attract wealth (arts patrons, visitors, theater-goers, etc.). Wealth attracts businesses; businesses attract more wealth, and so on and so on in a virtuous circle. (Presentation tip: Show a flow chart or one of those diagrams with the big arrows running in a circle.)

— The arts help to diversify the business and employment mix.

— Artists contribute their skills to many businesses outside the arts.

— More of the money spent in arts establishments is likely to stay in the local economy, compared to the money spent in chain stores, franchises and the Internet. (For more on this, read Ann Markusen’s work on the artistic dividend.)

— The arts are part of place-based experience economies, so artists tend to be involved with local economic revitalization efforts.

— Creativity is critical to industries that rely on innovation, such as biotechnology and other knowledge economy businesses.

How the arts (and artists) can contribute to the environment

(Note: Art tends to be neutral regarding the environment, but artists have a long history of being connected to the natural world.)

— Visual artists, such as landscape painters, draw inspiration from local environments.

— Artists are more likely to be involved in preservation efforts.

— Artists are more likely to reclaim abandoned and blighted spaces, reducing construction waste.

— More architects and urban designers are promoting “green” building and design.

— Visual artists, such as landscape painters, draw inspiration from local environments.

— Artists are more likely to be involved in preservation efforts.

— Artists are more likely to reclaim abandoned and blighted spaces, reducing construction waste.

— More architects and urban designers are promoting “green” building and design.

(Presentation tip: Use an image that shows artists working with children in a ‘green’ project.)

How the arts (and artists) contribute to equity

— Art provides a safe and inviting bridge for people to learn about other cultures.

— Art gives people who feel discriminated against a productive way to express themselves.

— Artists are often involved in revitalization efforts in their communities.

— The arts can provide job opportunities to people without advanced degrees. (Ok, it’s probably not a lot of jobs, but it helps.)

How communities can better connect the arts and sustainability

— Bring arts and sustainability leaders together.

— Identify current and potential connections between the arts and sustainability initiatives.

— Create a local cultural plan with a sustainability focus. Try to get it attached to the community’s master plan.

— Work on short-term and highly visible projects to highlight the connections.

— Develop a leadership group committed to promoting the arts and sustainability. Build the group to include all parts of the community.

— Try more. Learn from your mistakes. Create new solutions. Update your plan. Build more leaders. Repeat.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Rutgers University's Arts Build Communities provides research, continuing education and technical assistance in the arts and community and economic development. Learn more...

Check out PDI Advisor's Topic Library for advice or food for thought

2010-07-30T09:50:00.002-04:00

From thoughts on the 21st century economy to tips on writing, PDI Advisor offers dozens of short essays to help you in your work and career. Some are quick tips you can use today. Others are more thoughtful essays that may cause you to question some of your assumptions. Hopefully you will find all of them useful.

We recently redesigned the site to make it easier to find what you're looking for. You can search by keyword or by topic by going to the left-hand side of the screen.

Interested in a topic, but can't find something on it in PDI Advisor? Let us know and we might write something about it soon. Please send a note to Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP.

We add new essays several times a month, so please check back often to get more advice. Better yet, sign up for the PDI Newsletter.

Using focus groups in placebuilding

2010-07-20T15:42:00.001-04:00

Having a large number of huge public forums seems like the ideal way to get good input for making places better. But there are a number of reasons why this strategy often doesn't work:

You probably don't have the budget to do all of the public meetings you want to.
In communities where there's a lot of tension between residents, or there are ethnic or cultural groups whose members don't often go to public meetings, the people who show up usually don't represent the diversity of the place.
The 'town hall' model is biased towards people who are comfortable speaking up in public, or have the courage to say things that others might not want to hear. So the people who talk don't often reflect the diversity of views in the place.
The Q & A format in a limited time frame forces people to compete for time, which biases the format to the most strong-willed in the group. People are so focused on what they want to say that they are less likely to listen to others.
News videos of town hall meetings usually focus on people yelling, arguing, or saying unreasonable things. This doesn't make public meetings feel welcoming to thoughtful people.

Photo credit: Creative Commons

Focus groups can help address some of these problems. This kind of public participation technique is designed to help get richer information than you can get through a survey or town hall meeting and leads to participants listening to and learning from one another.

Focus groups are moderated meetings of usually no more than 20 people selected to represent the diversity within a community.

While businesses often use focus groups to test products with potential consumers, focus groups for placebuilding often play a different role. They are used both to get rich information and to create opportunities for members of competing or conflicting groups to listen and learn from one another.

Focus group participants usually sit around a conference table, a U-shaped set of tables, or a circle of chairs. Unlike in town hall meetings, where participants talk at decision makers (usually sequestered behind tables), in focus groups, participants often talk to facilitators and in relation to others in the room.

Focus groups typically run about an hour to an hour-and-a-half. During that time, the facilitator (who is often a planner or specialist in group skills) asks a series of questions. The questions should be "deep"; that is, they should be designed to encourage thoughtful conversation among participants. ('Why' questions are usually deeper than 'what' and 'when' questions.) Usually, there is time for no more than five or six deep questions because the participants will respond at length to the question and sometimes to one another. Or the facilitator may want to follow an interesting line of conversation and ask several follow-up questions.

Focus groups have the potential of eliciting rich information that participants might not be willing to share in a survey or a public meeting (at a lower cost than conducting individual interviews.) They also help competing interests understand each others' views by putting them in environments that allow them to be more open to different ideas. (When you are representing an interest group's viewpoint in a public meeting, you risk losing credibility with your members if you appear to be too conciliatory.)

The keys to making these focus groups work best are:

Create a list of participants that is bigger than what you can have at the table and:

Select participants who can reflect and represent the diversity of the place. This often means selecting participants who are involved in at least one organization or initiative within the place. Former leaders of groups are especially good to have at the table because they may speak more freely than a current leader or director.
Select participants who are known to be good listeners. This can be hard to do on your own. Ask your contacts in the place about who is known for being fair, approachable or having other traits associated with listening well.

Have a facilitator who is skilled at working with small groups and will:

Be knowledgeable enough about the placebuilding project to know which questions are critical and which can be dropped when an unexpected but more important issue comes up.
Work to ensure that everyone has fair opportunities to speak. This does not mean that everyone will speak an equal amount of time. Some people are more comfortable listening, then presenting their ideas at the end. Pushing them to speak up earlier and more often may make them feel uncomfortable.
Be able to manage tension -- defusing it when it inhibits thoughtful conversation, aggravating it to challenge participants to be more thoughtful.

Start on time, end a few minutes early, and have refreshments.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Leading Institute and the Professional Development Institute offer several classes a year on strategic communications, public participation and other issues in placebuilding. Learn more or find out about upcoming courses.

The constitutional role of American placebuilders

2010-07-06T10:24:00.002-04:00

What is the proper role in American society of placebuilders (planners, architects, civil engineers and revitalization professionals)? Since the United States Constitution empowers --or limits the powers of—states and their counties and municipalities, it’s a good place to go for guidance. Neither the Constitution nor its predecessor, the Declaration of Independence, mentions cities or towns – or placebuilders . But they speak to what the Founding Fathers saw as the proper role of government – and by extension their agents -- in society.

The Declaration of Independence lists three “unalienable rights” – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Government’s role, therefore, is to protect those rights. How would they translate for our work?

The Declaration says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”

Placebuilders should strive to promote a better “quality of life” in the places that they work. Since the term is so personal and because the powers of government are derived from the “consent of the governed,” the Declaration says, quality of life should be defined by the people who will be affected by the placebuilder’s actions.

People can have liberty only if they have the opportunity to fully engage in the benefits of society, and have the freedom to pursue those opportunities. Placebuilders should promote development and infrastructure that increases opportunity for all members of society. Also, placebuilders should be careful that the policies and regulations they recommend do not have the effect of unreasonably limiting liberty. Everyone agrees that to live peacefully in society, there should be some limits to personal freedom. Even Libertarians don’t want to get rid of every traffic light, and no one is holding rallies to get rid of zoning. But rules that put too many restrictions on property, or that make the cost of property ownership too expensive, have the effect of reducing an individual’s pursuit of happiness.

The Preamble to the Constitution provides clearer guidance for placebuilders.

“We the People of the United States,

in order to form a more perfect Union..."

Placebuilders should work to balance competing interests in the field of the public realm.

"establish justice..."

Placebuilders should create or recommend policies and regulations that are based on generally accepted concepts of fairness and definitions of good and evil in society

"insure domestic tranquility..."

Placebuilders should promote development and policies that promote peaceful and positive interactions among people, and reduces stress on members of the population who suffer because of market failure or the acts of dominant groups to protect their privileges.

"provide for the common defense..."

Placebuilders should promote development and policies that protect against threats to the public's safety and health.

"promote the general welfare..."

Placebuilders should promote development and policies that increase both opportunity and equity for disadvantaged members of society.

"and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..."

Placebuilders should promote development and policies that are sustainable, so that future generations of Americans of every color, creed and nationality can pursue their own version of the American dream.

"do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Want to be a more trusted advisor? Just answer the question...

2010-07-01T12:02:00.001-04:00

Here is a true story of how an economic development expert lost an opportunity to do a great project:

A public agency asked a planning consultant about creating an economic impact study. The consultant contacted the economic development expert to invite thim to be on the team. Let's call the planner Steve and the expert L.K. Nove (all names are changed.)

Steve, busy on a number of projects, asks Nove how much it would cost to do an economic impact study for the public agency.
$20,000 to $120,000 was L.K.'s quick answer.

"OK, I didn't give him enough information to give me a better range," Steve thought. So Steve asked Nove what the client could get for $20,000, $60,000 and $120,000.

Nove responded with a long, rambling email saying, in effect: You don't get much for $20,000, you get some good information for $120,000, and sometimes these studies are even more expensive. He said nothing about what tasks he might perform.

Steve thanked L.K. for his time and decided that he would never ask him to do any work again. Nor would he ever recommend L.K. for any project -- despite the fact that L.K. was a known expert. And if somebody asked him about L.K., he would have no comment, a signal that many people in the private sector understand.

When busy people or clients have questions, they are going to rely on those advisors who can give them clear answers. Steve indirectly asked L.K. what tasks he might perform for specific dollar amounts. Rather than answering that question, L.K. gave an unasked-for interpretation. This just made Steve frustrated and angry. It also made Steve wonder, "If L.K. can't answer my questions, how can I trust him to answer my client's questions?"

You might say that Steve should have been clearer in his request. But it is the job of the advisor to understand not just what the client says, but what the client means.

Client competency skills are not just nice to have. In the Internet age, where professionals in our field know most of the same things as their competitors (or could find out easily), your success depends more on your emotional intelligence than on your technical expertise.

Some clients know exactly what they want and need, and can make themselves clear to their advisors. (Often, these clients don't need consultants; they need an extra pair of hands.)

Many clients know they face conditions they want to manage more effectively, or change. These clients usually have some ideas about how to address the issue, and so they ask advisors if they can do X, Y, or Z. But often, what they really want to know is: "Can you figure out the best way to reach my goals? Can I entrust you with this responsibility?"

