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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Rachel's #804: Precautionary Mister Rogers Pt. 3
  • Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 08:52:18 -0700


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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
NEWS #804 http://www.rachel.org November 11, 2004

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PRECAUTIONARY MISTER ROGERS, Part 3*

In this "Precautionary Mister Rogers" series, we are exploring how the
precautionary principle works at the local level.

The precautionary principle can begin with the question, "Is this action
necessary?" Or, "Does it have to be this way?" This leads naturally to a
discussion of alternatives.

Precaution has been applied to least-harmful purchasing policies at the local
level. But it can also be used to protect the local economy. We saw an
example of this last week, with policies that favor government purchasing
from local firms, to keep tax dollars at work locally. Here's another
precautionary approach to protecting the local economy:

EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS TO SAVE LOCAL BUSINESSES

Local businesses are essential for the stability of any community. Therefore,
looking ahead to try to prevent business closures is a sensible precautionary
approach.

Dan Swinney at the Center for Labor and Community Research (www.clcr.org) in
Chicago has studied the problem of small businesses disappearing and has
concluded that there are two main reasons why small businesses close their
doors: the owners grow old without making plans for succession, or
insurmountable management problems arise.

Swinney believes that communities that understand these problems can take
action to prevent the loss of local businesses -- arranging for the firms to
be bought out by their workers, for example. Or, in the case of management
problems, providing management advice to failing firms.

The key to success is developing a network of community people (chiefly
workers, who have inside information about the places where they work). This
"early warning network" can spot the signs of trouble in small businesses and
can find the right kind of help to keep local busineses operating.

Swinney's brief report on this topic, "Early Warning Systems: A Proactive
Tool for Labor in the Regional Economy," can be found at
http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=488.

While you're thinking about your community's economy, take a look at
Swinney's longer paper, "Building the Bridge to the High Road,"
http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=489. And while you're thinking
about the "high road economy" versus the "low road economy," check out the
High Road Service Center at http://www.highroadnow.org/. We
"environmentalists" are missing the boat if we think we can protect "the
environment" without paying attention to jobs, the economy, fairness and
justice.

COMMUNITY VISIONING AND GOALS

Sometimes the precautionary principle begins by asking, "Is this action
necessary?" But it can also arise from the question, "What kind of community
do we want? What are our common goals?"

Every community needs to have an articulated vision for its future and a set
of goals to reach that vision. The vision and goals need to be created by all
community stakeholders (residents, homeowners, local business owners, public
officials, community-based organizations, and institutions in the community)
who are committed to the process and who are ready to see it through. The
process of setting goals will take a long time (sometimes a few years) so
people need to be prepared to engage for the long haul.. The group
articulating the vision and goals also needs to develop a set of indicators
to help local citizens know whether they are making progress toward the goals
and the vision.

So how do a diverse group of people with very different agendas come to a
table and agree on a vision and a set of goals? In Rachel's #783 we reviewed
some of these techniques in detail but here is a quick wrap-up of the best of
them:

In order to make sure you have all the stakeholders at the table you have to
know who is in your community. The best way to do this is to conduct a
community asset inventory to learn about all the gifts, skills, and talents
of neighborhood residents; all the associations in your neighborhood
including social clubs, religious organizations, sports clubs and teams,
PTAs, civic organizations, gardening clubs and others; and formal
institutions such as private businesses, public institutions (libraries,
schools, parks, etc.), and non-profit agencies (hospitals, community
development agencies, etc.). For more information about community asset
inventories. see http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=2416 and
http://www.rachel.org/bestPrac/detail.cfm?bestPrac_ID=56 .

