2 CHARLOTTE, NC: City Skyline Photo by Flick User kenfagerdotcom 3 The classic idea of a social contract is is about norms of reciprocation, give that citizens jointly decide to create and take, made evident in daily life. The Civic a government to rule over them. That is when we most keenly feel both Government emerges from the will of the the responsibilities and the rights of people and government in turn ensures a citizenship, our obligations to one another Generation framework of laws to keep society in good rather than to a distant state above us. order. The classic social contract is a two- This kind of social contract is not formal, step afair: First it is a contract between set out in documents, but a kind of lived DAVE CABLE IS LEADING A CITYWIDE VOLUNTEER EFFORT IN CHARLOTTE TO citizens to create a legitimate government, experience, enacted in daily life. It is not PLANT 10,000 TREES A YEAR FOR THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS. Meg Daly has mobilised and then it is a contract between citizens created in a single moment, when people a community in Miami to turn the land beneath the Metrorail line into a 10 km linear park and the state. come together in a democratic convention; for gardening, cycling and walking. In Detroit, Justin Jacobs has created a community of instead, it is continually unfolding. Civic young people by reviving non-competitive team sports, a movement that has proven so That is not how the social contract works in innovators are creating experiences popular that his organisation ComePlayDetroit is leading the rejuvenation of the city’s dynamic and ﬂuid modern cities. In cities, tutoring people in customs and practices of iconic Belle Isle recreational facility. Kathryn Ott Lovell, the no-nonsense chief executive the contract between citizens and the everyday urban democracy, giving people of the Fairmount Park Conservancy in Philadelphia, has used all her considerable moxie state still matters in the form of policing, the conﬁdence to write and rewrite the to turn a lost piece of land near the Eakins Oval into the home of a summer festival that zoning, parking regulations and the social contract that binds them together to attracts 70,000 people. In San Jose, the softly-spoken Roy Hirabayashi is using the art provision of key services like education, the place where they live. of San Jose Taiko, Japanese drumming, as a way to bring people from the city’s many water and waste disposal. Cities need communities together around his culture. capable mayors and good public The result is a sense of shared, administration. Yet much of the time the emotional commitment Using simple, convivial technologies, like Each of these civic most important contract is between the among people who identify planting trees and playing sports, civic innovators is doing citizens themselves—what matters is how with where they live. By innovators are breathing new life into the something absolutely vital we regulate our behaviour, peer to peer, binding people together around social contract of their cities through an for the health of their cities. through shared norms and practices. a place, civic innovators are everyday style of democracy, as people They are creating a social generating a deeper sense of come together to exert greater shared contract that binds people In successful cities, citizens largely belonging. By creating places control over city life. together around the place govern one another. Citizens experience that have more meaning for they live at the grassroots, democratic self-rule in a city not just when people, those places stand a where it matters most. they vote in elections, but also when they better chance of being more inhabit shared public space and use shared economically successful resources, like parks, schools and transport because they will attract more systems. Everyday urban democracy commitment and investment. 4 5 This report is about how civic innovators are reviving their cities by bringing citizens together to renew the social contract that binds them together. It’s about the skills and techniques innovators use to make that contract come alive, and it’s about the challenges cities face in making sure everyone is included in the process.

U.S. cities are reviving. People are returning to cities—young millennials, immigrants from within and outside the U.S. and baby boomers. Civic innovators are deepening this revival because they are creating a shared attachment to the city. Critics argue that the reviving city is largely designed for the young, trendy, middle classes, for whom city-living has become hip, without doing much for longtime residents, often African American and poor. The challenge and the opportunity for cities is to grow in a fair and inclusive manner. Whether they do so will depend on what kind of social contract they create.

Downtown Detroit’s Campus Martius Park

Image Courtesy of ComePlayDetroit

6 DETROIT, MI: Campus Martius Park Image by Flickr User Michigan Municipal League 7 Cities are being lifted by powerful forces of innovation, cultural change, demographics and globalisation.

8 MIAMI, FL: Miami Underline Image Courtesy of Friends of the Underline 9 MIAMI, by turns glamorous, brash, and with a scale of ambition that belies energetic and chaotic, is living out its own its apparently peripheral status. A city The Turning Tide extraordinary drama, a globalising city that that has already successfully transitioned is the meeting point for the flows of money, from manufacturing to national and then people and ideas between Latin and international financial services is remaking AS PEOPLE WANDER HOME FROM WORK TO CATCH A TRAIN OR BUS, North America. Miami’s downtown, once its identity once more as it draws people RESIDENTS WALK THEIR DOGS IN THE SQUARES AND PARKS LAID OUT BY a slightly lost and sometimes threatening from all over the U.S. and beyond looking WILLIAM PENN. They sit and talk, eat and drink, at pavement cafes and on benches. place, especially at night, now has 80,000 for a place that ofers the rare combination The atmosphere is safe and convivial, relaxed and animated, and mildly celebratory, as residents and a daytime population of afordability, liveability and economic if people are marveling at how they get on with one another, not least because 20 years of 220,000, with 6,000 mainly small opportunity. ago the centre of the city, like so many in the U.S., seemed bleak and lifeless. Philadelphia businesses and 8,000 hotel rooms. In the is not alone in feeling a sense of resurgence. first decade of the century, Miami built 135 DETROIT is hustling harder. With a new high-rises, mostly in the downtown area, mayor and a sense of self-confidence, the A spirit of optimism is coursing through U.S. cities generating a and many more are on the way, along with city is out of bankruptcy. All over inner-city palpable sense of possibility and opportunity. That is true for all plans for improved public transport, bike Detroit, amidst the scenes of devastation, fve cities on which this report is based. lanes and pedestrianized areas. Crucially, there are signs of new beginnings: around many younger people, some of them the Eastern Market and the galleries like Spiral PHILADELPHIA has turned a corner. SAN JOSE in the heart of Silicon Valley third and fourth generation of families of Collective on Cass Avenue, the string For the first time in decades the city’s is looking forward to its population immigrants, are putting down roots in a of new restaurants such as the Selden population is growing. Downtown is home growing from 1 million to 1.4 million in the city widely regarded by many as a place to Standard and cofee shops like Astro in to Comcast, the most successful U.S. next 25 years, transforming what has been visit and pass through. Partly as a result of Corktown, and the new Shinola store technology company outside Silicon Valley. built as a dormitory town into a thriving their commitment, not only is downtown and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Even Urban Outfitters, another homegrown city. Much of that new population will be Miami coming back to life, but the city’s Detroiters wearied by false dawns say they success story, is the anchor tenant in the accommodated within three miles of its dispersed networks of power are starting feel the city has a moment of opportunity vast Navy Yards on the edge of downtown, downtown, one of the last opportunities to turn their attention to big shared of a kind it has never had before to take its which will become a new east coast centre in Silicon Valley to create a relatively dense challenges such as its woefully inadequate future in its own hands. for innovation. It’s not just Center City that urban centre. The city could become a new public transportation system. hums with life; so do many of the city’s model for a walkable, liveable city with an newly cool neighbourhoods such as urban core, closely connected to low-rise CHARLOTTE, in North Carolina, continues Fishtown. A steady stream of young people residential neighbourhoods, from Latino its own remarkable evolution as a global and empty-nester baby boomers are making Mayfair to the ample avenues of the Rose financial centre, immigrant gateway and their way back into a city that styles itself Garden, to the north and the comfortable increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan as an afordable mini-Manhattan. inner city suburb of Japantown. city. Charlotte looks neat and tidy, but beneath the surface it is paddling hard 10 11 These second cities are taking advantage of the rising costs, worsening congestion and relentless pace of life in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. People are drawn to second cities because they are smaller and more liveable, yet also increasingly dynamic and connected. It’s easier to fnd yourself at the heart of the conversation about the future of the city.

