“Si la mente no está desconcertada, no está en uso”.

– Wendell Berry

En el transcurso de mi carrera, he tenido la oportunidad de enseñar en muchos lugares y contextos diferentes, desde una escuela de formación profesional en South Shore, Massachusetts, hasta aulas de grado y posgrado en Nueva York, Carolina del Norte, Inglaterra, Italia y Rusia. Si bien el alumnado y las asignaturas han variado, hay un hilo conductor: enseñar es la mejor forma de aprender.

La mejor forma de descubrir las brechas en tu propio conocimiento es intentar comunicarlo a otra persona. La mejor forma de comprender cómo la gente absorbe la información y actúa según esta es participar activamente en ese proceso. No es un concepto novedoso: la expresión latina docendo discimus, que se suele atribuir a Séneca, significa “aprendemos enseñando”; en Alemania se promulgó un enfoque pedagógico llamado Lernen durch Lehren: “aprender desde la enseñanza”.

Lo primero que se aprende al enseñar es que es más que hablar desde un púlpito, entrar en un aula y lanzar información desde una postura de superioridad. Sí, es necesario dominar el tema, pero también es necesario ser consciente y estar en el momento: con mente abierta, predisposición para experimentar y, más que nada, oír a fin de reordenar el debate si las palabras no llegan como se esperaba.

Nuestro fundador, John C. Lincoln, gozaba, y mucho, de estas cualidades. Él priorizó la educación y la experimentación desde el primer día en la Fundación Lincoln. Lo motivaba la ferviente convicción de que el valor del suelo pertenece a la comunidad y se debería usar para su propio beneficio, concepto que escuchó por primera vez en una conferencia de Henry George, economista político y escritor. Lincoln difundió esta idea con su fecunda obra (panfletos, artículos e incluso “Lincoln Letter”, una publicación mensual) y mediante el financiamiento de instituciones educativas.

En 1949, apenas tres años después de establecer la Fundación Lincoln, redactó una carta en nombre de la Facultad Henry George (cuya labor financiaba y de cuya junta fue presidente durante 17 años) para promover un curso de debates de 10 semanas basado en la obra de George. “El curso no ofrece panaceas listas para usar ni fórmulas de chamanes”, advirtió. “Abre al debate y fomenta el análisis, a fin de intentar dilucidar las causas subyacentes de los problemas a los que se enfrenta el mundo moderno y descubrir los medios para resolverlos”.

Ese compromiso para debatir problemas y descubrir soluciones sigue siendo primordial en nuestra misión. Si bien nos enfrentamos a desafíos mundiales que John Lincoln no podría haber previsto, desde el cambio climático hasta la COVID, algunos problemas de su época nos resultan bastante conocidos: desigualdad económica, costos de vivienda exorbitantes, injusticia social y uso excesivo o abuso de recursos naturales, por mencionar algunos.

Tras la muerte de John Lincoln, en 1959, David Lincoln tomó las riendas de la fundación familiar. Poco después expandió el compromiso de su padre para con la educación: otorgó subsidios a Claremont Men’s College, de California, las universidades de Virginia, Nueva York y Chicago, y el Urban Land Institute (Instituto de Suelo Urbano). Una década más tarde, la Fundación Lincoln estableció el Land Reform Training Institute (Instituto de Capacitación sobre Reforma Territorial) en Taipéi, que hoy se llama International Center for Land Policy Studies and Training (Centro Internacional de Estudios sobre Capacitación y Políticas de Suelo), y sigue estando asociado al Instituto Lincoln. Además, David y Joan, su esposa, hicieron generosos aportes a la Universidad Estatal de Arizona y otras instituciones.

Si bien David respaldaba la educación en otras instituciones, soñaba con fundar una organización independiente que pudiera realizar su propia investigación sobre políticas de suelo; un lugar que pudiera desarrollar e impartir cursos junto con instituciones adeptas sin ser cautivo de ellas. La fundación del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, en 1974, fue un paso arriesgado, una incursión en la pedagogía activa que impulsa nuestra labor de hoy y que, a su vez, podría ayudarnos a aprender más.

En las casi cinco décadas desde que David Lincoln dio ese salto, hemos enseñado a personas de todo el mundo y aprendido de ellas, desde estudiantes de grado que están incursionando en la incorporación de conceptos básicos hasta profesionales urbanos expertos que desean expandir sus habilidades. Hemos dado cursos sobre recuperación de plusvalías y mercados del suelo en América Latina; sobre tasación e impuesto a la propiedad en Europa Oriental y África; sobre financiamiento y conservación municipales en los Estados Unidos y China; y muchos más. En la última década, nuestros cursos y capacitaciones llegaron a casi 20.000 participantes.

En el camino, aprendimos varias lecciones importantes. Por ejemplo, aprendimos que cuando se trata de capacitación sobre políticas de suelo, hay brechas cruciales. Al prepararnos para lanzar una campaña sobre el estado fiscal de los municipios en 2015, realizamos una encuesta extraoficial con la Asociación Americana de Planificación para determinar cuántas facultades de grado de planificación exigían a sus estudiantes realizar cursos sobre financiación pública. ¿La respuesta? Ninguna. Para abordar esta omisión desconcertante, desarrollamos un plan de estudios sobre financiación pública para planificadores, y desde entonces lo hemos impartido en Beijing, Chicago, Dallas, Taipéi y Boston en diversos formatos: desde un programa de tres días con certificación profesional hasta un curso de un semestre para estudiantes de posgrado.