In other words, a client's question about tasks is clear, but the client's question about goals is present, but unstated. A good advisor works to understand both the clients wants (stated questions) and interests (unstated questions). To do that, the advisor needs to ask questions of the client to better understand the unstated concerns or interests.

Considering this, L.K. should have:

Made it clear what tasks he would perform (answer the stated question)
Asked Steve what was his understanding of the client's wants and interests.
Explained how the quality of the analysis would improve if the client were to spend more.

Why didn't L.K. do that?

It could have been arrogance. L.K. is recognized as an expert on economic impact and he might have felt this his opinions were as valuable as his facts.

It might have been that L.K. didn't know enough to answer Steve's question. But because he felt he had to give an answer, he talked around the question.

Or it could be that, like many professionals in planning, development or public design, L.K. has more training and experience in speaking ('profess'-ing) than in listening.

We don't know. But we do know that L.K. lost at least one potential client, and all the others that Steve will work with in the future.

-- Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Learning opportunities:

The Leading Institute's Leading from the Middle program can help you be a more influential advisor. It is designed for urban planners, community and economic development professionals, and others who need to influence, but don't have the ability to coerce others, or would rather persuade than demand.

For more on understanding clients better:

Flawless Consulting and The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook, by Peter Block

SPIN Selling and The SPIN Selling Fieldbook, by Neil Rackham

Emotional Intelligence, and related books, by Daniel Goleman

How planning turned a dusty village into an international icon

2010-06-02T12:16:00.003-04:00

Like the beautiful brown-to-red rock formations nearby, the City of Santa Fe seems to rise organically from northern New Mexico’s high desert. Santa Fe is an international arts and culture destination, each year drawing artists, aficionados of Spanish colonial or Native American history, and millions upon millions of dollars owned by tourists buying into “Santa Fe style.”

But like so many “adobe” buildings – which are really made up of the same materials used for your house – Santa Fe’s image has been meticulously planned and maintained. The city demonstrates the enduring power of planning and placemaking.

At 400 years old, Santa Fe is one of America’s oldest cities of European heritage. (Nearby Acoma Pueblo, from 1100 AD, is actually the oldest continuing settlement in the United States.) But the Santa Fe that most people know got its start in the early 20^th century, with the 1912 City Plan.

As told by Chris Wilson in The Myth of Santa Fe, the innovative plan envisioned Santa Fe as a national cultural tourism destination. To this end, the plan recommended that all buildings be maintained in variations of Pueblo or Spanish Territorial forms (later known as Santa Fe Style), no industrial activities be allowed downtown and that curving pedestrian streets in the downtown be protected from widening and straightening.

The vision was so powerful that some owners of existing structures built in ornate architectural forms -- such as Italianate -- changed their facades to fit in with the Santa Fe -- even though there were no legal requirements to do so.

One of the most amazing aspects of the vision is that it didn't carry any legal weight until the 1950s, when Santa Fe created its zoning code mandating the Santa Fe design style. (The code is still one of the most restrictive design ordinances in the United States.)

With so much art and natural beauty, cultural tourism in Santa Fe today seems a natural fit. Not so in 1912. The City is surrounded by natural beauty, but no more so than any other Northern New Mexico town. In the early 20th century, there were more artists in Taos. A closer town, Espanola, sits on the Rio Grande (a more likely pre-automobile navigation route) and is closer to many of the Pueblo villages that inspired Santa Fe's leaders. Albuquerque was a bigger town and on the famed Atcheson Topeka Santa Fe (ATSF) railroad main line between Chicago and Los Angeles.

So why did the vision work and continue to endure?

The vision met the the different interests of the various groups in the city.

After several decades of economic decline, business people were looking for an economic development boost. The city did not get to be on the ATSF main rail line, depriving it of the opportunity to compete with other southwestern towns for manufacturing and distribution. In a place without the agricultural capacity or waterways of other growing cities, cultural tourism couldn't hurt.

The architectural style reflected the interests of descendants of Spanish conquistadors and immigrants who were part of the cultural and economic elites or otherwise engaged with Anglos. It also helped that Edgar Hewett, who was as influential to Santa Fe then as Jane Jacobs was to New York, and other Anglo leaders encouraged the creation of the Santa Fe Fiesta to celebrate Spanish culture.

In the early 20th century, there was a growing industry in Native American arts and artifacts. Cultural tourism could bring more business opportunities for Pueblo Indians.

Northern New Mexico was already attracting artists, architects, archaeologists and cultural historians who could now get into the high desert through trains and early automobiles. (In fact, the leading painters and patrons of New Mexico's art scene came from New York.) These cultural elites would of course support a vision that preserved their fantasies of New Mexico.

Although the vision was created largely by an archaeologist and former college president, Edgar Hewett, leaders throughout the city were involved in its development.

The plan mixed technical planning knowledge -- more mundane aspects dealt with open space and growth management -- with a clear image for the city's development.

The vision was culturally competent for its time. Rather than have one ethnic group's interests dominate others, it strove to promote a vision of Native Americans, Spanish descendants, and Anglo-Americans living together in peace. (This is the essential "myth" that Wilson describes so well. The integration, Wilson says, was largely superficial, and often excluded lower-income people who considered themselves more "Mexican" than "Spanish." The strict design guidelines deny Latino residents -- some of whom use tropical colors in and around their homes -- opportunities to see their architectural tastes reflected in the tourist areas.) Today, the city's strict design guidelines and architectural standards would not be considered culturally competent for the diversity there.

The vision worked. It attracted artists and cultural tourists, elevating it above other cities in New Mexico and the American Southwest as a cultural tourism destination.

(About the image -- A centuries-old Spanish mission? Nope. The Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts, built in 1907. Its director, Edgar Hewett, who was the Jane Jacobs of his time, spearheaded the development of the 1912 Plan of Santa Fe. Source: http://marilynsnyder.org/images/New%20Mexico/SF%20Museum%20of%20Fine%20Arts%201.JPG)

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Keys to sustainable arts-based community and economic development

2010-05-25T17:44:00.001-04:00

Our companion publication, NJ ArtiFacts, has a three-part series on the keys to sustainable arts-based planning and development. These keys are: Branding, collaboration and regional marketing. While written for a New Jersey audience, the tips here can help any planner or community or economic development professional who wants to promote the arts in any community.

The first two installments of the series are available now. This posting will be revised when the final installment is published.

Read Three Keys to Sustainable Arts-Based Community and Economic Development

Part 1 -- Branding
Part 2-- Collaboration

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

The Professional Development Institute offers a number of courses to help you build your skills in cultural community and economic development. Please visit PDI's Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program to learn more about upcoming courses.

A business model for the 21st century planning, engineering or design firm

2010-05-13T13:37:00.000-04:00

The recent demise of one of New Jersey's largest engineering and planning firms, CMX (formerly Schoor-DePalma), has made us think about what could be a winning model for private sector land use firms in the 21st century.

In the 20th century, such firms could rely largely on the expertise and relationships of influential professionals (such as Olmsted, Bartholomew and Schoor). As the firms grew, more work would be farmed out to junior and mid-level associates in a central office, who generate the greatest revenue margins in the private sector. Bigger firms could better afford the hardware and manage the human resources to become sources of expertise for their clients. With the reduction of travel costs and the growth of the Internet, bigger firms could afford to have more branch offices to compete against smaller local firms.

Here's why the 20th century business model won't work as well in the upcoming decades:

Globalization. Globalization doesn't just distribute goods around the world -- it distributes brain power. Within the next decade, if not already, there will be thousands of English-speaking professionals in lower-wage countries like India and China. Some will have trained in the United States. Some, like those in the Middle East, will be trained in their home countries by American universities. And of course, there are plenty of fine universities throughout the world.

Information technology. As more information gets digitized, and there is more bandwidth to distribute it, there is less need to keep it in any central location -- especially not in high-rent locations like New York City or San Francisco. Videoconferencing and cloud software (such as Google and Zoho applications) allow professionals to collaborate from anywhere they can get an Internet connection.

Diversity. Olmsted, Bartholomew, Schoor and others were almost always building business relationships with other white men like themselves. They could build connections in the Rotary Club meetings and golf courses, then close the deals in the conference rooms. In the 21st century, more decision-makers are going to be women and people of color. (And not just in the cities. American suburbs are becoming more diverse.) It's easier to work with people who are like yourself, and so large planning, engineering and design firms tend to go from lighter to darker, and from more male to female, as you move down their organization charts. Decisionmakers who are women or ethnic minorities are going to wonder how well your firm can serve their communities if your staff look like the people who used to live in those communities.

(By the way, you know that technique of tossing 5% of the work to a women-owned or minority-owned business, then showing up with someone from that firm at the interview to show the diversity of your team? Yea, decision-makers will catch on to that soon.)

So what might the successful 21st century American business model be?

It may be based anywhere in the United States, but its technical and analytical work will be done in India, China or other countries with large numbers of English-speaking professionals and lower wages than in the United States. Teams will collaborate by videoconference and large files will be sent through the Internet. Anything you can do from your desktop in the United States can be done by someone else anywhere in the world -- for less money.

Branch offices in the United States will be boutique offices. They will have a small number of staff -- mostly people who are good at getting contracts that can be managed somewhere else -- and be in locations that clients will enjoy visiting. (Hint: Nobody wants to visit an exurban office park.) Because information is so cheap to get and hold, more professionals will look the same to clients. Building personal relationships with a wide variety of people will be more important than ever.

It will be more diverse and culturally competent. No, no, no -- it's not that clients want to hire only those people who look like themselves. Clients will know that everyone who pitches to them has the same basic level of expertise. Contracts will be given not for being smart, but for being able to understand the concerns of the client at a deep level.

It may not even be a single firm, but a consortium of boutique businesses sharing resources. Why carry the overhead of full-time staff when you can have friends in the business who are on-call? (By the way, this is happening now, and it is a threat to mid-sized firms.)

If you are a professional in the United States with at least 20 more years left in your career, you should build skills in business development, cultural competency, team building and leadership. Even if there is more demand for planning, there may not be much more demand for mere technicians in the United States.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

If you want to learn business development skills, try the upcoming BOCEP Deep Learning course Business Development for Planners, from May 26 to July 3, 2010.

Tips for new and soon-to-be solo practitioner consultants

2010-05-06T15:02:00.001-04:00

By Gary Minkoff, guest contributor

The Professional Development Institute and The Leading Institute recently hosted a learning event for planners and landscape architects who want to build free agent consulting practices. The speakers/coaches included successful solo practitioners who are also instructors in the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program.

Speaker/coach Gary Minkoff, Principal of Above Beyond Marketing in Highland Park, New Jersey, generously shared his tips for publication in PDI Advisor.   Gary has more than 25 years of professional experience, including over 15 years in consulting. In BOCEP, he teaches Managing Green Politics.

Gary’s suggestions are responses to questions prepared for “Planning to Go Out on Your Own? Building a Successful Solo Consulting Practice,” held April 28, 2010 at Rutgers University.

*Some people do well as consultants, while others flounder. How do you know if you have what it takes, or have the right set of skills and personality to be a consultant?