Like all cities, these five face significant who see in the idea of the city hope and challenges, whether in the form of ingrained possibility where earlier generations saw poverty, economic uncertainty, educational danger and despair. underperformance or climate change. Detroit is still recovering from a deep Downtown areas that have long felt crisis made manifest by its depopulation. deserted are filling with people and cafes, Philadelphia still carries a heavy weight of restaurants and art galleries, markets and poverty. Miami’s confidence flies in the face clubs, start-up businesses and shared of the threat of rising sea levels. workspaces. The city, long synonymous with decline and disinvestment, is now Yet their infectious optimism has not seen as a place of aspiration and growth. been spread by boosters employed in city It is a remarkable turnaround, which is not marketing departments. They are being just due to larger forces working in the lifted by powerful forces of innovation, city’s favour. People are making it happen, demographics, cultural change and and at the forefront of that movement is a globalisation, which are working in cities’ new generation of civic innovators. These favour, bringing with them new people, are the people remaking these cities. especially immigrants and young people,

The Miami Underline Image Courtesy of Friends of the Underline

BEFORE AFTER

12 MIAMI, FL: Ocean Drive Image by Wikimedia Commons User Chensiyuan 13 Civic innovators come in many diferent shapes and sizes. What makes them innovators is not the kind of organisations they come from but what they do and how they do it.

14 CHARLOTTE, NC: TreesCharlotte Project Image Courtesy of TreesCharlotte 15 trees as a community-building programme. Dave Cable is knitting together Charlotte, And we’ve found that the stronger the one tree at a time. He is breathing new Civic Innovators community, the healthier the trees. Where life into the city’s social contract through we go in and plant the trees ourselves trees. Across the U.S., civic innovators because there is no community buy-in, the are creating new ways for cities to work, trees don’t do so well. Trees thrive when for all residents. They make the city CHARLOTTE MIGHT BE THE ONLY AIRPORT IN THE WORLD TO HAVE A CAR communities look after them because they more than the sum of its parts by pulling PARK THAT IN EARLY SPRING RESEMBLES AN ORCHARD. The cars are almost hidden from view by the blossoms. For visitors, it sets the tone for what is to come: Charlotte is have a sense of responsibility for them and together people, places and resources blessed with trees. ownership by the community.” in new ways.

Once its most important natural assets despite the city council planting about Civic innovators come in many diferent shapes and sizes, including: were the streams that fed the cotton mills. 10,000 trees a year. Now it’s the tree canopy that covers almost half the city. Charlotte is not a garden city TreesCharlotte was formed to › PUBLIC LEADERS such as Paul Levy, › PHILANTHROPIC AND CULTURAL so much as a city of “neighbourwoods,” reverse that trend and make the driving force behind Philadelphia LEADERS, such as Emily Zimmern, and much of its human scale comes from sure that by 2050 more than Centre City’s renewal, and Kim Walesh, the recently retired head of the Levine its trees. In any city, trees are a signal of half of Charlotte—by then the deputy city manager in San Jose Museum of the New South in Charlotte, something diferent. They ofer shade, a much larger city—will be responsible for the city’s growth strategy. who used the museum to convene a care and colour. Research shows that cities covered by trees. To achieve rolling discussion of how Charlotte › SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS like Justin needs to adapt to the challenges of where people can see trees on streets that, the city needs to plant Jacobs, the founder of ComePlayDetroit, becoming a cosmopolitan, global city. tend to be safer, cleaner, more social and an additional 15,000 trees a and Meg Daly, of the Miami Underline, healthier. Trees soften the hard edges year, and to do that it needs running independent social enterprises. › PRIVATE BUSINESSES and developers of cities, as well as providing important to mobilise thousands of such as the late Tony Goldman, the › COMMUNITY DEVELOPERS and environmental services, cleaning air and volunteers across the city. brains behind the making of Wynwood water. Well-tended trees also help raise protagonists such as The People’s in Miami. Goldman put Wynwood on Emergency Center in Powelton, property values, as they are a sign that It’s perhaps surprising then that David the map by commissioning a series Philadelphia and San Jose Taiko. people care over the long term for where Cable, TreesCharlotte’s thoughtful and of giant murals called the Wynwood Walls, which have kickstarted the area’s they live. quietly charismatic chief executive, says the › HYBRID ORGANISATIONS, like redevelopment. Dan Gilbert, the founder programme he runs is not really about trees: Fairmount Park Conservancy and of Quicken Loans, is a major player in the In 2008, however, a specially commissioned “It’s mainly a programme to get people Mural Arts in Philadelphia, have one revival of downtown Detroit. Major banks aerial survey showed that the city’s out, doing things together, which happens foot in the City Hall administration have played the leading role in shaping continued development threatened the and another in the more informal to be planting and tending trees, which Charlotte’s development over the past canopy, which was on trend to decline to power and politics of the community. they feel good about, and so they form ﬁfty years, not just as a ﬁnancial centre, less than 45% within the next few years, stronger bonds and connections. It’s using but also in terms of culture and education. 16 17 What makes these people civic innovators is not the kind of organisations they come from, but what they do and how they do it. They are all seeking to build stronger communities, economically, socially and culturally, pulling the city together in new ways.

Civic innovators operate in a variety of diferent places and scales within the city, from the downtown core to the edges where the city absorbs new arrivals.

