Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Alex Marshall: "Community--the network of formal and informal relationships that binds people together--is a thin, tepid brew in this country."

"Downtown" Franklin, Wisconsin.

An excerpt from HOW CITIES WORK: SUBURBS, SPRAWL, AND THE ROADS NOT TAKEN by Alex Marshall. See if you agree (more excerpts here):

Coming Home

It's a Saturday night and my house is filling with people. Some carry musical instruments. Some have sheets of poetry or fiction by their sides. Some carry nothing, but are prepared to stand up before a crowd of people and dance, perform theater, or tell a story.

We call it the Coffeehouse. We've been doing it now for seven years. The first Saturday of every month, friends and friends of friends come to our house to entertain and be entertained. Usually about fifty people show up. It's a great time.

This coffeehouse is the highlight of the month, both for me and many of the people who attend. It's not just the music, poetry, and other acts that bring people back, although these are good. It's the chance to meet, connect, and talk with other people during the breaks. Through it, my wife and I have met many of our now good friends, and other people have made similar friendships and bonds. In a city where people come and go, it provides us a mechanism to make new friends as older ones leave town.

Why do I mention it? Because our coffeehouse is a replacement for what does not exist in the outer world. And the fact that it does not exist says a lot about our society at this stage in its history. I would prefer that a corner tavern or bar be down the street, where I could magically meet my friends and make new ones. I would prefer to be held up in a naturally emerging web of friends and family, growing out of the physical place where I live and the work that goes on there.

Our situation is ironic, because if anyone should have community "naturally," it's my wife and I. We live in Norfolk, Virginia, a port city on the Elizabeth River, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean. Huge carriers make their home here, as do huge cargo ships that freight millions of tons of coal all over the world.

It's been the home of my family on my father's side for five generations. My great-grandfather came here before the Civil War. He was the first publisher of the newspaper where I started my career in journalism, The Virginian-Pilot. My father grew up one block from where I write this. My wife is a native of the area as well. My newest niece lives down the street.

Looking at my background, one might think that I live a life rich in contacts with the past and the world that molded me, a place where an intricate and perhaps suffocating web of family and friends who have centuries of combined experience support, argue with, and love each other. Which is not the case. I have no close friends from my childhood or high school years that still live in this town, or even the state. Most of my siblings have scattered themselves around the country, as is the wont of professional people these days. Various relatives--second cousins once removed and so forth--do live near me. I know none of them well. As one commentator remarked about Europeans in contrast to Americans, "They still have cousins." Americans do not.

Various forces operating in the country and world today have pulled apart my "natural" community and scattered it to the winds. My own more cosmopolitan bent figures into this. I lived in Europe for a few years, attended college and graduate school in Pittsburgh and New York City. I am not able, nor do I desire, to sink back into the old-boy culture that does still exist here to a degree. I have a community around me, but it is one that I created or sought out, more than one I was born into. My community is in my coffeehouse, in the arts organizations I belong to, and in the civic work I do.

Community--the network of formal and informal relationships that binds people together--is a thin, tepid brew in this country. It has declined to the point where improving it, saving it, nurturing it have become slogans of a variety of movements in different, seemingly unrelated fields. In urban planning, New Urbanism promises to revive community through building subdivisions more cohesively. In political theory, Amiti Etzioni hopes to reduce crime and improve social health through his philosophy of Communitarianism. In journalism, the philosophy of Public Journalism, sometimes labeled Community Journalism, promises to rebuild community and a newspaper's circulation base by having the press foster public dialogue and political participation. Our politics, our places, our press--all of these things run across power lines that jolt us with the message that something is missing in too many of our lives, some sense of cohesion and togetherness.

This desire many people have for richer, more connected lives is a valid one. I believe that a society grows out of its social, religious, and political compacts, on which ultimately even market relationships depend. But like the construction of coherent physical places, the construction of coherent communities is not something to be attempted directly. Rather, one has to understand what produces both places and communities, and what weakens them, and address those forces.

Most of what we call community in the past has been produced as a byproduct of other things: making a living, shopping for food, keeping ourselves and our families well, protecting them and our society from physical harm, educating them. We shopped for groceries, served in the military, and went to a doctor and along the way got to know the butcher, the fellow soldier, and the local doctor. All of these actions have become less communal, and so our society has become less community-minded. We buy our food at the warehouse-style supermarket, do not serve in the military unless we volunteer, and go to the impersonal HMO to get our cholesterol checked. If we want to revive community, then we should look at the trade-offs involved in making some of our decisions more communal again.