También aprendimos que los profesionales que trabajan con políticas de suelo están ávidos de capacitaciones prácticas, y que la gente valora muchísimo los cursos oficiales. El año pasado, con la llegada de la pandemia, el personal probó nuevos enfoques virtuales que fomentaran la participación e involucraran más a la gente. Por ejemplo, grabaron presentaciones que se podían ver antes de las sesiones en vivo, o expandieron a varios días lo que en persona habría sido un cronograma estrecho. En algunos casos, llegamos a más gente: por ejemplo, un seminario virtual sobre tributación en Europa Oriental llegó a 500 personas, en vez de a las 40 que habrían participado con un formato presencial. En otros, llegamos a una base de mayor diversidad geográfica, y a la vez mantuvimos baja la cantidad de inscripciones para fomentar la participación y el aprendizaje activo. Si bien ya estamos planificando volver a la capacitación presencial, ahora sabemos aprovechar las posibilidades que ofrece la formación virtual y esperamos poder ampliar esa oferta.

Este año, sobre la base de lo que aprendimos y en honor a la tradición de la familia Lincoln de dar grandes saltos, lanzaremos nuestro primer programa con título oficial junto con Claremont Lincoln University (CLU), una universidad de posgrado en línea sin fines de lucro dedicada a la educación con consciencia social. Junto con CLU hemos creado programas asequibles y en línea de Maestría en Administración Pública y en Liderazgo Sostenible, y estamos trabajando en una tercera opción: la primera Maestría en Políticas de Suelo de los Estados Unidos, que esperamos se inaugure pronto.

Estos programas de posgrado, que se pueden realizar en entre 13 y 20 meses, son una forma de repensar la educación superior desde las bases. Se diseñaron específicamente para profesionales en ejercicio que necesiten adquirir habilidades prácticas que puedan implementar en la vida diaria, mientras ejecutan su trabajo. Ambos son integradores y ágiles. El personal del Instituto Lincoln diseñará e impartirá varios cursos, y usará casos de estudio reales y análisis transectoriales para abordar temáticas como financiación pública y compromiso cívico. Hacia fin de año, yo impartiré un curso sobre sostenibilidad urbana, y ayudaré al alumnado a adquirir los conocimientos y las habilidades que necesitan para identificar desafíos urbanos, diseñar intervenciones para la sostenibilidad de las ciudades y movilizar recursos para implementar dichas soluciones. Y no tengo dudas de que aprenderé mucho en el proceso.

Los estudiantes que se inscriban en CLU no lo harán solo para adquirir un título de posgrado, también lo harán para explorar dificultades, descubrir soluciones y ser parte de un movimiento nacional de aprendices permanentes. La crisis climática nos presiona de formas nuevas y alarmantes, la infraestructura se cae a pedazos y las viviendas asequibles son una especie en peligro de extinción. Con todo esto, los funcionarios públicos se enfrentan a desafíos que parecen insuperables y tienen cada vez menos recursos. Este programa formará una red cada vez mayor de personas instruidas y activas que podrán resolver problemas y usar las políticas de suelo para abordar nuestras dificultades ambientales, económicas y sociales más escabrosas.

El Instituto Lincoln está decidido a “hallar respuestas en el suelo”. No afirmamos tener todas las respuestas. Nuestro compromiso es hallarlas mediante la investigación y colaboraciones con partes asociadas en todo el mundo. Mediante iniciativas como este convenio con CLU, seguiremos enseñando, aprendiendo y experimentando; y, como escribió John Lincoln en 1949, trataremos de “echar una luz nueva y escrutadora sobre las cuestiones esenciales que nos inquietan a todos”.

Para obtener más información sobre el convenio entre Claremont Lincoln University y el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo, y las oportunidades de colaboración actuales, visite www.claremontlincoln.edu/lincolninstitute75.

George W. McCarthy es presidente y director ejecutivo del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo.

Fotografía: La sede de CLU en Claremont, California. Crédito: CLU.

Contenido relacionado

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Developed in partnership with and reprinted with permission from the American Planning Association. This article originally appeared in PAS QuickNotes and is available for download as a PDF. 

The accelerated pace of change and increased uncertainty about the future make it ever more difficult to imagine what is to come. Creating a community vision and planning for it require knowledge about potential drivers of change and a nimble process that allows planners to pivot while the future is approaching. 

Foresight (also called strategic foresight) is an approach that aims at making sense of the future, understanding drivers of change that are outside of one’s control, and preparing for what may lead to success or failure in the future. Applying foresight in cycles creates agility and enhances one’s preparedness for disruption before it happens. In today’s quickly changing world, it is important for planners to integrate foresight into their work to make their communities more resilient. 

Background 

In the business world, strategic foresight is used to “future-proof” a product, a business plan, or an entire company. Understanding how markets, consumer behaviors and preferences, or applications may change can help businesses to adapt as needed to remain successful and become more resilient. 