1)    Are you an entrepreneur by choice-or by necessity?
2)    Know your goals and priorities-there’s a difference between self-employment and building a business to create wealth or a legacy.
3)    Are you comfortable networking constantly?
4)    How well known are you-how in touch are you with your reputation?
5)    Do you mind continuous follow-up on everything-proposals, projects, invoices, collections?
6)    How do you like doing a little of everything?
7)    How are your people-and admin—skills?
8)    Do you like to sell or to close?
9)    You need discipline: Stick to a routine
10)    How are your time management skills?

*In the private sector, you can choose to be part of a consulting firm, try to build your own firm, or choose to be a solo practitioner. How should you go about making this choice? What do you need to know about yourself?

1)    Resilience – Financial (access to working capital and reserves) and emotional (rejection, peaks and valleys as you get clients, lose on bids, etc.)
2)    Risk tolerance – How comfortable are you with the risks of not having a steady flow of income, or not having enough clients (or having too many), or having clients who are litigious or could impact your reputation?
3)    Identification of your strengths and weaknesses.
4)    Consider partnerships to mitigate risk.
*What do you find most challenging about being a solo practitioner?
1)    Balance of admin, billable hours and sales time.
2)    Business development in this environment.
3)    Procurement processes—advantages –minority/women in Supplier. Diversity programs-disadvantages-time/disclosures and documentation for compliance.

*How do you compete against so many other people who have similar skill sets?

1)    Build relationships.
2)    Provide something unique or provide it in a unique way-know your “unique selling proposition”—or value proposition.
3)    Educate yourself, and your clients to stay on top of new trends/offerings.
4)    Provide outstanding proactive service and make responsiveness to all inquiries and requests your trademark.

*What resources would you recommend for anyone who is starting out or planning to become a solo practitioner?

1)    Consulting for Dummies/Working from home (this second title may be out of print-but anything by Paul and Sarah Edwards is immensely helpful to small/home office businesses).
2)    Understand the different dimensions of risk and mitigate them:
a.    Liability-E&O, GL insurance, contracts, corporate structure or LLC/LLP
b.    Financial-savings and access to credit lines
c.    Competitive-professional education, business development
d.    Industry segment-are your target markets growing or shrinking—how large are they?
3)    Professional team-accountant, banker, attorney, insurance agent-and informal advisors on business/professional issues.
4)    Technology mobility—have a functional Laptop/virtual fax and phone/skype/quality color printer-
5)    Kinkos or GBC binding capability; consider Kinkos, Staples or Mimeo if you need high quality printing in quantity and you are on the go
6)    Software for remote collaboration-Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Audition, Google Docs, Adobe Breeze; FTP site if necessary; Outlook, Google or other enterprise calendar
7)    VOIP/smart phone for email/voicemail forwarding
8)    Fast Company (the magazine). If you do business in New Jersey-keep an eye on NJBiz; in New York or other metro areas, Crains Publishing usually has a publication to keep you abreast of news and trends
9)    SmartBrief published by the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

Gary Minkoff is the Principal of Above & Beyond Marketing, based in Highland Park, NJ. You can reach Gary at minkg@aol.com or at 732-777-6892. Gary is also a member of the Highland Park Borough Council. You can read more about him at http://www.hpboro.com/index.aspx?NID=204.

Indicators that a group is becoming a team

2010-04-27T13:58:00.001-04:00

A group is a set of individuals who happen to be together; a team is a group of individuals working toward a common purpose. Among the ways you can tell when a group is becoming a team are:

*Group members talk with one another as much as with the team "leader." In the early stages of group formation, members tend to look to a strong, central figure to give them direction. As the group members become more comfortable with one another and understand their individual roles, they tend to become more engaged with other team members.

*The group develops norms. Norms are the "rules" (many of them informal), that govern how members should interact with one another. These rules could be as serious as "everyone will respect everyone's else right to speak" to as light as "we always go to lunch together after our meetings." Some team leaders try to speed up the norming process by asking group members to agree on rules. It's when group members themselves know the rules (and punish those who break them) that the group is going through it's "norming" process.

*Members are able to handle disputes and disagreements among themselves. Team leaders like to know what's going on in a group. But it's also a good sign when leaders learn after-the-fact that disputes and disagreements have been handled by the team to the satisfaction of its members.

Leaders have to be careful when working with emerging teams. While new groups tend to look to strong figures who can provide direction and structure, this same type of leadership might be seen as patronizing and unnecessary to a well-performing team.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

To read more on group development, please consult the Free Management Library.

If you would like to learn more about how to effectively lead and manage teams, please consider enrolling in an upcoming Leading from the Middle program.

Principles of human needs placemaking

2010-04-22T12:59:00.001-04:00

Psychologists say humans have four sets of needs: To be safe and secure, be loved and feel connected to others, to express their power and individuality, and have access to sensually appealing environments. By focusing on these sets of needs in planning, design and development, we can help build places that are more equitable, efficient and sustainable.

This essay explains and connects the concepts of human needs and placemaking, then offers guidance for practitioners. It is meant to provide a framework for planning practice and a launch pad for more conversation.

The human needs framework can help us avoid spectacular failures (such as the promise of urban renewal to enhance low-income communities ), get good ideas integrated into places more effectively, and help us better adapt to changing interests and demands in the communities we serve.

Human needs theories

No amount of urban planning and placemaking can meet all the needs of every individual at the same time. People are far too diverse and complex, and we are limited in what we can know. But we can strive to increase the number of opportunities for people to meet their needs and enhance the access to those opportunities.

We begin with psychological theories because ultimately it is individuals who decide whether to support, use and sustain placemaking efforts.

There are many theories of human motivation. Alfred Adler wrote that everyone has a ‘will to power’ – a desire to express their individuality (for example, through various types of art, career success, or leadership). Carl Rogers shared a similar view, and theorized that individuals are satisfied to the extent that what they experience is consistent with their desires for their protection and growth. Perhaps the most famous theory is the hierarchy of needs, by Abraham Maslow. He initially created a five-tiered structure of needs, ranging from physiological needs (food, safety, etc.) to self-actualization (the desire to ‘be all you can be.’) Later he added two more needs – the need to know and understand (which appear to be strategies toward self-actualization than separate needs). Maslow’s concept of a hierarchy is controversial, and criticized as being too focused on a male Western-oriented viewpoint. (Gender researchers and those who study collectivist cultures argue that for many people, the need to maintain strong relationships with others is at least as important – if not more so – than standing out. However, the three dimensions of human needs have been widely shared among psychologists. In recent years, as a result of the growth of the environmental movement, some psychologists have added a fourth dimension of the need for appealing environments. Ecopsychologists have argued that humans feel happier and more satisfied when they feel connected to their natural environment.

The evidence for these theories can be found in societies around the world. The basic physiological needs are indisputable. The lack of food and shelter can lead to hunger, illnesses and death. Connecting products such as alcohol, cars, and clothing makes advertisers reach.

Self-actualization needs epitomized

Though it is difficult to measure self-actualization in individuals, there are many symptoms of its absence in society. Korean immigrants and their descendants in the United States are considered model minorities, with higher than average educational outcomes and business creation. [i] Korean immigrants also do quite well in China. But the experience of Koreans in Japan is far different. Denied full citizenship rights and opportunities as their Japanese neighbors, Koreans there had social and educational outcomes similar to African-Americans and Latinos in the United States. What makes the Japanase Korean experience more interesting for this discussion is that unlike African-Americans in the United States, most Koreans physically resemble their Japanese neighbors -- and like some Jewish-Americans in the early 20^th century, some Koreans have changed their names to ones that fit more in their mainstream society. Pyong Gap Min, who studied the experiences of Koreans in Japan and China, argues that Koreans did better in the latter country because they could exercise their cultural beliefs and practices without the pressure of giving those up through assimilation, as in Japan. In other words, the ability of Koreans to self-actualize as a group empowers and enables them to succeed.[ii]

The connection between the arts and participation in civil society also shows the importance of self-actualization. Numerous studies show that where there is more activity in arts, there is more volunteering and participation in other community activities.[iii]

Relational needs epitomized

Robert Putnam’s oft-cited book Bowling Alone stokes fears that Americans are becoming more isolated and less communal.[iv] Intuitively, it seems that the growing number of options for at-home entertainment (television, computers, recorded movies), and the growth of suburban and exurban communities would lead to a society of isolated families. But as William Whyte showed in City: Rediscovering the Center, people prefer to be around other people. In his observations, Whyte and his researchers found that when given a choice of sitting locations, most people will seat within a few feet of others. People also preferred to sit in moveable chairs rather than stationary benches, which is symbolic of a self-actualization need.[v] Though Whyte’s research was primarily in New York City in the 1980’s, the growth of cafes in the suburbs, and the revitalization of hundreds of aging downtowns in the face of increased competition from malls and big box stores strengthens Whyte’s theories of an urban design that promotes close human interaction.

There are many other examples of the power of relational needs in society. Youth gangs and organizations that provide volunteer opportunities both offer their members ways to connect with others in affirming and esteem-building ways. Not surprisingly, both gang membership and volunteerism has been on the rise in the first decade of the 21^st century.[vi]

Environmental needs epitomized

From an economic perspective, one of the best indicators of demand for a quality of life element is in property values. There is ample research showing that enhancing the environmental quality of a place increases property values. Looking at the literature in real estate journals, Laverne and Winson-Geiderman reported that having trees on a residential property can increase its sale price by 4% to 19%. Their own analysis of office buildings in the Cleveland, Ohio, area found that “landscaping with a good aesthetic value” added 7% to the property’s rental rates.[vii] In a wide-ranging study of the literature on environmental amenities, Jackson found evidence that landscaping, signage, and other amenities that make built environments greener, more interesting and easier to navigate have significant benefits for public health.[viii] Grill argues that adult education in natural environments, such as those provided by the residential retreat center The Omega Institute, can help adults learn more effectively.[ix] In effect, furthering one human need can help to further another.

Connection to placemaking

Placemaking is a process by which a space becomes a “place” – a physical area that is seen by its users and others as distinct from other areas. This comes largely from the place’s history, combination of uses, and the feelings it evokes among the people who know of the place. All major cities around the world have similar objects and uses. Yet Paris, France is widely seen as a different type of place than the city of Los Angeles, California in the United States. In the United States, a place’s image plays an enormous role in revitalization efforts. Compared to their suburban neighbors, communities in New Jersey such as Paterson, Trenton, Newark and New Brunswick have far more of the kind of physical resources that in theory. Placemaking is often an organic and unintentional process that happens without the active knowledge of the people who give a place its identity, and help retain it.

For most of recorded history, intentional placemaking was a craft practiced by kings, chief clerics and wealthy landowners through (and sometimes led by) their architects and engineers. As monarchs and clerics gave way to committees and associations in the 20^th century, these professionals continued to lead placemaking efforts. Their focus has and continues to be on the physical elements of place: buildings, infrastructure, and the spaces in between.[x] Early urban planning theory followed in the footsteps of architecture and civil engineering.