Place has something to do with all this as well. Walking to a neighborhood cafe for breakfast is a more communal thing than using the drive-through at a McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin, although relationships can occur at either place. Driving on the freeway is less likely to generate relationships than riding a streetcar. Living in an older neighborhood fashioned around the foot is more communal than living in a contemporary one fashioned around the car. But the physical makeup of our places is just one factor in this trend.

John Perry Barlow, computer sage and former Grateful Dead lyricist, commented once that community is largely generated by shared adversity. This gets at the notion, true I believe, that our social ties, while beneficial, are not necessarily produced by situations we would choose. Although many of us miss community, we don't miss poverty, disease, and war, things that produce community with some regularity. The problem for contemporary Americans is that enhancing social cohesion may mean giving up some things we really like, like personal mobility, low taxes, and a footloose economic structure. We have not figured out yet that creating wealth is not the same as creating community.

I speak without any sentimentality or nostalgia for the past. I believe, however, that the generally fragmented lives so many of us lead break up marriages, disturb childhoods, isolate people when they most need help, and make life not as much fun. We live, to speak frankly, in one of the loneliest societies on earth. If we are to change that, then we should look more closely at the various relationships in our society--political, social, economic, and others--and attempt to construct them in more communal ways. Deciding how to structure these relationships comes back to what I increasingly believe is our most fundamental relationship--politics.

Building on good bones vs. making room for a drive-thru

The Former Herda's True Value Hardware Store in St. Martins

With last week's Economic Development Commission meeting canceled due to lack of a quorum (mass illness), I was able to attend and listen in on an organizational meeting of a group called Franklin Citizens for Community Development (formerly known as "Franklin First"), a project organized by blogger Greg Kowalski and James Mullarkey (a Franklin Community Development Authority Commissioner). I wanted to get a sense of their intent.

I listened as they discussed possible mission statements. At first, I heard a lot of "we need a water park," "we need a performing arts center," "why aren't we Mequon?" "high-end amenities!" etc.

I brought with me a picture of the empty hardware store down in St. Martins, which is a beautiful building, and reminded them that the city has some good "bones" to build on; their organization would do well, in other words, to exploit current assets before crying out for more new construction. This seemed to be enthusiastically received.

I also introduced the term "sustainable" to their discussion. One look at the city's budget will tell you that the current way of doing things is not going to work for much longer. Perhaps Citizens for Community Development could use their energy and voices to promote the small steps that are needed in order to create a more economically vibrant city. For instance, promoting small businesses in town is an excellent way to enrich the local economy: For every dollar spent at a local business, 45% is reinvested locally. Spent a dollar at a corporate chain and a mere 15% is reinvested locally.

(We will hopefully be talking more, by the way, about the building above on this blog in the near future.)

Meanwhile, Kowalski's Franklin Today blog reports a rumor that the now-vacant Sentry store on 76th and Rawson may be purchased by neighboring Walgreens, and - amazingly - razed to make room for a drive-thru window.

That's right: Torn down for a drive-thru window.

The bar is once again lowered.

See what happens when you miss a meeting?

FranklinNOW and the Franklin Today blog report on a common council meeting I could not attend Tuesday night. My unavoidable absence was particularly unfortunate because they discussed the city-owned parcel of land between Fire Station #1 and the Franklin Public Library, which I'd indicated would be a good location for a coffee shop/co-working facility if we could somehow induce that sort of development.

After reading both accounts (FranklinNOW starts out breathlessly: "Officials know that some empty city-owned space at 8921 W. Drexel Ave. has caught the eye of several interested parties, but they will want to continue to mull how to re-use that property."), it's clear that I should clarify some aspects of the concept I'd proposed and the process thus far.

First of all, it's my understanding that the Common Council asked various departments and commissions to submit their recommendations for the city-owned space. So, outside of the Fire Department, the "interested parties" became "interested" only after being asked to do so. (The Economic Development Commission recommendation is pending.)

