I have spent the past week doing my own private equivalent of a marathon, insisting that I work as hard as possible in spite of being sick, while carrying with me a knot of tension on my back and shoulders about as thick and cumbersome as a mature oak tree. When this happens, sometimes I try to make myself believe that no harm will be done, but the truth is I think that I pace myself just so, in order that I tend to forget what happens next after an all-work-no-sleep-while-sick binge: I crash.

And crashing really takes with it the whole family.

This is also how one might identify manic-depressives. Crazy highs, deep lows. That’s not really me: I don’t have the highs. Instead I just feel like I’m trying to make it through some long underwater tunnel, and I figure if I go faster, I’ll get out sooner. Nope.

So what is the answer to this? Am I supposed to be breathing water? If I just relax and settle in, is this home now? Maybe so. Maybe I’ve adapted.

This week one of my children stayed home a total of three days from school. On two other days, he managed to make it, but he looked horrible. Today, he was home again along with his sick sister. I’m sick, too. We needed a caretaker, so my husband stayed home and even managed to do the slightest bit of paid work, while juggling all of us and our various whiny little needs. And so did I manage to do a slight bit of paid work, although I practically had to slap my hands to prevent attempting more.

I really like the work I do. I just wish I got paid for all the hours I put in, and the many more I could (or might, out of insanity) but don’t, because of guilt for already working too much. These days, “equitable pay” for a writer is sort of a curious joke anyway. And as I have been reminded by some in the field, as a blogger, it’s even more curious. Then again, there was some guy in California getting paid something in the neighborhood of $72,000 a year to blog. I like to write that off as “just those crazy Californians at it again.”

Here in the northeast, we like our bloggers poor and underfed, because it makes them wilder and less predictable. Pay them too well, and gosh, they might get complacent. In my case, the pay keeps me just on this side of the line, but always wondering if this makes any sense to keep doing. I try too hard, I tell myself. Then it’s, I’m not trying hard enough. Push, push! Write more and it will feel better. But then it doesn’t, because there is always so much more writing to do.

Oughtn’t a writer burrow into pillows and muse, and emerge to write about it later, spending weeks ruminating and creating, and then being paid millions for the brilliance of it all? Perhaps—I wouldn’t know—I’m in a different league, that of the addict-writer. The blogging life has a way of feeling a little like crack hits rather than a series of moody pamperings (although moody I am, and apparently, today, pampered)… each post is so live, so in-hand, so temporally electric, that I just can’t wait to post again, until I’m exhausted. And there are moments when I wonder why I do this when it can be so draining, and so little certainty about whether it means anything, or is headed anywhere good.

Being sick puts me in a funny frame of mind. And it’s February. One wants to think spring, but for some reason it’s as though winter has finally arrived here. So the sunlight has that essence of spring in it, that persistent shine and glow and increasing strength that can actually be a bit of an annoying glare (especially when one has not had much sleep, or can’t breathe from congestion). Yet the air is frigid and the wind brutal. Is that just another curious joke? I seem to be surrounded by them.

Anyway crashing is reminding me again to pace myself, go slow, maybe hold back some of my energy a little and keep it in reserve for… some other important thing I could be doing, like… parenting, or cooking, or arranging photo albums. Wait, I never arranged photo albums much. It’s the cooking part I used to do. Parenting, there’s no choice. Except today, of course. Today, I crash. Maybe I savor this, too.

Deep thoughts, What now? | No Comments »

My temporary hibernation period here is coming to a close, seeing as how Punxatawney Phil predicted an early spring, among other factors.

I’ve been busy the last several months, and dealing with the transitions that follow a big job change in the family; namely, my husband’s, from working at a job in our city to a much better one in a far-away suburb.

We’ve tried to give the change some time, knowing that there were hurdles to get over before we could possibly know if the lifestyle is sustainable. We see now that it’s not, so we decided to move at some point closer to the job. The likely move is still months away, since we don’t want to pull the kids out of school unnecessarily, and a few other things will come together this spring to help the move make sense then. But I don’t “wait well,” as my mother has put it.

I spent the fall being productive and transitioning myself between one professional blogging environment to another. I can’t really make a living blogging, but I pretend to by working at it nearly full-time. My monthly payments are a useful stipend covering a portion of the grocery budget.

