“John Parr was an uncommon American citizen.” Those were the words of that my fellow Alliance for Regional Stewardship board member and Citistates colleague, Doug Henton of Collaborative Economics, on the untimely passing of John Parr, a great, boundary-crossing national civic leader. John and his wife Sandy and daughter Chase tragically died in an auto accident in December 2007.

Parr’s lifetime mission was to recognize and motivate others in the arts of community building. He was one of America’s foremost counselors in the area of collaborative government, public/private partnerships, and regional governance. In that tradition, the Alliance for Regional Stewardship, which I am chairing this year, is pleased to announce the John Parr Award, to be bestowed annually by the Alliance for outstanding personal leadership and excellence in advancing regionalism and civic stewardship of metropolitan areas. John himself embodied that ideal through many activities, including his decades of inspirational and practical leadership of the Denver region and his contributions as a co-founder of the Alliance for Regional Stewardship.Your browser may not support display of this image.

John Parr

It is fitting that the inaugural John Parr Award is being presented to Neal Peirce and his Citistates Group co-founders Curt Johnson and Farley Peters. Neal, Curt and Farley shared a lifetime of civic collaboration with John Parr–through the Citistates Group, the National Civic League, and the Alliance for Regional Stewardship. Neal helped recruit John for the National Civic League presidency; John advised the Citistates team on their first “Peirce Report” (for the Phoenix region in 1987); Curtis worked closely with John on many projects including the Boundary Crossers project and book with the late John Gardner; and Farley sparked organization of the Citistates Group in 1995, with John as a charter Associate and speaker.

The John Parr Award will be made annually to recognize individuals who have dedicated their work and personal service, as well as social and political capital, to regional stewardship. The Award named in his honor is the only recognition that the Alliance bestows upon individuals. It was formally presented to Neal, Curt and Farley at the Alliance’s Annual Meeting and Regional Strategies Forum on Wednesday, July 29th in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The John Parr Award recognizes Neal Peirce as one of the most widely-recognized and widely-read writers in the nation about metropolitan regions–their political and economic dynamics, and their emerging national and global roles. His weekly column, syndicated through the Washington Post Writers Group since 1978, appears in over 50 newspapers. Time magazine has called Neal “the only national chronicler of grass-roots America.”

Sharing credit for accomplishments and humility are hallmarks of effective regional stewardship, yet no one can deny the role that individual leaders play in successful regional initiatives and advancing the civic stewardship of regions. Through their over 25 years of producing independent civic diagnostics of over 25 regions, Neal, Curt and Farley have had transformational impacts on the livability and economic competitiveness of regions throughout America.

In our own bi-state St. Louis region, a 1997 Peirce Report published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch proved to be a civic wakeup call for St. Louis, generating unified region-wide action which has stimulated some $5 billion in reinvestment in the region’s center city and launching the region as the BioBelt: The Center of Plant & Medical Sciences.

Citistates co-founders Neal Peirce, Farley Peters, and Curtis Johnson.

Neal, Curt, and Farley established the Citistates Group in 1995 with the goal of bringing an array of public policy, regional and economic development expertise together in a collaborative group that could be accessible to people trying to solve regional and community problems anywhere in the country. Since then, the Citistates Group has emerged as a nationally-recognized network of journalists, speakers, community and economic developers and advisers committed to competitive, equitable, and sustainable metropolitan regions. Their trademark “Citistates Reports” (formerly “Peirce Reports”) — independent assessments of a particular region’s major problems and opportunities — have been catalysts for change in metropolitan areas regions across the country. Their most recent book, Century of the City — No Time To Lose–reflects their experience covering the Bellagio Global Urban Summit sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation during the summer of 2007.

The New England Futures Project, co-sponsored with a newly-formed New England Partnership of leading civic organizations, will be launched the weekend of October 1-2 with release of the first of six major articles, made available on a monthly basis to all interested New England newspapers and broadcasters. Over 50 newspapers across the six-state region have signed up to receive the series.

THE NEW ENGLAND FUTURES PROJECT – Topic draft, September 2005

Series Title: New England: New Century, New Game

October release: – Six teams — or one? Is New England fated to be an old, cold, blue corner of a red-hot America, too divided (Red Sox-versus-Yankees territory, north versus south) to compete nationally and globally in a perilous 21st century? Or can it bring its enormous human and intellectual talents to bear, six states working collectively to forge joint strategies and a distinctive New England brand for the times?

