Last weekend, thousands of people around the Australian state of Victoria gathered for memorial services to mark the first anniversary of the Victorian Bushfires, in which 173 people lost their lives. While a Royal Commission into the causes of the Black Saturday tragedy continues, efforts to rebuild the communities devastated by the fire are well underway through the $193 million Rebuilding Together strategy.
Several communities have embraced the opportunity to rebuild, but some within these communities have been hesitant. According to figures compiled by the Victorian Bush Fire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority, 60% of people affected by the fires will go back to their former homes and rebuild. Others are undecided or have chosen to start again elsewhere, after the events of Black Saturday made them reassess their love of the bush and the risks involved living there.
According to The Australian, this uncertainty is reflected in the appearance of the townships including Kinglake, where 38 people died, which is 'a jumble of new construction, vacant lots and "for sale" signs'. And in places like this, there is little employment aside from construction and more job options are needed for the community to be sustainable. The paper also noted that each community is recovering at a different pace with recovery in towns like Flowerdale at a more advanced staged, while Strathewen, which lost 27 people, has virtually ceased to exist.
Those who chose to return have rebuilt and have moved in or are due to move back into new homes. There is plenty of help for those who want to rebuild such as this self-build guide. But inevitably, the communities residents return to will differ from what was there previously as advice about prevention strategies, including fire resistant building and vegetation clearance, filters through to residents.
However, the slow pace of reconstruction may help to avoid the mistakes of the past when Noojee in eastern Victoria was devastated in 1939, just 13 years after its reconstruction following a previous bushfire.
There has been so much speculation and projection about the scale and impacts of future public austerity measures. It’s mostly pretty depressing stuff. Let me add to this! The literature on this subject has largely been silent on the possible impacts on rural people and places.
So, we in the Commission for Rural Communities have published a discussion paper, ‘The potential impacts on rural communities of future public austerity’. We prepared this following a literature review and a roundtable discussion last month chaired by Ben Lucas, Director of the 2020 Public Services Trust.
We want to help those who represent and serve our rural communities with ideas on how future austerity measures might affect rural people and places. And what they could do about it. Now is the short window of opportunity for rural representatives to consider these challenges and to act on them where possible.
Where decisions are taken locally, using the practices and tools of Rural Proofing, the more likely it is that the right decisions in the circumstances will be taken. The Total Place approach should have the potential to deliver joined up spending reductions that still maintain good service access.
New Start readers will be pleased to hear roundtable participants also focussed on questions about rural people and communities and their resilience. It was felt that government, at all levels, needed to protect, maintain and sustain the capacity of local communities to help themselves, through community development and other support.
Other highlighted areas included throwing a spotlight on a hardy perennial, trying to achieve fairer resource allocations between different local authority and other areas. And within them.
We felt there was room for delivering further efficiencies in the rural public sector, including unitary authorities and virtual unitary authorities and improving boundary coterminosities. This would demand strong leadership and collaboration.
On the basis that you shouldn’t waste a crisis we also felt now was a good time to look at more radical innovation. Maybe constructing shire mayoral/gubernatorial systems to deliver Total Place ambitions; releasing further potential from the work of parish and town councils; and also insistently taking up best practice from Beacon Councils and (Audit Commission) Green Flag exemplar projects and elsewhere. The challenge for rural representatives, as well as public servants, is to see the glimmers and occasional opportunities through the prevailing grimness of austerity.
And that’s about as cheerful as it gets.
How serious are we about asking the difficult questions about our futures and grappling with the issues they raise? I thought last week's Regeneration Momentum conference might offer some pointers. What it offered was in insight into how far we have to go - and a realisation that if those of us who are starting to understand this don't act, perhaps nobody will.
First, a positive. There are some heavyweight institutions, including the three northern regional development agencies, who are prepared to invest significant time and resources in looking at the future for the north of England, and the impact the recession is having. The research documents launched at the event are testimony to that.
Now some negatives. First, the limited vision. For me this was summed up by Terry Hodgkinson, chair of Yorkshire Forward, who praised city-regional governance structures because they would 'bring trickle-down benefits to towns and cities'. I'm sorry, Terry, but people have been waiting for benefits to trickle down for decades. Reshuffling institutional structures won't make a jot of difference. I want to see benefits surging up from people who are empowered to take action for themselves.
Second, the threat. I mentioned the suggestion that Michael Heseltine is going to set an incoming Conservative government's agenda in my last post, and Simon Cooke, as a Tory councillor, has made some telling points on his blog. But that's not all. Few picked up the significance of Conservative peer Lord Michael Bates's comment on the northern economy: 'Given the north has a higher share of the public sector economy, shouldn't it bear its share of the pain?'
In other words, the public sector cuts to come will hit the north hardest, and when they do, northerners should just remember what a good deal they'd had in the past. If this thinking takes hold in a new Cabinet, expect to see northern cities hit as badly by the public spending cuts of 2010-11 as they were by deindustrialisation in the 1980s.
Third, the missed opportunity.
