George Nemeth · Disappointments

December 24th, 2008

Beautifully written piece by Kathleen Cerveny on the Cleveland Foundation’s site:

Why one stand-alone project after another gets us fired up and then leaves us wondering why nothing changes, because we do not plan, focus on the long term, keep building on what we begin? Other cities, it seems, have leaders who envision the future, make plans that move forward and last beyond a single administration, beyond a single developer’s dream of short-term gain. Other cities make commitments and hard choices, stay the course, and attract talent and energy to the cause. These cities end up in a different, usually better, place from where they started, rather than wallowing in self-hate and the self-fulfilling belief that nothing will or can get better…

I’m ok with the rust belt brand. Are you?

Kathleen Cerveny/Arts and Culture » Water Worries and Other Disappointments

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13 Comments »

13 Responses to “Disappointments”

  1. Jack Ricchiuto Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 3:52 am

    Kathleen has a great and honest heart as far back as I can remember and she speaks truth here.

    Profound change, not self-serving change, will occur when every developer puts a $1 million in social engagement for every $1 million in built environment.

  2. Ed Morrison Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    A few years ago, a Brookings report on Cleveland gave some good context. Cleveland started a transformation in the 1980’s. The momentum started slowing in the White Administration.

    The Browns Stadium project proved the turning point. The per capita income data reveal the story. An income growth gap with Pittsburgh opened in the 1990’s and has widened ever since.

    This dynamic can change when enough people in Cleveland lay claim to an alternative future.

    Right now, Cleveland development strategies arise from an inside game rife with self-dealing. We see projects, but no coherence, focus, transparency or accountability.

    It does not have to be.

    Some Great Lakes cities are making promising moves in the right direction. My Great Lakes favorites: Milwaukee, Kalamazoo, Evansville, and the Twin Cities.

    Another example: Oklahoma City moving from heavy dependence on oil.

  3. TimFerris Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    No, I’m not OK with the “rust belt” brand. It’s a negative, a brand of obsolescence, uselessness, and low value. It ignores our intrinsic wealth, a wealth that far surpasses that of most other areas. It makes it possible for cheap suits to begin the dialogue of selling off our assets, or demolishing them, instead of leveraging them. Our natural heritage is incredible, and it led to our built heritage at a time when our country was richest.

  4. TimFerris Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Jack, I think that when we all put people, all people, first and developers way, way down the food chain is when we will have a proper balance. Having developers lead the dialogue is having the tail wagging the dog.

  5. TimFerris Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    George, the time is off here. The last post at 8:22 AM came in at 1:22 PM–I want to be able to savor every hour of this Christmas Eve, and have it recorded as it plays out.

  6. Ed Morrison Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    On the Rust Belt brand, I’m with Tim. Leave it behind.

    We need to build another narrative in the Great Lakes, not embrace one that some bonehead editor in NY gave us twenty years ago.

    The Great Lakes is a deeply different place than either coast. It’s time to knit together a new story based on the core of this remarkable corner of the planet: sustainability, creativity, innovation, community, authenticity.

  7. George Nemeth Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    As I look out my dining room window at the abandoned house next door and think about the sweetheart deal my councilman got, the reality is that America is crumbling.

  8. Kathleen Cerveny Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    I am heartened by this dialogue. Responding to Ed Morrison’s comment about the necessity of seeing an ‘alternative future’ I am reminded of a piece I wrote more than a dozen years ago for the Cleveland Foundation’s Civic Study Commission on the Arts, that envisioned an arts community generously supported – with dollars and participation, by the local community. This 1996 Study Commission was the first study of the arts in 25 years. Its recommendations led to the creation of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, with a mandate to create a cultural plan which would set the stage for an evential effort to generate local public support for the arts. It took more than 10 years of steady working of the plan, bringing the community together and cementing partnerships across public, private, for-profit and non-profit, secular and religious sectors, but with the passage of Issue 18, Cleveland’s arts sector is now among the top five in public support from its local community nationwide – after having not even been on the list of the 50 largest cities in America in this respect. If we can do this in the arts, surely we can do this in other critical areas of this city’s future. The arts had great and steady leadership, though – both from CPAC CEO Tom Schorgl and the arts and civic leadership coalition he forged. We will have to find that if we are to achive an alternative to the rusted continuation of our decline.