DOWNTOWN: Many are focused Cities need civic innovators across all on downtown revival, exemplified these scales, from a diversity of diferent by Paul Levy in Philadelphia. bases, operating across the entire range of scales from citywide to downtown and CITYWIDE: Shawn McCaney at into particular communities. the William Penn Foundation is funding innovative approaches to public Civic innovators use social technologies space across the city. to bring people together to make their city more liveable, human and successful. LOCAL: Kira Strong at People’s Emergency Center has a tight The defining feature of the social focus on a few blocks around Lancaster technologies profiled in this report—trees Avenue in Philadelphia. in Charlotte, a bike path in Miami, sports leagues in Detroit—is that they become DIGITAL: In Miami, Chris Sopher more efcient as they build more social and Bruce Pinchbeck are using capital. They are efcient because they a digital platform to create a citywide are social and convivial. They thrive on the community of mainly young professionals. density and diversity that a city provides. Luther Keith is using ultra-local storytelling to build a community around his web platform Arise Detroit.

EDGE: Steve Tobocman at Global Detroit focuses on how the city creates efective arrival zones, the places where the city welcomes immigrants and integrates them into city life.

18 CHARLOTTE, NC: Metalmorphosis Statue Image by Flickr User Alex G. 19 Civic innovators are deploying social technologies, often modular, simple, replicable, adaptable and frugal, that help them achieve scale and reach while running small organisations.

20 SAN JOSE, CA: Veggielution Image Courtesy of Veggielution 21 another and navigate the shared space. To systems are efcient but often impersonal. be safe it has to be social. True social technologies are made more Social efcient by becoming more social, but that Where Meg Daly in Miami is using bikes, in turn means the users have to be able to David Cable in Charlotte is using trees, adapt them to their diferent needs. The Technologies Justin Jacobs in Detroit is using sports, users have to feel as if they have a say over Jane Golden at Mural Arts in Philadelphia them. Civic innovators excel at developing is using street art and Roy Hiyabashi in San social technologies—simple tools for IN THE SUMMER OF 2013, A HORRIBLE BIKING ACCIDENT LEFT MEG DALY WITH Jose is using drums. people to get things done together. TWO BROKEN ARMS. Unable to drive to her physical therapist in south Miami, she had no option but to take the Metrorail and then walk the remaining few hundred metres to All are deploying social technologies to Food, from growing and selling her appointment. It was July, and the heat and humidity were punishing. Necessity is the achieve their goals. It is these technologies, to preparing and eating, is mother of invention, and Daly found herself walking in the deep shade created by the often modular, simple, replicable, perhaps a good example of a Metrorail running above her. For the most part she was completely alone. It was on those adaptable and frugal, that help them pervasive social technology. walks that she came up with the idea for the Underline. achieve scale and reach while running small organisations. Cities are increasingly becoming places Daly quickly conceived a scores of community meetings along the where people want to grow food, together. plan to create a 10 km linear route. In 2015, the Underline won the A social technology is a set of tools and In San Jose, hidden below the dense web park, about 100 acres in prestigious Pitching the City award from practices that bring people together of arcing intersections where Highway 101 area, along which people New York’s Municipal Arts Society. If Daly to achieve a shared goal or to enjoy a meets Route 680, Veggielution is a six-acre could walk, jog, skate and is successful, the Underline could become shared experience. They are inherently community garden that started life in 2007 cycle, in a park that would the spine for a network of 250 miles of bike social in the sense that they depend on when four San Jose State students started be a mixture of outdoor and running trails in and around Miami. people collaborating to work, without growing vegetables for one another and the gym, art installation and instruction from above. The more social local community in their four backyards. In community garden. The Underline is a prime example of a social they are, the more efcient they become. 2015, Veggielution grew about 20,000 lbs. technology. Daly wants to create a system The more the tools are used, the more of organic produce, mainly with the help of Slightly to her surprise, the idea took of. It for people moving around that is shared, lasting social connection and capital they students and volunteers, with almost two- excited the imagination not just of locals simple, ﬂexible, low-cost, and inherently create. These are convivial technologies, thirds of the food distributed free or at low but also architects and foundations. Daly more social than either impersonal mass where efciency and social interaction cost to the nearby largely Latino Mayfair formed the Friends of the Underline, transportation or the solitary car commute. go hand in glove. Cars and freeways are community. Two mornings a week, long modelled on the civic group that pioneered If the Underline ever gets built it will not anti-social technologies: Their efciency lines form outside the main Catholic church the High Line in New York and raised the be just a means for people to get from A depends on eliminating social interaction as people wait to collect food parcels. funds for a master plan. She has conducted to B; they will stop, chat, acknowledge one and coordination. Public, mass transit

22 23 Food markets are becoming iconic places a crucial meeting place for entrepreneurs to see cities at their best—loud and and civic activists of all stripes. colourful, egalitarian and diverse, tasty and pleasurable. In Philadelphia, the covered Food is one of the most immediate ways for Reading Street Terminal market brings a city to integrate and make the most of its together a diverse crowd of mainly locals immigrant cultures. That is why San Jose’s in search of good food at afordable prices. many immigrant communities provide In Detroit, the Eastern Market has become brilliant low-cost food from ceviche a magnet not just for visitors but also for tacos in Mayfair to homely katsu don in new restaurants, shops and businesses. Japantown, which has 17 family-run Asian San Jose’s downtown city culture will likely restaurants within a handful of blocks. A spread out from the collection of cofee ten-course lunch in the Grand Century shops and restaurants at San Pedro market. Mall in east San Jose is like a visit to Saigon. Downtown Charlotte is a bland corporate business district, but just beyond the city Restaurants now play a critical role centre one can enjoy everything from a in branding cities, proclaiming their bucket of traditional fried chicken from inventiveness and distinction. Philadelphia Price’s Chicken Coop, to Serbian, Greek, has proudly attracted leading chefs away Turkish, Mexican and Japanese food from New York. Philadelphia’s answer to along Central Avenue, the arrival strip for Brooklyn—the Fishtown neighborhood— immigrant families and food entrepreneurs. has a cofee roaster and café, Colombe, that seems more like a holy site. Cofee Food is central to the culture and is becoming the new fuel for economies economics of the modern city because driven by collaboration and conversation. A it brings people together in enjoyment of lawyer closely involved in Detroit’s painful their shared diferences. emergence from bankruptcy said one of the main reasons she was optimistic about the Civic innovators provide the city with city’s future was the news that a local farm- its social technologies: simple, modular to-plate restaurant, the Selden Standard, and adaptive solutions, which people had been nominated for a national award. can latch onto very easily. In spreading Much of the community regeneration of these innovations, they adopt strategies Brightmoor has started from the Motor very diferent from those favoured by City Java and Tea House, which has become innovators in the private sector.

24 SAN JOSE, CA: Obon Festival Image by Flickr User Ramberto Cumagun 25 Civic innovators have to be disruptive, using a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of the city to galvanise change. Yet, in many ways, their approach to innovation is the very opposite of disruptive.