Once you have all the stakeholders at the table you can create your vision
and goals. There are a number of processes that will help with this task.
Here are two:

** Participatory mapping will help you understand what your community looks
like today and what you want it to look like in the future. This is done
using paper maps rather than computer generated maps. For example, you can
look at the map and locate all the grocery stores and then think of where you
want new ones located so everyone in the community could easily get to a
grocery store. You could target land for open space, new schools, retail
stores, and affordable housing. You can look at what polluting facilities are
in a residential area and discuss if they should stay there with more
emission controls or should be moved to a more industrial area. For example,
you might want an auto body repair shop conveniently located but you might
want them to have better emission controls so they do not vent toxics into
the neighborhood. You could also look at which neighborhoods need sidewalks
or traffic calming devices (such as speed humps) so that it is safe for
children to walk to school. To learn more about participatory mapping see
http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=2416 and
http://www.rachel.org/bestPrac/detail.cfm?bestPrac_ID=65 .

** Another tool for discussing vision and goals is "study circles" that are
given the task of finding agreement on an issue. A study circle is a
facilitated group of 8 to 12 people with diverse backgrounds and differing
viewpoints who agree to meet several times to discuss a specific issue. Each
person has an equal voice and people try to understand one another's
different views, share concerns, and look for ways to make things better.
With the help of the Study Circles Resource Center
(http://www.studycircles.org/ ), communities develop a committee that creates
the agenda and helps find the participants. Like the study circles
themselves, these committees need to represent different backgrounds and
interests in the community. Multiple study circles are held in the community
simultaneously over a period of time, culminating in a community-wide meeting
where the individual study circles report on the action ideas they agreed on.
The whole group then agrees on the actions that the community can take
together. http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=2416 and
http://www.rachel.org/bestPrac/detail.cfm?bestPrac_ID=62 .

The above examples show how community-based organizations can jumpstart the
process but there are also good models that have been driven by local
governments. One such process has been used in Austin, Texas on the
neighborhood level.

Austin, Texas has a long history of land use planning and zoning errors
including zoning intended to create and enforce racial segregation[1]. In
1998, Austin began a program to develop neighborhood plans -- a program
designed to remedy existing zoning problems and improve community outreach
and communications.

Over the course of a year, Austin's Neighborhood Planning and Zoning
Department works with neighborhood residents to address land use,
transportation, services and infrastructure, and urban design issues. The
goal is for diverse interests (renters, residents, property owners, business
owners, community organizations and institutions) to get together and develop
a shared vision for their community.

Each neighborhood plan has four goals: 1) identify neighborhood strengths and
assets (for example, can a resident meet all his or her basic needs within
walking distance?); 2) identify neighborhood needs and concerns (for example,
the neighborhood might need more recreational space); 3) establish goals for
improving the neighborhood (for example, exclude properties that don't fit
the scale of existing buildings); and 4) recommend specific actions to reach
those goals (for example, develop design criteria for all new buildings).

So far, 25 of the 54 plans have been completed and are available on Austin's
Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department's web site (see
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/zoning/adopted.htm ). The web site also includes
an extensive library of materials that residents can review to prepare for
their neighborhood planning sessions. See
http://www.rachel.org/bestPrac/detail.cfm?bestPrac_ID=60 and
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/zoning/default.htm for more on Austin's
Neighborhood Planning.

This kind of planning requires resources and it is best if community-based
organizations work with local governments to create plans. Some other cities
that have created neighborhood plans include Seattle (see
http://www.cityofseattle.net/neighborhoods/npi/plans.htm ), Minneapolis (see
http://www.nrp.org/R2/Neighborhoods/Plans/Plans.html ), and Lake Oswego,
Oregon (see http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/plan/neighborhoods/naplan.htm ).

Large nonprofit organizations have also helped communities create
neighborhood plans. See for example, the plan developed by Urban Ecology in
Oakland, Calif. (http://www.urbanecology.org/neighborhood.htm) for the 16th
Street BART neighborhood in San Francisco.

Having a vision, goals and even a plan is a good first start but then a
community needs to know whether it is moving toward (or away from) its goals.
A community needs to see whether things are getting better or worse. A good
way to do this is to develop indicators -- standardized data that is
collected every year. These indicators can measure progress, or the lack of
it.

Indicators can be chosen to help residents understand a community's economic
vitality, the strength of its social institutions, the health and well-being
of the citizenry, and the state of the local environment. Residents can not
only use indicators to track progress but can also use them to adjust their
vision and goals. For example, if the indicators show that a community has a
lot of emergency room admissions for routine health issues they could adjust
their goals to include more local health centers within the community.

