According to land use strategist Chris Leinberger, speaking at the Walk21 conference in New York City yesterday and reported on StreetsBlog:

If the American Dream of the Baby Boomers was all about being able to have a car and a house in suburbia, the new American Dream is having the choice between living in drivable suburban places and walkable urban ones.

This summer, CEOs for Cities released a study showing how the walkability of a neighborhood increased the value of homes in that neighborhood. In Charlotte, NC:

Controlling for all other factors including size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, age, neighborhood income levels, distance from the Central Business District and access to jobs, “if you were to pick up that house in Ashley Park, and place it in more walkable Wilmore, it would increase in value by $34,000 or 12 percent,” Cortright said.

But it is not an "either/or" challenge. Some important distinctions:

• According to Leinberger, "About the the same number of people want to live in a pedestrian-friendly environment as those who want to live in a drivable suburban one..." In other words, there are always many factors at play in the personal preferences of home buyers, but desire for walkability is playing an increasing role. It is not necessary that everyone be walking...but the trend appears to favor walking which is beginning to translate into measurable economic value.
• Most of the discussion so far has been about urban vs suburban--a distinction I find stereotypical and non-applicable in my New England town. Although we are only a dozen miles from the center of Boston, we have two "villages" separated by relatively rural spaces. It's not quite "farmland," but the town has set aside conservation land in a community that has evolved over several hundred years--limiting the amount of cul-de-sac sprawl. Getting across town on foot is currently impractical but within these villages, many amenities are accessible on foot. There is a great opportunity here.

We all know the potential advantages of living in an urban village, but most of us in towns and suburbs have weighed those advantages against much higher disadvantages which include the following perceptions:

• urban schools are unsafe and less integrated into the community
• urban living is more expensive
• parking is a nightmare and cars are still a necessity
• personal safety is a concern
• "anonymnity" is less desirable as we "settle down"
• most people still want "space"

I'm just listing those perceptions to illustrate, not to start a debate. Most people like where they live and it is an arrogant and presumptive mission to tell them they should change their attitudes. Instead, we should focus on the opportunities to get the best of both worlds.

We can transform our suburban towns into walkable communities, retaining the strengths and advantages of already desirable communities. When more residents can walk to amenities like shops, parks, schools and small local restaurants, the economic viability of these highly localized services will be strengthened. It does not mean "no more trips to WalMart," but perhaps a few more customers per week at Cafe Diva or Islington House of Pizza will prompt them to stay open longer or be able to hire another person. Perhaps the foot traffic to these places will result in a new customer walking into the "Ski Shop" or choosing to drop off dry cleaning at the Crown Cleaners instead of using a chain store. As activity increases, perhaps a new business will open...

Over time, one new customer at a time, we grow. While we grow, our children become healthier as they walk to school and our playgrounds, spending less time in front of video games and more time outdoors. We see our neighbors more often and the strength of our community grows. Isolated houses sit on the market for months while starter homes on 10,000 sf lots get multiple offers. It all feeds together into an economic and social revitalization that begins, literally, with a few steps...

I recently reviewed the mission statement of this blog and was struck by how it sums up my own "mission."

The purpose of this blog is to connect topics in economic development, community development, and new media technology and identify practical actions readers can take to make a difference in improving our society.

I want this to be more than a writing project. I wrote a series of posts about a business plan, a sort of thematic arrangement of content topics I would write about to create a popular blog. That's not really a business plan--the business plan was just to get more traffic and use google adwords to make some money off clicks. But for that to work, I need hundreds of thousands of visitors...I need the blog to be an end unto itself...and that is not what this is about.

The blog is a tool, a communication medium that has connected me with people who share ideals and passions about improving society. I think there are many of us who are engaged in what Ed Morrison of the I-Open Institute describes as "Strategic Doing." Some of the things I'm "doing" strategically are to:

• create a blog in Westwood to encourage greater participation of residents in our community
• form a Pedestrian/Bicycle Safetey Committee in Westwood to look for opportunities to make the town more walkable
• get a Community Access Television station up and running in Westwood

Now what does any of this have to do with economic development?