But by the mid-20^th century, some elegant physical design theories failed in practice – the Radiant City produced more crime-filled housing projects than towers in the park; Broadacre City generated more wasteful urban sprawl than Jeffersonian green spaces. In the early 1960s, a working-class self-described housewife and activist with no architectural training suggested paying more attention to people than broad theories. Jane Jacobs and her followers challenged architects, planners and engineers to put people in their places.

In the last quarter of the 20^th century, more people who weren’t focused on physical design – social workers, community organizers, lawyers and business development professionals – added more dimensions to placemaking practice.

Placemaking now is a craft focused on the relationships among people and their built environment. It fills in the gaps between the scopes of architects, civil engineers, social workers, and other professionals who each have a role in shaping places. This view of placemaking helps to justify collaborative planning practices: Even if the design proposals generated from all those public workshops is not much different from what a small committee generated in a half-day meeting, the proposals are much better because the workshops helped people feel that they designed their place themselves. In other words, the workshops furthered the self-actualization needs of residents, and therefore would be more likely to be supported within the community.

Meeting human needs through placemaking

The following table provides a matrix of sample elements that help meet the four dimensions of human needs. There are two categories of elements: Land use, which comprises objects in physical space, such as roads or parks; and associational/psychosocial, which comprises human activities and social beliefs that support human needs.

Dimensions	Typical land use elements	Typical associational/psychosocial elements
Physiological needs	Roads, Stores, food production and distribution facilities, waste management facilities, energy generating facilities, auto-oriented uses, transportation-related facilities, hospitals	Emergency services Job opportunities Equitable distribution of public services and publicly available resources Equitable access from residence to elements that meet all four human needs dimensions
Relational needs	Plazas/public squares, bars, residential enclaves, business districts, places of worship, community centers, theaters, historic and cultural sites	Social clubs Civic organizations Arts associations Festivals Community rituals
Self-actualization needs	Schools, museums, galleries, passive recreation, business incubators	Competitions Openness to diversity Fair opportunities to engage in governance Openness to diversity and change
Environmental needs	Parks, open space, streetscaping,	Conservancies Neighborhood associations

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Additional references

Engler, Barbara. 2009. Personality Theories. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Smith, Daniel B. 2010. Is There an Ecological Unconscious? The New York Times Magazine. January 31, 2010. 35-40

[i] F. James, J. Romine and P. Terry. Big City Labor Markets and Immigrant Economic Performance. Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, (2002), pp. 107-131.

[ii] P.G. Min. A Comparison of the Korean Minorities. International Migration Review,

Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 4-21

[iii] National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Arts Participation and Civic Engagement Linked in New Research. NASAA Notes, December 2006. http://www.enewsbuilder.net/nasaanotes/e_article000701234.cfm?x=bf5pFGV,b57JMnRS,w Also M. Stephenson. Developing Community Leadership Through the Arts in Southside Virginia: Social Networks, Civic Identity and Civic Change. Community Development Journal. Vol. 42, No. 1, (July 2005), p. 79-96.

[iv] __________, Bowling Alone, http://www.bowlingalone.com/#. Undated. Reviewed on March 28, 2010.

[v] W. Whyte. City: Rediscovering the Center. 2009. University of Pennsylvania Press. Originally published in 1988.

[vi] For information on why youth join gangs, see J. Howell. Youth Gangs: An Overview. Juvenile Justice Bulletin, August 1998. http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/jjbulletin/9808/intro.html For information on the growth of gangs in the United States, see M. Carlie. Into the Abyss: A Personal Journey into the World of Street Gangs. http://faculty.missouristate.edu/m/MichaelCarlie/what_I_learned_about/GANGS/demographics_number.htm. Undated, but with information from as late as 2006. For information on the growth of volunteerism, see R. Grimm et. al. Volunteer Growth in America: A Review of Trends Since 1974. December 2006 http://www.serveminnesota.org/PDFFiles/VolunteerGrowthReport.pdf

[vii] R. LaVerne and K. Winson-Geiderman. The Influence of Trees and Landscaping on Rental Rates in Office Buildings. Journal of Arboriculture Volume 29 Number 5. (2003) 281-290

[viii] L. Jackson. The Relationship of Urban Design to Human Health and Condition. Landscape and Urban Planning 64 (2003) 191–200.

[ix] J. Grill. Natural Settings, Restorative Environments, and Adult Learning. Adult Learning Volume 14, Number 3 (Summer 2003) 20-23

[x] It’s not surprising that English translations of European documents equate ‘plan’ and ‘map’.

After the conference: Getting the most value

2010-04-14T16:16:00.003-04:00

You go to a conference, learn about a lot of things, talk to some interesting people, and hopefully get some good conference toys. Now you’re back in your office. What can you do to make your conference more worthwhile?

Teach what you learned to your colleagues or in your network. You are likely to forget 90% of what you heard at the conference within the next three months. Sharing what you learned can help you remember up to 90%.
Either make plans to read through the materials you got at the conference, or throw them away. If you’re not that interested in learning more in the next week, you will probably be less interested in the next month. Next time, take only what you expect to use.
On the backs of all those business cards you got at the conference, write down the name and year of the conference where you met those people, and if possible, a word or two about what you talked about. Plan to follow up with everyone you want to in the next six months, and remind those people of how you connected with them.
If you have an email mailing list, it is more courteous to ask the people you met if you can add them, rather than just downloading their information. Because so many of us get enough (really too much) spam, they will probably appreciate your asking. And if they say no, that’s a good sign they might not be interested in continuing the business relationship further.
Think about what you wish you had learned at the conference, but didn’t. Plan out how you’re going to fill those knowledge gaps over the next year or two.
Think you can do better than some of the speakers you heard? You probably can. Offer to do a conference session on a topic that you know well. It's a great way to increase your visibility and prestige among your colleagues.

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

A guide for measuring the creative sector

2010-03-29T11:34:00.000-04:00

A new report from PDI's Arts Build Communities initiatives provides guidelines for measuring the creative sector. The report, designed to support the New Jersey Creative Vitality Index, includes a definition of the creative industry in the United States (the organizations and businesses that focus on developing, creating or distributing products designed mostly for their aesthetics.)

The ABC report can help analysts and policy makers in several ways:

By taking a narrower definition of the creative sector than is found in other places, it reduces the "noise" of the economy's impact on other, unrelated industries. For example, some definitions of the creative sector include gypsum manufacturers. While gypsum is used to create plaster, it also is used to create drywall. A sharp decline or increase in building construction could impact gypsum manufacturing -- but this would not tell you much about the state of the creative economy. The report identifies dozens of creative sector industry.
The guide offers a matrix of the creative economy that organizes it by economic function (manufacturing, distribution, development, etc...) and subsector (architecture, visual arts, performing arts, etc...) This can help planners and policy makers see new opportunities for some communities to participate in the creative sector. Not every town or city can be an arts destination. But those that aren't can provide housing for artists, warehouse space, or manufacturing locations for businesses that want to connect to the creative economy.
The guide also relies on reliable data that is freely available and updated regularly by the U.S. Census Bureau.

See Defining and Measuring the Creative Economy

Learn more about Arts Build Communities

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Arts Build Communities and the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offer several courses to help you excel in the creative economy. These include:

*Cultural Community Development Studio

*Cultural Economic Development Studio

*Cultural Heritage Tourism Basics

*Programming Cultural Uses

*Valuing the Arts in Economic Development

For more on these and other courses, please visit the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program.

Measuring the experience economy

2010-03-22T14:06:00.000-04:00

There are many ways to gauge the growth of the experience economy in your area.

The easiest, though not the most current or comprehensive, way is through the U.S. Department of Commerce's County Business Patterns database. Here you can get information on business activity at the federal, state, county and even zip code level. (But not the town/city level, which is odd.) Depending on what level you're looking at, you can find out the number of establishments, annual payroll and employment. (CBP covers private-sector businesses and nonprofit organizations, but not many government agencies.) County Business Patterns is updated annually, but it is usually two years out of date. But that's generally ok for planning and policy research, because it is better to make long-term decisions based on long-term trends.

Many experience economy businesses can be found under NAICS code 71 (Arts Entertainment and Recreation Industry). It's not a complete list (Retail stores fall under NAICS codes 44 and 45), but Code 71 establishments are representative of the kinds of businesses that exist to offer an educational, artistic or entertainment experience: Museums, amusement parks, historic sites, etc.

The Economic Census offers information on receipts, so you can gauge the financial health of an industry. (Receipts might be a better measure than employees for many industries because technology could reduce the need for some workers.) Unfortunately, the Economic Census is every five years, and detailed data isn't available for a long time. The last census was 2007, and as of March 2010, there is limited data at the state level. (Alaska information is there, but New Jersey numbers won't be available until August.)

Still, you can find some comparative statistics on experience economy businesses for the United States as a whole.

For more current information, check with organizations that focus on tourism, historic preservation, arts or entertainment at the state,county or city level. They probably will not have the type of comprehensive information you would find in CBP or the Economic Census, but they are more likely to have their ear to the ground.

The most expensive way to measure the experience economy is to inventory and survey experience economy businesses. This will help give you the most current information, as well as insights that a statistical table can't.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

For more information: The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers various Deep Learning courses and Learning Labs. Upcoming courses and Learning Labs (as of March 2010) include Cultural Economic Development Studio, Programming Cultural Uses and Cultural Heritage Tourism Basics.

You can buy anything on the Internet except an experience

2010-03-16T17:19:00.002-04:00

According to Retail Traffic Magazine (by way of Planetizen), both foot traffic and sales are up at the largest mall in the United States. In these difficult times, the success of the Mall of America can offer some insights into the future of retail-based economic development.

The Mall of America shows the growing strength of the experience economy. A key to its success has been adding more rides to the large amusement park at the center of its complex. In the experience economy, consumers are willing to pay more for a good or service if they have a positive experience with the business. (That experience could be fun, pretty, stimulating, ego-boosting, etc.) Joseph Pine and James Gilmour, who coined the term in The Experience Economy, were writing about the importance of businesses spending time on enhancing consumer experiences, even if those actions didn’t immediately ring up sales. (For example: a salesperson acting like your personal shopper in a store.)

Today, you can buy almost anything (that’s legal to buy), except for an experience.

For our field, participating in the experience economy means making our built environments more interesting, exciting, safe, surprising, or whatever the communities we serve enjoy. The ‘experience’ starts when the consumer feels he or she is in the place. If that person gets lost, it is going to affect his or her willingness to spend time and money – or to come back. In the experience economy, streetscaping, public art and architectural design are not just decorative; they are critical parts of the economic development infrastructure. Events are not public relations gimmicks; they are important marketing tools.

Enhancing the public environment can especially help businesses that serve low and moderate-income communities. Because many of these businesses make their profits on volume, rather than per-capita sales, and they tend to be in older, smaller spaces, they tend to use more floor space for retailing or service activity. In other words, stores that cater to wealthier people, or that have higher profit margins, can afford to have more floor space available for experiences. (That’s why the places that sell coffee for $4 a cup have more chairs and nicer art than the places that sell it for $1 a cup.) While all retail districts can benefit from enhanced physical design, businesses in lower income communities tend to have less capacity to do it on their own.

