Interested readers and subscribers will release a once-a-week release with two columns–

(1) My regular column syndicated (since 1978) by the Washington Post Writers Group — and

(2) A new Citiwire.net column, authored by a different member of the Citistates Group (www.citistates.com) each week.

We hope readers will enjoy both.  The goal: enhanced journalism on the major changes in cities and regions now impacting American life.

Existing subscribers to the Peirce Column list will automatically be transferred to the Citiwire.net weekly e-mail list.

Others are invited to sign up through this link:

http://citiwire.net/subscribe/

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

‘DISRUPTING CLASS’ –
EXCITING HOPE FOR OUR SCHOOLS

By Neal Peirce

Surprise #1: America’s public schools are actually improving, average scores inching upward despite increased numbers of immigrant and often poorly-prepared children.

But we’re still losing — failing to inspire and fully prepare — roughly half our children. Most are bright and curious, and can be taught.  Just check how many, even from the poorest neighborhoods, are “digital natives.”  And all are needed in the new global economy.  Which leads to:

Surprise #2: The school system as we know it — 20 to 30 children in a classroom, sitting mostly passively through instruction, moving grade-to-grade with preset courses in rigid sequence — is toast.

Surprise #3: A fascinating “disruptive technology” has started to displace big chunks of schooling as we know it.  It’s called student-centric learning — individualized instruction, or better put, students progressing at their own pace, guided by computer programs tailored to their learning levels and personal learning strengths.  A process in which teachers instruct less, coach more.

Prediction: In 10 years, computer-based, student-centric learning will account for 50 percent of the “seat miles” in U.S. schools. By 2024, roughly 80 percent of courses will be taught this way.

So who says all this?  The answer is Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School’s famed expert on how “disruptive technologies” challenge and displace long-dominant industries. Together with my Citistates Group colleague, Curtis Johnson, and Michael B. Horn of the Innosight Institute, Christensen is a coauthor of a new book, “Disrupting Class,” just published by McGraw Hill.

When businesses fail, according to Christensen’s 20 years of research, it’s usually because they’re high proficiently at — but have great difficulty abandoning — the processes they’ve long excelled in.  So rivals develop radically new products, often inferior at first, but reaching previously unserved customers and improving over time, disrupting and eventually taking over the field.

Example: first transistor radios such as upstart Sony’s in the 1950s. The first were low quality but they were portable– so that kids could listen to rock music away from their parents.  Before long, the big old tube-based radios (and many of their manufacturers) were history.

A similar disruption is now hitting America’s public schools with their century-old standardized grade levels and assumption that courses can be put in rigid sequence, taught to all kids of a similar age at the same time and speed.  Like the industrialized factory on which they were modeled, the schools and their row-upon-row classrooms are rapidly being undermined by flexible new models designed to accommodate kids’ learning differences.

For evidence check the number of home-schooled children- up from 850,000 in 1999 to over 2 million today.  Add to that the rapid rise of charter schools with their experimental, more flexible formats.  And computer-based courses created by private firms.  The computer learning programs have skyrocketed from 45,000 in 2000 to roughly 1 million today, and they’re fast improving with enhanced video, audio and interactive elements, including formats to reach different types of learners.  More than 25 states now have supplementary virtual schools.

If there were ever a “disruptive” technology, this is it!  And it works precisely because our brains seem coded to learn in so many different ways — for some of us visually, others by taking notes, and with special intelligences ranging from linguistic to spatial to logical-mathematical.
Student-centric instruction  allows adjustments to the optimal learning capacities of school pupils.  Ironically, it’s a little bit like the one-room classrooms of the 1800s, in which teaching was customized by necessity as teachers spent most of their day going from student to student at different grade levels, providing personally tailored instruction and assignments.

But in 1900 only 50 percent of 5- to 19-year olds were enrolled in school. The new demand then was to educate everyone, at least prepare everyone for vocations in an industrializing economy.  Almost 60 years later came the Sputnik scare, obliging more focus on science and math.  And we keep asking schools for more .