The star of the show was Michael Parkinson, director of the European Institute for Urban Affairs at Liverpool John Moores University. His weighty report - The credit crunch, recession and regeneration in the North - was launched at Friday's conference.
Again, there were some positives. Professor Parkinson was right to criticise the political 'race to the bottom' in terms of public investment, spotlight the likely impact of the 'public sector recession', and explain how the current downturn is hitting manufacturing areas far harder than the south of England (the banks have survived, but by cutting adrift the rest of us).
The missed opportunity was to examine carefully and honestly what needs to change and how. While he and others talked about the 'model' of regeneration being broken, this was coupled with a hope that if only we could focus on economic development and keep the investment flowing we can patch it up and all will be well. To me, that's wishful thinking.
Look at what's missing from the report. Inequality gets not one mention in 100 pages of text. Poverty is mentioned once, in a description of the 'hidden social consequences of the downturn'. A document that purports to describe 'what's next' for regeneration without addressing poverty and inequality, I'd suggest, is on the fast lane to failure.
The same goes for climate change. The single mention is a passing reference to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. There's a little more on 'low carbon' - as in 'the low carbon sustainability agenda', a set of weasel words if there ever was one if you're not going to make an effort to explain how it is to be put into practice, which this report doesn't.
Search the report for concepts like 'flourishing' and 'thriving' and you won't find them. Of the three uses of the word 'green', two refer to the 'green belt'. On the other hand, the word sustainable is used a lot - without ever being precise about what it means or how it is to be achieved.
I recounted the professor's response to questions about this in my previous post: 'It goes without saying, so I didn't say it.' But when all's said and done, what isn't said is usually not done.
So what do we do?
There are three overriding and urgent challenges for public policy: how to live within environmental limits, how to create meaningful work and life chances for a generation that won't have their predecessors' access to cheap credit or affordable housing, and how to manage under a much harsher public spending regime. The task can be summed up as creating resilience: economic, environmental and social.
Think about what that might mean for a new graduate. The job you do - whatever it is - must reduce its environmental impact with increasing rapidity to meet our existing commitments and legislation on climate change. If it's in the public sector, you can expect your earning power to reduce in real terms as salaries are squeezed. If it's in the private sector, you will still have less access to ready money through loans and mortgages than those born in the 1980s, and repayment terms are likely to be more stringent. And whoever you are, you might find the safety net offered by the state (central or local) looks somewhat threadbare. So you need new ways of coping.
If we are to enjoy our lives and create great places to live in for years to come, we have to investigate and model different ways of doing things.
Not every speaker at Friday's conference was wedded to doing more of the same. Richard Brett, co-leader of Leeds Council, spoke passionately of the need for long term support for poorer communities and the importance of recognising the impact of climate change. Tony Reeves, chief executive of Bradford Council, pointed out that a low carbon society would require a complete rethinking of spatial planning and an alternative to the current commuter economy. Ed Cox, director of ippr north, revealed how community groups in Croxteth, Liverpool, had proved resilient despite the lack of investment in the past, creating social enterprises and community organisations - in contrast to neighbourhoods like Speke that had received huge amounts of investment.
Where do we go from here?
Over recent weeks I've been hugely encouraged by conversations that I've had with people who, from varying perspectives, understand both the gravity of the challenges and the need to be brave and creative in facing them. I have met people who are open to new ideas, willing to explore, and have the foresight to see beyond patching up the policies of the last decade.
I'm interested in engaging with thinkers and doers to create a new dynamic for regeneration and sustainable communities in the UK. Some of those conversations will happen via New Start magazine and the series of features I'm writing on these issues this year; others through organisations like the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. Some might happen through social media like Twitter; others in pubs and cafés. The important thing is to start drawing this thinking together and using it to create a new narrative for our communities and the places we live in.
If you're interested in being part of this, and don't just want to push your own commercial, political, ideological or organisational agendas, please let me know so we can all share what we're doing. This is about linking people with each other, not sucking them into an institution. You can contact me via Twitter or comment below, or via New Start.
Why, given the failure of all Michael Heseltine’s prior efforts at regeneration, are we bringing him back to advise the Conservative Party on a ‘green paper’?
‘Failure’, I hear you exclaim, ‘but surely Hezza’s a regeneration superstar?’ Followed I guess by talking about intervening every verse end, clearing vast swathes of industrial land in northern cities and cutting through the ‘red tape’ by handing planning powers to development corporations. Plus Docklands of course.
Well I don’t know where to start with the reasons why Michael Heseltine is the wrong man to lead on regeneration, but here are a few good reasons:
Regeneration isn’t about buildings, land, property development or big business. It’s about people and the barriers to people succeeding in life – remove those barriers and there’s a chance of regeneration. Keep them there and all the land deals in the world won’t make things any better.
Regeneration isn’t about being ‘business-led’. Especially when the businessmen doing the leading are those with the vested interests in using the public money poured into regeneration to generate profits.