26 PHILADELPHIA, PA: Music in Rittenhouse Square Image by Fickr User Ahd Photography 27 › They are certainly expert and It takes about half an hour to walk the promiscuous convenors, bringing ten blocks of Lancaster Avenue, a long Complementary together alliances of supporters. diagonal former trolley car route, from But they are rarely just satisfied with Lee’s LA Hair and Nails and the Great convening: They want to turn talk into Taste restaurant, down to Reed’s Cofee Advantage action. They mobilise coalitions and house on the corner of 38th street. In that movements rather than running an short walk one moves between two starkly efcient machine. diferent sides of Philadelphia’s personality. EVERY BUSINESS IS TAUGHT TO FIND ITS DISTINCTIVE, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AND THEN TO PROTECT, NURTURE AND EXPLOIT IT. Civic › They are continuous innovators because At the intersection with 41st, young men innovators need something diferent, a distinctive complementary advantage that allows their work never seems to be finished. promenade and banter in air thick with them to build wider coalitions to mobilise resources. That means sharing value rather than Jane Golden has been running Mural marijuana. Down at 38th Street they controlling it. They find ways to work with others so the sum of the whole is far greater than Arts for 25 years. They generally take deal in drugs of a diferent kind: Young the parts. many small steps to achieve big change. medics, dressed in gowns, emerge from Continuous innovation is not sporadic, the labs, theatres and wards of the Penn These innovators are often › They accept that they have to be episodic, superficial or dependent upon Presbyterian Medical Center, itself part radical in the way they think, evolutionary and cumulative, building on superstars. of a vast centre of higher knowledge and challenging convention. In what is there already, rather than wiping research with Drexel University at its that sense they have to be the slate clean. They never start from the › Innovators are often divided into radicals centre. These are the two worlds that disruptive, using a sense blank sheet available to a raw start-up and incrementalists. Civic innovators are People’s Emergency Center (PEC), a of dissatisfaction with the in business. They always have to both: They are radical incrementalists. community development corporation, is state of the city to galvanise start from the city as it stands, with They build the momentum for change trying to bridge by enabling a new mixed change. Yet in many ways their the constraints, complications and painstakingly, step by step, but always community to develop on and around approach to innovation is the capabilities that entails. with big ambitions for system-wide the Lancaster Avenue corridor. PEC is very opposite of disruptive. changes, which will make cities more in the game of building complementary › Though sometimes they can be afordable and creative, prosperous and advantage for Lancaster Avenue. impatient, and they can seek to shock, cleaner, and safer and inclusive. they are not simply disruptive. Instead, PEC started life as a homeless hostel in they seek to be generative, mobilising There are few better examples of this the 1970s, but has long since evolved to more people and resources around what painstaking, radical incrementalism undertake a wide range of community they do, to widen and deepen its impact. community building than the remarkable development activities, from volunteer People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia. cleanups to digital literacy programmes. With the support of the William Penn

28 29 Foundation, in partnership with the that Kira Strong, PEC’s vice president for Delaware Valley Regional Planning community and economic development, Commission and through a highly describes as both a playful conversation participative planning process, PEC has piece and an evident sign that people are come up with a plan to reinvest in the taking care of their community. 18,000 people and the 600 acres that surround a 1.5-mile stretch of the lower All innovation, and especially social avenue. That plan, painstakingly put innovation, involves building coalitions together through workshops and focus of support around a new idea. Around groups with locals, envisages new schools Lancaster Avenue, building coalitions and roles for young people as community among often fractious communities is leaders; a renewed stock of housing to be far from easy. Community leaders often owned by locals and vacant land turned see themselves as competitors for scarce into community parks; and the empty resources and political favour. PEC is store fronts on the avenue populated by attempting to bond together the disparate new small businesses, artists, food shops forces along Lancaster Avenue, bring and restaurants. in new investment (which is not always welcome) and build bridges with near PEC is constantly generating social neighbours who are not always on good technologies designed to bring people terms. together, from large-scale participatory planning to its Block Party in a Box Civic innovators build toolkit, which in 2014 was used by 20 coalitions around a shared neighbourhoods to stage organised street commitment to a place. parties. Through that commitment they mobilise resources to fow One sign of its technologies making an around communities in new impact is a small previously abandoned ways so they can meet their storefront where a collection of local needs more efectively. and international artists have been in residence producing public art for the neighbourhood. One product is a three- story mural in a vacant lot just beyond 41st

30 Philadelphia, PA: LOVE Park Image by Wikimedia Commons User Smallbones 31 Civic innovators manage to have an infuence well beyond their own limited organisational scale because they shift the way resources fow within the city.

32 DETROIT, MI: Dequindre Cut Image by Flickr User Rex Roof 33 The Fairmount Park Conservancy started Now the Conservancy is leading a life in the 1990s as a mainly white, middle- collaborative programme with the William Small Is class institution to look after Philadelphia’s Penn Foundation and the Knight Foundation watersheds and the extensive, linear to reimagine the civic commons across Fairmount Park, through which the Philadelphia, with projects ranging from the New Big Schuylkill River flows. The original goal repurposing the East Fairmount Reservoir, was the preservation and conservation in conjunction with the Audubon Society of properties in the park that had fallen of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia CIVIC INNOVATORS SIT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OFTEN UNRULY, MESSY MIX into disrepair. Yet the Conservancy has Outward Bound School, to remaking the OF CITY LIFE, WHERE DYNAMICS OF GROWTH AND DECLINE OFTEN COMBINE. become a remarkable advocacy movement Reading Viaduct Rail Park, a raised rail line They are consummate and patient coalition builders, knitting together often fractious and mobilising hundreds of volunteers in in the city centre. The FPC cooperates competing interests. They believe in their city, what it stands for but also in the idea of the communities across the city to support closely—Ott Lovell says sometimes it feels city as a place where people can revel in their shared diferences. They are not just hardy parks large and small. It is not just more like a collision—with the city’s parks and resilient; they tend to be optimistic and practical, looking to build on capabilities and conserving parks but remaking and reviving and recreation department. The idea is that assets rather than focusing on deficits and deficiencies. them by convening local supporters to the Conservancy will provide the ideas, make public spaces matter. software and connections to communities, Their key skill is to run small an orchard and a regular farmers’ market while the department provides much of the organisations that have a to improve the local community’s food A prime example is the Eakins Oval, a hardware, resources and professional skills. wider catalytic impact. By options. sometimes lost and uncertain place, sitting rewriting the social contract in the no-man’s-land between the grandeur A brilliant extension of that idea is the Pop- of the city, they turn small into Yet the most important creation has not of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Up Pool movement started by Ben Bryant, big. An outstanding example been physical but social: the 150 member the ceremonial Benjamin Franklin Parkway a Philadelphia designer who is trying to is the role the Fairmount Park strong Hunting Park United, a local leading into the centre of the city. Most of revive the popularity of the city’s 70 public Conservancy (FPC) is playing voluntary group that is now the park’s the year the Oval is used as a parking lot. In swimming pools. Philadelphia has more in Philadelphia. steward. Kathryn Ott Lovell, the FPC’s 2013, working with the Department of Parks pools per head of population than any other no-nonsense chief executive, explains: and Recreation, Ott Lovell decided to turn it U.S. city: one for every 22,000 residents, By the 1980s, Hunting Park in northern “Parks are a catalyst for community and into a summer urban park, with a programme compared to one for 150,000 in New York. Philadelphia had become a largely economic development. A good park, of entertainment and activities that she There are many reasons why people have neglected, often dangerous haunt for which is looked after, attracts people to describes as “scrappy.” It attracted 30,000 turned away from public pools, including people dealing and taking crack cocaine. the area, brings them out of their homes people. In 2014, FPC commissioned the worries about hygiene and safety. But The FPC made a $4.5 million investment and that in turn is good for business.” artist Candy Coated to lay down a brightly- one of the main reasons is their austere, to create an athletics track, a baseball coloured Magic Carpet, and they attracted barren and utilitarian feel. Bryant is piloting pitch, tennis courts, a community garden, 70,000 people over a 12-week programme. a programme, started at the Francisville

