Neighborhoods
Rob Handy, River Road Community Organzation
What makes a neighborhood a desirable, livable place to call home? What makes a neighborhood more than simply geographical boundaries on a map, but a living, breathing community of people with common values and interests?
At the inception of American cities, neighborhoods grew up around industry. Generally, the people who lived in these neighborhoods either worked nearby or provided services to the same neighborhood.
These communities were very stable and their population shared similar values and concerns. Neighborhood public schools were the pride of a community, often doubling as social and educational centers.
Today it is more challenging to identify inter-connected community within a city and its neighborhoods. Increasingly, residents choose to work, shop, play, and school their children in different parts of town than where they live. As our lifestyle choices increase, what is the glue that holds together neighborhood residents and businesses with a sense of place?
Oregon was a pioneer in codifying public involvement as Goal 1 of our trail-blazing state land-use guidelines. The visionaries of that bipartisan effort understood that involving the public at the beginning phase of planning was vital to the success of any plan, and a foundation for our democracy.
For many Eugene planners and decision makers today, engaging energetic public involvement seems to have become an afterthought. It may be seductive to believe that policy creation and implementation can skip over community involvement yet still find success and support as a top-down exercise.
And when inappropriate planning lacks community support, and proposed projects become controversial, it may be tempting to place blame on pesky residents, who may seem to show up at the last minute - and always in opposition.
Are residents really just reactive or ignorant? Or are there flaws in what passes for our current public-involvement processes? Are Crest Drive-area residents just against street widenings? Or maybe we are hearing them voice their shared values and vision for preserving heritage trees, promoting equity in street-improvement assessments, and maintaining neighborhood character.
Are the neighbors in Santa Clara just against a large community park that would accompany a land-swap proposal and development scheme from the McDougal Bros.? It may be that residents are asking savvy questions about the impacts of new development on already strapped transportation infrastructure and schools, and about the loss of prime Class 1 farmland that would result from an Urban-Growth-Boundary expansion. Can we hear these residents say that developing several small, accessible pocket parks throughout Santa Clara is more desirable than a traffic-inducing regional park at the UGB?
Is it that the four neighborhoods adjacent to the Union Pacific Railyard are simply against noisy trains? Maybe they are searching for a way to prioritize a community-wide public-planning process for this large, polluted industrial site and to envision a future use for the site that would be compatible with the surrounding neighborhoods, as well as the broader community.
Are the residents of the West University Neighborhood just concerned about student housing rented from out-of-town landlords? Or can we hear that these neighbors want to shepherd the interests of both the local community and the University?
Is it that the County residents of River Road and Santa Clara are simply enemies of the City of Eugene who want to be left alone? Maybe these residents have legitimate concerns about whether annexation to the City and the accompanying rise in property taxes will mean a commensurate increase in urban-service delivery.
Are these residents being unreasonable when they identify heritage characteristics of their neighborhoods that they want to see preserved 50 years from now --- and when they ask planners to forge plans with appropriate neighborhood scale, tenor, and compatibility?
Are neighbors downwind of the JH Baxter plant in Trainsong and Bethel being unreasonable to want to go outdoors without having to breath toxic air? Is it that residents of the Friendly neighborhood are just wannabe cops? Or are they to be commended for making streets safer by staffing a residents radar patrol?
Can we praise Friendly, Amazon, Jefferson, and Southeast-area neighbors for volunteering to plant street trees in roundabouts and proactively supporting other forms of traffic calming? Or must they be viewed as do-gooders with too much time on their hands?
Are residents opposed to a $169M West Eugene Parkway proposal simply against highways
or can we hear that folks value wetlands habitat and public parkland, and that they prioritize funding of infrastructure improvements along existing roads like Beltline, rather than building new roads?
Can we respect the intelligence of residents when they ask to prioritize reinstatement of the neighborhood matching-grants program, or when they ask that the city investigate the savings and benefits other communities have realized by hiring independent auditors?
Can we accept that the citizenry is informed when they ask for not just any external review for police, but an external-review process that has proven to be successful elsewhere?
Public discourse in Eugene has a reputation for being spirited. Is it simply because the public is reactionary? Or perhaps residents have core values and vision for the health of this community, but without an empowering public-planning process we are missing a constructive conduit for channeling our vision and energy.
Eugene finds itself at a crossroads. Our new mayor, Kitty Piercy, is aware of the importance of supporting grassroots neighborhood vision. Our city manager, Dennis Taylor, got his start in civic advocacy and public service in Helena, Montana, after his downtown neighborhood was punctured by urban-renewal decisions that resulted in a monstrous parking lot.
Our police chief, Robert Lehner, champions community policing as a tool to help neighborhood residents and businesses build trust and accountability with their civic institutions.
So how do we connect the dots between these noble concepts and the fiscal realities that leave many great ideas on the cutting room floor of the budget-making process? How do we get more police on the ground doing community policing?
Can we acknowledge school choice, while simultaneously infusing neighborhood schools with the support and funding they need, so families can keep their children in the neighborhood, building community pride and connection to the physical environment? How do we create a caring community for our youth - one that imbues a sense of place, where they can learn that freedoms go hand-in-hand with responsibility?
What is the mix of public involvement that faithfully engages a community? To what degree do resident values and vision get front-loaded in planning processes so that there is community buy-in when it comes to decision making that impacts neighborhoods?
Washington D.C. has delegated much of its decision-making regarding neighborhood-funding priorities to the neighborhoods themselves. Albany, Oregon, has decreed that developers must consult with neighborhoods to get buy-in on proposals before development plans are submitted to the city. Can we learn from these and other communities?
The International Association for Public Participation delineates a full spectrum of increasing levels of public participation in community-planning processes, and describes how increasing public commitment correlates with increasing participation. Copies of their chart are available at the literature tables.
Most basic is a commitment to INFORM the public with balanced and objective information. The next level is to CONSULT with the public, to solicit comment, acknowledge concerns, and provide feedback about how public-input influenced decision making.
Higher participation INVOLVES a community throughout a process, to ensure that concerns and issues are directly reflected in alternatives developed.
The next level is to COLLABORATE, involving the public in each aspect of decision making, seeking and incorporating direct advice in formulating solutions to the maximum extent possible.
And finally, we could EMPOWER the public, by placing some final decision-making in the hands of citizens, with the promise to neighborhoods: "We will implement what you decide."
Eugene has almost 20 active neighborhood associations that, during this past year, have published more than 60 newsletters or postcards and collectively have held hundreds of meetings, election forums, and potlucks. Food, schools, living-wage jobs, and the natural environment are common currencies of our shared values and vision.
When core groups of residents make a common investment in a comprehensive view of their environment, neighborhoods can be at the forefront in articulating community vision. With such vision, a city can become proactive, and can strive to develop a beneficial business- and social environment - to build a community that is vibrant, thriving, and responsive to its citizens.