Using foresight in planning provides multiple benefits. Planners can use foresight to help their communities navigate change and uncertainty. It can make long-range planning more resilient and nimbler. And it can foster community engagement and allow for more inclusive and equitable outcomes. 

There are multiple approaches and methodologies to practicing foresight. The most important components (and most relevant to planning) include the following: 

Trend scanning: researching existing, emerging, and potential future trends (including societal, technological, environmental, economic, and political trends, or STEEP) and related drivers of change 

Signal sensing: identifying developments in the far future and in adjacent fields outside of the conventional planning space that might impact planning 

Forecasting: estimating future trends 

Sense-making: connecting trends and signals to planning to explore how they will impact cities, communities, and the way planners do their work 

Scenario planning: creating multiple plausible futures. 

In foresight, engaging diverse teams with diverse perspectives is critical to avoid missing signals or trends that might not be obvious or seem immediately related to planning. For planners, engaging the community in foresight makes the process more inclusive and will result in equitable and sustainable solutions. 

Integrate Foresight into Your Community Vision 

It is important to understand the difference between creating a vision and practicing foresight. In a visioning process, the community together with planners create a vision of the future and identify goals and objectives based on the community’s values. A visioning process usually starts in the present, analyzing current challenges that need to be overcome, current and potential future needs that must be addressed, and mutual goals and objectives that need to be achieved. In short, community visioning starts in the present and creates goals for the future. 

In contrast, foresight starts with the future and reverse-engineers what needs to happen today to achieve the most desirable outcome in the future. Foresight combines the processes of forecasting and backcasting (understanding how to prepare for what’s to come with a vision of the ideal community in mind). Trend scanning, signal sensing, and the understanding of external drivers of change will reveal potential roadblocks the community might encounter along the way toward its envisioned future. A good understanding of these potential disruptions is crucial to be able to create a plan—not just for what the future in 10 or 20 years will look like, but for how to achieve the community vision and goals while pivoting and adapting along the way. 

Prepare for Multiple Plausible Futures 

The practice of foresight is not a crystal ball and will not predict the future. Rather, it helps to develop ideas of what the future could potentially look like. Planners can use foresight to consider multiple plausible futures based on different potential drivers of change. 

Exploratory scenario planning is a useful tool to create alternative futures. It can help planners prioritize different drivers of change and create scenarios with the ones that seem to have the biggest impact, that communities are least prepared for, and that are most likely or certain to occur. Exploratory scenario planning can be done in a variety of ways, including SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, formulating “what if” questions (what will happen if trend X occurs . . .), and using axes of uncertainty (a two-by-two matrix that interconnects different drivers of change to create alternative plausible futures and to assess future risks or opportunities). 

Ideally, scenarios range from visionary (best case, success, or transformative scenarios) to expectable (conventional expectations) to challenging (worst case, failure, or dystopian scenarios) to cover all grounds when creating alternative paths towards the future. 

Create a Nimble Plan for an Uncertain Future 

Long-range planning is important, but it needs to be agile and adjustable. The goal of integrating foresight into community visioning is to prepare for uncertainty on the path towards the future. 

As the world around us is changing, the community vision and the plan to achieve it need to be regularly updated and adjusted. What might be an ideal future from today’s perspective could be unachievable or problematic in five or 10 years. For instance, in 2005 no one would have thought that a telephone would change the ways people move around town, how planners connect with their communities, or how data is collected. Then the iPhone changed everything. 

To create the needed agility and a nimble plan that allows for pivoting and changing directions, foresight needs to be practiced in cycles. Continuous observations, discovery, and sharing of signals and trends, including regular scenario planning to create alternative paths towards the future, are crucial. 

It can be helpful to create a “trend radar,” categorizing trends and drivers of change as immediate (or critical), near-term, or long-term. This will provide guidance on what decisions are needed now, what planners need to start preparing for, and what they need to keep watching and learning about to understand potential implications. 

Continuous monitoring of developments around us and on the horizon and adjusting the plan every one or two years will enhance the community’s resilience and preparedness for the future. 

Conclusions 

Planners play crucial roles in shaping inclusive and equitable futures for their communities—and they must be able to imagine the future to shape it and prepare for it. Practicing foresight and future literacy provides an opportunity for planners to create more resilient communities by better preparing for potential disruptions, by developing equitable solutions before a challenge arises, and by finding inclusive mechanisms to change directions when needed without leaving anyone behind. 

This PAS QuickNotes was prepared by Petra Hurtado, Ph.D., research director at the American Planning Association.  

Image Credit: American Planning Association

Further Reading from the American Planning Association 

APA Foresight, American Planning Association 

COVID-19, Communities, and the Planning Profession, APA Blog 

Learn, Prepare, Act — APA’s Approach to Foresight, Planning 

Other Resources 

Beard, Alison, and Curt Nickisch, with Mark Johnson. 2020. “To Build Strategy, Start With the Future.” HBR IdeaCast, May 12, Episode 740. 

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 2021. Consortium for Scenario Planning. 

Ryan, Rebecca. 2021. What Is Foresight? 