As for my co-working facility idea, the most important point is this: The specific parcel between the library and the fire department was a CATALYST for my concept of using city resources to promote the idea of a coffee shop/co-working facility in a logical space close to the library, park, and subdivisions, but the concept is NOT dependent upon that specific spot.

In most of my discussions and meeting regarding the issue, this seems to be the hardest thing to make clear. For my part, I was led to believe in my initial inquiries that the fire department had not indicated any particular interest in that land. Therefor, I continued to refer to that piece of land specifically when describing a coffee shop/co-working facility, even though there's an entire "zone" in proximity to the library, park, subdivisions and city hall that could be suitable.

It's been made clear since then, however, that the Fire Department would like to expand Fire Station #1 in the direction of that land. As I've always said, Fire Department gets first dibs.

So, to reiterate: the coffee shop/co-working facility conversation can go on without regard to the specific parcel in question.

I think it might be wise at this point to "rebrand" the proposal as well by removing "coffee shop" from the title to prevent shorthand characterizations like the one I noticed in the FranklinNOW report ("There has been interest in the property for businesses, such as a coffee shop, the mayor said..."). While I think a coffee shop component is very important, more attention needs to be paid to the co-working function of a facility like the one I have in mind, and what such a facility could mean to the community in terms of supporting business development and small business collaborations.

Finally, Greg Kowalski's Franklin Today blog item paints a picture of political intrigue ("Michlig would need both the Mayor and the CCP to support his plan for that parcel, and without it...at this point I'd have to contend that the proposal could be labeled as 'politically dead'....) that simply does not exist. I am not a city employee nor an elected official, and the Economic Development Commission on which I serve is unbudgeted; at best I can afford only to offer my ideas and "shake the trees" in hopes of creating a productive conversation that gets us above and beyond business as usual.

So, back to shaking trees I go ...

Co-Working: Start-Ups Share Space to Shave Costs

Hoping to explore this direction here in Franklin via my coffee shop/co-working space concept:

From: Start-Ups Share Space to Shave Costs - WSJ.com:

For three years, Tobias Roediger and a friend spent their spare time in Mr. Roediger's basement working on a dream: starting a small digital-film and visual-effects company. When Mr. Roediger lost his full-time job as a computer-lab supervisor in June, the friends decided it was time to launch the company -- and move out of the basement.

They were able to afford the move by "co-working," a rental arrangement in which the tenants -- usually small-business owners and professionals -- share space and office equipment, and pay short-term leases, usually month to month. Some co-working spaces feature groups of desks positioned in open rooms; others have individual offices. Many provide certain amenities such as a receptionist, kitchen or game room.

Tobias Roediger runs his digital-film company in a shared office space he rents from Qwirk for $500 a month.
For entrepreneurs, it's a cheaper and more flexible alternative to renting or buying space of their own. The 32-year-old Mr. Roediger and his partner contracted with Qwirk Columbus Corp., a recently opened co-working space in downtown Columbus, Ohio, to pay $500 a month for two desks in an office, computers with Wi-Fi, use of conference rooms, a shared printer/copy/fax machine, espresso maker and more. Mr. Roediger estimates he's saving $300 to $400 per month on utility bills and not having to rent space he doesn't need.

It's also a much more social setting than Mr. Roediger's basement. "The thing that really drew me was the ability to work with a lot of other creative people," says Mr. Roediger, who adds that the shared space is good for networking, too: He says he's been talking to an advertising company on the premises about a possible deal.

Sharing office space with other businesses isn't new, but the tanking economy has prompted many small-business owners to consider it as they look for any practical way to lower overhead costs.

Some providers of co-working space are also offering reduced rates and even giving entrepreneurs opportunities to barter their services in return for paying no rent at all.

In February, Office Nomads LLC of Seattle started giving a "Pink Slip Special" to customers who were recently laid off, offering a free one-month membership worth $375. Overall, a dozen people took advantage of the offer, which ended last month, says Susan Evans, co-owner of Office Nomads.

Winnie Fung, a manager of the Change You Want to See Gallery, a nonprofit co-working space in Brooklyn, N.Y., says she sees a lot more bartering than she did a few years ago. At least three or four people from the 10 in her co-working space have partially or fully bartered their services for desk space, she says.

Ms. Fung says a few months ago she made a deal with one of her members, a tech start-up owner, to look after the building's computers and Internet service in return for free space.