34 35 Pool, to turn them into places of leisure, CONNECTORS: Make more of OPENERS: Create access for The urban farmers of Detroit are recycling play and relaxation, adding a pop-up park, the distributed resources already people to flows of resources from blighted land and bringing it back into yoga and Zumba classes, cafes and areas in a city by connecting them up. Design which they have been excluded. Cities productive life economically and as a focus to relax. By making public pools attractive, Philadelphia has a created a citywide design are becoming centres of innovation in for community cohesion. he is breathing new life into them, and the festival by connecting up and providing technology, arts and manufacturing. more people who are attracted, the more a shared platform for existing design Many civic innovators, like the Lifeline Civic innovators manage to have an attractive they become. businesses and initiatives dispersed within entrepreneurship programme in Detroit influence well beyond their own limited the city. The annual festival stages 130 created by Nicole Farmer, are creating ways organisational scale because they shift the The Conservancy is an outstanding events, which attract thousands of people for people excluded from these flows to way resources flow within the city. They do example of how a relatively small, catalytic by making more of the distributed design get access to them by creating businesses so using one or more often a mix of these organisation can convene foundations, resources already embedded within the city. and finding jobs. At Temple University strategies: repurpose, connect, mobilise, city hall, local volunteers, architects and in Philadelphia, a professor of computer open, share, reframe, recycle. It is through environmentalists in collectively rethinking MOBILISERS: Create a sense of science, Yungjin Yim, has created a summer those strategies that small organisations how public space can animate a city by shared purpose that people commit programme for local school children to learn like Come Pay Detroit can have such a big bringing people together around it. resources to, often in-kind. TreesCharlotte how to develop smartphone apps to give impact. is not just connecting resources but young people, mostly African-Americans, Civic innovators do not deal mobilising and growing them, in the form a route into the growing local tech industry. Sport and physical activity is becoming in abstracts. They achieve of 10,000 trees a year. The trees and the vital to how cities signal themselves as an their goals by shifting the communities that form around them are REFRAMERS: Provide new ideas attractive destination for young, jogging fows of resources within like cells in a growing civic movement. so people can see opportunities for and bike-riding professionals, as well as cities to the beneft of their improving life where there appeared to be tackling long-term health challenges, such communities using a mix of SHARERS: Provide new ways for none before. Campaigners for improved as obesity. Detroit has invested in opening these six approaches: people to share resources. The city access for bikes and pedestrians are up its river frontage walkway, linking it was the home of the sharing economy long encouraging cities to reframe how they through the Dequindre Cut recreational REPURPOSERS: Reshape how before Airbnb came on the scene. Cities see streets as places primarily for people path to nearby neighbourhoods. established organisations use their need density of population to sustain rather than cars. That simple but radical Infrastructure without users is a resources. Fairmount Park Conservancy shared infrastructures. Civic innovators reframing, which involves challenging deadweight. ComePlayDetroit, a non- started outside city hall but now has a are creating new generations of shared conventional wisdom, entrenched norms profit established in 2010 by Justin huge influence over the entire parks and solutions, such as car sharing, ride sharing and vested interests, creates a new sense Jacobs, is a good example of how social recreation system. The organisation has and bus rapid transit. Hunting Park United of how people can live in a city. technologies can bring infrastructure to provided a new operating software for the is an example of how a group of people life. ComePlayDetroit runs about 100 hardware of the public system. have come together to make more of an RECYCLERS: Reuse and renew non-competitive, informal sports leagues, asset by taking shared responsibility for it. assets written of and left idle. primarily aimed at young people, to get

36 37 them to socialise while taking physical Motherships are large anchor institutions, the future of the city, as the role of the A prime example is the way that advocates exercise. About 20,000 people took part which lend the weight of their resources— Urban Institute at UNC at Charlotte of cycling and walking in local communities in ComePlayDetroit activities in its first facilities, brand, convening power, shows. San Jose State will be central to the are combining with advocates of large- four years, and the project’s track record legitimacy and political connections—for remaking and rejuvenation of downtown scale investment in light rail and shared helped it to win the contract to rejuvenate the good of smaller organisations and San Jose, as Drexel and Temple will be to transport solutions. Public, mass transit, the recreation facilities on the iconic initiatives. Motherships can come in many the future of the north side of Philadelphia. combined with cycling and walking, will Belle Isle in a partnership with Beiderman forms but in most of these cities two stand Engaged, creative and thoughtful be vital to the future liveability of all these Redevelopment Ventures, the firm behind out: universities and cultural institutions. A universities provide vital anchors for cities. Civic innovators bring to life the the rejuvenation of Bryant Park in New classic example is in Detroit, where Wayne communities and resources for other civic hard infrastructures of the city. York. In the 1950s and ‘60s, Belle Isle was State University and the Detroit Institute innovators to draw upon. an aspirational leisure destination for of Arts have both stood their ground as the San Jose, for example, started life as an Detroiters, but it had long since fallen into private sector has left downtown. Enlightened cultural institutions are also agricultural hub, but has increasingly disrepair. ComePlayDetroit has developed motherships. A prime example is the way become synonymous with easy access a simple social technology—a way to bring the Levine Museum of the New South has to Route 101 running from San Francisco young people together in non-competitive led debates in Charlotte about its changing south through Silicon Valley. The city is team sports—which will breathe new life identity. This included Emily Zimmern, the implementing plans for a bus rapid transit into the faded assets of Belle Isle. Informal director, leading a taskforce on Charlotte’s system, modelled on Bogota, Colombia, mobilising power is being translated into approach to the integration of documented while also building out miles of bike lanes formal institutional resources, which and undocumented immigrants. In San and planning for the eventual expansion ComePlayDetroit will reshape, revive and Jose, the Tech Museum’s president and of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. In repurpose. CEO Tim Ritchie says it aims to be visitor- Miami, one cause that brings together facing by day and community-facing by environmentalists, hip millennials and Civic innovators master the night. The annual Tech Challenge, for mainstream business is the need for art of how small organisations example, draws hundreds of entries from a proper light and long-distance rail can have a big impact. Equally local schools each year. The Tech wants commuter services. Charlotte, a city centre intelligent large organisations to be the hub for a community, not just a ringed by freeways, is already enjoying the also understand how they place to visit. benefits of a north-south light rail line, can connect more deeply and which has connected the University of efectively with the daily life Universities play a critical role in many of Motherboards are the shared North Carolina to downtown for the first of the city. These big-to-small these cities, providing not just jobs and operating platforms and time, and encouraged the development organisations tend to be either students, but also knowledge and wider systems that make cities work of apartment blocks that add to the city’s motherships or motherboards. international connections. Universities can at scale, supporting many density along its route. be vital convenors of discussions about diferent kinds of initiatives. 38 39 Getting an answer to the question – “who is the new social contract for?” – will be a messy, difcult process that will involve a good deal of confict as well as much creative collaboration. It will be hard work, not undertaken lightly.