The older, traditional ideas about economic development were about attracting business to locate in town. It was about creating a regulatory climate friendly for business and identifying opportunities--then clearing obstacles. I'm not a practitioner and I cannot claim expertise about the work that continues in that conception of economic development. But I think there is a "New Innovation" growing based on an increasingly engaged and creative Citizen 2.0.

If we can find ways to connect the people who are innovating--problem-solving individuals who care passionately about issues of sustainability and growth--I believe people will be begin to see opportunities to invest. This will become "Enterprise Collaboration."

Again, what does it mean?

To revitalize a town, you need people, not just business. You need the people who will shop there and the people who will open stores. You need people who live there and care about the community and who choose to make their stake in town, rather than hopping in a car and driving to a job in the city where they can collect a paycheck and go home to sleep and watch TV. You don't need EVERYONE to do this, but you need a critical mass of a few people who are no longer fighting the good fight alone, but who network with each other, draw strength from each other, and see opportunities they would not have seen alone.

It is the same principle in schools--to make them better, we don't need more money alone, we need parents to be involved. We need that elusive and powerful force of responsibility and activism that is more evident in its absense in the anonymous suburbs and isolated communities of regions in decline.

What next? What do I do?

That's the $100,000 question, really. I need to find a way to take these ideas and passions and not only accomplish things, but generate income for me and my family. My website describes one approach of the type of consultative advice I believe I could deliver. But talk is cheap...or, more realistically, just sitting around talking about theory is not something cash strapped town can afford to bankroll.

I could create a non-profit, an association not unlike a chamber of commerce, but more of a business facilitator...then choose projects to tackle and start delivering value to the members of the organization. Perhaps opportunities come out of more of these discussions...perhaps it is as basic as helping civic organizations set up blogs and facebook pages. But I think fundamentally, I need to identify some real, specific needs of the community and find how money is currently being spent towards that need--then propose a less expensive alternative.

Everybody wants to be the last person to move to Westwood. That's how one resident summed up a controversy over plans to build a horse stable and operate an "elite dressage barn."

I've put myself in the midst of controversy by blogging about it at WestwoodBlog. And I believe I am learning some principles that our town and other towns could use to better manage these situations in the future. I am not a Public Relations professional, but I believe the root of all this conflict is fundamentally grounded in the relationship and communications between town, developer, and residents.

Problems

1. The formal process is inadequate.

It's not enough to follow "the rules." A review of the documents, meeting minutes, etc. on the town website reveals there has been no shortage of procedure. But there is always some person who remains unsatisfied and many issues that must be re-argued over and over again.

2. Communication never ends.

When I spoke with people connected to this process, I quickly felt their frustration over a matter that, to them, had been going for months. I was amazed that anyone would care so much about this issue--to hire attorneys and plan on filing a lawsuit to prevent a neighbor from putting horses on their 16-acre farm. But it fit the pattern of discontent in this town that to me is more about a lack of trust than a lack of information.

3. Local politics cannot be strategized.

Residents who oppose change have a huge advantage when the town, developer, or business owner commits to a public plan. It's like having Patriot's coach Bill Belichik hand over the playbook to the Jets before the game. We ask for openness and transparency, but then, when it is provided, opponents use this information to selectively counter everything.

Solutions

We need a conversation, not a sales pitch. We need to recognize that the process is dynamic and evolving. We need a system that can tolerate uncertainty, ensure voices of objection are heard, but work towards a definitive compromise resolution.

I believe in this case a blog can help. I provided a sort of "brokered anonymnity" to the parties involved--doing research on my own to find facts and then posting those facts into the stream of opinionated discussion. It's not going to resolve this issue. But I hope it is a start.

I believe there can be an economic development role around communication. There is a facilitative component--to ensure that dialog happens in a public enough space that serious objections are raised early and frivolous objections can be publically answered. For example, in the case of the horse stables, I was under the impression that the farm would be using public land to operate their business. "What's next, a snowmobile rental shop in the winter?" I thought. But that's not what it was about at all. I also had concerns about how the trails would be affected, my dog and kids, etc. It turns out these issues have been raised and there are specific ways they can be handled as well.

But it is asking a lot for a business owner to engage in a one on one conversation with every person in town who wants to get involved. That's where social media could play a valuable role.