Webb, Amy. 2016. The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe is Tomorrow’s Mainstream. New York: Public Affairs/ Perseus Books. 

Amid rising home values, cities and states need to provide targeted relief to keep property taxes affordable while avoiding overly broad measures that could undermine the largest source of local revenue, a new report finds. 

In the Policy Focus Report Property Tax Relief for Homeowners, Lincoln Institute scholars Adam Langley and Joan Youngman evaluate more than a dozen common tools for tax relief and explain how state and local policy makers can keep tax systems fair and fiscally sustainable. They recommend a mix of sound tax administration, highly targeted relief, and robust state funding. 

“An approach that includes policies such as circuit breakers, deferrals, sound assessment and collection practices, and well-designed state aid formulas will promote a tax system that is fair and affordable for taxpayers while providing the revenue needed to maintain quality public services,” the authors write. 

The report addresses a challenging aspect of the property tax: higher home values do not always equate to greater cash flow for homeowners. Thus, keeping tax bills stable is essential.  

In an attempt to provide stability, states sometimes enact ineffective measures that destabilize state and local budgets, reduce the quality of public services, and deliver disproportionate benefits to wealthier homeowners. The most common among these are far-reaching limits on local tax rates, revenues, and taxable property values. 

“All state-imposed tax limits reduce local control over budget decisions, and so diminish the capacity of local governments to respond to taxpayer preferences and changing circumstances,” Langley and Youngman write. 

Instead, policy makers can employ targeted approaches that keep tax bills as stable as possible and provide relief to those who need it. 

Regular and accurate assessment of property is critical. Without it, assessed values stay artificially low until they eventually spike after a long-delayed revaluation. Further, if property values increase faster than incomes, policy makers need to reduce tax rates accordingly to stabilize tax bills. 

While sound assessment and rate-setting practices go a long way to prevent financial hardship, targeted tax relief is needed to support some homeowners, such as seniors with fixed incomes, people who have lost their jobs, or lower-income residents of gentrifying neighborhoods, whose property tax bills are still growing relative to their income. 

Langley and Youngman recommend circuit breakers, which provide property tax relief to those whose tax bill exceeds a certain percentage of income—so named because they function like a switch that cuts off an electrical circuit when too much current flows. They also recommend deferrals, which delay taxes until the property changes hands, enabling homeowners or their heirs to use proceeds from the sale of the home to pay off the taxes. Finally, they recommend monthly payment options so that homeowners do not face a large bill once or twice per year.  

While cities and towns can administer such programs, states play a critical role. They need to remove legal barriers that prevent local governments from effectively administering the property tax and provide robust aid to make up for gaps in real estate values among different cities and towns. Adequate state funding ensures that even low-wealth jurisdictions can provide quality local services at affordable tax rates. 

“If policy makers are sincere about providing targeted property tax relief for homeowners that has the fewest unintended or spillover effects, they would benefit from serious study of the concepts and approaches presented in this report,” said Alan Dornfest, property tax bureau chief for the Idaho State Tax Commission. “It could not be more timely or more complete.” 

The report is available for download on the Lincoln Institute’s website.

Image: Mailboxes along Route 66, Arizona. Credit: libre de droit/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

The following is an excerpt from Equitably Developing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities: Investing in Residents from South Bend to Worcester, a Policy Focus Report recently published by the Lincoln Institute. The Lincoln Institute’s Legacy Cities Initiative offers additional strategies and resources. 

In 2020, leaders of smaller U.S. legacy cities confronted more than their usual challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement laid bare persistent racial and income segregation common in these postindustrial centers. A long history of discriminatory and failed policies contributes to these conditions.  

This report does not serve as a treatise on eradicating injustice from small legacy cities. Instead, the report focuses on the significant opportunity that these cities now have to combat inequity and increase economic competitiveness by embracing policies that support equitable development. 

America’s smaller legacy cities—such as Akron, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and Worcester, Massachusetts—are well positioned to promote development that includes and benefits all residents while improving economic competitiveness. This report shows local changemakers how to incorporate equity into the traditional suite of revitalization strategies by focusing on both physical development and investment in residents. The report makes a case for why local changemakers should care about equity and offers ways to shape development policies and actions to make them equitable. Most of these strategies are tailored to the unique conditions of smaller, weak-market legacy cities and can, for the most part, be implemented at the local level. Case studies further illustrate each of these strategies. 

An earlier Policy Focus Report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Greater Ohio Policy Center, Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities, discusses smaller legacy cities and the economic and historical dynamics that shape them, including a detailed analysis of their demographics (Hollingsworth and Goebel 2017). The 2017 report provides a more detailed foundation for the equitable development strategies discussed here. 

The Equitable Development Imperative: How Greater Equity Can Support Growth 

Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor (2012, 2015) assert the economic imperative for addressing long-standing inequality by demonstrating that racial and income inequality are not just outcomes of a postindustrial world, but also drivers of current and future regional economic stagnation. Specifically, they found that “high inequality, measured in a variety of different ways, has a negative impact on growth and that these impacts are in fact stronger in regions with what many in the literature call ‘weak market’ central cities” (Pastor and Benner 2008). While this “dragging effect” of inequality on financial strength is concerning, a growing and encouraging body of research offers a path forward, validating the economic advantages of improving equity (Pastor and Benner 2008). 

Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland supports this, finding that “a skilled workforce, high levels of racial inclusion, and progress on income equality correlate strongly and positively with economic growth” (Benner and Pastor 2012; Eberts, Erickcek, and Kleinhenz 2006). 

Persistent disparities can depress a city’s economy. Revitalization without a deliberate equity component does little to address underlying injustices. Alan Mallach’s 2014 analysis of traditional legacy city revitalization shows us how development designed for high-income residents in the downtown or central business district alone does not improve inequities citywide. Mallach found that traditional revitalization in some legacy cities failed to improve economic and quality-of-life indicators for the least advantaged residents: “Revitalization, at least at the scale and of the character that is being experienced in these cities, does not confer citywide benefits; if anything, it may even redirect jobs, resources, and wealth away from large parts of the city, concentrating them in a smaller area and leaving the rest worse off than before” (Mallach 2014). 

Urban Institute researchers, in their analysis of how larger cities recovered from the Great Recession, concur with Mallach’s finding. They write, “Across all types of cities, local leaders are beginning to recognize that economic growth does not automatically lead to inclusion; rather, intentional strategies are needed” (Poethig et al. 2018). Federal Reserve researchers also weigh in on this, saying: “The pursuit of societal goals, such as racial inclusion and lower income dispersion, are very compatible with economic growth” (Eberts, Erickcek, and Kleinhenz 2006). 

Sidebar: What are equity and equitable development?

This report uses the term “equity” broadly to refer to an overarching goal: to make opportunity accessible to all, regardless of background and circumstance, and to make a special effort to improve outcomes for low-income populations and communities of color to bring them into parity with other populations. Greater equity is possible when poverty and disparities in wealth, employment, and health shrink as incomes and access to employment increase. In equitable cities, decision makers value the perspectives of all residents and ensure that anyone who wants to participate in civic life can have a seat at the table. 

“Equality” and “equity” are not synonymous. Many scholars of equity and inclusion have argued that equality means funding, access to support, and decision-making power are shared equally, and one solution applies to all (Blackwell 2016). But treating all issues equally does not correct underlying inequities; instead, it perpetuates them, because policies and practices impact individuals and communities differently. Committing to equity means tailoring solutions and supports to local needs and circumstances so that everyone thrives. 

The process of equitable development must include diverse stakeholders who provide critical input and take leadership roles. Equitable development must also protect residents from being physically or culturally forced out of their homes while improving market strength and encouraging new market-rate development. Practitioners need to be patient and strategic, understanding that it takes time to realize the desired outcomes. In the meantime, changemakers can track progress with data and make course corrections as needed. 

Unique Challenges and Opportunities for Equitable Development in Smaller Legacy Cities 

One major advantage that smaller legacy cities have when advancing equitable development is that their leaders often already have meaningful relationships with each other. When intentionally nurtured, these connections can lead to fruitful coalitions. The path to better economic times is through collaboration; this was true in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and it is likely to continue to be true in the pandemic era (Brachman 2020). Conversely, strained or poor relationships resulting from competition over scarce resources or other factors can impede progress for smaller legacy cities. Steps for dealing with these conflicts are addressed later in this report. 

Another advantage is that the relative lack of market pressures in smaller legacy cities means leaders can take their time to get plans right without rapid development threatening to get ahead of the planning process. Additionally, the smaller size of these places makes them an ideal environment for testing ideas and changing paradigms, eloquently described in the Ferguson Commission report (2015) as encouraging a “culture of trying.” Smaller legacy cities can make course corrections and quick pivots—critical pieces of “trying”—by expeditiously seeking residents’ input and regularly checking back in for feedback. 

An equity agenda cannot be built entirely on a city’s real estate market. This is especially true in smaller legacy cities, which often lack the market strength to support development impact fees or exactions—payments made by developers to local governments to deliver public goods associated with a project, such as infrastructure, open space, or affordable housing. 

Because those strategies may not be suitable for all smaller legacy cities, this report describes alternative routes to equity that do not require waiting for a strong real estate market. For example, leaders in Dayton, Ohio, co-located a number of similar community programs when they renovated the Dayton Arcade. This facilitated more coordinated, collaborative, and efficient delivery of small business development services. Because revitalization work must extend beyond the physical environment, many strategies presented in this report seek to increase human capital. Case studies focus on coalition building, planning, and workforce development. Research supports this need for a breadth of strategies. In an examination of how to improve upward mobility for low-income families and families of color in America’s metro areas, researchers from the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty found, “The evidence suggests that full-scale transformation will result not from any single policy endeavor, but through a long-term process that extends beyond investments in the distressed neighborhoods themselves to also address the economic, political, and social systems that helped create and sustain neighborhood disparities” (Turner et al. 2018). 

The case studies included here from larger cities or healthier markets can be adapted for smaller legacy cities. Many of the examples come from Ohio, which is home to 20 smaller legacy cities (a relatively high number for one state), and a state policy environment that is not particularly city-friendly. As such, Ohioans have been innovating at the local level for decades. Additionally, this report purposefully prioritizes equitable development strategies that can start at any time, regardless of market strength, and are primarily within the control of local leaders.  