And now, with No Child Left Behind, we’ve moved the goal posts again, decided for a 21st century economy it’s not enough for public schools to raise average scores, rather it’s to assure every child improves his or her test scores to qualify for a high skill- and knowledge-based employment.

The genius of “Disrupting Class” is the spotlight it throws on how we can tap children’s early enthusiasm for school by letting them learn in best-choice, individualized ways, the teacher’s role transformed from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.”

Will teacher unions resist?  That’s the great fear experts raised to the book’s authors. But with looming teacher shortages as the baby boom generation retires, teachers may only have time for math and reading basics. The new wave of computer-based courses may, indeed, be arriving just in the nick of time.

The event is scheduled for 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at an especially fitting location — the Regional Enterprise Tower at 425 Sixth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. The tower houses virtually all the major regional organizations of the Pittsburgh region, including the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. Formerly the corporate headquarters of ALCOA, the building was turned over to the regional groups at the instigation of Paul O’Neill, ALCOA’s then-CEO (and later U.S. Treasury secretary) when ALCOA moved to another headquarters building in the city.

An earlier tribute to John’s work and life in the Denver and Colorado communities in particular, and to his wife Sandy and daughter Chase who lost their lives in the same December automobile accident, was held in Denver February 29, with more than 1,500 people in attendance. But John’s colleagues in the Citistates Group, National Civic League and others, believe that there should be a national event, focused on John’s remarkable legacy of invigorating cities and civic life all over the United States. The July 29 date also provides all who are interested an opportunity, following the late afternoon event in John’s honor, to register and take part in two activities of the Alliance for Regional Stewardship, which John led for several years. (The ARS is currently being operated as a program of the American  Chamber of Commerce Executives — ACCE).

The first ARS event will be a July 29 dinner at 6:30 p.m., at the William Penn-Omni Hotel – a short walk from the reception. The dinner will feature awards for outstanding regional accomplishments and pay tribute with a special new award to the lives of John Parr and Joan Riehm of Louisville. (Joan, who died earlier this year, was an outstanding civic leader in the new Metro form of government there and former ARS chair.)

The second ARS event will be an all-day program July 30 focused on “Organizing and Mobilizing Regions for Sustainable Development,” including a number of noted speakers including

• Bruce Katz, Director, Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, Blueprint for Prosperity
• Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO, Global Urban Development
• Petra Todorovich, Director, America 2050, Regional Plan Association
• Michael Langley, Chairman, Alliance for Regional Stewardship, and President & CEO, Allegheny Conference on Community Development
• Richard C.D. Fleming, President & CEO, St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association
• Robert Grow, Founding Chair, Envision Utah

All friends of John Parr are invited to the 4 p.m. Regional Enterprise Tower reception at no charge. For the ARS dinner there is a $75 charge. To participate in the dinner and the July 30 program, there is a discounted ARS member rate of $195. The registration fees and way to get a discounted hotel rate are described in the following link.

Click here for more details or to register>>

To be eligible for the ARS member rate, insert “ARSGuest” on the coupon code line. To register at one of the designated hotels under the ARS-ACCE group rate, check http://www.acce.org/forumhotel.

In addition, if you plan to attend the 4 p.m. celebration of John’s life, please send a confirming e-mail to Farley Peters, business manager of the Citistates Group (fpeters@citistates.com). We want to know who’s coming, to prepare name tags, plan the program and assure room set-up and refreshments. We believe all these events should be memorable moments — in John’s spirit — for people who care about the future of regions and all those leading the charge to make them more competitive, sustainable, civic places to live.

For The Citistates Group –Neal Peirce, Curtis Johnson and Farley Peters

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

WASHINGTON — A Chesapeake Crescent organization, pushed by business forces and enthusiastically supported by the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the mayor of the nation’s Capital City, has just been announced. It could be a national example of collaboration across city and state lines, tied to 21st century priorities of radical energy savings, compact, transit-accessible development, and a sustainable environment.