Glenn Okun, clinical professor of management and entrepreneurship at New York University's Stern School of Business, say that the co-working environment presents an opportunity to tap into the collective expertise of the group and create business deals with other business owners, who are just a cubicle away.

Other experts, though, say small-business owners should be wary about the loss of privacy in such a workplace.

Sara Beckman, a senior lecturer who has taught a course on workplace design issues at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that entrepreneurs should consider these drawbacks: "Am I sharing the space with people who are direct competitors? How do I draw boundaries around the information I can and cannot share with people who don't work in my organization?"

Michael Patino of Fairfax, Va., who was laid off in October from an executive-search firm, started his own firm, Patino Associates LLC, and says he saw co-working as a better alternative to working from home. It's a more professional place for clients to visit, and a businesslike environment in which to make calls and conduct interviews.

But he didn't want a work space that was airy and open. "I needed four quiet walls," he says, to evoke the image of confidentiality, especially when he needed to interview candidates for executive positions.

For six months he worked at home, while also taking care of two kids. But "in a field where you spend most of your time on the phone, [home] is not the best dynamic in the long term," says Mr. Patino.

He started looking for a suitable co-working space for his company and found one in McLean, Va., owned by Preferred Offices LLC, which has nine locations in the Washington area. Mr. Patino signed a 12-month lease in June. He says he spends $2,000 a month, which includes the lease, utility, telephone and Internet charges, and a receptionist, who works for all the businesses on the floor.

"It's wonderful so far," he says. "There's an extra layer of credibility when there's someone picking up the phone for you."

Write to Raymund Flandez at [email protected]

Free Wi-Fi at Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble Now Offering Free Wi-Fi [Wi-Fi]:

Wi-Fi at Starbucks is SUPPOSED to be free, but it's unreliable. B&N is gonna sell a lot of coffee.

Via Lifehacker: "In case you spend a lot of your time thumbing through books or drinking coffee in or around a Barnes & Noble bookstore, you'll be glad to know that B&N is now the proud distributor of free Wi-Fi through AT&T. They've offered Wi-Fi for quite some time, of course, but now you no longer have to pay for it." Photo by grilled cheese. [Macworld]

The New Shape of Office Space | Planetizen

The New Shape of Office Space | Planetizen.

"Coworking is rapidly emerging as a meme for the reorganization of knowledge work among entrepreneurs, programmers, writers and even, as we learned during our visits, sustainable furniture designers. The majority of discussions of the social implications of the Internet on the evolution of work and cities revolve around concepts such as the virtual office, online collaboration, and telecommuting. But, coworking communities (and related phenomenon that have grown out of the culture of the open source movement such as MeetUps and BarCamps) illustrate the ways in which these emergent forms of organizing are deeply embedded in physical places and, at the same time, enabled by new technologies such as laptops and wireless networks.

As the material artifacts of offices – messages, documents, photos and plans - are digitized and stored on servers, physical spaces have the potential to become increasingly open, flexible and sharable. Data security concerns aside, one can imagine a future scenario when most of the tools that we need to work effectively will be accessed and stored in “the cloud”. This allows the dynamic reorganization and co-location of people, firms and activities that have been separated since the early days of industrialization, the advent of the hierarchical firm and the rise of cities themselves. For example, an office building might house a conference room that doubles as an entertainment room for the co-located apartments. Such arrangements will require new ways of thinking about private and semi-private spaces, trust and security, and ownership and property."

In lieu of the (cancelled) Economic Development Commission meeting ...

... there will be an organizational meeting of "my" subcommittee (screenshot of Franklin's online meeting calendar above), which is exploring the creation of a commercial coffee shop/co-working facility on the city-owned land between the Public Library and Fire Station #1 (or thereabouts).

That's right: Like Leslie Knope of PARKS AND RECREATION, I have a subcommittee.

An invitation to attend has gone out to each member of the Economic Development Commission; however, potential participation is not confined to the EDC, so an agenda item will allow those in attendance to suggest possible members.

Having never so much as attended a city subcommittee meeting before, actually running one should be quite... interesting.

Coffee Shop/Co-Working project gets some ink

From the Franklin Citizen (no web site, unfortunately):

By Andrew C, Westbrook
Franklin Citizen staff writer

The City of Franklin Common Council approved further investigation of a  potential new commercial development near Lions Legend Park, Tuesday. 