Many traditional downtowns and some cities, like Las Vegas, are succeeding through experience economy strategies. Urban design in highway commercial areas tends to ignore attractive site design (A key exception are upscale lifestyle centers, which are essentially lifestyle-themed open-air malls.) The oversight might be a costly mistake. Fifty years ago, traditional downtowns began to be threatened by malls. Thirty years ago, malls began to be threatened by big box stores. Today, those stores, and many highway retail uses, are threatened by the Internet. Internet shopping is growing rapidly; two-thirds of all Internet users in the United States made an online purchase in 2009, said Internet Retailer.

Of course, enhancing the visual environment is not enough. Consumers want to go where they feel welcome and safe. Circulation planning and the management of retail districts are key. Also, in age when anyone can have a public voice through the Internet, a key part of any experience economy strategy is keeping up-to-date with the changing pulse of stakeholders. In business, they call in market research. We can think of it as needs assessment or public engagement.

In many cities and communities, there are still elected officials and public administrators, as well as members of the public, who think that decisions on where and how long to shop depend solely on price and convenience. Hopefully, this essay has given you some talking points.

For more resources:

Check out the Urban Land Institute or the American Planning Association for resources on urban design.

The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers a number of courses on economic development, branding and other issues raised in this essay. Please visit http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/bocep to learn more.

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Developing high quality verbal images

2010-03-01T11:17:00.000-05:00

Verbal images -- examples, metaphors, analogies and stories -- help audiences better understand complex matters and feel more comfortable about change. Here's how to make them work better for your goals:

*Use verbal images that your audiences will easily understand. What sounds better to you? "Trapped between Scylla and Charybidis" or "Caught between a rock and hard place." They say the same thing.

*Be aware of your audience's emotional response to the verbal image. A New York City-base planner was working on a .development plan for a suburban Long Island town. In his initial presentation, he used examples of good planning from the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Bad mistake. A number of the town's residents moved out of places like Brooklyn. You can imagine what they thought of a planner who they thought was trying to bring Brooklyn into their town.

*Use imagery that elicits strong, but not extreme, emotions. I was talking with a planner in Montana about how I could both support the concept of the American Institute of Certified Planners' Certification Maintenance program while opposing its design. I said "you can support economic development, but that is not a blanket endorsement of eminent domain." I picked this image because of the strong emotions elicited by the words "eminent domain" (especially in Western states). The planner said that analogy helped him see the issue in a new light.

*Use images that connect to what concerns your audiences. Parents are concerned about the safety of their children. If you're trying to promote the development of sidewalks, you would have more success getting audiences to envision the dangers to children walking on streets.

*Unless you feel there is no better image, avoid images that elicit extreme emotional responses. Words like "steal," "rape," "Nazi," "Hitler," are more likely to cause your audience to roll their eyes than raise their eyebrows.

*Use images of experiences that you might have in common with your audiences. No matter how different we are, we all have experiences of growing up, being nervous, shopping, having friends. These kinds of images will help you connect with your audience.

*Stories -- also known as visions, scenarios or simulations -- are excellent tools for helping audiences feel comfortable about pursuing change. They help audiences understand and visualize complex and abstract information. My favorite stories make the audience members the main characters in the world that the plan envisions. ("Imagine you are walking down _________. You see _______. You hear _____."

-- Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Learn more:

Become a more effective communicator through Professional's Writing Studio. This Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program course runs from March 10 to April 17, 2010. (Missed this course? Get updates on this and other courses. Go to the Professional Development Institute website to sign up for updates.

If you have a professional development tip you'd like to share, please send your tip to Leo. Please also give us your full name, title and affiliation, so we can give you proper credit.

Tips for effective emailing

2010-02-25T09:25:00.000-05:00

Email wastes too much of our time. It's not just because of the volume of email. Poorly worded or unnecessary emails distract us and cost us time. According to a recent article on MSNBC.com, workers who are interrupted by emails or phone calls can't just get right back on track. It can take 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to do so. (For more, see “‘Reply All' can lower worker productivity.” )

And yet, we need email to get things done more quickly. Here are some tips for helping your own productivity and getting the right kind of attention for your emails:

To help yourself:

Understand that people read emails for quick communications. Want your reader to spend time on a subject? Write a separate memo or schedule a meeting. We prepare ourselves for different types of documents. We might be willing to spend hours on a thick book or report that we think of as 'serious reading' -- but only seconds on the same platform we use to read and share jokes and images.
Schedule yourself times to respond to email, and avoid checking email outside of those times.
If you have to check email throughout the day, open those that are from people you need to respond to quickly (such as your supervisor), or those dealing with critical projects.
If you're part of a team project, and you see a lot of ‘reply all' emails from various team members, consider asking for a conference call or meeting. The extended conversations may be a sign of tension that is best resolved in person or by phone.
Organize your emails, so that you can easily respond to high priority items first. I use a system developed by David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. But you may find a different system works better for you.

To help others:

Understand that everything you ask someone to read is more work for them. Would you want them giving you more work, if it doesn't benefit you?
Never, ever send an email without a subject line. It is like asking a busy person for a meeting without any reason.
Let your reader know in the subject line if something is URGENT, you want the reader to PLEASE REPLY, or the email is just FYI.
Use strong verbs and precise nouns in your subject. “URGENT: Please help Joe on the budget” is stronger than “Re: Help”
Keep your emails to one topic. If you can't, use subheadings (such as I do with PDI News), to let your readers know that the email has several parts. We have become used to using email for quick communication, and to seeing obligatory language (e.g., “This communication is intended for the recipient only…”). So when there are breaks for paragraphs, many people drop their attention.
If you're going to change the topic in an ongoing conversation, do not simply hit “reply.” Put a new subject line, or compose a new email. Otherwise, your readers may think you're just continuing an old discussion. If they're ready to move on, your email may go nowhere.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

lf you have a professional development tip you'd like to share, please send your tip to Leo Vazquez at vazquezl@rci.rutgers.edu. Please also give us your full name, title and affiliation, so we can give you proper credit.

Should you go after that RFP?

2010-02-10T13:48:00.002-05:00

Whether we are consultants or nonprofit or public sector professionals, we all at some point wind up getting requests for proposals (RFPs). Hopefully, we get more of them than we can respond to. How should we choose among them?

The first step is to decide whether the work that is being asked for is in what the requesters would see as one of your core strengths. That is, it's not about whether you can do the work, but whether the person who reads your proposal thinks you can do the work. If not, you will be better off ditching the RFP or seeing if you can collaborate with another organization that specializes in the work.

Think about how you heard about the RFP. If someone at the requesting organization told you about it before it was issued, that's a good sign that you might be a strong candidate. If, on the other hand, you found out about it from someone outside the agency, and had to request a copy of the RFP, you are going to have a harder time proving yourself against your competitors. If the agency didn't send your group an RFP for something that you would normally do, the most likely reasons are that the issuers don't know you, or don't want you to respond. (Or it might be that the intern assigned to mail out the RFPs overlooked your address.)

Before you begin to write your proposal, get information from the issuer. Some of the things you want to know are:

*Does the requester have the money committed to the project? As strange as it sounds, some public agencies send out RFPs without having the money to pay for the work. What someone at the agency is probably doing is getting respondents to do the work of building a case to pay for the project. They may get the money, but that doesn't mean you will get the job. Note: this kind of practice is harmful to society in the long run. It increases the operating costs of responding organizations, which are then passed on to clients or employees.

*How much does the requester plan to spend? Any response other than a range of figures is a bad sign. "I don't know" means the agency might just be fishing for ideas -- which the agency might take on itself. "We can't tell you that" (or words to that effect) is a sign that the potential client might have a habit of hiding information. Clients that withhold important information will generate additional administrative and time costs -- and may blame you for the overruns.

*Why is the requester sending out the RFP? Clients and funding agencies aren't always clear in an RFP about what they want in a consultant or grantee. By asking questions such as: "Why do you want to do this?" "Why now?" and "What have you tried before?" you can get a richer sense of the requester's needs and beliefs.

There may be times when you should respond to an RFP, even if you sense some warning signs, or think you will be a long shot. Respond to the RFP if:

*You're trying to build a relationship with the requesting agency. You can use your proposal as a 'calling card' that might help you get future interviews on other projects.

*You're trying to build your image with competitors or potential clients. Requesters are more likely to pick the consultant or grantee that they know -- or at least have heard of.

*You don't mind taking a risk. Like the slogan for the New York Lottery -- Hey, you never know.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

For more information:
The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers several courses to help you enhance your practice and business. They include Business Development for Planners, Professional Writing Studio, and Who Do They Think You Are? Branding for Planning, Design and Development Professionals. To learn more about these courses, go to http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/bocep

Making cost-effective choices for continuing education

2010-02-04T08:59:00.002-05:00

Everybody knows that planning and policy professionals who build their knowledge, get more training, and develop their abilities are better prepared to handle new challenges in our field. There are many choices for continuing education – websites, professional networks, webinars, day-long workshops, conferences, online classes and programs that last days or months, as well as traditional university-based classes. The options are growing. Any of them could be exactly what you’re looking for – or a waste of your time and money. How do you get the most for your limited resources?

To do this, you need to treat continuing education as a process, rather than an event. But first, here are some common mistakes that professionals and organizations make about continuing education:

Mistake #1: Thinking all continuing education is “training.”
Generally, continuing education does any of three things: build your knowledge, train you to learn new skills, or develop your abilities. Knowledge is knowing about a subject. Conferences and webinars are good for building your knowledge. Training is designed to help you learn how to do something. Hearing someone’s success stories in a conference may help open your eyes to new ideas, but you usually don’t learn there how to put those ideas into practice. Workshops are designed to do this. Development is designed to help you change the way you think about and approach problems. It is the highest form of continuing education. You get knowledge and training, and under the best conditions, you can create new knowledge yourself. Ultimately, development programs are about more than what is being taught – they are about building your capacity to do things better.

Let’s say you want to learn “budgets and budgeting”. If you need to learn why a budget is important (knowledge), a one-hour webinar is fine. If you want to learn how to put together a strong budget (training), you may want a two- to four-hour workshop. But let’s say you want to use a budget as a tool for effective management or organizational change. That’s where a development program – especially one that gives you time to practice what you learned and reflect on it – is most useful.

If a subject is complex or difficult, you may be better off with development than simple training. Warren Bennis, who is to leadership what Frederick Law Olmsted is to landscape architecture, doesn’t put much faith in leadership “training” programs that last a few days. That’s because leadership is far too complex and difficult to learn in a few days. Leadership is not a set of skills, but ways of seeing, thinking and acting. You learn this best in programs that give you time to learn, explore and reflect. (That’s why The Leading Institute’s “Leading from the Middle” program is four to six months long. It’s leadership development, not just training.)