Regeneration isn’t about big, grand, landmark schemes. You can spit from the wonders of the Victoria Dock development in Newham onto the depressing sadness that is Silvertown and North Woolwich. Those grand schemes haven’t transformed those communities – worse than that, they have made them more isolated
Regeneration isn’t about knocking down the stuff you don’t like and handing over the cleared remnants to developers. Sometimes that’s right but mostly it destroys neighbourhoods and merely relocates the community’s problems
Above all regeneration is about people. Not people with nice cars, good suits and expensive haircuts. Not men who think the way to regenerate is to push out all the poor people. Regeneration is about transforming the lives of people who live in poor places – places where the schools are crap, where the only available careers appear to be drug dealer, prostitute or benefits cheat and where having a job is the exception not the rule. All the planning rules, red lines, area-based initiatives, urban development corporations, property forums and assorted paraphernalia of regeneration amount to nothing if we ignore the basics – education, skills, housing and, first and foremost, the aspiration and confidence of people in poor communities.
I don’t doubt Michael Heseltine’s business acumen. I’m sure there are good tactical reasons for the party involving him in developing policy. But regeneration needs new thinking. Thinking that focuses on the people who live in the places being regenerated. People whose aspirations are low, who see little prospect of opportunity and who get the raw deal when it comes to many services.
Rounding up a few businessmen to sit on some grand board so as to hand out some cash didn’t solve the problem in the 1970s. Or the 1980s. Or the 1990s. Or from 2000 to today. Perhaps we’ll learn now and put money and effort into regenerating the people rather than in trying to hide them under shiny new buildings.
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A few months ago I wrote about what we can learn from the US banking system (albeit a system that caused the global credit crunch and subsequent recession). Last week President Obama announced a new "financial crisis responsibility fee" to claw back some of the public funds that US banks have received – generating up to £72bn in tax. These banks are now in sufficiently rude health to be planning to pay bonuses totally billions of dollars. There are number of things about Obama’s approach that are interesting.
The language President Obama used in announcing what is effectively a tax on banks, is pretty strong stuff. He said: ‘we want our money back and we’re going to get it’. Fairly unambiguous language. Hugely populist stuff, though hardly surprising for a president swept to power just a year ago on a platform of change. But Obama seems unconcerned with upsetting the banks and damaging a still fragile US economy. This is in stark contract with our own politicians, who seem nervous of a mass exodus of financial services to more favourable locations overseas.
The tax only applies to banks with assets over $50bn, directly targeting the ‘big boys’ but not penalising the smaller community banks (of which there are many in the States). In the US the $700bn or so spent bailing out ailing institutions went not only to the banks, but to insurance companies (most notably AIG) and the car industry. The banks have in fact paid back far more of the money they received than the other sectors, but it is the banks that are directing the public’s anger and the banks that Obama have chosen to target.
Interesting stuff and something for our timid politicians to think about as we go into the general election.
The other thing I became aware of just last week was a citizen-led response to the financial crisis. The ‘Move Your Money’ campaign was established in response to the greed and excessive risk taking of banks that has resulted in suffering for communities in the US. It suggests that if people are dissatisfied by these banks, then they should move their money (or mortgage) to somewhere else more ethical. A simple message and a logical action to take. The campaign is attracting significant media attention and increasing numbers of people are now switching their accounts to institutions that are not paying obscene bonuses to their employees or acting in ways that harm society.
Like any great campaign, it’s so simple in conception that it makes you wonder ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ There seems to me to be huge potential for a similar campaign in the UK. Why wouldn’t people unhappy with the way banks are acting not move their accounts to better institutions? I would.
Of course we need to think some things through…like where to move our money too. And how to make it as easy as possible for people to move accounts – cut through some of the inevitable bureaucracy and research needed. But these are surely things we can accomplish if we give it some thought.
Interested in the idea of ‘move your money’?, then I’d love to hear from you. Meanwhile, watch this space.
There's an awful lot of advice out there at the moment, about how to cope with / take advantage of / simply survive the new economic and social climate (not to mention the environmental one) which we are assured we now all face.
Well, I'm sure it's true that things are changing, but my guess is it's less certain that we actually know in what way or ways.
Shifting the vantage point
Perhaps I've been a social scientist for too long, but what I'd like to propose is not another set of guidelines for adapting perspectives and practice for the future, useful as these may prove to be. What I'd like to suggest is that we, all of us, start more assiduously to ask Why?
Why does Pundit A tell us we must do such and such? And why does Commentator B suggest this perspective? What is Politician or Decision-Maker C doing when s/he tells us the facts point to a particular conclusion? And especially why does Person-in-the-Street D wonder what on earth (or in the big TV in the sky) is going on?
Forget the motive, look at the 'facts'
In proposing adoption of the Big WHY? I'm not as it happens suggesting we need to check out people's motives. Usually, this takes us nowhere and wastes both time and energy.
Rather, I'm beginning to think we simply need quite urgently to begin as a cultural shift to understand that there is almost always evidence somewhere which has led whoever it is to the conclusions they want us to accept. So the big question is, what's the evidence, and how did it arise?
Engaged rather than enraged
It's true in my experience that people often ignore public debate, whatever it genesis, until they disagree with the outcome. Then the Big Fuss begins. There's nothing like an apparently done deal to bring out the Nimby in all of us.
