There was a recent post on Critical Moment on community engagement in the Detroit Works Project by former CLR staffer Angie Allen. Here is my (Sandra Yu) response:
First, a big thanks to Angie for writing this post. It's very helpful to see the perspective of someone who has been involved in both processes.
As someone who was involved in helping organize the environmental summit in a way that tried to expand community outreach (thought we only had 2 months to DAAA's 6), I think the topic-based meetings could be called necessary but insufficient, and only the starting point if folks have the commitment and support to continue. Yes, I'm still unclear about how the input from those meetings will be incorporated into DWP 2.0 and next steps for those groups are yet to be determined. And I agree that neighborhood level (and regional!) input is absolutely critical. But those summits served as a very important forum for getting artists, seniors, youth, environmental advocates...
and entrepreneurs (and immigrants, sort of) to express population-specific needs and explore opportunities together with city officials - has this ever happened in any kind of coordinated, open, documented fashion?
Although concrete proposals are a ways off, I view that experience (organizing to plan the summits, meeting new fellow advocates and building relationships - hard as that was at times, learning more about different perspectives on each of the topics and their relationship to land use, learning who and what's "out there") as very valuable to moving forward - maybe not quite directly related to DWP's specific goals around dealing with population loss through land use, but certainly towards advancing our own as environmental advocates.
My point is - while I don't disagree with some of your overall points about the absolutely critical need for broad, genuine, neighborhood level engagement - it would be unfortunate to miss the very important fact that small coalitions of community residents and local advocates and stakeholders (including members of the Mayor's Advisory Task Force) were indeed deeply involved in organizing the environmental, entrepreneurial, artists and youth summits as well as the senior summit.
This is important because to me, the important lessons are that:
a. Even when the engagement strategy is genuine and in earnest, engagement on a challenging topic in a community with a tough past is HARD and that's nature of it - dealing with it and making it work is the expertise that we need, not a perfect engagement plan on paper; and
b. Building skills and experience in LOCAL organizations and people is worth the stumbling and slower pace in the long run because you will have built-in accountability and commitment to implementation, as well as a smarter, stronger local community at the other end of the process.
Different groups with different philosophies about [justice/development/revitalization/etc.] and different goals [building trust/implementation/quality of life outcomes/etc.] will define "successful/effective community engagement" quite differently.
What I am most curious about regarding the Community Revitalization Strategy (CRS) is what the actual outcomes have been. I usually hear "the process was great but overall it failed." What does that mean? People involved (Shea Howell has written about it in her column, Angie wrote about it in Critical Moment, Donele Wilkins has spoken about her experience as Cluster 3 co-chair) seem to have thought engagement was "good," but don't feel that exercise delivered significant tangible changes what neighborhoods look like for a variety of reasons (Archer didn't fund implementation, the plans were "pie-in-the-sky," PDD was isolated, etc.).
But there are lots of different kinds of possible outcomes beyond physical condition of neighborhoods (which is just one indicator of success) - local organizing capacity, a populace that's more knowledgeable about land use and community development, relationships built between advocates, residents, city officials, local consultants, foundations. All of these are important factors that help lead to better tangible quality of life outcomes.
Did Detroit's experience with CRS result in a stronger, savvier community development community that has an idea of the type of engagement they'd like to see? Did it result in better understanding about how the City, foundations, private consultants, community development practitioners and local stakeholders and residents can work together? Did it result in some physical changes in some neighborhoods? What kind? Where? Did it result in reducing poverty? How much? Where?
Angie writes that CRS was a 20-year vision, and it's now been almost 15 (I believe it kicked off in 1997). Is there a thorough progress report somewhere out there on the outcomes and lessons of CRS? What a shame if not, and if there is, why is it secret? $1.5 million was spent on that project - what are the lessons?? If it was so great, why does Detroit look the way it does now, and are there more important outcomes?
There's a philosophical question at the heart of both CRS and DWP - and any community development endeavor, for that matter. I personally believe that there are good intentions and genuine desire for better quality of life in every camp - City, philanthropy, community development industry, residents, advocacy groups. But there are complicating power & money dynamics, differing views of best strategy, distinct specialized expertise, and different types of authority and responsibility. Given all of that, what are the most effective/appropriate roles for each in helping a City rise again? And can that be worked out in a non-adversarial manner? If so... who should be the arbiter...?
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