  9. Christine Borne Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    Forget about brand – for a long time now, I’ve been thinking about “rust belt” as my ethnicity, of a fashion, similar to “Appalachian.” Geography forces a people to share an experience, and the “rust belt experience” — including economic depression and decay — is what I feel like I’ve shared most with my people. (Maybe taking offense at/embracing the term is a generational thing – I’m 30, and Rust Belt is the only reality I’ve known.)

    And maybe it’s the idea of building another narrative, instead of embracing and exploring the narrative we’ve been dealt, that’s part of the problem here. In the afterword to “Good Roots” (stories about growing up in Ohio), Mark Winegardner talks about the curious absence of a study of the literature of the Midwest. The literature of the South is so well defined (and oft studied) because, he says, the South was “suffused with the defiant fatalism of a conquered nation.” I think we could use some defiant fatalism around here instead of just the scared-little-mouse impulse that we’ve got to deny our ugly recent history and sweep it under the rug as fast as possible and get on with our lives. I think we’ve just got to have some artistic wallowing for a bit.

    The recent CLE- exhibit at Asterisk Gallery – which I didn’t get to see, but which I lived vicariously through via Cleveland Bachelor – was a fantastic opportunity for just this kind of thing.

    (Then again, what we need artistically and what we need economically may not be the same at all. What you guys are talking about vs. what I’m talking about might be as different as apples and oranges, kishka and hurka.)

    Even if I am full of crap here, I wish you all a merry Christmas.

  10. Lynn Phares Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    Cleveland used to be a factory town, so everyone waits for the boss to tell them what to do. But that’s not how vibrant communities work. Vibrant cities are made up of vibrant neighborhoods. It is rare that vibrant neighborhoods are created by government and business leaders. Waiting for a boss to tell us how to fix the city hasn’t worked and isn’t going to work.

    Instead, the question we each need to be focused on is what can I do to make my neighborhood –or even just my block—a better place to live? What can I do to encourage people to visit my neighborhood? What business can I help get started and succeed in my neighborhood?

    For example, we moved here in July 2007. Almost immediately it became apparent that the park just south of us was a magnet for thugs and drug dealing and that kids were rarely playing on the playground. My husband and I started spending 30 to 45 minutes a week picking up trash and broken glass in the park. Other neighbors came out to see what we were doing. One of them got Cleveland Public Power to repair the lighting in the park. We meet folks we probably never would have meet. Pretty soon there was noticeably less drug activity and the kids started coming back to the playground. All it took was one or two people doing something and others realizing there was something they could do too.

  11. Christine Borne Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 3:00 pm

    Lynn: that’s a really fascinating observation about waiting for the boss to tell you what to do.

  12. michael feigenbaum Says:
    December 25th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    in 1976 i left cleveland for san francisco. i felt then i was leaving a dying city filled with corrupt politicians greedy bankers and corporate heads, bigoted masses of every kind, black and white-it all seemed so obvious to me back then, nixon was gone but not forgotten. fast forward 2008, is there any real change? chicago,madoff,wall street greed, as some have said before i too moved back started picking up the broken glass,litter, dirty diapers left behind in the bakery parking lot, i chased out the druggies and hookers at 3 am. for months in 1994 when i first bought the place. but nothing has changed except the place,cleveland, my place on buckeye is that much older and that much more neglected and need of fresh paint, fresh air, fresh face,some enthusiasm please.there will never be leaders we are all the leaders we need but what is not here are masses of people to consume, hang out,wait in line for the coffee and donut, we need 500,000 people to fill in the city or maybe we just turn the rust into compost and farm the city to life.

  13. Ed Morrison Says:
    December 25th, 2008 at 10:39 pm

    Kudos to Lynn. She’s expressed the “it”: We are the leaders we have been waiting for.