40 MIAMI, FL: Wolfson Campus at Miami Dade College Image by Flickr User Xinn Tii 41 The answer to that question—“who is the city of Detroit, ruefully acknowledges in a new social contract for?”—will not arrive subsequent discussion, A Deeper neatly packaged, settled once and for all by a vote or a political decision. It will be “We have no shortage of identity a messy, difcult process that will involve and pride in Detroit; that’s not Contract a good deal of conflict as well as much where the problem is.” creative collaboration. In short it will be hard work, not undertaken lightly, as a few Another young professional whose arrival THE PATH TO THE SHINOLA STORE, JUST OFF CASS AVENUE IN MIDTOWN days in Detroit testifies. in Detroit three years earlier was featured DETROIT, CAN BE FOUND BY FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF MAINLY YOUNG on the front page of a local paper as a sign PEOPLE CARRYING SMART LITTLE BLACK BAGS CONTAINING THEIR EXPENSIVE At a discussion over lunch, Maggie that the city had turned the corner ruefully PURCHASES. The store is the hub for a little quarter of shops, galleries, bars, restaurants, Desantis, a veteran community organiser, reflects: “Since then, Midtown Detroit has microbreweries and cofee roasters, that adjoins part of an historic neighbourhood of continued to lose population. For all that is echoes Dell Pryor’s question but adds a remarkable restored 19th century homes. The young woman selling me my $700 watch, going on there, the demographics are still sharp edge: “I’m not going to be told by made in a factory just down the road which employs about 700 people, explains that going in the wrong direction.” An expert white hipsters what to do in a city I’ve she drives in from the suburbs to work, while also being a student at nearby Wayne State on Michigan cities tells me later that no been fighting for over three decades,” University. She is working in a city her parents turned their backs on. But she does not city has ever overcome the demographic she proclaims. A stung Justin Jacobs, the actually live there, not yet at least. implosion of Detroit: “I just don’t see how founder of ComePlayDetroit shoots back, the numbers stack up to keep it from going his own anger barely contained: “This city Just round the corner in the wonderfully What is at stake in those two back into bankruptcy.” But then there is no needs to welcome everyone who wants to idiosyncratic Spiral Collective gallery, Dell conversations is who the city like Detroit, as Luther Keith shows. Pryor, an impossibly elegant 80-something, future of Detroit will be for. come and really make a contribution to it. And they should come; the city needs provides a perspective with a longer If the social contract is being Keith, a veteran Detroit journalist turned lineage. Pryor has been trying to create rewritten, who will take part them to come. But they should not have community activist, brims with optimism an artists’ quarter in Detroit—she wanted in that process and on whose to go through a loyalty test before they undaunted by his city’s long struggle it to be like Chelsea in New York—for the terms will it be written? can make a contribution.” Newcomers against division and decline. “This is a best part of 40 years with mixed success. who are excited by the city nevertheless place of hope and possibility,” he afrms. “It’s great that Shinola is just around the There will be no future for Detroit without say that they have never been so quickly Everyone around the table, most of corner, bringing all these people here,” she more firms like Shinola. Yet if that future pigeonholed and labelled. them also community leaders, nods in says. “I just wish they would remember excludes longtime residents like Dell Pryor, agreement. And there is more optimism we’ve been here a long time, plugging who have kept with the city through its The charismatic and willowy Garlin and more cause for optimism in Detroit away. I’d just like not to be forgotten.” long depression, then renewal will feed a Gilchrist III, Deputy Technology Director around than might be apparent from a sense of exclusion and resentment. for Civic Community Engagement for the distance.