So why not turn things around and expect from the very beginning of an issue or problem that people of all sorts actually want to debate and challenge emerging analysis and options?
Can we as those on the regeneration and sustainability front line find a way to say, bring on the conversation? And could this apply not only between ourselves as practitioners, but also with and between those whom we want to work with as clients, customers and wider stakeholders?
Are we brave enough - and, to be fair, do we have the human and material resources and systems - to say: Look, we think this is the problem or challenge, but we're willing quite openly both to question each other and to answer the questions of all of you, customers, stakeholders and the wider public, before we move on? Here's our evidence to date, what do you think?
Positive scepticism (and curiosity) for a changing world
In other words, can we nurture a sort of positive scepticism in the face of undoubtedly massive change? The sort of enquiring curiosity and scepticism which will help everyone to see that flexibility and change is inevitable, but doesn't have to be handed down as a list of what one Must and Must Not do?
The Big WHY? is not the mode in which most of us have been trained, and it can be very uncomfortable (not least for those who currently set and lead the agendas) but could be a real help towards accommodating constant change. We may think we live in an open society (and, let it be said, modern democracies are certainly the most open so far), but we still often find it difficult to navigate towards complete transparency in our dealings with each other, let alone our customers and stakeholders.
Transforming agendas from Stop to Go
And, strangely enough, we might even find it fits the wider political agenda too - politicians know very well that they can deliver only what (they believe) the electorate will tolerate. But we know that time is now running out, especially for resources and sustainability, in a way which has never really been the case before. It's truly critical right now to move from whingeing and worrying (or denial) to facing up to the (thoroughly scrutinised) facts.
Perhaps more insistence on the Big WHY? in public debate, by encouragement and by example, might even result in helping those same publicly accountable politicians, the people who ultimately decide for us all, to support difficult but unavoidable decisions which need to be taken very soon.
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Are Community Contracts just another in a long line of recycled ideas indicative of a deeper poverty of ambition at the heart of government?
Surely we have had similar pilots since at least the 1970s.
What immediately arises from the Manchester University evaluation is their caveat that it is far too early to draw many conclusions!
One conclusion we can draw, however, is that from a third sector/community sector perspective this approach is (still) incredibly top down.
A second contextual point might be – whatever happened to neighbourhood management with its focus on exactly the territory covered by community contracts?
If we want real change we have to build from where local people are at.
It follows that we need more than just warmed-up managerialism laced with rhetorical commitments to talk to people about narrowly defined service choices.
Unless you're a redneck, a dinosaur or a Pollyanna, you'll probably agree with the proposition that we need to reduce our collective impact on the environment.
If you're reading this, it's also probable that you're among the 20% of the world's population who between them use more than 80% of the earth's resources. So there's a rather uncomfortable personal question: what am I and my community going to do about it?
Last night I was at a packed event at King's Cross, London, hearing speakers from the UK and Europe on the subject of 'degrowth' - or, as the Europeans style it, décroissance, which sounds as if it's to do with eating fewer croissants but involves a lot more than that.
A lot of work has been done to construct both the arguments for degrowth and a theoretical approach to a post-growth economy. Tim Jackson's excellent book Prosperity Without Growth (based on this report for the Sustainable Development Commission) is probably the most positive explanation of this approach; the new economics foundation's document The Great Transition sets out what a degrowth economy might look like and suggests some initial actions.
But the argument is far from won (or even clear in terms of practical action), and won't be won in gatherings of like-minded people. To make the case cogently, I think a few challenges need to be overcome.
• First, we need to address people's real fears and reluctance to change. Tim Jackson is good on this, explaining how consumption is ingrained in our desire for social affirmation. We use stuff as symbols of our respect for ourselves and each other. So a mindshift needs to take place in which we rethink the symbolic value of physical goods. Hectoring won't achieve that.
• Second, we need to move the debate from the margins. Inevitably this will provoke cries of selling out by those who see themselves as pioneers of green thinking. But there's a kind of green gamesmanship that needs to be recognised here - the easy kudos that comes from proposing a more radical solution than the next person, knowing there's no likelihood of being the one who has to put it into practice. Anyone who feels they're at the cutting edge because they've listened to three hours of speeches needs a reality check.
• Third, the theorists need to start modelling their proposed approaches in real life. The Transition Towns movement and projects like Incredible Edible Todmorden are good starting points, because they're rooted in practical action. Showing what's possible to friends and neighbours is worth a thousand seminars and conferences. Car clubs and pools like Car2go in Ulm, for example, are starting to show how people's needs for personal transport can be provided in a less environmentally harmful way.
• Fourth, the challenge to unsustainable growth needs to be expressed in language that people understand. The idea of environmental limits is important here. We all know that if you accumulate debts, either as an individual or a nation, the chickens will eventually come home to roost. While you can put off the evil day by borrowing more, there comes a point where you're so deep in debt you have to take drastic action. We have already reached our environmental credit limit - between the 1960s and 2005 the human species moved from using 60% of the earth's available capacity to 130%, according to Mauro Bonaiuti, one of the speakers at last night's event. And while you can create more finance to lend people at the touch of a button, you can't create more environmental capacity to use up whenever we fancy it.