The blog can collect opinions and fact is a less structured way than the local newspaper and a less formal way than the town website. When the newspaper reports on this issue, town officials get small quotes if they are available. The story is presented and cast a certain way, then the business owner is left to deal with the fallout.

I ask people to go to the blog, but I run into a number of objections and problems:

• Residents do not want to state their names because they fear public ridicule and meanness from people with opposing views.
• Officials do not want to be characterized as speaking for the whole town or on behalf their board or commission.

We need a more comprehensive communication engagement. For example, our selectmen and members of boards and commissions could write short updates on a regular basis about what matters were being considered. These kinds of updates would not be long summary documents, but just status updates like: "Tonight, we heard about the horse stables to be built on Sandy Valley Road. A number of residents are concerned about traffic, waste, and the impact on the Lowell Woods." If other people in town were following that person on Facebook, Twitter, or through an official town blog, they might be inclined to ask questions early--before the threat of lawsuits was looming and public officials were advised to stop talking.

I don't have the answers here, but I am hoping to generate some commentary from other bloggers, social media advocates, and PR people about their experiences. There is a great deal of frustration in these development challenges...and the town has limited resources to invest in a big plan or strategy. But it seems to me there is a solution here--or an approach at least--that would be valuable to learn and teach to municipalities seeking to better serve their residents.

Towns, cities, developers, business leaders and activists should seize the communication opportunities available in social media to collaboratively and cooperatively plan their economic futures.

I recently blogged about how Boston World Partnerships is developing a social media approach to facilitate connections between "movers and shakers" in Boston and globally promote the city. I subsequently chatted with Eric Schoenfeld and got a better sense of how they are in the process of preparing to launch what will be a resource and affinity network--like an alumni network for the city. It could connect all those who identify with the creative and intellectual "gravitas" that is Boston in a way that fosters collaboration and cooperation. I see this project as a way to address the criticisms and comparisons of the culture of the past--most notably the Saxenian appraisal of why Silicon Valley beat Boston in the 90s race to be a technology capital.

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Update: The MBTA is constructing a temporary ramp to be completed this week.

Simple problems don't have simple solutions...in fact, the more obvious the solution, the less likely it is to be solved. I'm not talking about technical problems, but community problems--problems that are systemic in nature. Efforts to address one part of the issue upsets an underlying system and things quickly become complicated.

A specific case of this is the situation near where I live, at the Dedham Corporate Center commuter rail stop. This blog post at myDedham is a great illustration of a problem stated, information provided by the town, and the quick exposition of underlying complexities:

For several years now, train riders have been cutting through a chain link fence to reach Rustcraft Road across the tracks from the intended parking area. Promotional materials for the luxury apartments on Rustcraft Rd describe their location as only a "crosswalk away from the Dedham T Station."

There is no crosswalk. What happens every day is that pedestrians pass through a 2-foot wide break in a chain link fence and climb over a dirt embankment down to Rustcraft Road where they dart across to the apartments. It is a ridiculous situation.

For the problem-solver, this is easy. We need to open up the fence, add a sidewalk path from the train platform to the road, put in a crosswalk--ideally with a stop light, and put in sidewalks all along the apartment side of the road. Instead, the MBTA has recently begun to block off that 2-foot wide gap in the fence because they are now concerned about liability. So people just walk down the tracks to where the fence ends and cut through the woods there.

The problem here is not so simple. In technical fields--and in most business situations--we are taught to analyze the problem and find a solution. When emotional issues arise, we are told to "separate the people from the problem." Therein lies the root of why nothing has been done for so many years...

The people are the problem. Apparently, when Dedham Corporate Center was originally developed, the neighborhoods on the Rustcraft Road side were so concerned about traffic from people rushing to the train, that they demanded assurances that there would never be access to the train station from their neighborhoods. Now they are watching the construction of Legacy Place which landlocks them between Route 128/I95, the train tracks, and this new luxury living mall. Their backs are against the wall--quite literally, as the highway department just erected a sound barrier behind their homes.

When I say the people are the problem, I'm not saying that they should shut up and go away. What I am saying is that a series of decisions have been made where clearly the residents were considered an inconvenience and now they have been backed into a corner. There is not much left of a neighborhood--we are talking about 15-20 houses. But it illustrates an unfortunate outcome with "loose ends" manifested in this idiotic train situation.