There’s no doubt that the initiative marks an amazing shift. Quibbling, tax-base stealing and big job-residence mismatches plagued the National Capital Region of Washington, suburban Northern Virginia and Maryland over the last half of the 20th century. Even the supposedly progressive Clinton Administration failed to lift a finger to push more coherent regional development.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, a regional Emergency Preparedness Council, based in the region’s Council of Governments and endowed with prominent business support, was formed. But a hopeful “Envision Greater Washington’ effort, begun in 2005 and focused on less sprawling growth in a region second only to Los Angeles in traffic congestion, failed to gain traction.

George Vradenburg, the former executive of AOL, CBS Inc. and Fox Inc. who was a key leader of “Envision” and now the Chesapeake Crescent, explains: It’s just too tough to change behavior of local governments. Why? They instinctively chase commercial jobs for their rich revenue base, and drag their heals on less-tax-lucrative housing opportunities. So housing gets pushed out, with sprawl clogging the roads — an unsustainable growth pattern. The “tragedy,” Vradenburg adds, is that local leaders know the bad result but simply “can’t change their behaviors.”

So Vradenburg and his colleague Herb Miller, CEO of a development firm that’s built major Washington projects, decided on a radical shift. They approached Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to argue that their total jurisdictions, not just Washington and its immediate environs, need to coalesce for global competitiveness.

The main reason: the jurisdictions’ shared, vital interest in their biggest single employer — Uncle Sam. In fact, the federal government’s first, second and third largest employment centers anywhere are in Greater Washington, Baltimore and Norfolk. Federal agencies are having difficulty recruiting people to the region because of congestion and high housing prices.

But if the imaginative new answers are found — such as creating transit town centers up and down the I-95 corridor, from northeasternmost Maryland to Richmond, Norfolk and the Hampton Roads area in Virginia — then there’s a chance to create housing that is affordable, commute-accessible to federal work centers, but doesn’t clog the roads further.

Lining up the financing, rail service and support will be a formidable challenge. But the governors at least grasp the need for new answers. Virginia’s Kaine: “In the 21st century economy, we know that regions, not artificial political boundaries, compete for talent and capital.” Or Maryland’s O’Malley: Government and business together need “to expand our definition of community beyond any one metro area.”

Smart energy innovations can be a big driver of regional competitiveness — indeed an issue potentially “bigger than the Internet,” says Vradenburg, pointing to global demand as emergent nations drive up oil costs, the national security need to reduce U.S. oil use accelerates, and political pressure mounts to respond to climate change through sharply reduced fossil fuel use.

“Greening” of office buildings with energy retrofits can save $3.6 billion yearly in the immediate Washington area alone. The capital markets firm Hannon Armstrong, in partnership with Virginia Tech and Pepco, a local utility, has committed $500 million to finance private office building energy efficiency programs. The investment will be paid back entirely from the energy savings, with no up-front investment by the owner. The same could be done for government buildings, with immense greenhouse gas emission cuts, notes Vradenburg.

The states could also create big scale economies in combined efforts to capture power from wind off the Chesapeake Bay, or tidal power from the ocean. Or work on shared biofuels generating capacity. Or promote plug-in hybrid vehicles, expected to be commercially available in 2010, with utilities leveling their power load without added carbon emissions. How? — by loading power into cars parked at home garages at night, then reverse the flow to withdraw the electricity from the vehicles parked in work-site garages during daytime hours when there’s heavy air-conditioning demand.

The intriguing idea here: applying an entrepreneurial and imaginative mindset to state policy-making. In the process accruing big benefits back to the major metro regions, where the business (and university and technical lab) skills to expand the new ideas are rooted.

Then imagine expanding such approaches to such issues as workforce training (two-thirds of today’s federal workers are baby boomers who will retire in the next decade). Focused regional-based business interest won’t easily solve such challenges. But it can open minds, spark fresh debates, new approaches. Precisely what these challenging times demand.

© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group

An open letter to the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates:

When will you finally start talking about the issues that matter specifically to cities and metro areas that are home territory to 80 percent of America’s people?

Sure, from Point Barrow, Alaska to Key West, Fla., most Americans care about the national issues — Iraq, taxes and health care, who’ll have the steeliest eye confronting foreign adversaries, or handling the newest hot-button topic, immigration.

But even the issues that look national can prove to be very urban and local.

