Urban setting in Spokane, Washington |
This is the
fifth New Year’s Day that I’ve been writing this blog. Once again, best wishes to all for a
productive and increasingly urbanist New Year.
A tradition
of this blog, although an admittedly trite one, is New Year’s Resolutions. In past years, I’ve touched on subjects such
as doing more urbanist reading, becoming a better educated urbanist traveler,
and making more numerically-based urbanist arguments. As the best resolutions should be, they were
stretch goals, perhaps beyond reasonable reach, but encouraging beneficial growth.
Not
surprisingly, I’ve not fully achieved any of the goals. But the process of setting them and reaching for
them made me a better advocate for urbanism, which is how it should have
worked.
This year, I’ll
set another pair of stretch goals, ones in which your assistance will be sought. I want to expand the North Bay urbanist
advocacy in two ways.
A few weeks
back, I was invited to participate in the holiday lunch of a North Bay advocacy
group. They might not have called
themselves urbanists, but their advocacy targets were closely aligned with
urbanism. I had worked with them several
times during the year and thought we made a good team. So I was happy to join them for lunch.
The
conversation was sparkling. A few
speakers leaned toward the pedantic, forcing the chair to exercise his authority
more than he may have wished, but the comments were all educated and
insightful, offering a tutorial to attentive listeners. They represented a level of community
advocacy that should encourage all who hope for a better world.
But when I
looked around the table at the participants, I saw folks who were mostly grey-haired,
wrinkled, and walked with a stiffening gait, a description that can also apply
to me on many days. I’m not always good
at estimating age, but I guessed that I was the fourth youngest person at the
eighteen-person gathering. And I’m
sixty-two.
I understand
why land-use advocacy often falls to the older generation. Financial security has been achieved. Children are educated and gone. Even if retirements haven’t yet arrived,
careers are winding down. Lifetimes of
observation and consideration have identified the issues that really matter to
the advocates.
And perhaps
most importantly, seniors sometimes have an extended vision that often eludes
the young. When I speak with high school
juniors about land-use possibilities, they hope for changes that can be made
before their senior year. When I talk to
thirty-two-year-olds, they hope for changes that can be made before they buy
their next house at age thirty-five.
Perhaps
because they’ve had a lifetime to observe how long some goals take to attain, it
is often only the seniors who are willing to embrace and to work toward forty-year
visions, even with the knowledge that they’ll almost undoubtedly have left the
stage before the vision is achieved.
At the
holiday lunch, mention was made of several former members who had passed
on. There was no disappointment that the
departed folks had gone before the goal was achieved, but only satisfaction
that they had gone knowing that progress was being made.
But for all
the reasons that long-term land-use advocacy often falls to the elders, there
are good reasons why young advocates are necessary. The young can bring an energy and enthusiasm that
can be more difficult for elders. Also,
many public decision-makers are still in the heart of their working careers and
can too easily dismiss as “old coots” the older advocates who totter to the
microphone with their grey hair, even when those old coots deliver well-honed,
insightful, and essential wisdom.
But when I
think about the folks who I see regularly, who speak to city councils about
urbanist ideas and who write to local papers to complain about anti-urbanist biases,
those folks look a lot more like the me of today than the me of thirty years
ago. And that’s not good enough.
So my first resolution
on this New Year’s Day 2016 is to encourage more urbanist advocates across a
broader age spectrum, with a particular focus on the young.
To be clear,
I know I have many readers who are significantly younger than me. And they’re good folks. But I may not see them or hear from them for
months on end. And I virtually never see
them at City council or planning commission meetings.
I understand
the family and career reasons why that is so.
But it still leaves a hole in the ranks of advocacy. And it fails to meet the expectation set by
Gandhi, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
My second resolution
touches on a related issue, which is the essential tenacity of advocacy. The folks around the holiday lunch table knew
what advocacy truly requires, which is crafting five stratagems for moving a
boulder, celebrating briefly when it moves an inch, and then creating five more
stratagems.
But I see
much current advocacy coming from a different place, which is the dispensing of
perceived wisdom, often to those are already converted, and nothing further.
In a meeting
of advocates on how to promote mixed-use development, someone will flutter in,
suggest we need more mixed-use development, and flutter back out, thinking that
advocacy has been achieved, when the truth is that nothing was achieved.
So my second
resolution is to do more to impress upon folks the dogged and persistent nature
of the advocacy required to affect change.
These two
resolutions may sound as if they are being applied to others, which would be
the easiest kinds of resolutions to set and the least troublesome to keep. (“You should lose weight and you over there
should exercise more.”) But they are
truly internally-directed. I worry that
my approach to advocacy is failing to attract the kind of advocates needed for
long-term change and that I’m failing to impart lessons about the essential tenacity
of advocacy.
So the
resolutions are about me looking in the mirror during 2016 and seeking changes
in who I am and how I present myself, so that I can better attract urbanist
advocates.
Whether or
not I can make myself a great leader, I can still take encouragement from this
quote from journalist Walter Lippmann, “The final test of a leader is that he
leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.” All of us who advocate for long-term urbanist
goals should rally to that flag.
In my next
post, I’ll return to the upcoming StrongTowns visit to Santa Rosa, giving
reasons why attending the public sessions should be worthwhile, even for the
Petalumans who may feel jilted. The effort can be a test of my ability to
gather urbanist advocates.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
Thank you for another year of exciting posts. I read your blog at work, where I can only access blogspot through an RSS reader (kind of a proxy server), so I can't usually comment on them.
ReplyDeleteIt's great for the New Year to consider advocacy and what it takes to be an advocate. In my view, the reason that the elders are doing most of the advocacy work is that they are the ones who have the free time to do it. I can attest that raising children eats into your evening and weekend time and makes it impractical to attend meetings. As long as advocacy is principally characterized as meeting attendance, it's going to miss out on middle-aged adults.
What you see as your second point is often the result of those same adults engaging with the echo chamber that is the internet. Most comments (certainly including this one) can be boiled down to "+1"; your observation is correct that this kind of "support" is not enough to change minds and enact change.
Thanks again
Jonathan, thanks for the thoughtful comment and thanks for being a regular reader.
DeleteI agree that free time is often the reason that elders take greater advocacy roles. But I think there are still ways to be an effective advocate without attending a lot of meetings.
Blog posts, letters to editor, and op-ed pieces can play a role. They can't be a complete strategy, but they can be a great start.
Even if someone can only free themselves for one or two public meetings a year, they should ensure that the agendas include topics that are desperately important and be prepared to speak eloquently.
Also, getting to the occasional event such as a StrongTowns meeting can admittedly have an echo chamber effect, but knowing that there are fifty or more advocates with shared beliefs can still be important.
Folks can reach out to friends and neighbors to explain urbanism in casual settings. (StrongTowns called their first advocacy pamphlet "Curbside Chat" for a reason.)
One can identify candidates who seem to lean toward urbanism and encourage them to make urbanism a plank in their platforms.
Lastly, money can make a difference, whether donating to candidates with urbanist leanings, joining urbanist organizations, or making donations to non-profits which push urbanist goals.
I know time will always be a constraint to all of us, including me, but with creativity we can all find ways to put a shoulder to the task.
Thanks again for writing and for reading.