Mistake #2: “Paying for a conference.”
Directors and executives who are critical of continuing education see it as just a way of giving employees paid time off. Those who think in terms of “paying for a conference” are creating their own problems. Organizations should pay for knowledge, training or development. Directors and staff together should decide what new knowledge or skills they need – and then make the most cost-effective decisions. If you’re just “paying for a conference,” you shouldn’t expect your staff to learn. You should expect them to network, party and hang out -- at the organization’s expense.
“I don’t often find the content of conferences particularly useful. I read a lot. I think about these subjects constantly and talk to a lot of people. By the time I get to a conference, I know the substance of what’s going to be said.”
Keith Ferrazzi, in Never Eat Alone

Mistake #3: Keeping what you learned to yourself.
This is a common mistake of both learners and organizations. Planning and policy professionals take time off to go to a continuing education program, come back to work, and… do the same things they did before they left. Under these circumstances, directors are right to think they wasted their organization’s resources. But it hurts the learner too. An excellent way to learn about a subject is to explain it to others. Teaching forces you to think about your subject and put it into your own words, which helps you retain more knowledge.

Mistake #4: Thinking you have to leave the office to learn
Organizations waste a lot of money on training by ignoring a low-cost and valuable resource – the diverse knowledge of their employees. Most planning organizations do little or nothing to encourage employees to share their knowledge with one another. It’s not expensive – you can hold staff lunches where employees – and not just the professional staff – can share knowledge or train their co-workers. If your organization has multiple offices, you can encourage peers to share knowledge over online discussion boards. Yes, planning and policy professionals do share knowledge while working on projects. But the focus tends to be on production, not on learning.

Mistake #5: Not paying for or pursuing continuing education
Planning is such a dynamic field that planning and policy professionals who fail to learn will fall far behind their peers. Organizations that don’t pay for continuing education should expect their employees to be of lesser quality than their competitors – because their staff will be, eventually. Some directors mistakenly think that sending employees to training programs just helps them find another job quicker. But covering continuing education sends a signal that you care about your employees’ growth and development. If you do not want to pay to help your employees learn, you should expect them to be less motivated, less loyal, less productive, and less prepared. And your best staff will probably find someplace else to work. That place will probably offer continuing education costs.

Mistake #6: Trying to learn in “chunks”
I hear the same complaint from planning and policy professionals all the time. They go to a workshop or conference, get excited about all the new things they learned, then three months later, forget most of it. If this happened to you, it’s not your fault. According to the book Coaching for Performance, people on average forget about 90% of what they are told and about
70% of what they’re shown after three months. Why? Because they try to warehouse the knowledge like books on a shelf. But your brain acts more like a set of muscles in a gym than a library. Continue to exercise your brain, or you’ll lose most of what you learned. How to do this? Treat every experience as an opportunity to learn. Schedule time to reflect on what you know – or think you know. (I like to do this on Sunday mornings, before everyone in the house is awake.) Talk with others about what you’ve learned, or better yet, teach it to someone else.

Here are some steps to making smart choices about continuing education:

1. Work together with colleagues to decide what you most want or need to learn to achieve your mission and goals. There are so many things planning and policy professionals can learn about, you could theoretically spend all your time in continuing education. (But your organization won’t let you.) Talk with your colleagues, supervisors and staff to find out what “gaps” in knowledge or skills are hurting your ability to meet your mission.

2. Create a “knowledge inventory” in your office. Have members of your office identify their five areas of expertise – on any subject. Someone’s expertise in music management might not seem useful to planning today. But that’s a person you’ll want to turn to when you want to do an arts-based revitalization program.

3. Decide whether you need knowledge, training or development in a particular area.

4. See who in the group or organization would be willing to teach, train or develop their co-workers.

If nobody wants to, see if your budget allows you to bring someone in. This will help more colleagues get the same experience.
Or maybe you need to leave the office to learn. If it is the kind of place where the phone rings a lot, planning and policy professionals have to stop to check their e-mail, or there are frequent interruptions, it’s not a good environment for learning.

5. Create a staff development budget that provides real money for learning. If your budget is so tight that you can’t make funds available, budget staff time for colleagues to teach one another.

6. Seek out the most cost-effective solutions for learning. Ok, there’s a four-hour workshop at an upcoming conference. But is it worth spending $1,500 for four hours of training? Be careful. Cheap is not the same as cost-effective. If you’re unsure, get recommendations from people who’ve been to the program, or get good information from the program’s leadership. Some of the questions you may want to ask are:

What should I expect to learn from this program?
Will I be getting knowledge or also tools?
What has been the experience of others who’ve gone through this program?
What is the instructor’s experience or expertise in the subject?
What do your course evaluations say?
What materials will I receive before the program starts? (This will help you be better prepared for the program.)
What did previous students consider to be the weakest areas of the program, and what improvements are you making? (The answers to this question tell you whether the program designers are adapting to new information or learning needs among students.)
Is there a test to demonstrate your knowledge or can anybody earn a certificate or credits just for showing up? (If there is no test to demonstrate the knowledge of participants, there is no way to know whether the participant actually learned anything.)

7. Maximize your investment by planning for the “post-program.”

If you are director or manager, make time for your staff to practice what they’ve learned, and encourage them to share their knowledge with their colleagues.

If you were in the learning program, work with your supervisors to make time to share what you’ve learned. A free lunch will help you attract your co-workers.

Some people see continuing education as personal development. But I see it as a way to further our public service mission. If we can learn better ways to analyze challenges, and new tools to address them, we can be more effective, efficient and productive. Ultimately, the people who most benefit are our clients and constituents.

Leonardo Vazquez

To learn more about programs offered by the Professional Development Institute or The Leading Institute, please visit www.policy.rutgers.edu/pdi

How bad leadership spoils good planning

2010-01-26T11:32:00.000-05:00

When it comes to learning management and leadership skills, professional planners say "I'm OK, but my boss and my colleagues could sure use some help."

This is the message we get consistently from a survey of planners and related professionals we conducted in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. There were more than 400 responses to the four surveys. Planners and related professionals were asked what subjects they would like to learn more about, as well as what their supervisors, colleagues and staff should learn more about. Respondents had 50 choices. The most common answers to what supervisors should learn: "Motivating staff," "leadership skills" and "(basic skills in) management." With the exception of leadership skills, these choices ranked among the lowest when respondents who were supervisors mentioned their own learning needs. (Urban design matters tend to top those lists.)

The findings reveal what seems to be a blind spot among planners about their own leadership and management skills. Regardless of their position, the work of almost every planner involves leading and managing teams, individuals, projects, and relationships. Planners spend a significant amount of their time, if not most of it, on these kinds of tasks. Yet they seem more willing to find fault in others than in themselves.

This is a problem because bad leadership is expensive. Under the watch of poor leaders and managers, staff morale declines and workers feel less committed to the organization and its mission. That tends to lead to work of lesser quality and things getting done more slowly. Poor morale saps energy and contributes to an uncomfortable climate that turns petty disputes into interpersonal wars. And workers who lose their focus and commitment to quality are prone to making more mistakes.

Even worse, poor leadership can stop planners from producing new ideas and solutions to problems. (If you've got a boss who constantly bullies, criticizes, or doesn't give you your due credit, why would you want to do anything extra to make him look good?)

As with planning, the problems trace back to bad assumptions and a lack of knowledge about leadership and management. A lot of people think that you need to pay people more money to motivate them. Wrong. There are plenty of low- and no-cost strategies you can use to motivate staff. Executives who want to improve performance will bring in "tough managers" or promote the most productive staff member as a "pacesetter". Yet, according to a study of more than 3,800 executives, coercive leaders and pacesetters actually reduce the conditions that lead to better performance. Leaders and managers who know when and how to coach, build consensus, or engage in partnerships are much more likely to enhance the climate for performance. (For those of you who are not executives, you're not off the hook: If you manage a staff, a team or a project, you're in a leadership position.)

According to the study, reported by Daniel Goleman in "Leadership that Gets Results" (Harvard Business Review, March-April 2000), leadership affects six key indicators of an organization's "working environment: its flexibility -- that is, how free employees feel to innovate unencumbered by red tape; their sense of responsibility to the organization; the level of standards that people set; the sense of accuracy about performance feedback and aptness of rewards; the clarity people have about mission and values; and finally, the level of commitment to a common purpose". Because organizational climate is highly correlated to organizational performance, if you see positive gains in one, you're likely to see them in the other. (By the way, for those of you who think this is all "touchy-feely" or "fuzzy" -- the organizational climate indicators are measurable, and the instruments used are valid and reliable.) The study looked at six primary leadership styles, and found that only two -- the coercive manager and the pacesetter, had a negative impact on organizational climate.

Though the study was not focused on planning, development and policy organizations, you would expect consistent (or even stronger) findings in our fields. We are part of the "knowledge economy." You can't bully or drag people into producing new ideas or solutions, or to being a better analyst.

You might look at this and think "oh, good leadership is just about being nice to people". However, it's far more complex. Coercive leaders can have a slightly positive impact on standards, and pacesetters on responsibility. As Goleman points out, no one leadership style is going to be the right one in every situation. Leaders in public service have to balance their concern for their co-workers with their responsibility to the communities they serve. As professionals whose work greatly affects the public, we have a responsibility to be efficient and effective. That's why learning about leadership and management is as important as learning about urban planning, community development or public policy.

Most planners have very little knowledge of or training in leadership and management. When I make presentations about leadership at the American Planning Association's National Conference, only a small fraction of the audience members say they had any training in leadership skills. Many planning schools either do not teach management and leadership skills, or undervalue it by making the topic just another elective. There's a sense, I think, that students will "just learn management skills on the job" (as one planning professor told me). You could say the same thing about statistics or economic analysis. (In fact, in some ways, it might be harder to learn leadership than to learn statistics or economics. You can predict how numbers will affect each other if you put them together. Harder to do with people)

Many planners undervalue leadership because, I believe, they hold onto old, incorrect assumptions about the subject. The first is that you can't lead without formal authority. This is a huge error that causes people to disenfranchise themselves. Another is that leaders have to be charismatic. They don't. (And if you don't believe me, read the work of Warren Bennis, who is to the field of leadership what Jane Jacobs, Andres Duany, and Frederick Law Olmsted are to planning.)

The biggest problem could be that planners think the problem is "the other person." There's an ad for a company that says it can improve public involvement in planning. The ad shows a bratty-looking kid in a suit at a birthday party. The message this sends me is that members of the public who won't listen to planners are childish or spoiled. I often hear planners say that the reason that a community won't accept their ideas is "that they need more education on _________." Rarely if ever do I hear a planner say something like "we didn't do a good enough job reaching out to the community or listening to their concerns." If you're not willing to consider how you appear to other people, or how your approach affects them, you'll do yourself and your organization a favor by spending the rest of your career in a cubicle.

A lot of planners don't see themselves as leaders, nor do they want to be "leaders." When I asked incoming students at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy if they wanted to influence leaders, they all shot up their hands. When I asked who wanted to "be a leader," no one raised a hand. Here's the irony: you have to be a leader to influence leaders.
Leadership is the art and craft of influencing the thinking and behavior of audiencesâ to achieve mutual goals. Leadership is not about what leaders do, but the relationship between leaders and audiences. If you're not interested in influencing audiences, what are you doing in the planning field?