The nation’s economy functions mostly thanks to 361 metropolitan regions, responsible for over 85 percent of U.S. jobs, income and output.

Or take immigrants. Overwhelmingly, they’re landing in metro America. Beyond sending in federal agents for spot arrests of undocumented immigrants, what’s Washington doing to help localities cope with a tidal wave of skill-short, English-deficient new arrivals? Or finding more affordable housing opportunities for long-term Americans too — or dealing with today’s mortgage foreclosure crisis? Do you have any new ideas?

Climate’s a mega-issue, finally getting a smidgen of White House interest. But real cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will have to be focused at the metropolitan level where most energy is burned. Over 500 city leaders have signed the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement initiated by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. But individual cities’ climate efforts won’t make much difference if neighboring jurisdictions in their metro areas just shrug their shoulders. Please, candidates, tell us how federal carrots and sticks could get all our localities working together for greenhouse gas reductions that really matter.

Or how would you propose to reshape federal narcotics policy after 30 years of a disastrously ineffective “war on drugs” that’s propelled us into the biggest prison population of any nation on the planet? We have spent billions to run penitentiary systems, yet fearfully dangerous drug markets still plague many inner-city neighborhoods. What would you do about that?

Traffic congestion is becoming completely intolerable in many metro regions. There’s scarcely any space for new roads, and everyone recoils from new gas taxes. Federal transportation policy is in a shambles, even while foreign oil dependence imperils our national security.

There was a ray of sunshine on this issue in the last New Hampshire debate, as Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico insisted on the need for “a transportation policy that doesn’t just build more highways.” Richardson continued: “We have to have commuter rail, light rail, open spaces. We have to have land use policies where we improve people’s quality of life.” Sadly, the rest of you failed to respond– and now Richardson is withdrawing from the campaign.

And what about infrastructure? Falling down bridges, deteriorating highways, aging dams, failing water systems in the face of rising pockets of severe drought — and you would-be chief executives hardly mention the topic? Let’s get real! How do we rebuild a greener, safer, more economically competitive America, focused on the metros where most of us live? Where’s the new federal-state-local partnership to make it happen?

Maybe you all need to read the America 2050 platform of the Regional Plan Association and its allies, with its specific formulas of where we need to go to rebuild infrastructure, develop new energy sources, reduce our carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, build “mega-region” rapid rail systems up to world standards, and more.

You keep talking about hope, candidates. Let’s make it a bit more real!

The Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program is making a major issue of metro areas in the campaign. For further inspiration, try going to the web site of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, which has a group of mayors making video pitches for an array of federal initiatives and partnerships.

Focus on jobs, crime, housing, infrastructure, education and the environment, Mayor Manny Diaz of Miami counsels on the Drum Major site — and don’t succumb, he insists, to media and pollster interest in the emotional issues of the war, abortion and gay rights. Los Angeles’ Antonio Villaraigosa notes that even on homeland security, the Bush administration’s signature issue, cities have been left high and dry.
“Down here where the rubber meets the road, we’re fixing potholes, we’re making cities safer, we’re solving problems around healthcare,” says Denver’s John Hickenlooper. “We can figure out the solutions. We’re America’s laboratories.” But cities, he adds, need Washington’s help to “roll out” the new solutions “to the whole community and the whole country.”

OK, presidential hopefuls, listen up to what these grassroots leaders are telling you. Maybe you could excuse detouring key city and suburban issues in rural Iowa and small-town New Hampshire. But primaries in strongly urban states will come on quickly, including Nevada Jan. 19, Florida Jan. 29, and then on Feb. 5 the Super Tuesday constellation including California, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Georgia, New Jersey, Illinois, Missouri and a dozen other states.

This is an overwhelmingly metropolitan, urban nation. Please, candidates, respond to it — and for it.

John was killed, with his wonderfully creative journalist wife Sandy and daughter Chase, in an automobile accident in Wyoming the Saturday before Christmas. Their daughter Katy was injured but is recovering.

John’s passing has been a special blow to the Denver and Colorado communities, where he made such a special contribution, in political and civic life, through his career. Five hundred people gathered to mourn quietly at a candlelight park event for John and his family.