Equitable Development in the COVID-19 Context 

Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened challenges faced by leaders in small legacy cities. Already weak housing markets are further strained as tenants and owners face job losses and increased financial instability. When limited resources force city leaders to make difficult strategic investment decisions, residents may sometimes view these choices as picking favorites. This dynamic erodes trust and underscores how essential it is to develop a defensible plan and an inclusive process to guide decision making. COVID-19 has also increased food insecurity and presented public health challenges such as caring for sick residents and administering vaccines. These new fiscal demands, along with concurrent or projected declines in local tax revenue, make financing revitalization even more difficult in smaller legacy cities. Yet these challenges often provide the impetus for new partnerships.  

Constrained resources can motivate committed local leaders to forge a sense of common destiny and develop strategic partnerships. Today’s conditions may further broaden awareness about existing challenges and generate momentum for new collaborations, while also encouraging leaders to strategically stretch every dollar to yield the most significant impact. 

When the pandemic began, many local governments were already financially fragile. They had not yet recovered from the Great Recession, more than a decade after its official end. Nationally, cities anticipate losing 10 to 15 percent of their revenue in 2021, and the actual amount may be more significant, depending on the type of tax revenue cities depend on (Greater Ohio Policy Center 2020; McFarland and Pagano 2020). 

These revenue challenges are compounded by a dramatic need for initiatives to help support residents and retain small businesses, such as establishing non-congregate shelters, increasing food access, offering small business grants and loans, and expanding internet access. Many local governments have already cut spending by shelving or scaling back scheduled capital projects and laying off staff, actions that then challenge their ability to undertake strategic investments. 

COVID-19 has exacerbated racial disparities in both physical health and economic well-being. While low- and moderate-income people, many of whom are people of color, have benefited from various protections against eviction in the short term, renters worry that they may not be able to pay their accumulated debt. Local landlords who are financially dependent on rental income often dominate the rental market in smaller cities, and the pandemic puts their income at risk, too. 

The long-term consequences for the economies of smaller legacy cities are ultimately unknown—but worrisome. Nevertheless, leaders of smaller legacy cities consider these challenges a setback, not a death knell. Many of Ohio’s smaller legacy cities even report that their traditional economic development efforts were extraordinarily successful in 2020 despite the effects of the pandemic. Linking these economic development successes to equity goals remains a challenge for some, but more stakeholders are growing aware of the issue thanks to an increasing number of conference panels, training sessions, and informal conversations. 

The COVID-19 pandemic also creates a unique opportunity for legacy city leaders to prioritize equity through recovery. A growing national focus on racial justice is underscoring the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on communities of color. Racial justice protests have occurred in many smaller legacy cities, and many communities have declared racism a public health crisis (Walliser-Wejebe 2020). 

Such protests hold the potential to build dialogue among residents and municipal governments, including police (Frolik 2020; Petersen 2020). Legacy city leaders can seize the moment and fully acknowledge long-standing racial and economic disparities within their cities, as well as the fact that recent economic growth has not benefited all residents equally (Economic Innovation Group 2020). This increased awareness in an environment of heightened urgency paves the way for a more equitable strategic plan for recovery from a pandemic-driven recession and a more inclusive future for smaller legacy cities. 

Addressing Concerns About Gentrification in Smaller Legacy Cities 

An enduring tension within revitalization efforts is between the need for new market-rate housing and residents’ fears of displacement. Declining populations and low incomes in small legacy cities prompt the need to attract new and higher-income residents to approach a healthy bell-curve distribution of incomes (Mallach 2018). Many smaller legacy cities in the Midwest have weak housing markets that require interventions to strengthen the market. 

However, city leaders and developers must authentically acknowledge community concerns as they begin to bring investments to these neighborhoods. Leaders can build trust by bringing a community together to address the need for a mix of incomes, while also acknowledging and mitigating cultural changes and fear of displacement in an open, honest, and transparent way—as in the case of the Bowman Creek Educational Ecosystem in South Bend, Indiana. Physical redevelopment can meet equitable development objectives and maintain a neighborhood’s sense of cultural identity by preserving important community assets such as churches, parks, retail corridors and the long-standing merchants within them, and community and recreation centers. More strategies for addressing these dynamics are considered in the full report. 

A Common Destiny 

Today, smaller legacy cities continue to lose major employers, jobs, and in some cases residents. These trends are exacerbating long-standing racial and income disparities, which have been deepened by COVID-19’s infection rates and economic impacts. The need to address the persistent racial and income segregation common in smaller legacy cities is more urgent than ever. Equitable development offers a new playbook to address inequality while increasing economic competitiveness. 

Strategic work to improve these indicators will provide more opportunities for many residents and will increase potential for broader economic recovery. New investment needs to include deliberate interventions to correct these damaging inequalities. Some smaller legacy cities are experiencing revitalization, but the investments typically do not benefit the city as a whole (Mallach 2014). To reach everyone, revitalization strategies need to be deliberately designed to improve equity outcomes. This report offers numerous examples of how smaller legacy cities can enhance equitable development and set the stage for healthy, sustainable economic recovery. Our strategies acknowledge the importance of relationships and trust in sustaining meaningful, equitable development work. This work can lead to a sense of common destiny among diverse groups and help address disparities and improve economic prospects for the whole city. 