There are many ways to develop and collect indicators but here we will look
at one effort that is taking place today and we believe is an excellent model.

The Neighborhood Environmental Indicators Project (see http://www.neip.org/ )
is sponsored by the Oakland-based nonprofit organization, the Pacific
Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security
(http://www.pacinst.org/ ). With the West Oakland community-based
organization, 7th St./MyClymonds Corridor Neighborhood Improvement Initiative
they have created the West Oakland Indicators Project (West Oakland EIP),
which has a Neighborhood Taskforce that serves as the community center and
overseer of the project. The Neighborhood Taskforce selected indicators that
represent a broad range of community concerns, from issues of air quality and
toxics, to environmental health, land use, housing affordability,
transportation, and even civic engagement.

Once the indicators were established, Pacific Institute researchers collected
and analyzed data from city, county, state, and national agencies. They then
compiled the information in 17 indicator reports that can be found at
http://www.neip.org/article.php?list=type&type=21 and in the report,
Neighborhood Knowledge for Change: The West Oakland Environmental Indicators
Project (found at http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=490 and
http://www.neip.org/downloads/w_oakland_indicators_report.pdf ).

For some of the indicators, data was not collected because it was not
available or because it was not reliable, consistent, or regularly updated.
Future plans for the project include having the community organizations
update the indicator information themselves. By identifying missing data, the
Pacific Institute helped residents identify data gaps in their community so
they could advocate for government agencies to begin collecting this
information consistently. Appendix B of Neighborhood Knowledge for Change
lists four indicators that were not included: trucks, neighborhood blight,
indoor air quality, and noise pollution, and tells why these indicators would
be important, what can be done by the community about the problem, and who in
the city to contact about the problem.

Like neighborhood visioning and planning, these efforts take resources to get
started. Community-based organizations should look to nonprofit organizations
and their local governments for assistance. Other examples of community
indicator projects assisted by nonprofits include the Baltimore Neighborhood
Indicators Alliance (see http://www.bnia.org/ ), Truckee Meadows Tomorrow
(Reno, Nev.) http://www.quality-of-life.org/main.php?choice=about , and the
Crossroads Resource Center helping the Urban Ecology Coalition in Minneapolis
(see http://www.crcworks.org/nsip.html ).

Examples of indicator projects sponsored by local governments include efforts
in Seattle, (see http://www.sustainableseattle.org/Programs ), Washtenaw
County, Michigan (see
http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/departments/planning_envir
onment/sustainable_washtenaw/sw_indicators_sc_html ), and Jacksonville,
Florida (see http://www.jcci.org/statistics/qualityoflife.aspx ). For a list
of who is working on indicators see the International Sustainability
Indicators Network at
http://www.sustainabilityindicators.org/resources/WhoWorkingOnI
ndicators.html .

Throughout the next year we will continue this series on Precautionary Mister
Rogers. If you have a local precautionary project to tell us about, please
send us an E-mail at erf@rachel.org .

===========

* This series is a collaborative effort of Peter Montague and Maria B.
Pellerano of Environmental Research Foundation, and Carolyn Raffensperger and
Nancy J. Myers of the Science and Environmental Health Network
(www.sehn.org). This installment was written by Maria B. Pellerano.

[1] Philip Rutledge and others Addressing Community Concerns: How
Environmental Justice Relates to Land Use Planning and Zoning (Washington,
D.C.: National Academy of Public Administration, July 2003), pages 89-116.
Available at http://www.napawash.org/Pubs/EJ.pdf and
http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=320 (this is a long document and
takes a few minutes to retrieve).

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
NEWS Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 160 New Brunswick, N.J. 08903
Fax (732) 791-4603; E-mail: erf@rachel.org

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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 this material is distributed
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  • [Livingontheland] Rachel's #804: Precautionary Mister Rogers Pt. 3, Tradingpost, 11/12/2004

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