But John also registered immense accomplishments on the nationwide scene. He was president of the National Civic League for a decade starting in 1985 and later led the Alliance for Regional Stewardship that had been inspired by his friend and mentor John Gardner. He was a charter member of our Citistates Group. John also helped many communities, and widened his amazingly broad national network, through Civic Results, his consulting firm with Peter Kenney. Most recently he worked with our colleague Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, on an approach for regions of Louv’s Children and Nature Network.

A John Parr and Sandy Widener Civic Leadership Award has been established by the Denver Community Foundation. In addition, the Citistates Group, the National Civic League and others are looking into the possibility of a national conference to honor John’s memory and consider long-term ways to continue his tradition of civic leadership.

A remembrance of John appears below:

REMEMBERING JOHN PARR — By Curtis Johnson

Remembering John Parr is easy. It’s getting him out of your mind in the wake of his tragic passing – that’s hard.

Author Mitch Albom’s best-selling For One More Day imagines what one despairing, aging, suicidal former athlete might have learned about life from his mother, had he been granted just one more day to talk with her, after she was gone. John’s life journey, while rich and full, abruptly ended December 22 way too soon. Many of us now wish for that one more day – with John. A day to drill down for that core DNA of his artful way of working with people. A day to ask him what he believed really mattered most – both in individual fulfillment and the betterment of communities. A day to tell him how much he meant to all of us who were privileged to work with him.

As former Colorado lieutenant governor Gail Schoettler would put it in a Denver Post column, “It takes only an instant to end a life, whether it’s an explosive in Iraq, or a loose rock on a Colorado fourteener, or an icy road in Wyoming.” In life John’s work was a constant reminder of higher possibilities. He could raise your expectations without ever raising his voice. Time and again, groups would testify in some amazement after a series of sessions with John that they never believed they could come together on contentious issues, but John managed to get them to see that what they shared was bigger than what divided them.

In testimonials appearing on the Denver Post website, colleagues and friends have described John as a domestic diplomat, a conciliator, a superb strategist, a power in both politics and civic life who never made much noise about himself. He was content to make things happen for others.

John and his irrepressible, talented wife, Sandy Widener, were called a “prominent couple.” Later the stories would say they were a “power couple.” They were – but only in the special sense of being transmitters of power, rarely receivers. Long after John’s early Colorado days as an insurgent who defied the state’s power brokers claim to the 1976 Olympics, his and Sandy’s inspiration and insight launched a generation of leadership in Denver and Colorado’s halls of public service. John’s work with the 31 mayors of the Denver region would be widely seen as a national model of informal, voluntary governance that showed major impact.

Our Citistates community first encountered John shortly before he became the president of The National Civic League in 1985 and transformed a tired and thinning network into a vibrant and visible presence on the national scene. Inspired, as we all were, by the last big visions of John Gardner, John would, years later, sign on to shepherd the formative Alliance for Regional Stewardship. But the ARS work quickly reminded John that he didn’t want to spend his life on airplanes and lonely hotels. Home was where he wanted to be – the Rocky Mountain range of communities, his beloved Denver region, his devoted wife and daughters. He and Peter Kenney created Civic Results, through which John could exercise his passion for making better communities, and keep one stirring and steering hand in the political life of Colorado. His was a good life and a large lesson in living one for all of us. It just ended too soon.

Citi•state — n. — A region consisting of one or more historic central cities surrounded by cities and towns which have a shared identification, function as a single zone for trade, commerce and communication, and are characterized by social, economic and environmental interdependence.

What’s heartening is to see the crescendo of increased interest and attention to these organic, functioning, critical regions of the new global economy. The “feel” is 20 to 30 times more interest than 20 years ago. Latest evidence: the major attention and commitment to the metro issue of interest on the part of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, headed by Bruce Katz. Under the banner of its new “Blueprint for American Prosperity” initiative, Katz and his crew are presently holding meetings across the country to encourage regions to think more cohesively, more strategically about their own issues and how they believe the federal government could be a stronger partner.

Here’s a link to my November 11 column on the Brookings initiative.