• Fifth, we need to be more robust in challenging accepted wisdom. The main argument against degrowth is that everything will collapse - people will spend less, there'll be fewer jobs, we'll all live in poverty. What the growth advocates don't explain is why it is responsible to use finite resources at an ever-increasing rate without putting in place a means for creating alternatives when we do reach the limits; what those alternative resources will be and how they can be obtained and shared equitably without permanent damage to ecosystems; and why an exponential increase of consumption is an intelligent way of meeting human needs and sustaining our planet when it has failed to eliminate global poverty or offer happier, healthier lives to the majority of the world's population, and failed to find effective ways of remedying the damage already inflicted by increased consumption.
There are some tough debates to be had, difficult choices to be made and no guarantee of a successful outcome. On the other hand, as Tim Jackson pointed out, there's an opportunity to revalue our lives and emphasise what really contributes to human wellbeing - qualities like trust, affection, respect and participation.
At a recent conference, I heard an otherwise sane academic tell us that the principles of regeneration – which were sound in the good times – will see us through the bad times.
What a delusion! Economic regeneration worked in part, but failed in some key areas. Let’s not forget, even when the economy was effervescent, poverty, low income and worklessness were never solved and in some cases actually became worse. The ‘good times’ were not that good for some. Also, in terms of the environment, economic regeneration policies have failed to deal with our overreliance on carbon for economic growth.
To solve the problems of inequality and environment, we need to start thinking differently about economic regeneration and economics. If we stumble on, in the belief that the principles were right, we will continue to get it fundamentally wrong. Let’s be clear – we need a rethink of these principles.
At the heart of this rethink is seeing poverty, low income and worklessness as well as climate change and pollution as issues with the same cause. They are both symptoms of economics and economic regeneration policy which failed to protect and nurture social and natural capital.
The old principles need some ‘creative destruction’. This will not just be a change in vocabulary where we just start refreshing our pre-existing plans with a dousing of worthy words such as ‘green’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘low carbon’. It does not just involve ‘taking the environment seriously’ and committing to media driven carbon reduction pledges, while following similar economic growth patterns. It is not just economic strategy adding a ‘green economy’ section. The environment is not an ‘issue’ to be lopped on like a brainstormed ‘post it’ note.
But there is a way forward. The driving principles were clearly faulty, but I believe that the people, disciplines and some practice surrounding regeneration were sound.
Practitioners in economic development and regeneration, planning and urban design, community development and all those other frontline ‘place making’ and so called ‘sustainable community’ workers, are imbued with values like fairness and liveability, instilled in practice. Arguably, these values were suppressed by overriding principles and an orthodoxy as regards land and property appreciation, financial services, trickle down economics and traditional economic growth models.
I believe this latent value driven process can forge new policy and practice, and develop a sophisticated appreciation of the relationship between economic development, growth, inequality and low carbon. This would mean, for example, that business support policy is also low carbon transition policy. It would mean that community development policy is environmental activism. It would mean that the young workless are trained as the carbon army.
I believe that with a mission to nurture and protect social and natural capital, these values can come to the fore. Indeed these practitioners can become the new environmentalists and forge a new wave of local economic activism and place making.
Tim Henman may never have won Wimbledon, but the former world number four tennis player has made a mark on an even bigger British sporting event – the London 2012 Olympics.
You might remember that Aorangi Terrace, the Lawn Tennis Club's picnic spot, was dubbed Henman Hill after fans gathered to watch nail biting show court contents featuring Britain's top player. The televised matches have continued on the terrace ever since. And although many British tennis fans have rechristened the terrace Murray's Mount, in honour of the UK's current number one, it has lost little of its atmosphere.
It is this atmosphere that Olympic bosses are trying to recreate in the Olympic Park, which I got a sneak preview of today on a bus tour. We were told that although the Beijing Olympics impressed the organisers of the London games on many levels, it was felt that atmosphere was lacking once you left the games' venues.
The London organisers want to create a festival atmosphere in the park through public spaces with screens televising the events. And they are hoping that a landscaped hill next to the stadium will be the life and soul of the party.
The question that this raises is what will this vantage point be called? Of course, it all depends on who becomes the talking point of the London games. At the moment, my money's on it being named Bolt Bank.
Soft and hard are strange words. They carry a lot of baggage, a lot of it gender-based. And much of it involves value-judgements that are questionable at best.
I've been thinking a bit about this as I've been researching the second part of a series of features I'm writing for New Start on the future of regeneration in the UK. Among the documents I've been looking at is a discussion paper from the Young Foundation's Local Wellbeing project, and some interesting facts and figures on the economic and social outcomes of government policies (especially from the weighty but worthwhile Towards a More Equal Society?, essential reading from John Hills and friends at LSE).
In policyspeak people talk a lot about soft and hard outcomes, and soft and hard evidence. The main difference is that 'hard' is stuff you can attach numbers to. The unstated value-judgement here is that hard is better: hard is firm, it's what you can trust, while soft is slippery and malleable.