I now find myself one of blogging’s avid evangelists, having found my calling. It blends my writing with immediacy, audience interaction, and the integration of artistry and technical skills. I can attack the issues that interest me most. In this case, and in this iteration of my career, it’s location-specific city life, and the nature of civilization itself.

It’s through blogging about such topics that I’ve come back around to finding an easy way to express myself artistically, but with a digital camera instead of illustrations. Finding meaning with the camera is a fun exercise. Usually one to draw people when I illustrate, I now find myself not wanting to capture images of people much at all. Instead I like crumbling plaster, moss-overgrown interior brick, and peeling wallpaper.

Springfield is full of empty and neglected spaces to exploit. The tough part is discerning which ones to approach, and in which order, and finding a way to fit it into my schedule. I have not been systematic about this endeavor at all but I am seeing that if I had been a long time ago, I could have accumulated a rather significant collection of photos of beautiful and dilapidated vacant buildings.

I love the stories associated with these buildings, as well as appreciating the structures themselves. The building pictured below is envisioned to become a mid-size urban grocery by its owners. They have been working on a plan to transform the space for several years, and have approached many supermarket owners in the region. If they could even get the prospective grocers to visit the location, certainly upon visiting they have turned down the opportunity. I talked with the owners about how important I think it is that any tenants of the space share their vision for transformation. So many business owners—and people in general—are afraid of this city, and its badly-lit street corners, and its questionable storefronts.

Not so with a group of community gardeners I have had the opportunity to befriend. After losing a city lot to infill housing, they relocated this fall to a lot on a street with a fair number of abandoned homes.

The lot itself is privately owned by a business; the garden is being prepared along a rear wall in an irregularly shaped space. When I visited to take pictures of the group while they put strawberries in and got some beds ready for the winter, I couldn’t help but take some shots of a prominently boarded-up duplex adjacent to the lot.

Wandering around this structure and examining it through my camera lens, I thought about the folks who live across the street, and wondered how it feels to see this house every day as they go about their business. I had a conversation with one of the middle-school-aged neighbors there, and she told me all about the young man who allegedly murdered his mother (stabbing her repeatedly with a pen) in the house on the other side of the garden lot, now vacant as well.

As for this house, it had a lot of overgrown weeds, and some abandoned furniture in the fenced front yard. No stories of murder lingered around it, but instead stories of active illegal use through a busted back door.

On a bright note, and there have been plenty this fall in the context of city life, the state’s new governor paid a historic visit to the city in early January as part of inaugural festivities. I had not previously heard him deliver a speech in person, but it was a pleasure to do so on the occasion of the office-taking of our first African-American governor, and in this oft-neglected westerly city. After the speeches, our mayor and his wife applauded the new governor (far right) and his lieutenant governor (near right), who just left his position as mayor of nearby Worcester.

In December I received a media award from the state chapter of the American Planning Association. Something told me they were as surprised to be giving the award to a blogger as I was to be receiving it from a respected, established institution. The award ceremony took place at a holiday luncheon upstairs at Quincy Market, giving me a good excuse to visit the place for the first time (that I could remember, anyway).

The luncheon was at a place affiliated with Ned Devine’s Irish Pub called Parris. Attending the luncheon were a lot of people who work in the field of urban planning, design, and related community or public/private sector work in Boston and its suburbs. I felt distinctly out of place, but received the award gratefully, largely because it was a real honor to have my work recognized in this way. But also in part for not having to deliver any kind of speech along with it to explain what I do.

Meanwhile, family life goes on as always with customs and traditions and idiosyncracies. My mother turned 60, and my husband turned 35. We celebrated both with equal amounts of love and festivity, but with distinctly varying amounts of candles.

To create my husband’s birthday cake, my mother collaborated with my kids to create this unusually decorated carrot cake, adorned with a “river of ice” and enough candles to set one’s beard afire. The icing is a swirl of blue with brown, chocolate-sprinkle banks, dotted with little silver balls. He was born by a small river in the calm after a winter storm in northeastern Vermont, so it was a fitting tribute to his birthday.

My mother’s celebration was honored by the attendance of my aunt from Ohio and my Texas-born cousin, who just moved to Boston. My aunt brought with her a suitcase gift for my mother, a kind of nostalgic memorabilia time capsule, assembled recently. It contained everything from kitschy inside jokes, like a set of Thanksgiving candles, to musical selections—a Pat Boone vinyl record—to a box full of nostalgic candy.