42 43 On a Saturday night, sitting at the heaving more than 1 million people and hundreds A thoughtful young African-American unless it also has a viable economic base bar of one of a clutch of trendy restaurants of thousands of jobs. Much of the real woman, brimming with ambition, tells that can provide them with livelihoods that are popping up in newly fashionable estate in Midtown is still empty, standing me the day afterwards, almost in a hush, in an era in which technology is filleting neighbourhoods across the city, a young like silent witnesses to the city’s implosion. that the new Mayor Duggan regime is just unskilled jobs from most organisations. woman who recently decamped with her the return of old style machine politics. boyfriend from an apartment in Brooklyn Yet Detroit is slowly piecing together a new “There is no new beginning in this,” she At the extreme in Detroit, that struggle to no bigger than a shoe box explains social contract, which could sustain the says. “It’s the old story being rerun.” create a new social contract and a viable their reasons for coming: “This is an city’s resurgence. A lawyer closely involved The racial divisions between inner city community is even more violent and visceral. internationally important city. Everyone’s in navigating the city out of its bankruptcy, Detroit and its suburbs will be played out Out in blighted Brightmoor, a young eyes are on Detroit. You can make a real proudly wearing the regalia of a committed in the centre of the city as it comes back mother showing me the water reclamation diference here. We can aford a family Detroit Tigers fan, explains in a shared taxi to life, she says. Her question is this: Is projects she runs, which feed the district’s house in which we can bring up a family. ride to the game that the election of a mayor Detroit regenerating just because white, burgeoning market gardens, explains how There’s a community of people doing the who is competent and can be trusted is an middle-class people have decided it’s she had to learn to shoot a rifle because same thing to be a part of it. There’s a essential step forward, a new beginning. The hip (and they cannot aford New York)? after dark it’s like living on a lawless frontier. great cofee shop from Portland just down city, she explains, needs “adult supervision.” “Urban trickle-down economics from Yet she has chosen here to bring up two the road.” More efective city government is restoring the white middle class to poor blacks will daughters. the city’s finances, which means people not work. That will not genuinely include Detroit provides them will have to pay for their water rather than people in Detroit’s future success,” Once a prosperous working class with a heightened sense of assuming it is free—just one essential part she says. “Something more deliberate, community where young men would community lacking in other of a new social contract to sustain public bold and creative will be required.” proudly display gleaming cars outside cities and that gives their services. Piece by piece the city is being put neatly-painted clapper board cottages lives a sense of meaning back together. A new social contract is all very well, but set amidst woodland, Brightmoor became and purpose. the city needs an economic base. Over everything that Detroit stood for in the Yet the crowd at the Tigers’ game is mainly dinner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper dark imaginations of those who did not live Down at the Eastern Market that Saturday from the suburbs, not even day-trippers to columnist asks a group of us, plaintively, there—an apocalyptic scene of empty lots morning it is not the colours and the smells the city that is home to their team. They if there are any examples of cities around and burned-out houses. Tourists come to that strike one but the sound of the people. want only to dip in and out of the city rather the world that have replaced the lost compare it to Chernobyl, she says. That’s because most of the time Detroit than being part of the social contract that manual labour and unskilled jobs of the does not sound like a city: Arriving in will renew it. Yet even that may change; the mass production industry. Everyone Yet large parts of Brightmoor are now being downtown earlier that morning, the most new apartments around the circle outside scratches their heads. What we ofer as reimagined by mainly white, educated striking thing is the quiet. Midtown Detroit the stadium have all been sold. Signs of life answers seem barely more than straws homesteaders, who are creating a new on a Saturday sounds more like a village are returning to a city core, bringing new in the wind. A city cannot create a viable ideal of rural community within a former than a city. Since 1950, Detroit has lots people, voices and expectations. social contract that includes all its citizens industrial city. It’s not hard to see Brightmoor

44 45 as an urban pasture land of rolling fields, all of that was the love I got in Brightmoor. young millennials and new immigrants. seem rather bland. In both Charlotte and streams and trees, interspersed with public For me Brightmoor was very important.” Successful cities will be good at attracting San Jose, for example, many people have and private market gardens. In the winter, and then rapidly integrating immigrants. come from somewhere else. Charlotte has children will sled down the slopes through Detroit: deeply troubled, Conversely, cities where communities turned itself into first a national banking the trees. In the summer, the creek completely confounding and are closed, inward looking and distrustful centre and now an international one. Since could be a nature trail for local schools. utterly irresistible. of outsiders will find the future harder. the 1990s, it has attracted immigrants from Brightmoor is festooned with expressions While the “big I” of integration might be the north and west of the U.S. and from all of public love, like swings from trees and Rewriting the social contract in Detroit achieved through legislation, regulation over the world. The result, however, is a rough circular benches, in gardens with will require painstaking, difcult work, and reforms to public systems, the “little city that is searching for a confident sense names like the Lamphere Community often involving conflict and argument, to i” of daily integration, which is just as of identity. San Jose’s very success at the Garden and Louise May’s Seed Park. build trust, create shared agendas and to significant, is achieved through countless heart of Silicon Valley seems to rest on it All this caring for the place and for one share rewards and responsibilities. It will small acts of connection, empathy and lacking a distinct identity. As one person another, consciously evokes the frontier take many years. That process will only entrepreneurship through organisations put it: “Living in San Jose is a bit like a giant spirit and homesteading values of thrift succeed if it makes a tangible diference such as Global Detroit and the Welcoming conference call. People go to Washington and simplicity, self-help and community. to all parts of the city and not just for Committee for New Pennsylvanians. to be involved in politics and power, not those newcomers with money, skills and because Washington is a city they love. Amidst the gardens she points out the resources. Yet if Detroit does not learn Being open to outsiders means that People come to San Jose to be involved in houses that have large SUVs with blacked- how to embrace new people, new ideas successful cities need to be at ease with tech, that is what pulls them in, not the city out windows parked outside them, in and change, it has no future. the idea that their identity needs to shift itself.” Another person who has worked at open sight overseeing the serving of drugs and flex rather than being fixed. Helping a senior level within the city administration mainly to people driving through from the There is a real hope in these cities that cities to navigate a changing identity, explained: “There’s not a there there, in suburbs—another local industry, with its they have turned a page. Yet two major which can accommodate the past and the San Jose.” own codes and norms, but definitely not a issues face these cities as civic innovators future, continuity amidst rapid change, is a part of the formal social contract. within them attempt to rewrite their social vital task for civic innovators. Nor is everyone convinced there needs Yet in Detroit nothing is ever simple. Just contract: Who will be included, and will it to be. San Francisco and Silicon Valley after lunch that day in a conversation make a tangible diference to the economic Cities such as Detroit, which has a are strong brands in their own right. Many in Corktown, Nicole Farmer, the force outlook for these cities, especially for those powerful sense of its identity, may find people feel a strong sense of attachment behind LifeLine, an entrepreneurship without high skills and incomes? this harder than younger, more open and to particular neighbourhoods like Rose training programme for people with few transient places such as Miami, San Jose Garden and Japantown, and so see no skills, declares: “I was a mother at 14. I WHO IS INCLUDED? and Charlotte. Yet places that are open to need to be attached to the city of San have taken everything this city has had To grow and innovate, cities need new outsiders can, as a result, seem to lack a Jose itself, which can at times seem like to ofer, and believe me it has a lot. But ideas and new people. In an aging core identity: What makes them so easily a dormitory for people who commute to what kept me going and got me through society, U.S. cities will need a flow of accessible is also what can make them work elsewhere in Silicon Valley.