The potential development was discussed as a mixed-use, community-based coffee shop with "co-working"  space. 

John Michlig asked the council to place the item on Tuesday's agenda after  it was discussed at length at the April 26 meeting of the Economic Development  Commission, of which he is a part. 

Michlig said the idea would be for the project to potentially be a community incubator that could involve  various educational groups, such as the Milwaukee School of Engineering,  Milwaukee Area Technical College or Franklin High School. 

The development, Michlig wrote in a letter to Mayor Tom Taylor, was suggested to also involve private commercial entities, as well, including possible philanthropic grants to co-fund and  operate facilities. 

The suggestion discussed at the meeting was that students entering into  businesses could learn in a hands-on way. 

"If you want to learn business, you can run a business," Michlig said. 

The idea is still in the experimental phase, and the EDC only sought, and  was given by the council, permission  to continue investigating to see what  potential is truly there by meeting with  various groups, 

However, the issue of location  became a concern, as the initial site talked about would be between the  Franklin Library and Fire Station 1, an  area the Fire Department listed as one they would like to expand their already cramped facility. 

It was suggested by Alderman Steve Olson that, as the fire department pro-  posed expanding for dorms and office space on that side of the building and  because their current dorm and office  spaces are on the east side of the building, a potential alternative would be  expansion of the tire station to the southeast side of their property instead. 

Most in attendance were in favor of the idea. 

Mayor Taylor noted that the idea  could potentially help create a greater  sense of community.

A long journey begins: The project is now official

Click on picture to embiggen

At last night's Common Council meeting I presented  a short description of my coffeeshop/co-working plan for the city civic center, and the council voted unanimously to allow myself and fellow Economic Development Commissioners to make queries in the city's name. It's a tiny step, but a vote of confidence for exploring this sort of nonstandard approach to encouraging economic development and active community space.

It was not without potholes. Not even an hour before the meeting, the mayor emailed me to note that he now recalled that the fire chief did indeed have possible plans to expand the fire department building and may desire the plot of land under discussion. Also, alderman Tim Solomon made it known at a meeting the night before that he was 100% against non-park, non-fire department usage of the land. Fortunately, there is quite a bit of open space in the area pictured above in which the concept could work; the building doesn't have to sit exactly where I initially planned. I was gratified by the unanimous affirmative vote and the supportive comments made from the council dais.

So, at this stage we question and query the "tentpoles"; MATC, Franklin High School, the Library (I met and enjoyed a long conversation with a library trustee last night; I'll speak at their next meeting), fire department, etc.

The idea is to gather the needed elements and put a "situation" in place so a Kinkos/FedEx or local-owned/franchise coffee shop can come in and feel comfortable with a nonstandard setup; one that enlivens community life, has an excellent educational and vocational training component, engages the "creative class," and stirs further walkable "commercial amenity" development in the area.

And off we go ...

Baby steps: Request for Council Action

 
ABOVE: A rather ambitious vision of co-working space

To move mountains, start with a scoopful of sand.

Here is the admittedly low-ball request for council action (hard to say "no" to something that costs nothing and obligates no one) related to my community co-venture coffee shop/co-working space scheme:

_______

At their regular meeting on 4/26/09, the Economic Development Commission discussed an item that proposes the City encourage a community-based development on the site of the former Schleutter residence adjacent to Fire Station 1, the Library and Lions Legend Park. The discussion centered around development of a coffee shop with facilities for “co-working” space, with a patio area. The presentation suggested that the development act as a community incubator and involve various educational and private commercial entities—including possible philanthropic grants—to co-fund and operate the facilities; thus, it is an economic development project with educational and community-building elements.
 
The Commission now requests that the Common Council permit members of the EDC to enter into discussions with numerous groups regarding the concept and development of such a project, and hold these discussions as representatives of the city.
 
It is important to remember that the idea is at the conceptual level and many issues must be dealt with prior to returning to the Common Council for formal approval of a plan and commitments being made.
 
 
Council Action:
 
Motion to authorize various members of the Economic Development Commission to discuss the possibility of a mixed-use community-based “coffee shop/co-working space” with interested parties and develop a plan for possible implementations.