While my aunt was in the area, we also made a family trek to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The minimalist design of the building is always a fun departure for me from New England’s often hunkered-down, nestled-between-hills feeling.

You can sense Carle’s colorful personality in the place, too. The long hallway features his oversized, textured monochromatic splashes on canvas, which are much like his collages for his children’s book art; the bathrooms are decorated with tiles featuring many of his children’s book characters.

My favorite thing about the museum is the art studio.

The art projects the staff sets up, on a monthly basis or so, lean toward the very-prepared side of things, but what I appreciate about this is the very limited set of materials. Using only what the specific task will allow, how creative can you get?

On this day, the focus was on making comic strips, so we were provided with blank paper, some stencils for making strips out of boxes of varying sizes, some good quality, black fine-point markers, and one-color collage papers to glue onto our comics.

The imagery in the collage materials was very late-19th-century, kind of like the art you might see on a US dollar bill: lots of fine lines, very realistic. There were images of a man hand-cranking his way through water mounted on a sort of swimming bicycle; or a guy in a top-hat with cane and coattails. One shows a bearded man in jacket and tie wearing a lit light bulb on a crown with two wires hanging off him. A limited number of images of animals, people and innovative machines were all included. To tell a story with these characters you really had to use your imagination.

My kids often skip the planned art project and just grab pen and paper, or whatever’s offered, and simply draw.

The great thing about the studio is the atmosphere of creativity. I also like the freedom to imagine here and the lovely view. The windows look out onto what used to be an apple orchard, and many of the old trees have been preserved.

Not long after this, around Halloween, my shaggy-haired son decided he wanted to dress up as a cartoon character, the Nickelodeon child-monk superhero Aang from the show “Avatar.” Being a monk, Aang is bald. He also has a distinguishing blue arrow on his forehead.

My son, caught in a dilemma, really cherishes his long locks. I had not been able to convince him to allow me to trim it for some time, but with the plans for a costume, I saw an opportunity. We compromised on a very short buzz cut, no one being in favor of a total clean shave.

My son is also highly sensitive to certain types of sensory input. For instance, he hates haircuts because it’s as though he can feel each follicle screaming for its life, and most of all the little hairy bits that fall down his neck drive him mad. In order to accommodate this haircut, he innovated a new position to adopt for the occasion.

It ended up serving him pretty well. The haircut was a success. Months later, after another buzz cut at some point in December or so, he now needs another one, but the sheer mention of it nearly causes him to go into fits.

Next up, at some point, I’ll post photos of my recent trip to New York City to attend a work-related party with my husband and his colleagues. They were celebrating (a few days early, as it turned out) the final deal of the acquisition of a minority stake in their company by Time Warner, Inc., and the all-out purchase of their first baby. We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Long Island City, Queens, just across the East River from Manhattan (where we did plenty of walking in the time we could fit it in). Our hotel room overlooked the large scrap yard next door. The party was nine blocks away in an old, converted foundry.

Deep thoughts, Wish fulfillment | 2 Comments »

Lately I’ve been contemplating failure, and how it teaches me lessons. Ah, lessons. Failure. Ineptitude. Growth. Not knowing where I stand, or why I am trying to do what I do. Not knowing what I do. When I saw the news about this coming weekend’s Leonid meteor showers, I thought about how such things are a lovely display even for failures. It’s a self-pity party.

My son brought home a picture of a turkey. He colored it brown, with red feet and a red blibbery-blabbery thing under the chin. Underneath the picture he wrote in pencil, “I am thankful for Rth.” The “t” is a little cross symbol, not evidently a “t” at first. Since he’s just learning how to read and write, it was anybody’s guess exactly what this sentence was meant to say. Thankful for RNX (a local radio station)? Thankful for R+H (his parents’ initials)? Thankful for some animé character I have yet to learn about? Needing an answer to this mystery, I marched outside to ask my son to read it to me.

I interrupted him playing in the waning afternoon light with his brother. They were tossing paper airplanes with little paper clips affixed underneath them. I held up the paper. “What does this say?” He looked at the paper and his expression changed. When he reads, his face completely flattens and placidifies.

“I am thankful for earth,” he said.

Whatever angry beast had been screaming in my heart all day long, feeling the pain of failure, the agony of at-home isolation in a desperate, trash-strewn, poverty-stricken neighborhood, gasped out in momentary relief.