If we were in China, those homes would have been bulldozed long ago. But this is America and we are supposed to do better by our neighbors than that. But the problem is that I think too often we focus on solving a problem, engineering a solution, creating something new--and disrespecting the community because we have separated the people from the problem. Planners, developers, architects--often yearn to paint a new canvas with their enlightened brushstrokes, then placate the abuttors, the objectors, the irrational folks who don't share their vision of progress.

We see a similar tempest in Westwood. Billions of dollars may (better check the markets today!) be spent to create a mini-city of Westwood Station that will grow the town of Westwood by multiples and secure our economic future...if all goes according to plan. But the project is self-contained. Residents and neighboring towns are concerned about traffic, so millions of dollars are spent to mollify the abutting residents with "traffic calming" measures while neighboring towns are negotiated with and dismissed--resulting in legislative maneuvering and political tricks designed to sabotage the project. When I suggested in a blog post that it would be nice to connect Westwood Station to the neighborhoods...it sounded crazy to the residents who want walls built and assurances that they will not get any spillover traffic...the same pattern repeats. Fundamentally conservative residents don't want their lives to change and don't want new development in their backyards because it will be bad.

So our elected officials play a tactical game of problem-solving. What do we need to do to make these people shut up or get around them? If traffic is the problem, OK, let's fix that and move on. But I believe the problem is always the people...it is about engaging the people in a respectful dialog and working with them--not just to mitigate damages, but to adapt the community to new opportunities. Maybe I am naive and optimistic, but I think many of these problems grow out of a failure of vision and the mistaken belief that if we just fix a few specific problems, then we can get on with things and the objectors will go away.

I think the opportunity to develop on a massive scale is almost a gift for the community...most of the time, there is no money to do anything...adding sidewalks, just fixing the potholes is a challenge. So when a developer shows up ready to spend millions of dollars we should figure out how to make that investment benefit our community--not just cover mitigation of the presumed damages that come from growth. Can we trust the developer? Probably not. But just like politics, you've got to be in the game from the beginning...we need to be constructively engaged from planning, through build-out, management, and even the end of life of these projects.

It may be too much to ask of our government. I don't know what the structure would be but it seems to me we need to find a way to connect our communities with development not just negotiate a set of costs and benefits for a project. Circumstances change constantly...so what seemed a good idea 10 years ago might not be so good now. But when we break the bonds of community, good luck getting any cooperation down the road when the residents have watched their neighborhood being turned into a ghetto by the policies of the town and commercial motivations of the developer.

Today, the city of Boston will announce a website that is described by the Boston Globe as a "Facebook-like social networking website." That description fails on so many levels to communicate the value of what the city is doing.

Boston World Partnerships is the non-profit created by Mayor Menino to promote economic development in the city of Boston. The concept is so much more than a website...it's how we use modern communication technology to market our talent and facilitate development. It's part of the answer to the question I was asked by a Selectman in Westwood as how a blog could play a role in a policy debate other than allowing residents to "vent."

Social networking is about using technology-enhanced media to connect people and ideas and start constructive conversations. Of course it's also about connecting with all your friends from college, but in the business and political context, we can use blogs, wikis, twitter, facebook, and even myspace to give more people more opportunity to participate. It's not just about people venting or individual citizens complaining--it is about finding, connecting, and leveraging the human capital of our communities. The Boston World Partnerships site is clearly at the business and professional end of this spectrum:

Mission: Boston World Partnerships informs business leaders worldwide about the competitive advantages that Boston offers, and connects them with the resources they need to locate and grow here. We also work to strengthen the general business climate and to help existing Boston businesses achieve sustainable success.

It is admitedly a long stretch to go from my small town blog and experiments on twitter to something of this magnitude, but the principles are all there. Use social media marketing to market a city. Connect the "movers and shakers"--whether they be individuals, entrepreneurs, non-profits, activists or whatever. There is no need to be held back due to hierarchical planning and bureacracy when we can connect the people who know how to get things done and support their efforts with an infrastructure that takes advantage of the latest technical and media innovations. This is the future--not just future technology, but the future of applying business and marketing principles to public and social policy.