Erica Spaid Patras is the senior manager of special projects at the Greater Ohio Policy Center. She studies the impact of potential public policy changes on the real estate market, manages a community of practice focused on expanding access to capital in underinvested neighborhoods and communities across Ohio, and evaluates the impact of transportation policy in Ohio. She holds a master of city planning degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Alison Goebel is the executive director at the Greater Ohio Policy Center. She is responsible for charting the center’s strategic direction; directing the research, advocacy, and outreach teams; and securing resources for this work. She is the author of numerous research reports and policy briefs on the revitalization of weak-market cities, transportation funding, and local governance structures in Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a B.A. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. 

Lindsey Elam is the manager of research at the Greater Ohio Policy Center. She has a master’s degree in city and regional planning and a B.S. in social work, both from the Ohio State University. She is a certified planner (AICP) with the American Planning Association and a LEED Green Associate through the U.S. Green Building Council, and she has completed trainings through the Form-Based Codes Institute.

Lead image: The Erie Downtown Development Corporation, a nonprofit in Erie, Pennsylvania, has increased Erie revitalization capacity and redevelopment funding—and also sponsors the annual Celebrate Erie festival, which traditionally includes this community-driven Chalk Walk. Credit: Robert Frank.

References 

Benner, Chris, and Manuel Pastor. 2012. Just Growth: Inclusion and Prosperity in America. New York, NY: Routledge.  

———. 2015. Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America’s Metro Areas. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 

Blackwell, Angela Glover. 2016. “Equity Is . . .” Putnam Consulting Group. October 5. https://putnam-consulting.com/practical-tips-for-philanthropists/equity-is. 

Brachman, Lavea. 2020. The Perils and Promise of America’s Legacy Cities in the Pandemic Era. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. 

Eberts, Randall, George Erickcek, and Jack Kleinhenz. 2006. Dashboard Indicators for the Northeast Ohio Economy: Prepared for the Fund for Our Economic Future. Cleveland, OH: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. 

Economic Innovation Group. 2020. “Neighborhood Poverty Project, Interactive Map.” https://eig.org/neighborhood-poverty-project/interactive-map. 

Ferguson Commission. 2015. Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity. St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Positive Change. 

Frolik, Cornelius. 2020. “More Than 100 Volunteer to Help Dayton Develop Police Reforms.” Dayton Daily News. June 30. www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/100-people-agree-help-dayton-reform-police/lfxIZ7GOeZhZCVeXk663KK. 

Greater Ohio Policy Center. 2020. A Mortal Threat to Ohio’s Economic Competitiveness: SB352, HB754, and the Buckeye Institute Lawsuit. Columbus, OH: Greater Ohio Policy Center. 

Hollingsworth, Torey, and Alison Goebel. 2017. Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities: Strategies for Postindustrial Success from Gary to Lowell. Policy Focus Report. Columbus, OH: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Greater Ohio Policy Center. 

Mallach, Alan. 2014. The Uncoupling of the Economic City. Washington, DC: Urban Affairs Review. 

———. 2018. The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America. Washington, DC: Island Press. 

McFarland, Christiana K., and Michael A. Pagano. 2020. City Fiscal Conditions 2020. Washington, DC: National League of Cities. 

Pastor, Manuel, and Chris Benner. 2008. “Been Down So Long: Weak-Market Cities and Regional Equity.” In Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America’s Older Industrial Areas, ed. Richard M. McGahey and Jennifer S. Vey, 89–118. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 

Petersen, Anne Helen. 2020. “Why the Small Protests in Small Towns Across America Matter.” BuzzFeed News. June 3. www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/black-lives-matter-protests-near-me-small-towns. 

Poethig, Erika, Solomon Greene, Christina Stacy, Tanaya Srini, and Brady Meisell. 2018. Inclusive Recovery in U.S. Cities. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. 

Turner, Margery Austin, Solomon Greene, Anthony Iton, and Ruth Gourevitch. 2018. Opportunity Neighborhoods: Building the Foundation for Economic Mobility in America’s Metros. Washington, DC: U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty. 

Walliser-Wejebe, Maria. 2020. “Communities Across the State Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, the State Considers It.” Greater Ohio Policy Center blog. July 21. https://www.greaterohio.org/blog/2020/7/16/communities-across-the-state-declare-racism-as-a-public-health-crisis-the-state-considers-it. 
 

Among its many consequences, the pandemic ushered in a period of experimental, rapid-fire adjustments to public space. Cities were suddenly tweaking zoning rules to allow more outdoor dining, blocking off streets to give pedestrians and bicyclists more space, and figuring out how to respond to dramatic upticks in food and retail pickup and delivery. It has been a pivotal stretch, in short, for managing the curb. 

