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For a profile on Sarah Szurpicki click here

Values, Values, Values
I subscribe to the notion that we urgently need young talent to establish their homes here in Michigan because we need them to eventually occupy positions being vacated by retiring baby boomers, to start businesses, to support a service industry, to send their kids to our public schools, and to champion our cultural institutions—to do the things that people in communities do. But there is also an even more urgent need that only the younger generation can fill: Michigan's communities need to be infected by their values.

GLUE Principles Urbanism: Cities are our world's economic drivers. Decision makers cannot afford to underestimate their value nor overlook their needs. Regionalism: Great Lakes urban centers need to overcome outlooks of despair and isolation by forging a shared perspective and developing strength in numbers. Storytelling: White papers alone cannot propel an agenda. No need is expressed more powerfully than via human narrative. Building Networks: Connecting people and institutions will foster regional collaboration and transfer examples of success throughout the region.

Where once some of us might have adorned jean jackets with pins that said "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute!" (and by “some of us,” I mean me) we now are trained to think about reducing our carbon footprint by taking public transit, designing green homes, carpooling rather than private jetting, and feeding our inner locavore.

People around my age have grown up with the progressive values that our cities need, both to thrive, and to be attractive to the young people who share those values. We are pro-tolerance, pro-diversity, pro-sustainability, pro-equity. There are some lessons that exacted a great emotional toll on our parents; my generation has the benefit of the lesson without the learning. While we still feel the effects, we're not hampered by the emotions incurred­­—anger, guilt, or otherwise—by the riots and white flight of the '60s and '70s. We weren't there.

A Catch-22
In December, GLUE conducted a poll of our members, asking what issues GLUE should prioritize in 2009.

• 93 percent of respondents believe that public transportation should be a priority.

• 94 percent feel the same way about promoting walkability and decreasing sprawl.

• 89 percent think we should care about promoting cooperation between municipal governments, especially between central cities and their suburbs.

• 69 percent want us to work on government transparency.

GLUE really has its work cut out. Besides the fact that our members have high expectations, this shows me that people who have chosen to live in a "rust belt" city want city amenities and features that will actually make our cities more sustainable and more democratic. The things that will make our cities better are the same things that will make young people want to live here; if they live here, they'll help to create the things that will make our cities better. It's like Field of Dreams—without the baseball-playing ghosts. One would be hard pressed to conceive of a more appealing catch-22.

The Same Boat
Our industrial legacy means that most of our cities face the same challenges, varying o

nly by degrees. Our survey revealed no meaningful divide about issues along geographic lines. The 94 percent of our members who support greater walkability are from all the GLUE cities, including Michigan’s. Our cities' residents are in agreement about (at least some of) the elements that would improve life here.

GLUE Activities Promote the concept of mega-regionalism and the importance of urban revitalization. Develop a community of individuals and organizations who would benefit from participation in a mega-regional network focused on urban change. Develop tools, share resources, and facilitate conversations that empower change agents to engage in the network, and to engage better in their communities. Advocate for policies that promote healthier and more prosperous futures for Great Lakes cities.

Too often, government, politics, and even non-profits are proprietary and exclusionary. Maybe it’s because we haven’t settled into our roles, and our projects are perpetually underfunded, but initiatives led by young people are rarely hampered by self-defeating competitiveness.

At GLUE's inaugural conference one year ago, participants climbed aboard a yellow school bus, for an "alternative" tour of our host city, Buffalo, NY. Two members of the Buffalo contingent served as our main tour guides. They often paused to defer to other Buffalonians on the bus—"You work in this neighborhood, why don't you take over," or "You run the Village Association. How did this neighborhood turn around?" Beyond their admirable humility, their willingness to pass the baton demonstrated that these Buffalonian young leaders, while operating in diverse sectors, felt confident that they shared a view of Buffalo, its challenges, and its strengths—and that they would represent the city's "condition" with attention to similar details.

For instance, no one on that bus missed Anthony's implication of institutionalized racism when he said, "It is a travesty that this waterfront park is in this state." Nobody suggested that a park near a richer, and whiter, neighborhood, would exist in the same state of neglect. And, most importantly, nobody believed that Buffalo's long-term success isn't partly dependent on its ability to create safe, usable green spaces for more than just its more affluent children.

Competition Is Entrenched But Outdated
After our bus tour of Buffalo, participants repeated, "That looked just like Cleveland.” Or Pittsburgh. Or Flint. They saw Milwaukee, Detroit, and Lansing in the vacancy and reuse, declining industry and new technology, old ethnic neighborhoods and new immigrant communities, and the slowly re-densifying downtown districts of Buffalo. It was as if they were staring into a mirror. Rather than seeing in Buffalo a competitor for young talent, we saw a partner.

GLUE Values Information sharing Transparency Inter-sector/inter-city cooperation Mainstreaming good ideas, big and small The active solicitation of multiple perspectives Long-term, sustainable thinking and action Tolerance and inclusion across policy fields

In our new "flat world," there's no way that one of our mega-region's cities will be successful while the others fail. Businesses are more likely to land in Flint if they know that their supply needs can be met in Cleveland and Toledo, their marketing and technology needs in Detroit, and their financial needs in Chicago. Our new industries should be coordinated mega-regionally; our political weight should be channeled for Great Lakes Compact-style legislation mobilization (may I suggest: Great Lakes Light Rail?).
The next generation of leaders, through technology, organizations like GLUE, and their own prerogative, will be networked in a way to make this mega-regional cooperation real. But we cannot afford to wait for them to come into power.

As Michigan enters its ninth year of recession, it's clear that the rest of the country has written us off. The U.S. won’t be able to similarly ignore an organized mega-region that is the source of 29 percent of the country's public and private research and development, 33 percent of its bachelor degrees, and 33 percent of its gross state output. Our success is dependent on whether we can harness the values of the next generation and the strength of our mega-regional status, which should be described thusly: powerhouse. Mega-regionalism has to be more than a concept or even a community. It has to be a real alignment of assets and economic, social, and political strategies to solve our many real problems.

As we say at GLUE, welcome to the mega-regional family.

1 The Belle Isle Observatory, Detroit
2 Adaptive re-use in St. Louis
3 Milwaukee Art Museum
4 Wicker Park, Chicago

 

Sarah Szurpicki is a director for GLUE. You may reach her at sarah@gluespace.org. For more information on GLUE, visit www.gluespace.org.