Wish fulfillment | 3 Comments »

My strategic silence here for some weeks was, if not carefully planned, somewhat necessary while I drew inward and made some assessments in the quiet moments I had. Lately I have been pondering the benefits of staying in one place, versus moving away, towards new goals. Which is the harder thing to do?

Sometimes lingering too long in a location can bring on within me a sense of resentment, an impatience for change that simmers to a boil and threatens to cause all of my constructive efforts to be fruitless. If I have a channel for growth—a significant work at which to aim my intense energies—I find a sense of peace.

Picking up and moving is one way to create the opportunities I crave, and yet it is also too easy, in a sense. Looking back on my life, and at the turns in the road where I chose a less-beaten-down path, or so I thought; I wonder now if those weren’t just flights of fancy, and efforts to skirt the difficult task of staying put.

Fueling these thoughts, I immersed myself into Ursula K. LeGuin’s fantasy series, stories of a land she named Earthsea. In the first novel, the early life of a wizard is marked by his restlessness and yearning ego. While being schooled as a young mage, he chooses to show off for a young rival by using his significant power to perform a selfish and rather evil deed—opening a doorway between death and life, calling up some ancient soul to appear before them on a hilltop one dark night. The deed is accomplished, and the rival sufficiently upstaged, but the wizard’s own dark shadow also appears in that moment, a reflection of the darkest side of himself, from the other side of life. The shadow emerges from the doorway as a clawed beast, and rakes its razors across the wizard’s face; an older, wiser, stronger wizard sends it away and closes the doorway, only to die from the required effort, and the shadow is nonetheless released into the world.

The wizard must then come to grips with his act, at first avoiding the consequences of what he did, and then learning to face the fear of the thing, which roams the living world searching for him, clearly able to consume him if it wishes. He realizes that the only way to defeat it is to stop running, and turn around instead; to become the hunter and the one desiring a meeting. This intent alone somehow gives the wizard the upper hand, facing the shadow beast instead of turning his back to it in cowardice. By the end of the story, what brings resolution is not violent triumph but a rather anti-climactic, quiet acceptance: for the shadow is only the ego, the self, and the wizard alone had given it great power in the one act he performed on that dark hilltop.

Like the careless and fearful young wizard, I wonder if I am not sometimes moving from place to place, trying to escape myself, fearful of turning around to see what it is I am fleeing. Is something lurking behind me, some terrible entity that will swallow me up? There are periods of time where my greatest fear is that someone else will discover that anything good I appear to be is actually false. This fear has a long history.

But I do not travel alone: I have brought with me a family, children I am raising, and my attentions have for years been turned to them, and their needs. The fantasy is that I am solo, trekking off to great adventures and new tests and trials, but the reality is that I have simply been meeting the needs of those I serve for this time in my life, exchanging one sacrifice for another, bringing things full circle to the degree possible.

The less I am attached to my children physically, the more I can return to that place where I remember that I am an individual human being, and that fantasy of going off on my own feels closer on the horizon. At times it feels like it would be an evil deed in itself to walk off for a time as though I had none of these obligations, these several sacrifices to make in the interest of other people. At other times it seems the simplest, most beneficial act to perform—that act of tending to oneself after a long period of behaving as though the self had no needs. For the self has to be fed, and nourished. But not worshipped.

My own fear of being too selfish can come back to haunt me in the same ways I wish to avoid the trouble. Simply turning away from that fear doesn’t make it go away.

There are moments of attempted insight when I reflect on my childhood to see if there might be some glimmers of explanation for the struggle. Was there some evil act I performed for which I must repent, or which I must go back and face, and accept as being essentially the darkest side of myself? Was it some form of suffering I endured when I was too young to know the difference, when I was still capable of unwarranted trust? Both, it must be.

The riddle, or the balance, is that while successes are had in either achieving self-acceptance, or in discerning when trust is deserved, I seem to return to a place where the exact same lessons are relevant again, but at higher levels, and in more difficult and complicated ways. The impulse to turn tail and run is not yet routed out of me, causing me to wonder whether I’ve learned anything at all, which drains the confidence necessary to face the new challenge. Yet there are times when turning around is not a sign of cowardice, but a delineation between myself and a situation or person not to be trusted. A riddle indeed. The choice can be perplexing.