Afficionados of regionalism will note that the pyramid “flip” idea featured in the column harkens back to the “reverse RFP” idea of a few years ago. As Keith Laughlin of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy e-mails:

“When I was the director of the White House Task Force on Livable Communities [during the Clinton administration] we put together an initiative with major national foundations called the Partnership for Regional Livability (PRL), otherwise known as “pearl.” At the heart of the effort was the concept of the “reverse RFP.” The regions would issue a “Request for Partnership” to the federal government outlining its objectives and the responsibility of the feds was to align its resources to meet the needs of the region. This is what Al Gore, in the context of reinventing government, used to refer to as the federal government’s “virtual department of Cleveland.” The foundations, in turn, would use their grant making to catalyze cooperation across jurisdictional boundaries at the regional level. We held a Wingspread conference on the topic with the foundations and political appointees at the assistant secretary level across a variety of agencies to get into the nitty gritty of what statutory changes might be needed to permit greater cooperation. We were trying to set the stage for the next stage of reinvention based on both regionalism and livability in a Gore Administration. But it was not to be.”

But Mary Walshock, San Diego regional leader, reminds me the Bush administration has launched one significant regional initiative– the WIRED program of the U.S. Department of Labor. The idea is to provide incentives for often-disjoined workforce development and economic development groups to get together on creative new regional collaboratives. So far 39 regions have responded by forming their own partnerships and winning grants during three waves of competitive grant making. The total funding is modest, but the program certainly qualifies as a pioneering “reverse RFP.”

Nick had a home in Key West, Florida, where he decided to “retire” after his California work. Of course Nick plunged right back into civic leadership work. In early October he e-mailed me: ” I’m a Senior Fellow now at The Funders Network with Ben Starrett, and also a Senior Fellow with Jim Murley at his Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions at FAU, and living in Florida. California seems to be getting along fine without me.”

Nick in fact began to counsel Florida’s new governor, Charles Crist, whom he described to me as “not only a leader of the ‘new, new South’ but of the ‘new, new GOP’ (the ‘Arnold wing’).” Among other things, Nick noted, “Crist has really come out strong on climate change and actually ‘gets’ the climate-transportation-land use connection. Mark my words: climate change will drive the next generation of growth management policy for Florida (which needs some updating from the historic 1985 growth legislation that John De Grove and Jim Murley helped shepherd into place).”

Nick’s life, like that of John Gardner and other great civic entrepreneurs, sets a high standard for all who follow. A well-deserved tribute to him came in a Sacramento Bee editorial.

The overriding issue: How this small metro, with its historic and distinguished center city and exquisite Lowcountry setting, accommodates heavy early 21st century growth pressures without compromising its vaunted high quality of life.

Citistates Associates Lenneal Henderson and Bill Fulton collaborated with Citistates writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson in the extensive Charleston area interviews leading to the report.

It’s Time To De-Kotkinize The Planning Debate

21 August 2007 - 

So I’ve finally had it with Joel Kotkin.

Joel Kotkin is, of course, the Los Angeles pundit who loves to be hated by planners. Last week in the Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion section. Kotkin flung around a lot of very selective facts and kinda-truths in order to make the argument that Los Angeles is rushing thoughtlessly and without public debate into “Manhattanization”. This article is the latest piece of evidence suggesting that Kotkin’s arguments are getting old and tired.

» read more

De-Kotkinizing the Planning Debate, Part 2

27 August 2007 - 9:53am

Last week’s blog about Joel Kotkin and his article in the L.A. Times decrying the supposed “Manhattanization” of Los Angeles stirred up quite a bit of debate. Here’s Part 2 of the Bill Fulton blog on Kotkin.

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Cool v. Uncool Cities: The Battle For The Soul Of Economic Development

4 September 2007 - 11:57am

To succeed in the 21st Century, do cities really have to be cool, as Richard Florida argues? Or do they have to be uncool, as Joel Kotkin insists? Maybe they have to be both.

A few years ago, a little-known academic named Richard Florida turned the economic development world upside down by publishing a book called The Rise of the Creative Class. In a nutshell, Florida’s argument was that to be successful today, cities have to be cool.

» read more