Some planners are concerned about becoming more effective leaders, and take half-day to two-day courses on the subject. That's fine for learning certain leadership skills, but you can't learn everything you need to know about management and leadership in four hours or even four days. Leadership is not just a set of tasks -- it is a way of thinking and behaving. There are tools, but no tricks, to good leadership. Unlike econometrics or statistics, there are no real equations to learn. No one can accurately predict how any individual, group or community will react under dynamic conditions. Effective leaders in the field of planning, community development and policy are nuanced and reflective thinkers. They take risks but avoid gambling. They see their world and their situations in 360 degrees. They have an understanding of the past, present and possible future, but are always willing to learn and to question their assumptions. You can't learn all these things watching a PowerPoint slide in the back of a crowded room. Leadership, like good planning, has to be developed and nurtured.

Leonardo Vazquez

For more information:

The Leading Institute offers a challenging and effective leadership development program for urban planners called Leading from the Middle. The next program begins in New Jersey in September 2010. Learn more.

Note: This is an updated version of "How bad leadership spoils good planning," which appeared in Planetizen in 2006.

Enhancing public participation with diverse and divided audiences

2010-01-19T14:13:00.003-05:00

Loud, angry people make it difficult to meet the goals of town hall meetings - finding out what community members think and want. The actions of the loudest tend to intimidate anyone who has a different opinion from speaking up. If you take others' silence as agreement, you might make decisions that unfairly favor one group over another.

If the others won't talk for fear of the yellers, here are some tips for getting their input:

Develop with the audience workable ground rules for public participation. If one of the rules is "everybody's voice is respected," the audience can agree that "no one gets booed or laughed at." Enforce the rules during the meeting, or you will lose credibility with the audience.

Provide everyone with index cards where they can write their comments and a box to put their comments in. Make sure the box is covered or not clear, and has only a slot (that way audience members can't open up the box.)

Arrange the room in small tables if you can. Most people feel more comfortable speaking up from a table with their friends than in an auditorium format. When the yellers do appear, they are less likely to appear to be speaking for the whole audience.

Invite people to share their input via email or phone calls before and after the session. Organized activists will also dominate this type of communication. But you're more likely to get other opinions.

Set time limits on speakers during the public input portion of the meeting. This will help prevent a yeller from running out the clock on a public meeting.

Consider holding online public meetings. These are more difficult to disrupt. This should be done only in areas where most people are comfortable participating online. It always should be an add-on to in person community meetings, not a replacement.

If a yeller says anything that appears intended to intimidate participants from presenting other opinions, use that as an opportunity to defend the right of everyone to speak their minds. This changes the subject from the yeller's concerns to the fact that the yeller is trying to disrupt the democratic process. This might make some in the audience more comfortable about speaking up or sharing their thoughts later on.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Have a professional development tip you want to share? Share it with Leo

Feel free to comment on this or any other post in PDI Advisor

For more information:
The Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program offers courses in public participation and community outreach. Among them are Planning in the Age of Direct Democracy. For more information, and to see upcoming courses, or our course catalog, please visit the Bloustein Online Continuing Education Program.

Building effective relationships with the media

2010-01-11T12:49:00.003-05:00

Developing effective relationships with the media is a good way to help your cause, organization or yourself. Being a favored source for newspaper reporters helped Robert Moses become the foremost figure in planning in 20th century New York. "Rebuilding Communities," a landmark study by Avis Vidal, showed that funders were more likely to give support to community development corporations with greater visibility.

Here are some tips on building effective relationships with reporters. (By the way, I was a newspaper reporter for five years and still write for online publications and magazines.)

First, ensure that you have the appropriate permissions to speak 'on-record' to the media. Many governmental agencies and organizations, having been stung by bad publicity, limit who can talk to the media and in what capacity.

Reporters are like police officers; once they identify themselves professionally, everything you say or do can be used for their purposes.

Cultivate relationships with reporters who ask good or difficult questions. This often demonstrates that they are attentive and have prepared for the interview. Reporters who ask you for basic information that they can find on your website might be lazy or unconcerned with the story.

Reporters look for stories that have any of the following qualities: new information, unexpected information, clear impacts on their readers, and conflicts in which the issue and the opponents are easy to identify. For example, most reporters wouldn't be interested in writing about a capital improvements plan. But they would be interested in writing about new roads or street improvements that would reduce flooding.

Look for or create photo opportunities. Stories that have 'art' (the journalistic term for photos and other images) are more likely to get published and to get better positions within the publication.

Unless you are a whistleblower, there is almost never any need to go "off-the-record." If you decide to go off the record, understand what the reporter means by that term. For some, off-the-record means they can use the information without naming you as a source. (This is what other reporters call "on background.") For other reporters, off-the-record means they can't use the information at all in a story. In either case, you should expect that reporters will share what they know with editors, who are responsible for the content in their publications.

Good reporters are busy, especially in today's 24-hour news cycle. If you call a reporter, ask him or her if she is on "deadline." If so, ask about a better time to call back.

If a reporter calls you, call back within 45 minutes. Give the reporter all of your contact numbers, and be prepared to take calls at night or on weekends. Be patient and pleasant. A reporter might file a story at 5 pm, but has to respond to an editor's question at 9 pm.

"General assignment" reporters and those new to a beat are usually not experts in the subjects they cover. The more useful information you can provide, the more valuable you become to those reporters.

Remember that the story belongs to the reporter and his or her editors. They choose what goes in and stays out of the stories. If you want to control what goes into a publication, take out an ad.

When writing press releases, try to adopt the writing style of the publications you are trying to influence. In some cases, especially for shorter stories, reporters may simply lift or slightly revise what you wrote.

If you want to be quoted, speak in short sentences and a little more slowly. Most quotations in newspaper and magazine stories are only a sentence or two long.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Where to learn more about strategic communications:
The Leading Institute's Leading from the Middle program

If you have a professional development tip you would like to share, please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Conference networking tips

2010-01-05T16:24:00.003-05:00

Whether you're a gregarious extrovert or a shy introvert, the tips below can help you get the maximum benefit from a conference.

Engaging and disengaging individuals

Most professionals go to conferences to meet other professionals. So it's perfectly appropriate to go over to someone and introduce yourself. Make sure that the person is not otherwise engaged in a tight conversation or other activity.

You don't need a "line." Just introduce yourself, say what you do and where, and then ask the people you talk to their names, what they do, and where they work (or used to work.)

Aim to spend more time listening and asking questions than talking. Most people love talking about themselves. Everyone appreciates being listened to.

Asking "how," "why" and questions asking for clarification are good ways to keep your audience engaged.

If you're not interested to someone, you can quickly excuse yourself by saying something like, "It was a pleasure to meet you," and walk away from the conversation. If you're not comfortable being so direct, you can pretend to have a phone call or urgent message.

Don't worry if someone excuses him or herself after a few minutes. He or she may have different networking goals than you.

Aim to get at least five business cards per day of the conference. On the back of each one, write a note to remind you when and where you met the person and a word that indicates what you talked about.

Ideally, you would follow up with everyone you met. At least follow up within a week with those people who you would most like to meet or engage later on.

When talking to someone for the first few minutes, avoid trying to "sell" your organization, services or program. Work to make the person feel comfortable with you. If the person gives you his or her card, you're welcome to follow up.

Increasing your visibility

Do you remember the person who sat in the back of the room during the presentation and asked no questions? Neither does anybody else. Make yourself more visible by asking questions or asking a speaker to add to an earlier comment that he or she made.

Disagreeing directly with the speaker, or adding a tangential comment, can make you look pushy or arrogant.

Feel free to introduce yourself to the speaker(s) at the end of the session. In most planning and related professional conferences, the majority of presenters do not get paid. Many are themselves looking to increase their own visibility or awareness of their ideas.

Special tips for networking at mealtimes

If you came with colleagues or associates, sit at different tables. You don't need to network with your friends or co-workers.

If you see empty seats at a table, ask if you can join the group. When there is an appropriate opportunity, engage the people closest to you.

Avoid ordering or eating long pastas (spaghetti, linguini, etc.) or any food with a lot of sauce. It could get sloppy, which could distract your audience.

Avoid a table where everybody sitting there is "huddling." Those people have probably closed the networking circle and you would find it difficult to enter without seeming pushy. On the other hand, if someone at the table isn't part of the huddle, he or she would probably welcome some conversation.

Chain networking
Chain networking is the practice of networking with people who are networking with people you already know. It works best if you go to the conference with friends or co-workers, or already know people at the conference.

If you see that your colleague is talking with someone, feel free to join the group. Introduce yourself by your affiliation with your colleague. This will make the other person more comfortable in speaking with you.

If your colleague joins you while you're networking, make the introductions.

Networking with groups
When three or more people talk together, they tend to form groups. Read their body language to determine if you should try to join them.

If they form a closed circle (facing one another, backs to rest of the room), avoid trying to join them. You might be perceived as an interloper.

If you are on good terms with someone in a closed circle, you can probably enter it comfortably.

If the circle is more open, you can try to enter it casually. For example, you can listen from the side, and at an appropriate moment say something like "that's an interesting point. Why do you think that?"

Networking around conference sessions

If you don't need the continuing education credits, or aren't interested in any of the sessions, hang around the hallways outside the session rooms. You'll probably find others like you there.

Avoid standing in the refreshment line during the coffee breaks. Lines usually give you an opportunity to network with only two people at a time.

If you're looking for a job
Fight the urge to ask the person you just met if there are jobs available at his or her workplace. Instead, ask if there is someone you could follow up with to 'learn more about' the person's office.

In this economy, it's ok to let someone know that you're in between jobs. It's better to say your position was cut, or you were one of several laid off. If that's not the case, or you don't want to say any of those things, call yourself an independent consultant.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? Have a question that you would like to see answered here? Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Power vs control

2009-12-29T12:34:00.001-05:00

The more you try to control knowledge workers, the less power you have.

That's one of the key challenges facing managers in the knowledge economy - which includes urban planning, as well as community and economic development. (Any organization whose primary work involves creating and sharing ideas is part of the knowledge economy.) Knowledge creation workers are those people whose main jobs are creating and distributing ideas or information. You most likely fit in this category.

The function of management is to achieve results as efficiently as possible. Traditionally, managers do this through control and coordination. This makes sense when talking about inanimate resources - funds, equipment, property, etc. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, promoters of bureaucracy and scientific management extended this idea to people. Actually, treating people like property or farm animals is as old as slavery. Authors like Weber and Taylor helped bosses justify this treatment.

In those days, this way of thinking seemed to work (for the companies). Before the advent of unions, most industrial workers had few options. Large families often depended on single wage-earners, who often had limited education and limited resources. And the output of industrial workers could be easily measured. So if a manager treated a scared worker like a pack animal, and the worker produced more, the manager felt justified.

Let's put aside the moral issues of literally dehumanizing people by treating them as capital. Why is the old industrial model ineffective with today's knowledge workers?

