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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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--Peter Montague, editor

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