I try to spend equal time watching and learning while also moving and acting. I try to make sure an act has been well-thought-out, and that the act is decisive. This does not prevent me from questioning the act, or from making the opposite mistakes. I have been outwardly tender and passive—as a mother with children to raise—for too long to feel headstrong and capable all at once, or to understand adults very well anymore, if I ever did. Yet raising children has a way of fostering in a person those very simple and useful qualities, shedding the unnecessary, losing self so deeply in the process that something unexpectedly new and shiny is born that gradually emerges. This is a mysterious thing, not entirely clear to me, and parenting is not the only path to it.

What act will I take to make change with seemingly so much at stake—namely children, and a marriage? And yet nothing is at stake, we simply are, and whatever happens next is only the next bead on a string. Does one person’s act have that much influence?

Deep thoughts, What now? | 2 Comments »

My city blog, Urban Compass, officially has a new spot to roost.

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At last month’s ULI panel presentation, Jeff Kaplan, an associate with Wulfe & Co. in Houston, Texas, addressed the matter of Springfield’s image and potential for reinvention—with focus on its culture, its economy, and its government. He began by sharing the panel’s observation that there seems to have been a lack of a vision. “The city used to be the City of Homes,” he said, “and today it’s the City of Question Mark.”

“The consensus of our panel,” Kaplan continued, “is that the city should be known as the cultural urban center of the region.”

A lot of American cities, Kaplan pointed out, are creating “faux downtowns, faux urban centers that don’t compare at all to what you have already in your current downtown. Our belief is that you should really focus on branding yourself as the center of the Pioneer Valley region.”

Kaplan called out aspects of downtown as “the soul of the city,” like Main Street, the theaters, and Symphony Hall, saying that they “should reflect the culture of what the city is about.”

What is the city about, then? “If you look at the demographics of your city, things are changing,” Kaplan explained. “Things have changed a lot in the recent past. Almost a quarter of your city is under the age of 25, so you have a very vibrant youth market. The culture, the soul of your city, particularly downtown, need to reflect what’s happened in the city in the last several years.”

Kaplan turned next to the city’s economic prospects, which he conceded were justifiably clouded by some negativism. “At the same time,” he said, “there’s a good base with MassMutual and Baystate. Baystate is the 16th largest employer in the Commonwealth. There’s a burgeoning minority class of entrepreneurs opening businesses. And there’s a real opportunity to collateralize what’s already here, to stimulate further growth downtown.”

As a case in point, Kaplan cited the need to collaborate strategically with universities, as has been successfully accomplished in other cities: “In Chicago, Roosevelt [University] came into a dead department store, in the downtown, and moved all their classroom facilities—it’s a commuter school, not dissimilar from Springfield [Technical] Community College—and it was a real catalyst.”

Listen to Kaplan’s four-minute presentation on Springfield’s reinvention (mp4, 1.9 MB)

A change in perspective can also benefit how we perceive of subsidized housing, with a focus on artists and students. “Although both of these forms of housing are subsidized housing,” Kaplan said, “the market does not perceive that form of housing to be subsidized. The perception is that if you get students or artists on the street, things are cleaning up. There’s plenty of affordable housing today, and the panel’s consensus is that there needs to be a focus on market-rate housing, and particularly on artists’ and student housing. And it’s certainly doable. There’s an incredible building stock to focus on downtown today.”

Kaplan noted that with the economy stagnating, and because resources are limited, the panel underlined that it’s critical for the city to focus its energy on the “right projects.” These include clustering retail to start, creating nodes, for example on Main Street, or in places along the emerging State Street corridor.

“You can plan broadly,” Kaplan said, “but focus the energy, and get two or three of the right catalytic retailers, or universities, to come in, because little deals will lead to a lot if they’re marketed and branded the right way.”

“The message here is that everyone needs to buy into this vision, and push it forward,” he added.

Lastly, on the subject of reinventing government, Kaplan noted the “real need for leadership. There are a lot of opportunities with this young class of people that are coming up. You have an incredible youth market. Those people must be brought into the system.”

“It’s time to get over the past. There’s a lot of bad blood in the city,” Kaplan said. “A lot of people are still living in the past. It’s time to put it aside, and look forward, and focus on that new vision.”

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At the ULI panel’s presentation last month, Ray Kuniansky, Chief Operating Officer for the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, spoke about how to “strengthen the present” and “plan for the future.” He began by praising Springfield’s assets: it’s a compact city with abundant major institutions, beautiful buildings, and many open spaces with greenery and water—making “a beautiful city.”