This matters because politicians (and their critics) are obsessed with 'hard' measures. These are the values of the auditor: look at the numbers first. So a project to help people into work is judged on the numbers of people who go through the doors, how many of them get jobs, and how long they stay in those jobs. 'Soft' measures would look at how they feel about their lives, how confident they are, what skills they've developed, how their attitudes have changed, and the impact on their relationships (see this summary, for example). Hard is quantitative; soft is qualitative. And just as quantitative research is generally held in higher esteem than qualitative, and the econometrist held in greater awe than the ethnographer, so policy is judged mainly on 'hard' measures.
We shouldn't be so macho about being hard. Here are a few thoughts using two other definitions of hard and soft: hard as in difficult, soft as in foolish (and while both of those have negative connotations, it's interesting how people tend to read their value-judgements across from one definition to another).
So:
It's hard to measure the quality of a person's life. But you'd have to be a bit soft to think you could do it entirely by calculating their income.
It's hard to assess the success of a policy against a range of desirables, such as economic output, sustainability and equality. But you'd have to be a bit soft to think the one that's easiest to measure numerically is by definition a good proxy for all the others.
It's hard to measure how worthwhile and rewarding a person's job is, and harder still to measure it across a workforce. But you'd have to be a bit soft to think that the net number of jobs was more important than the sense of self-worth, motivation and aspiration people feel in doing them.
It's hard to calculate the value of a cultural asset like a theatre or art gallery or public artwork or live music venue. But you'd have to be a bit soft to think you could do it just by bums on seats or spending on merchandise and tickets.
It's hard to calculate how people feel about where they live and how involved they are in their communities. But you'd have to be a bit soft to imagine the price of houses or the proportion of people voting will tell you the whole story.
As we get nearer the election, expect numbers to dominate the arguments. Numbers are great, especially if you have lots of them. But quantity isn't a substitute for quality - it's a different way of measuring different things. If you're tempted to assume it's better, remember the old saying about lies, damned lies and statistics.
The political leaders of the world that gathered in Copenhagen had the unenviable responsibility of forging a strategy to pull humankind back from the brink of a dire future. What ultimately will come from this meeting is uncertain, but whatever occurs, the challenge ahead is immense. According to conservative climate change science, we need to stabilize concentrations of carbon dioxide at 400 ppm and then begin reducing it to 350 ppm to avoid triggering a cascading set of irreversible tipping points. To be successful in this task requires us to develop a solution to achieve by 2020 what the current treaty being negotiated hopes to achieve by 2050 — an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions.
The scale and speed of change required goes well beyond anything political leaders have ever had to contemplate, much less achieve. And even if the political will were there to achieve this level and speed of carbon reduction, the social change 1.0 tools at their disposal—command and control, and financial incentives—are not designed for this type of rapid, transformative change. They were purposely designed over two centuries ago for gradual, incremental change.
Putting aside the issues of speed and magnitude of change for the moment, passing a law that commands us to adopt new behaviors, and then penalises us if we don’t, is not politically feasible. And although offering us financial incentives to change is sending the right signal, we are still free not to avail ourselves of these incentives. When we are not already predisposed to changing, financial incentives have a limited effect. Even when we are amenable to changing, financial incentives are very slow moving and cumbersome to implement.
If command and control and financial incentives are not enough to turn the tide in the necessary timeframe, can renewable energy and new breakthrough technologies come to the rescue of humankind? While a low-carbon future critically depends on new technologies, there is no credible scenario by which they can be brought to scale in the ten-year window within which our scientists tell us we must make major carbon reductions.
The dilemma we face is what systems theory calls second order change — or change that requires a system to transform and reorganize at a higher level of performance. When the easier-to-implement solutions prove inadequate for the speed and magnitude of change required, the system goes into stress and must evolve, or it will break down.
We as a human species are being called on to reinvent not only our world but also the process by which we achieve this reinvention. If the current social change tools of carrots, sticks and technology are not able to meet our needs in the available time, what else do we have? Are there assumptions we might rethink about what motivates people to change? Taking a page from Thomas Jefferson’s playbook, might we be able to motivate ourselves to change because of a dream that inspires our imagination, enlivens our sense of possibility, and lifts our spirit as human beings? Or, to ask this question in a more tangible way, how might we empower ourselves to voluntarily adopt new behaviors that help us, our community, our organization and our planet operate at a higher level of social value?
My three decades of empowerment research has taught me that we human beings are willing to change when we have a compelling vision and the necessary tools to help us bring it to fruition. The vision must touch our core to engender the necessary passion and commitment needed to overcome the inevitable obstacles on the path of realization. To stay motivated, we need others of like mind going on the journey with us. And, with a well-designed change platform that is replicable and scalable, these behavior changes can be widely disseminated throughout a community, country and organization, and across the planet. I call this approach 'social change 2.0'. Here’s what a social change 2.0 strategy looks like as applied to climate change.
America represents 20% of the planet’s carbon footprint, with half of these emissions coming from the fossil fuels we use to power our homes and cars. And at the community level our collective carbon emissions are between 50-90%. If, as U.S. households, we were able to reduce our carbon footprint by 25% and take this to scale community and nationwide, we could significantly lower America’s carbon emissions in the short run and buy us the critically needed time for the longer-term solutions to scale up.