November: Take the offense on energy. The days of easy-come oil and gas are fast-disappearing. Imagine a coordinated New England-wide strategy to push hard on energy conservation, develop bio-fuels, wind farms, build new “green” buildings and retrofit old ones. Add up the initiatives, link them across six states, and New England could assure its security and keep more dollars at home rather than paying Texans or Saudis. And, it could increase air quality, bolster local agriculture with energy crops, and produce a new wave of jobs for both skilled white collar scientists and blue collar workers.

December: Growth gamble. New England’s losing ground: its population is aging rapidly; its loss of 20-to-34 year olds was twice the U.S. average in the ‘90s. Towns fearful of higher property taxes resist families with school-age kids; some demographers see “slow economic suicide.” Sprawl imperils the region’s world-signature countryside; housing costs soar; local government inefficiency inflates costs. Possible solutions: more family-friendly policies, big pushes for affordable housing, protecting open countryside and channeling development toward old working class cities, state-offered carrots and sticks to cut local government costs.

January: Play a smarter education card. New England, America’s Athens, faces fierce university competition, from Chapel Hill to Bangalore. Tuitions are soaring, attendance is static, public universities undernourished. Why not imagine all New England as one great campus, with a radical new way for students (local or across the world) to tailor their own New England education, in classroom or on-line? And to educate everyone, merge high school and community college efforts to curb dropouts; determine to make knowledge workers of immigrants.

February: Connect to compete. To compete, New England needs border-to-border broadband — soon. And to score, it needs earliest-possible attention to glaring deficiencies in the regional transportation system — roads, rail, air, water and interconnections. A first agenda: Can the six governors galvanize a coalition to save and rebuild the rail connections for the Northeast corridor and all of New England?

March: Health — Consumer as captain. New England prizes the economic jewel of its great teaching hospitals and laboratories. But high tech medicine alone isn’t delivering healthy lives: error rates, system waste, numbers of uninsured people are far too high. Rx: consumers armed with information to share health decisions with their doctors; computer-based scorecards showing which health providers provide best results; heightened focus on public health and healthy lifestyles

Up to now, there’s been a deep division within California on ballot-box zoning. The “blue” coastal counties — where Democrats rack up huge margins — have been rife with ballot-box zoning for years.

But the “red” inland areas — where Republicans predominate — have not. According to California Planning & Development Report data going back to 1986, more than 700 ballot-box zoning measures have appeared in the last 20 years — but only a few have ever appeared in inland counties. (For more detail, see www.solimar.org/pdfs/growth_mgmt_report.pdf).

Now that may be changing. In fast-growing San Joaquin County seven different measures appeared on Tuesday’s ballot in the cities of Stockton, Tracy, and Lodi. The result was a mixed bag — with, oddly, environmentalists and developers winning out on different issues — but the amount of ballot activity was the most seen in any inland California county in recent years. For the record, San Joaquin County went for Bush, 54%-45% over Kerry. (A complete account of ballot-box zoning results is available at www.cp-dr.com.)

And every indication is that ballot-box zoning will continue to penetrate the California’s red counties. According to polling from the Public Policy Institute of California , some 75% of the state’s residents believe they should be able to vote on important growth issues — and that figure is just as high in the Central Valley as it is in San Francisco and Los Angeles. So stay tuned.

Printed by the Boston Globe, the report — Boston Unbound: Tapping Greater Boston’s Assets and Talents to Create a World-Leading Citistate (PDF-24pgs) — hails the Boston region’s world-class intellectual assets but warns of complacency. It challenges the region to tackle major issues ranging from perils to its healthcare sector to emerging growth options, an expanded regional leadership role for universities to the idea of “smart energy” as a spark for the area’s future.

“This is a heads-up,” Speaker Finneran told the Boston Globe. “This is about the future of the whole state, from Boston to the Berkshires, and my greatest concern is complacency.”

The report’s findings sparked a series of articles in the Boston Herald touching on leadership, healthcare and workforce. It also highlighted the report’s “Paradox Place,” sidebar citing contradictory characteristics of a region that features “thousands of humble people in a culture hard-wired for hubris.”

The Boston Business Journal noted that Peirce and Johnson found a sophisticated and fragmented power structure that struggles to make the most of its many assets. The editorial concluded, “Some fear Massachusetts will wake up in 10 years and find that it has lost many of its competitive advantages. Reports such as Citistates’ help us think past long-held, stratified boundaries that hold us back.”

In its descriptive press release, The Boston Foundation, sponsor of the project concludes, that it “intends to hold a series of ongoing discussions on Boston Unbound over the next several months as a way to engage civic leaders in looking for ways to act on the report’s findings.”