“You guys have everything,” Kuniansky said. “You’ve got parks, you’ve got water features, you’ve got all these neighborhoods that are within a 15-minute drive of your downtown central area. You’ve got an incredibly diverse and wonderful housing stock. You’ve got architecturally significant buildings. It’s a very compact city here; you can walk just about anywhere in the downtown area.”

Kuniansky went on to describe Springfield neighborhood strategies: conservation, transition, and intervention.

“What’s a conservation area mean? You’ve got high homeownership, with good retail and good services. The strategies would be to enhance them with capital improvements and beautification. We think you’re going to have to work on housing renovation. Don’t lose the stock of beautiful homes that you have here. There’s a reason you were once known as the City of Homes.”

The second strategy Kuniansky outlined is for neighborhoods in transition. “These are areas that are on the edge,” Kuniansky said. “They can go up; they can go down. What do you need to do about that? You’ve got to provide investments in projects that will stabilize these areas. Focus on crime prevention, and retain existing services, while trying to attract new ones.”

Next Kunianksy turned to neighborhoods that are in need of the equivalent of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, calling for an intervention strategy. “These are areas that typically have low homeownership rates, high crime rates, and that overall creates a lowering valuation environment,” Kuniansky said.

“What do you do in these areas? They need major investment. They need catalytic projects. They need extra attention from code enforcement, and additional police patrols. All of these things will help you to begin to stabilize these areas, and give them the opportunity to move up as well.”

Listen to Kuniansky’s three-minute presentation on neighborhood strategies (mp4, 1.3 MB)

Kuniansky turned last to the urban core, which he defined as “the center of employment, culture, government, and unique living spaces.” He continued, “A vital urban core is critical to the long-term health and stability of both the city, including all of the neighborhoods, as well as the region. The downtown here is compact, it’s walkable, it’s accessible—it’s amazing how accessible this downtown is—and it has an incredible sense of history. Capitalize on all of these things. Don’t lose by ignoring what you have.”

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At last month’s ULI panel presentation, Alvin McNeal, Senior VP for Planning and Development at Fraser Forbes Company in McLean, Virginia, spoke about adopting new development strategies in Springfield.

“In reviewing the most successful cities,” McNeal began, “one of the lessons, or recurring themes, all of us have been able to identify is that they began thinking like a master developer, [enabling cities] to create more of a market-driven master plan for taking actions and making things happen.”

“There are certain preconditions, or focal points, that are important,” McNeal continued. “You must identify what your strengths are, and leverage those strengths. …Ultimately, what we’re talking about is polishing your image. Preserving historic buildings, celebrating those existing buisnesses that can make a contribution, not only in the downtown area, but also in your commercial corridors.”

“We want to work consistently with both the private sector as well as our institutional partners,” McNeal said. In mentioning the second action item in the slide above, inventory and classification of vacant properties, McNeal added, “The city has quite an inventory of vacant parcels as well as structures. The panel suggests, in the report, some very specific criteria for evaluating those parcels, in both a short-range as well as a long-range development potential.”

Lastly, the panel recommended securing “a development partner who has the ability, and the willingness, and indeed the capital, to proceed forward with some of the redevelopment that we see in the downtown area, and in your commercial corridors.”

McNeal underlined the need for a visible difference. “That visible difference,” he said, “will be made depending on the choices you make with respect to your priorities.”

Listen to McNeal’s entire seven-minute presentation on development strategies (mp4, 3.4 MB)

McNeal went on to list a few important “preconditions,” as he called them: reduce crime, increase homeownership, and become more business-friendly.

“You must address the issue of crime, and the perception of crime, and I would even go so far as to say the sphere of crime. Some very, very aggressive actions are underway now. We had an opportunity to interview the police commissioner, and he’s very aggressively approaching this issue. We think more can be done, and indeed, he’s doing more. One of the things that has been recommended is that he seek to link with some of the exisiting organizations that can provide additional eyes on the street; for example, the downtown BID, and some of the neighborhood groups, could become a little bit more active in perhaps a watch type program.”

“There are so many vacant properties, under the control of the city or the private sector, that they offer… an unusual opportunity, if you will, to do a variety of things in terms of infill developments in some of the communities that we visited,” McNeal said. “But also in terms of creating a tone within some of the corridors; I think one of our colleagues referred to creating nodes along the commercial corridors. In many instances you’ll have vacant parcels, and vacant structures of sufficient size, to make a difference within those corridors.”