I have a lucky perspective on changes in Boston. I went to college here in the late 1980s and then came back 15 years later. So much has changed--even more dramatically in the past couple of years.

The Boston of my youth was what you saw on Cheers or Spenser for Hire. As a college student, everything was defined in terms of proximity to a T stop. I didn't realize how close some things were to one another--for example, I knew that Faneuil Hall was a short walk from Government Center, but Aquarium was another T stop. South Station was irrelevant unless you needed to catch a train out of the city.

The Big Dig changed all that with the creation of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. When I emerge from South Station today, instead of seeing an ugly expanse of green steel and raised highway, I see this:

I explored Boston on foot 20 years ago and vividly recall the imposing barrier that was the raised highway. From the Faneuil Hall marketplace, it was possible to duck under the highway and make your way through a dark area that was perpetually dripping something from the roadway above, eventually emerging in the vicinity of the New England Aquarium. But most people just took the T to the Aquarium stop and walked from there. Similarly, an exploration of Haymarket Square involved taking the red line to Downtown Crossing where a long underground tunnel connected to the Orange line and you would emerge in a vacant gray plaza a couple of blocks away from Haymarket. From there, one could crawl under the multiple layers of highway, again, dodging the ever-present dripping, to get to the North End.

Each destination was isolated. It never occurred to me that they could be connected. There was history and charm in these places, but they were very discrete points of interest, not really part of a connected whole. I never did manage to walk the Freedom Trail and I never got a sense of how the harbor area connected with the rest of the city.

I recently took a walk down the the new greenway and was amazed at what has been transformed.

Only a few years ago, I recall dropping my wife off for her job at 1 International Place...things were still a concrete and steel mess. Today, all that has become a park. Gazing along what used to be an impassable mass of green steel and concrete once can see an arc of green and from one vantage point, glimpse South Station and the spire of the Old North Church at the same time. It is possible to walk between all these parts of the city--and also to see the harbor. I remember how as a college student I was hardly even aware there was a Boston Harbor--it was hidden behind the highway. Today the city is connected and once can see the bay, the airport, and beyond.

On the other side of the greenway, development proceeds at a furious pace.

Russia Wharf is preserving three old buildings while excavation continues prior to building out a 32-story skyscraper that will rise above the facades of the historic buildings and create a new Boston skyline.

The effort being expended to preserve these buildings is truly phenomenal. For the past year, I've watched as work crews meticulously hollowed out the buildings, while leaving the brick facades up on all sides.

Behind the facades, workers have excavated several levels down and installed massive steel columns to support the structure that will grow out of all of this.

Next Saturday, October 4, the Greenway will formally open with a big party. I don't know if we'll manage to get down there with the kids, but I highly recommend anyone who has not been there in the past few years to check it out. It's a cliche, but you have to see it to believe it.

I'm writing a proposal for a writing fellowship. On this blog, I had started a "business plan," but I ran out of steam when I realized I've spent the last dozen years or so in startup companies tying to second guess management on how to make the business work. It's boring. It's a necessary means to an end--to create the thing that brings in the money so we can have fun creating something new. But I would be managing away the things I want to do most: reading, writing, learning and experiencing life.

So here's another angle...a big topic I'd like to write about:

These are exciting times to live in the Boston area as massive redevelopment efforts are underway to reshape the city and suburbs. I am fortunate to live at the location of one such project and work in the midst of another.

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As gas prices skyrocket, Americans will abandon the suburbs and embrace urban living. That's the wishful thinking I detect when urbanists seize upon the findings in a CEOs for Cities study that claims to find and prove a causal link between rising gas prices and the collapse of the housing market bubble.

The study is intriguing; it uses data on gas prices and the timing of the housing bubble collapse, along with location specific analysis of real estate trends to explain the housing bubble NOT in terms of lending practices, but instead due to a fundamental shift in economics caused by rising fuel prices.
The study is principally talking about exurbs--and situations like the one in the New York Times article where a double-income couple chose to buy a McMansion an hour from their jobs. Perhaps those people, if they were looking to buy that house today, would think twice, factoring in the commute cost.

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