Monday, August 20, 2018
Jump-starting Cleveland's Economy: All the Pieces Already Exist
I have had the privilege of hearing many great speakers at The City Club of Cleveland, and I recently heard two in one week that are so different, yet so surprisingly connected.
The first, I am sure, many have heard of by now. On June 8, Cleveland attorney Jon Pinney talked about how a lack of leadership in this region is holding us back from the kind of economic success we’ve been striving to reach. The second had a smaller audience, but it was equally important. Malo Hutson is an Associate Professor in Urban Planning at Columbia University and Director of the school’s Urban Community and Health Equity Lab. Six days after Pinney, he spoke about the intersection of social justice and urban planning. Not entirely the same, but trust me, these two speak to each other. If nothing else, listening to the Hutson forum will fill you with the hope that might have been lost after the whirlwind of the previous week’s forum.
Minorities, women, millennials, and high school students are vastly underrepresented (or completely missing) in every conversation. We need make sure we are deliberately and intentionally including those voices if we to make any real change. In addition, we need to make sure we are fostering leadership from the beginning. An older leader who feels there is no one to take his or her place has not done his or her job.
One of the main lessons from Hutson is that no issue is one-dimensional. If we are going to address economic development, we must also address housing, public health and (most importantly, in my opinion) education—these are just a sampling of the barriers to employing our current workforce and attracting new business.
Another thing Hutson emphasizes is that we hold ourselves back when we allow ourselves to be fragmented along political jurisdictions, school districts, special taxing districts, and so forth. There is no better example of this than Northeast Ohio — even just Cuyahoga County with our 59 different municipalities. This jurisdictional competition hinders effective leadership.
Most of all, we don’t need a new organization or group to do this. One of the most important takeaways from the Hutson forum is that we need to be engaged and informed citizens who show up to public meetings, ask questions and hold existing entities and organizations accountable to the work they are supposed to be doing. This also means learning about who is doing this work and that there are organizations who are reaching targeted audiences and working to keep them in our region. (Shameless plug for the forum on Friday, August 24 at noon, a continuation of the conversation on how we expand and increase our economic competitiveness.)
Two things that run through both of these presentations that are either spoken or unspoken: as Jan Roller said in her op-ed on cleveland.com: we need strong municipal, county, and regional governments that are steering this ship and holding all of the players accountable. This is where this conversation should live and should be the work of the public sector. We do not have this in Northeast Ohio, and the lack of citizen engagement is a big reason why. Citizens need to hold our elected officials accountable. Bluntly, we should vote them out of office when they do not fulfill this role. Also, as Hutson says, “rather than saying what you don’t want in your backyard, we need to be discussing our vision for our neighborhoods, cities, and metropolitan areas.” We need to stop talking and start doing. We don’t need another organization to do this. All the pieces exist; now we need to make them work for our region.