Most industrial age workers produced tangible products, through the combination of physical labor and machines. With the exception of those workers who could carry all their equipment with them, industrial age workers had to be at specific locations at specific times for the organization to run efficiently. Knowledge workers produce ideas. They can function anywhere, anytime. In economic terms, knowledge workers "own the means of production." In industrial organizations, the machinery and the physical health of the worker had to be strong to produce more units. (The quality of the units depended on the workers' motivation, but quality control wasn't as big a concern for management researchers a century ago.) The ability of knowledge workers to produce more and better ideas depends on more than their competence and creativity. Their emotional state is just as important. A knowledge worker who is angry, distracted, has low morale or feels powerless is going to produce at a lower level of quality and quantity. You can't measure the amount or worth of knowledge that doesn't happen. Since you can't get inside a worker's brain and soul, you can't know when or whether a knowledge worker is at peak production. Most knowledge workers are sophisticated enough to know how to appear productive. So they can spend hours at the office "doing their job" without producing.

What do knowledge workers want? The same things everybody does - respect, flexibility, acknowledgment and affirmation. Workers who are committed to an organization's mission want to be treated as resources, not capital. (Anyone who thinks that workers are motivated only by money needs to take a basic course in human resources management.)

Thus the power/control conundrum. The more you try to control knowledge workers, the less productive they will be. In fact, they might work slower, make more mistakes, or be thinking more about their next jobs than the ones they have.

Here's another thing managers need to know: Supervisors can not motivate staff. Everyone has their own distinct set of motivations, and they will pursue what they value most. Supervisors who want to improve the performance of their staff need to understand what they most want, and do what they are able to help workers meet their own interests.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share? Have a question that you would like to see answered here? Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

In the 21st century, planners need a new watchword

2009-12-22T09:34:00.003-05:00

“Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.” Daniel Burnham

Daniel Burnham’s biggest influence on urban planners was not in urban design but in their DNA. Burnham created the model of large, comprehensive thinking in the 1909 Plan of Chicago. And many if not most planners today focus on orderly and harmonious development.

This has brought a lot of benefit to the places we serve. When property owners know what their neighbors can do with their property, there is less risk, and property values go up. Planning that provides a clear set of goals and objectives can give stakeholders more hope about places that are unsafe and unhealthy.

But the lust for order nurtures intolerance. Anyone who makes order their watchword is going to be uncomfortable with diversity. Maybe not a diversity of land uses, because zoning maps don’t talk back at you. Tension builds when people with different perspectives, beliefs and demands share space. This tension is usually not orderly or beautiful.

But diversity is valuable, if not essential, for enhancing creativity and helping communities find better and more sustainable solutions to difficult problems. (There are a lot of scientific studies that prove this point. Start with Scott Page’s The Difference) Planners who want to help their communities succeed in the 21st century need to do better at balancing the discomfort of diversity with the demand for order.

If you read the works of Leonie Sandercock, Stacy Harwood, and the authors they reference, you’ll see how planners use racially neutral language and methods of problem solving to perpetuate structural racism and stymie innovative thinking. I believe that most planners are open-minded and welcome creativity, so I think that what we’re seeing is the impact of decades of incomplete or misguided professional training.

Oyster Bay is the latest in a long string of communities to use the “order defense” to make it more difficult for low-income Latinos to look for work there. A new ordinance prevents a pedestrian from soliciting employment while standing on a sidewalk. Of course, there is no specific language targeting Hispanics (there never is). It just happens that the people who are most affected by this are low-income Latinos. More than 90 years ago, the city of Louisville, Kentucky used the order defense to justify zoning that prevented African-Americans from buying property in white communities. (The city argued in Buchanan v. Warley that the ordinance was to protect the safety of African-Americans, who would be attacked for moving into white neighborhoods.) Burnham’s most powerful descendants, including Robert Moses, used urban renewal to clear away neighborhoods and build housing projects that looked orderly on paper but failed in real life. Even the New Urbanists display their order gene through their formulas and intolerance of urban design that doesn’t fit their romanticized visions of pre World-War II American communities. (That’s probably why a couple of New Urbanist leaders got their hats handed back to them when they tried to push a diverse area of Biloxi, Mississippi to adopt new urbanism.

Is all this the fault of planners? No. But they do often unintentionally aid and abet. And this is again a result of the order gene. By focusing on orderly practices, planners in many cases are little more than coordinators, data jockeys and glorified jacket holders for powerful interests in communities. Unable or unwilling to manage the complexity of diversity other than by avoiding it, planners in many cases squander their powers to lead.

In another essay, I wrote about how planners can more effectively work with diversity by being more culturally competent. And in that vein, I understand why Burnham placed so much emphasis on order and beauty. The industrial revolution changed American cities dramatically. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cities got packed with huddled masses who couldn’t breathe free because of the dirty factories that polluted their communities. The nation was only a few decades away from an existential struggle over who should have what civil rights, and the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who had for centuries ruled urban centers were understandably distressed by so many people of different colors and creeds crowding cities.

But that was then. Why is the desire for order still so entrenched in the minds of urban planners? One reason is that the public sector, being focused on the efficient delivery of services, tends to be less tolerant of risk than the private or nonprofit sector. Public administrators are trained to focus on the efficient delivery of services. That, combined with the fear of looking bad in public when mistakes are made, tend to make public sector leaders value stability and fear change. But all organizations – especially large ones – tend to become more orderly over time. It simply is more efficient and less risky to repeatedly do the same thing. Another reason is that planning school students tend to be trained by social scientists. They are the core faculty members, which means they determine what is taught and how, who gets to teach, and the culture of learning. Though scientists learn by trial and error, the ideal scientific method is orderly (and frankly, a little compulsive). So planners are trained to value order, and then they see that maintaining order is the best way to get ahead in their organizations. It’s no wonder then that the person who most changed the way planners think was a self-proclaimed ‘housewife’ with no college degree and no formal training in architecture or urban planning – Jane Jacobs.

A third reason is that humans crave order in times of change. That desire is why relationships (even bad ones) persist, why cultural habits continue, and why charismatic individuals who offer easy solutions become leaders in times of crisis. Many planners want to serve the interests of the communities they work for, so it's natural that these planners would want to give people what they want: a sense of order.

But while order is a short-term relaxant, it makes societies vulnerable in the wake of changing conditions. (One of the best studies of how societies fail when they fail to change is Jared Diamond's book, Collapse)

So we can understand how Burnham’s words became a part of the planner’s genetic makeup. But we know that DNA is not destiny. Planners can learn to do a better job of working with diversity while effectively promoting order. But first they have to realize their genetic makeup, question their assumptions, and develop new ways of thinking and acting.

In the 21st century, let your watchword be balance and your beacon creativity.

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

When a fence is more than a fence

2009-11-30T15:29:00.001-05:00

Someone in my hometown, a leafy, liberal New Jersey suburb, put up a fence. It's a nice fence: Americana white pickets that curve gently, rising from two feet high to a little more than four feet where they meet the solid fenceposts. It stands at the property lines of a beautiful Victorian-style house. I went to a zoning board meeting to have it removed.

My problem was not the fence itself. It was the symbolic communication of the fence. Several years ago, my town required in its zoning ordinance that front-yard fences be no more than two feet high and placed no closer to the street than the building setback line. (The setback line is the marker that tells you how close your building can be to the street or your neighbors' property.) The purpose was also symbolic: to let residents and visitors know that the town is safe and welcoming. Fences send a different message: This is my property. Stay away.

Another reason: The fence was built illegally. The property owner's representative said his client was given permission by the local building official to put up the fence, but offered no proof. If the zoning board allowed the property owner to keep the fence, the board would implicitly be sending the message that it's better in our town to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Obsessing over rules and regulations may be unwise and unhealthy -- except to lawyers -- but sometimes you risk compounding a mistake by letting it go.
In his application to the zoning board, the applicant said that the fence was for safety and privacy. But this didn't make much sense. Neighbors said there were never any problems with intruders walking on the property. (A two-foot fence is not going to deter anyone anyway.) The fence has large gaps where you would expect gates to be, as well as gaps between fence posts and trees on the property. So it seems that the fence is meant to say: This is my property. Stay away.

After objections to the fence by several neighbors, the zoning board denied the applicant's request.

This story is not really about a fence. It is about the strength of objects in our built environment to be symbols. Symbols are physical objects (like fences) or conceptual objects (like logos) that convey information about the values, beliefs, customs, etc. of a place or organization.

Symbols are powerful because they give us a shorthand way of processing information about complex systems. We use symbolic communication every day in our gestures and rituals, and often convey symbolic stature on the objects in our offices and communities.

Imagine that your office is ordering new chairs. Everyone gets the same type of chair, except for the office director. Now the chairs aren't just furniture. They're symbols of the difference in status between the office director and everyone else.

Of all the land use disciplines, urban design and place marketing are most focused on symbolic communication. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that streetscaping, historic preservation and other urban design issues are just "decoration" and luxuries. These people tend to think that market forces will ensure quality design, or that no one should be told "what to do" with their property. This is an expensive mistake. People would rather go and live where they can make sense of place; in other words, where the symbols provide clearer communication.

Of course, urban design can be used as a tool for excluding people or trying to control social behavior. That is why in an increasingly diverse world, we have to be more mindful of the symbols, and the people who determine the rules about them, in our communities. Take a look at your community's historic preservation, zoning, and design review boards. How much diversity do you see there?

So there has to be a balance between the community's desire to provide some sense of order and individuals' desires to express themselves and feel they have a stake in the community. In this case, the fence sent a message that was wholly inconsistent with the community's intended messages of openness and friendliness. That's why no matter how nice the fence was, it was in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. If you find yourself on an architectural review board that is deciding what colors should be allowed on residential properties, please do more than look at what colors you like. Think about who likes those colors and what they symbolize about the community.

--Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Do you have a professional development tip you would like to share?

Have a question that you would like to see answered here?

Please send it to Leo at vazquezl@rutgers.edu

Minimizing mistakes under pressure

2009-11-21T07:32:00.003-05:00

While rushing to do other things recently, I sent out an email newsletter with the wrong title on it. It was the kind of simple mistake that can make you look bad. Someone might think: “If they can’t something as simple as an email headline right, how can we trust them on the big issues?”

As we are pressured to work with fewer resources and more stress, we’re more likely to make mistakes. When they happen at work and are visible to others, they tend to reflect on our departments, divisions, organizations, or even fields.

Trying to stop every mistake can be time-consuming and expensive. Here are some tips for cost-effectively minimizing mistakes under pressure:

*When reviewing statistical information, or any document with lots of facts and figures (such as a budget), do a random check on every third or fourth fact on random pages. If you find errors this way, there’s a good chance there are more in the document. You might be able to also find the cause of the errors (such as calculating figures from the wrong column).

*If a “fact” doesn’t sound right, flag it. You might be surprised by your research, but more often the data will support your intuition.

*Double-check the proper names of all places and people in documents. Readers tend to be sensitive about these errors, and critics tend to see more than just simple mistakes in them.

*To mark that a fact has been double-checked, write CQ, ZD, <>, or some combination of characters that normally do not appear together in English. The notation indicates to the final editor that the fact has been verified. The notations can be easily removed through find and replace features in office programs. Even if a notation gets published, it will look like nothing more than a harmless typographical error.

*Walk away from your document for at least an hour. Forget about it – literally, but just for that hour. This way you can come back to it with a fresh set of eyes. When you have worked too hard and too long on a document, you tend to see what you expect to see, rather than what is there.