46 47 Culture in all its forms will The social contract in a city cannot be fixed; EDUCATION: Cities are struggling, DISINVESTMENT: Community provide the most important way it needs to unfold and adapt as the city often with limited success, to development corporations, like for these cities to create bridges itself changes. An efective social contract improve public education systems that PEC in Philadelphia, are doing sterling and points of shared reference, needs to be open and inclusive. It cannot provide an essential bedrock for shared work to revive blasted areas like Lancaster be imposed from on high, nor become not least through food. culture and economic opportunity. Cities Avenue. Yet compared to the scale of the property of just one group. Managing without good schools find it hard to retain disinvestment from the city, this is a drop Cities need to learn, too, how to bridge these conversations within a city cannot families and to develop homegrown talent. in the ocean. Civic innovation needs to between new and old forms of power. be left to City Hall, nor to business. Good The failure to improve these systems only attract and mobilise significant flows Cities are the most potent breeding cities need a wide range of civic innovators drives further fragmentation with the of investment into the cities, which ground for new forms of power that conducting these conversations across growth of private, magnet and charter will require financial and commercial are more collaborative, lateral and self- diferent parts of the city. schools, along with homeschooling. innovation as well. Mobilising that kind organising. Yet this new power needs of investment will require new alliances FAIR GROWTH to find ways to connect, influence and POVERTY: Even cities that are between foundations, financiers, city Cities do not just need a new social work with the older, established, often growing are finding it hard to break administrations and civic innovators. contract. They need a robust economic disconnected and yet still critical, older base. Here they seem to face an unenviable down pockets of deeply ingrained poverty. forms of power in city hall, big business and choice. Philadelphia is the starkest example. The SUSTAINABILITY: All cities political machines. One example of such a city is doing well: Comcast, for example, must thrive in the face of deep connection being made is the community The route out of economic stagnation is building a vast new city centre building. uncertainty about their future. Detroit has of designers, artists, social activists and seems to involve forms of growth that are Yet that will not touch many of the poorest sufered a decades-long crisis, which still tech entrepreneurs that has gelled around grouped under the banner of gentrification, communities, which are no more than threatens it. Cities that were once centres Ignite Philly, an evening of fifteen five- which brings with it investment but a mile away. One of four Philadelphians of manufacturing are only just finding minute talks from locals, delivered to the which can seemingly do little for already- lives below the poverty line. That’s a heavy successful new ways forward based on packed upstairs room of a down-at-heel- established communities. New people burden to carry for the economy, the tax innovation, creative industries and culture. looking pub in Fishtown called Johnny move into and enjoy the city but seemingly base and public services. All of that will happen against a backdrop Brenda’s, on subjects ranging from making at the expense of those who have lived of rising environmental challenges and bread and the joy of beer, to how to turn there a long time, some in poverty. Cities INEQUALITY: U.S. cities are in costs. That in turn means cities will need a major thoroughfare into a cycle friendly are growing, but often that brings with it danger of sorting themselves into to make significant shared investments in boulevard and the attractions of imported widening inequality. places where only the very well-of and energy and transport systems. As a former Austrian Christmas rituals. The founders the poor live. The middle class, especially mayor of Miami Beach put it: “Miami is at of Ignite Philly, irreverent and proudly self- Civic innovators are devising families, on median incomes may find city the very start of a 100-year boom, if we can consciously brash, now find themselves alternatives, which are the living increasingly unattractive. Cities can stay afloat.” invited to sit in on discussions among some starting point for a new narrative survive without middle-class families and of the most powerful people in the city. of inclusive, fair economic children. But places designed for the young, Cities that want to grow need to include growth in cities. That will mean single and childless can seem transitional new people and ideas, alongside the old. tackling fve key issues and lack a sense of attachment. 48 49 None of these challenges should dampen $15,000-$18,000 a year. Often students are motivated to succeed. For these young meeting the challenges it faces, they are the new optimism about the outlook the first generation in their family to get a people, getting a college degree is a vital likely to have come through MDC. More for the U.S. city. However, it should put college degree. Parents and students make stepping stone, not just to higher incomes cities will need more institutions of the in perspective the challenges facing the significant sacrifices to make it possible. but also to become a part of society. scale, ambition and depth of MDC. hopeful generation of civic innovators Eduardo J. Padron, MDC’s president, who profiled in this report. As they pull their arrived in Florida at the age of 15 as a refugee The college is about far more than To achieve that, civic innovators will need cities together to find a shared sense from Cuba and has been college president churning out students with qualifications. to show that they are not just reanimating of purpose, they are working against since 1995, says there is a hunger to learn At every opportunity, students are the city to provide a lifestyle backdrop powerful forces threatening to pull it apart, among MDC students that is reminiscent of encouraged to become entrepreneurs and for young hipsters but tackling really separating and segmenting people, so they the developing world. For these ambitious, problem solvers. That’s not just because significant challenges, for example around have less in common and less at stake in striving families, education is not seen as an there are thousands of small businesses in education, investment and employment. their shared life. In the years to come, cities entitlement but a vital investment. Miami, but because Padron expects young They will need to show how small, nimble will need many such innovators, creating people will work in an economy in which innovative organisations can reshape new institutions and reanimating old ones. MDC is a microcosm of Miami and a they will have several jobs, using a shifting the agendas of large institutions, which model of how to knit together a diverse array of technologies. That is why MDC have the bulk and ballast that cities need. There is no better example of society. Students come from 184 diferent is constantly developing new courses, With their help, cities will need to develop how that is done and why it countries; their national flags fly from the including lately robotics, data science, a robust and resilient economic base, matters than the remarkable balconies around the open atrium of the animation and games design. which provides fair and inclusive growth Miami Dade College (MDC), in main campus building. It is a celebration with jobs for those with modest skills the heart of downtown Miami. of shared purpose and ambition amidst The college is also encouraging them to and median incomes, as well as those If Miami has a social contract, enormous cultural diference. become engaged and critical citizens. It runs with college degrees. They will have to it is embodied in this college. the largest “service learning” programme The college, Padron says, is all about translate the jobs, homes, tourists and in the U.S., for example. All presidential consumer spending into the intangible Miami Dade College started life in 1960 economic opportunity, or as he puts it, hopefuls make a stop at MDC. And the assets of belonging, attachment, pride and with 2,000 students. It now caters to MDC is turning hopes and dreams into jobs college sees its role in the city as much more about 165,000 a year, giving it one of the and incomes. But it also provides people commitment. than education. It started both book and largest graduating classes of African- with a sense of pride and belonging to a city American and Hispanic students in the in which they are just putting down roots. film festivals to reanimate the downtown There is much to be done. But U.S. Two-thirds of MDC students come area where its main campus is located. at the very least cities are in from low-income families. Students only Often students with poor English skills with a good chance, because for need a high school diploma to get in and need extra help, but they more than If Miami develops anything like a social the frst time for decades they pay fees of $3,500 per annum. That may make up for that with motivation. There contract, then it will trace its roots back are swimming with the tide. not sound like much, but the average are no discipline problems at MDC, to the classrooms and corridors of MDC. household income of a MDC student is Padron explains proudly. Everyone comes If Miami is to find leaders capable of

50 51 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Carol Coletta and her fantastic team at the Knight Foundation for making this possible, along with Alberto Ibarguen, the President and CEO of the Foundation for his support for the project. This report is based on visits to ﬁve U.S. cities— Philadelphia, San Jose, Miami, Charlotte and Detroit— where I met and talked with scores of people from the city in an efort to understand what they were trying to achieve. These civic innovators gave me a warm welcome and were incredibly generous with their time and ideas. Those visits were made possible by great Knight Foundation staf in those cities, Katy Locker, Danny Harris, Susan Patterson and Bridget Marquis.

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