Furthermore, by engaging the citizens of a community to lower their carbon footprint we would be stimulating demand for the green products and services needed to grow a local low-carbon economy. And as we aggregate these low-carbon economies nationally, we see the path forward toward the green U.S. economy on which the country is pinning its future. Moreover, this will send a message to the world that as Americans we are reducing our high carbon-emitting lifestyles for the sake of the planet, which will afford us the moral authority to encourage other countries such as China and India to up their ante.
But can we mobilize Americans, not known for our conservation ethic, to change? An encouraging study by Yale University indicated that 75% of Americans recognize that our own behaviour can help reduce global warming, and 81% believe it is our responsibility to do something about it. But how do we actually transform our current energy consumption patterns into low-carbon lifestyles in a meaningful timeframe?
In 2006 I began testing a solution by creating a community-based environmental behaviour-change programme called Low Carbon Diet. The programme consisted of 24 steps to reduce one’s carbon footprint by at least 5,000 pounds in 30 days and to help others do the same. It was based on my experience working with 20,000 people organized into neighbourhood-based peer-support groups — EcoTeams — who reduced their environmental footprint 25% in several cities, ranging from the environmentally progressive Portland, Oregon, and Madison, Wisconsin, to the more middle-of-the-road Columbus, Ohio, Kansas City, Missouri, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The programme empowered the movement that had been building around personal action and community-based solutions, and immediately took off. It was driven by the many local governments committed to the issue of climate change who were wishing to engage their citizens; faith-based groups like Interfaith Power and Light representing some 5,000 congregations, wishing to engage congregants; and environmental groups, like Al Gore’s Climate Project, which gave the book to the 1,000 people he trained to lead his 'An Inconvenient Truth' slide show. This interest resulted in the development of a strategy to scale up the program communitywide, creating what came to be called a Cool Community.
Three years later there are now over 350 Cool Communities in 36 states across America. Participants are achieving on average a 25% carbon footprint reduction and reaching out to fellow citizens to accomplish the same. A growing number of these campaigns have committed themselves to a three-year effort to mobilize up to 85% of their communities’ residents to reduce their footprint by at least 25%. And in Massachusetts — one of the nation’s leaders in enacting bold climate change legislation—the Cool Mass campaign has been launched to help the state achieve its carbon reduction goals through developing Cool Communities statewide.
A Cool Community also enables a city or town to enjoy the immediate practical benefits of more livable neighbourhoods, greater environmental sustainability, and economic development. Furthermore, it creates a robust long-term carbon reduction capability by building the community leadership, carbon-literate citizenry, and political will necessary to sustain this type of change over time.
And, at the most fundamental level, when individuals become personally part of the solution, it creates a new dynamic in the way we tackle large societal challenges. It allows us to move beyond the traditional social change formula of business as the problem and government as the solution — the familiar paradigm in which nonprofits lobby government for better regulations against business while disenfranchised citizens sit on the sidelines complaining about the coziness between politicians and business. When citizens are empowered to adopt socially beneficial behaviors, such as a low-carbon lifestyle, an opening can occur for traditionally adversarial relationships to establish new arrangements of cooperation and collaboration. When the whole system begins working together and there is no 'other' to combat or protect against, more innovative and generative solutions start to emerge. Everyone is now a participant in shaping the future.
The Cool Community movement is building Mount Everest base camps in communities across the nation for the long climb we must make to address climate change. It is also providing fire for the soul to inspire community leaders to reach for new visions of what is possible, with some committing to reduce their carbon footprint 80% by 2020. Nelson Mandela, an exemplar of taking on large, epic challenges, describes the journey this way, 'It always seems impossible until it is done'. But the journey must begin somewhere with someone. That somewhere is our homes, neighborhoods, towns and cities. And that someone is us.
A true regeneration professional should never shy away from a challenge, and the satisfaction of seeing a project get underway and a community benefiting from its own hard graft more than compensates for any frustrations and drawbacks. Recently we have been lucky to play a part in ensuring an apparently lost Wakefield community centre could re-open with its long-term future guaranteed.
The Phoenix Centre, home to a playgroup and range of other much needed community facilities, is a Victorian former school, in the care of the local authority. It was closed earlier this year on health and safety grounds, and if it hadn’t been for the kind offer of alternative accommodation made by the local pub, the playgroup would have had to close altogether. Luckily the council agreed to consider leasing the building to the local community on a long lease, if they could produce a convincing business case for it resuming its former role.
It was at that point that the community organisation which runs the centre, the Phoenix Alverthorpe Ltd, approached BlueFish Regeneration for advice on the business case, which we quickly turned around, and a 25-year lease was signed at the beginning of October.
Now, a matter of weeks after urgent repair work costing nearly £50,000 began, the playgroup is back where it belongs, and the centre is open for business again, offering a wide range of resources and facilities to the local community. We are now drawing up a costed delivery plan for a complete refurbishment of the building, ending a spell of considerable uncertainty about the centre’s future stretching back to 2007.