Continuing on the issue of vacancy, McNeal said, “We’ve suggested that you think in terms of bundling some of the vacant lots and to sell them to qualified developers. That expands not only the number of interested parties, but it also has the ability for you to begin to define a certain image by the mere collection of those different parcels in making this visible difference in certain areas.”

(Of note, such bundling was mentioned as a future action item in an article in today’s Springfield Republican. Finance Control Board Executive Director Philip Puccia was quoted by Azell Murphy Cavaan saying, “We’re looking to bundle something such as 20 properties at a time.” No mention was made in the article of the ULI panel’s recommendations on bundling, so we’re left to guess on whether this is a follow-through on suggestions.)

McNeal defined becoming business-friendly as forming partnerships with major employers, “which you’ve done to a certain extent. We’re suggesting that you go the next step, and perhaps create some type of merchants’ association in your downtown area, and perhaps a similar kind of organization along some of the commercial corridors.”

Attention must also be given, for business-friendliness, to “the various permitting processes; your zoning, and your planning process. And we do make very, very specific recommendations in connection with those tools,” McNeal added. “In fact, we are also suggesting the addition of another tool that has been very useful in other cities, that is referred to as a public services program.” The purpose of such a program, McNeal said, is to “start netting together your captial improvements program with your operating budget. It becomes, we believe, a very effective tool for managing development in the city.”

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At the ULI panel’s presentation last month, Patrick Fox, president of Saint Consulting Group in Hingham, Massachusetts, offered the shortest segment about establishing accountability in Springfield.

Offering a single visual element—a slide listing eight critieria for the use of scarce resources, including both land and finances—Fox described a “struggle over the allocation of resources. …There has to be clear accountability, inclusivity, and consistent and reliable decision-making on the part of the city government.”

Fox continued, “The city needs to regain the trust of the business and residential community, and establish consistent guidelines for decision-making.”

The first question to ask in gauging where to allocate precious resources, Fox said, is does the proposed project strengthen the downtown? “We heard from a lot of people, when we did the interviews, that there was too much concentration on the downtown,” Fox said. “The downtown is the key part of the city,” he continued, “and the whole city cannot be healthy unless the downtown is healthy.”

Will the new project provide skilled labor jobs or pay livable wages? Does it leverage private investment? On that note, Fox said, “We’re suggesting three to four dollars private for one dollar, public, spent. It’s important to pick projects that are going to best leverage private investment.”

“Will [a proposed project] improve the quality of life in Springfield, in the neighborhoods, and in the downtown, for its residents?” Fox asked. “Will it increase homeownership? Does it positively impact real estate values? Because as real estate values go up, lots of problems get solved.”

Listen to Fox’s two-minute presentation on establishing accountability (mp4, 1 MB)

“Is it a catalyst for future development? Does it increase local tax revenues?” Fox continued. “Using these criteria, the city should be able to prioritize projects, and ensure that tax dollar impacts are maximized for economic development and the future of Springfield.”

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I’ve been working for a few weeks now with a class at a local elementary school, under the tutelage of the school’s writing instructor, to create a published project generated by the students. The form the project takes will likely be something in print initially, as that comes easiest. I have been hoping also to publish online, since it is low-cost, full-color, and accessible. The writing instructor caught on to this idea favorably and has since been asking questions to learn what is possible both legally and technically.

We learned that the local school department’s policy is that no real names or images of children can be disseminated by the department itself. Articles in the paper that name specific children and their ages, depict them in images, and state where they go to school notwithstanding—since liability for those presumably falls on the shoulders of the publications that publish the information—such identifying information is meant to stay private, according to what the school department can publish. This comes head-to-head with my own urge to give students’ credit for their work, including their name in a bold byline, accompanied by their own smiling photo. Not only might students feel good to see their name up in lights like this; I think their parents and teachers might feel proud, too. And it can encourage further creations, and further publishing. It’s also good for the school district’s public relations: our children are creative producers—here is what they made.

In a meeting with the school department’s Webmaster, it became clear that this issue has arisen before. Several city schools have produced student-created works, whether academic or artistic, that cannot be published online because of the privacy policy. Or, if they are published online, they must be heavily edited to remove images of students and their names.

Our tentative solution is to use unlikely (i.e. not possibly real) pen names, and no photos. The published works of young “Twinkletoes Stardust” are coming soon to a computer screen near you.

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