Even before the lockdowns began, the increasing popularity of transportation network companies—from ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft to scooter firms like Bird and Lime—had made curb management a rising priority for many cities. “In today’s urban fabric, few spaces are more contested than the curb,” the American Planning Association declared back in the before-times of 2019. 

But the welter of recent experiments, some involving deployment of new technologies, seems even more significant. Consider the case of Aspen, Colorado. Aspen is an unusual municipality, with a downtown business district that is geographically modest, at just 16 square blocks. Nevertheless, it’s extremely busy: the retail and restaurant businesses there rack up a collective $1 billion a year. The inevitable upshot is that demand for curb space—for parking, for deliveries—can outpace supply. And that makes Aspen a useful curb-management lab. 

In February 2020, Aspen joined a group of municipalities exploring pilot programs with a start-up called Coord, one of a number of “smart city” tech companies with a curb-management bent. “I’m a data freak,” explains Mitch Osur, Aspen’s director of parking and downtown services. He figured that at the very least, Coord’s platform—which integrates “smart zones” with a payment app used by delivery drivers (and a separate app for enforcement officers)—could give him fresh insight into how the downtown streets are really being used. 

The city identified what it believed were its busiest loading zones. Starting in November 2020, using these zones required booking space through Coord’s app, at a cost of $2 an hour. While regular street parking in downtown Aspen can cost $6 an hour, the city (like many others) had never previously charged for loading, but figured it was necessary to get delivery fleets’ attention. In the end there wasn’t much pushback; most drivers appreciated being able to capture a time slot. When one shipping fleet manager questioned the scheme, Osur explained that the shipper could use other loading zones, but the data Aspen was collecting would affect policy decisions about curbs across the downtown area. “If you’re not part of the program, your data won’t count,” he added. Moreover, he was sharing data with participants and soliciting their input. The shipper signed on. 

Because the Coord platform tracks actual usage of the smart loading zones, Osur did indeed get plenty of fresh data. Some was expected, some surprising. He figured average “dwell times” were about 30 minutes, and found they were averaging 39 minutes and 13 seconds. The dwell times were longer in the morning and shrank to about 15 minutes after 2 p.m. He was surprised to learn that the busiest days weren’t Monday and Friday, as expected, but Tuesday and Thursday; Wednesday’s loading zone use was half that of peak days. Based on these insights, Aspen is planning to change the rules for some zones, converting them to regular parking at 11 a.m. on some days rather than 6 p.m. (Osur has seen other changes as a result of adopting Coord; drivers have stopped snagging space early and eating lunch in loading zones, a previously routine practice.) 

Coord has run similar pilots in Omaha, Nashville, and other cities. But it is just one entity involved in curb-management experiments. Cox Communications, through its Cox2M “internet of things” division, is testing curbside kiosks that can essentially monitor dwell times in loading zones and present a countdown clock warning drivers not to overstay their time on the curb; the technology can alert city enforcement when drivers linger. Las Vegas is running a pilot program with the technology, which can also be used to manage commercial deliveries, a Cox official told Government Technology. Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, DC, have run pilots with another app, curbFlow, designed to coordinate deliveries from multiple services along particularly busy curb stretches. 

Technology such as video kiosks and app-based location trackers adds both new options and new complexity to the business of managing curbs. Traditionally, defining curb use has involved signage and paint, which are hard to tweak quickly, notes Anne Goodchild, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, whose Urban Freight Lab has focused on public-private efforts to address evolving delivery logistics and planning. 

Perhaps because of the pandemic, cities have been more willing to try new options. Before the pandemic, a curb change would have entailed lengthy public processes. The crisis showed that a more nimble alternative was possible. “We did some things differently,” Goodchild says. “For example, we changed curb allocations literally overnight.” 

The pandemic pushed a fast-forward button on both new patterns of street usage and policy responses to those patterns, says Heather Hannon, associate director of planning practice and scenario planning at the Lincoln Institute. During the pandemic, the organization’s Big City Planning Directors Institute shifted from a twice-yearly gathering to a monthly one (held virtually, of course). The pandemic, she points out, “was a reason to try new things.” 

Hannon has observed a spike in interest in scenario planning for potential futures among U.S. communities since the pandemic began. She also points out that curb management isn’t merely an issue for downtowns or commercial districts, noting that it tilts into residential neighborhoods as well. The demand for home delivery has soared: food-delivery apps doubled their revenues in a six-month period during 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, and e-commerce in the United States grew 44 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year. These trends will only be complicated by the experiments with robots and drones that policy makers increasingly have to accommodate. 

Aspen, meanwhile, has expanded its pilot program, adding new loading zones to the experiment as the number of participating drivers keeps growing. While it is just one experiment in a small city, it overlaps with a singular moment in the way citizens and businesses use technology to interact with planned spaces, opening a window onto how planners and policy makers might think about the future of the curb. “This is totally scalable,” Osur says, referring not to any specific app or technology but to the general idea of cities using new tools to more actively manage the curb. “This is the future.” 

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. He is the author of The Art of Noticing. His newsletter is at robwalker.substack.com. 

Image: Curb management has become a rising priority in cities including Las Vegas, where Cox Communications is piloting curbside kiosks that monitor dwell times in loading zones. Credit: Courtesy of Cox Communications.