The revival of the Phoenix Centre is a prime example of what can be achieved by a community which simply refuses to give up in the face of overwhelming odds against success. They have had protracted discussions with the local authority, approached numerous funders, carried out exhaustive local consultation and overcome seemingly endless legal, financial and structural hurdles.
But this is just the start: the saga is set to continue well into 2010, with refurbishment of the main building and, hopefully in the longer term, a radical overhaul of the adjoining, derelict, headmaster’s house. We will be reporting regularly on progress and hope to feature in a forthcoming issue of New Start.
In the meantime, it is a real thrill to see the centre re-open, and children enjoying the new, bright space the building at last can offer. The tremendous support the Phoenix has received from local residents and contractors, consultants and other professionals, many who have worked at cost or for nothing, is an inspiration to all of us working in neighbourhood regeneration.
In these rather gloomy economic times, it is really encouraging to know that there are communities who can really pull together and make things happen. Long may they succeed.
I recently blogged about legal forms that social enterprises are adopting, drawing on published figures from the respective regulatory bodies, in an attempt to see if the hype surrounding certain forms is matched by reality.
Recognising that as great as my blog is, not everyone subscribes to it, I also posted it into a few other forums and got some really useful comments which have made me revisit this subject; this time comparing new registrations against the current make-up of the social enterprise sector (as identified by the Social Enterprise Coalition's research paper published earlier this year) and also Dave Hollings' experience as a leading practitioner in the make-up of new social enterprise registrations that he deals with.
For the sake of ease of comparison, I've looked at how the 'big 4' (companies limited by guarantee, charities, community interest companies, and Industrial and Provident Societies) square up against each other according to each of these sources by ranking of popularity.
And actually, there's a high degree of consistency - CLGs are by far the dominant choice between all. The averages then show its charities, followed by CICs and in a respectable 4th place, IPSs.
While the CIC statistically outnumbers IPSs, the gap between these two forms is not as great as might be imagined: the SEC research shows only 5% difference between their current use, and its 4% by new registrations.
Could this be indicative that a legal form created in the nineteenth century to explicity support the co-operative movement is still resonating with the wider social enterprise sector today?
And that as people explore their choices in detail, they're finding that the CIC model, while obviously attractive in some instances, isn't the be all and end all that its presented as in some quarters?
(N.B.: interestingly, the SEC research also identifies and lists sole trader and unincorporated association as legitimate forms for social enterprise...)
(for all the numerous links embedded in the original posting, please see http://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2009/12/are-nineteen-century-legal-forms-more.html)
]]>Last week a revised version of the Compact, the terms on which the third sector and government work together, was published. Matthew Scott, director of the Community Sector Coalition, says that the new agreement is a step backwards for equalities and for community sector organisations.
Now is the time when we need a boost to the most excluded and locally based parts of society in order to build resilience to ease pressure on public services. The tragedy of this document is that it may well serve to weaken recognition for associative action and proactive equalities community work.
The focus on a minority of voluntary sector organizations that have a sub contractor role is especially short sighted in the present climate. Most of the third sector is a community group*, taking associative action.
The Compact disenfranchises them by not talking about them or applying norms of operation that might be relevant to them. This is not accidental but instead a deliberately intended omission that privileges relatively few parts of the sector** engaged in public sector reform at the expense of those engaged in direct service to the local community by the local community.
The recent withdrawing of the campaigning fund has dramatically underlined the core contradiction of having a document than can be ripped up at will. The invalidating of concerns has been a feature of the consultation process itself.
Significant and wide ranging concerns were expressed in the consultation, the most common of which fixed on the relevance of the document for the community sector. These were aired not only by Third Sector respondees on the basis of previous experiences of the document being not fit for use, but had resonance in the comments made by statutory bodies***.
It now follows that the Compact is at risk of losing its status in judicial review, since a party can argue that there has been substantial disagreement among the wider Third Sector and that no convincing mandate exists.
The failure to retain equalities commitments is a particularly damaging omission – in particular the loss of the BME code. The new terminology which describes BME and equalities groupings as ‘organisations that provide services for protected characteristics’ can mean literally anything and undercuts the most vulnerable and marginalised communities of interest and identity.
The Coalition supports the principle of having a Compact and recognises the hard work of many in government and the sector to embed better relationships and fairness. We have been asked to be open, involved and speak up throughout the process. The hope is that the document can be reconsidered in the light of these comments, which have fundamental implications for all partners.
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*The 2009 NCVO Civil Society Almanac conservatively estimates that of 870,000 civil society organisations, 600,000 are informal community associations. Likewise the majority of charities exist on little or no government funding.
** ‘Not every organisation has grown. NCVO 2007 UK Voluntary Sector Almanac highlights the rapid growth of many large charities and the decline in income of many small or medium sized charities’
Future Role of 3rd Sector in Economic and Social Regeneration (Treasury & Cabinet Office) 2007 – paragraph 1.1
***Including consultation feedback from CDF (the Community Development Foundation), the Big Lottery, Capacity Builders and Local Authorities