50 ideas for the new city: #2 | Common destinies

"In some ways, it's almost like building a new city."

 

 

Any vision worthy of this opportunity will look to every place in this city and see to the lives of each of us in all these places.

The vision that will do the greatest justice to this opportunity will be the one that creates a destination for all our destinies.

50 ideas for the new city: #1 | Year Zero

"In some ways, it's almost like building a new city."

 

 

The history of Rochester is now marked by two dates: August 21, 1883 and May 20, 2013.

 

Any calendar that would claim to mark a course for this community should rightly (and wisely) be reset to Year Zero.
 





Natality

Hannah Arendt

Comments from a recent e-mail related to a beginning coincidental with a birth:

There is a strong and necessary generational element to this undertaking. There are some of us at the actuarial edges of being able to enjoy the shade of the trees being planted here. More importantly, what changes ever happen without the impatience, impudence, and impiety of a rising generation? Certainly no transformation happens without it. Advocacy is required to be sure, as has been and will be some agitation.  Having said so, I hope you see that this “long circuitous road” also allows for ample opportunities [not just for the status quo to be defended but also] to challenge the status quo. Those prone, prepared, and positioned to do so need to be engaged and stay engaged in those places where actions are deliberated and taken.....

I close with this thought, apropos of what is most important in your life right now. It is from Hannah Arendt about whom I have been thinking lately, “the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew….”

When transparency goes wrong

 "... a promotional shirt to get people excited about the project."

 "Mayo is too corporate"

Five.Oh.Seven. 

Who's up for a little crowd sourcing fun?
Well, earlier this afternoon we received a phone call from the team over at 'Destination Medical Center'. Through a pretty exciting initiative, their plan is to invest $6 billion dollars into Rochester infrastructure over the next 20 years. This project will create growth, jobs and opportunity like this area has never seen. It's a very exciting thing for those in the area.
Ready for the crowd sourcing part? The DMC wants Five.Oh.Seven. Clothing to collaborate with them to create a promotional shirt to get people excited about the project. In their words, "Mayo is too corporate", so they've come to the incredibly cool people in our network!
What are your ideas? What will make people talk, engage in conversation, and hopefully support this great initiative?

Let's hear your ideas! 

 - Source: https://www.facebook.com/FiveOhSeven 05.16.2013

Well, here's my idea (see above).

UPDATE:

Here's the final design:

"And we can't let avarice get in the way."

Avarice - commonly not a mortal sin

Chairwoman Ann Lenczewski, DFL-Minneapolis, told members of the tax conference committee that time is running out. In an interview afterward, she said she is particularly frustrated that Mayo is trying to get around a requirement that the city issue all the bonds — something all parties agreed to previously. 

"We started with a concept that couldn't work and was never going to happen to we're almost there," she said. "And we can't let avarice get in the way. It's called compromise around here. It's not winner-take-all."

- Post-Bulletin, 05.16.2013 http://bit.ly/12eEA1n

"Avarice," there's a word you don't see used much anymore. Merriam-Webster Online defines the word in this way: "excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain."

The Catholic Encyclopedia elaborates thus:

Avarice (from Latin avarus, "greedy"; "to crave") is the inordinate love for riches. Its special malice, broadly speaking, lies in that it makes the getting and keeping of money, possessions, and the like, a purpose in itself to live for. It does not see that these things are valuable only as instruments for the conduct of a rational and harmonious life, due regard being paid of course to the special social condition in which one is placed. It is called a capital vice because it has as its object that for the gaining or holding of which many other sins are committed. It is more to be dreaded in that it often cloaks itself as a virtue,  or insinuates itself under the pretext of making a decent provision for the future. [emphasis added] In so far as avarice is an incentive to injustice in acquiring and retaining of wealth, it is frequently a grievous sin. In itself, however, and in so far as it implies simply an excessive desire of, or pleasure in, riches, it is commonly not a mortal sin.

Here's a thought experiment:

With several billion dollars on the table, is it possible for avarice to get in the way? Is avarice a retardant or an accelerant?  Obstacle or object?

Gut check.

Not just growth, but "just growth"

We argue, however, that the usual tools of progressives have focused primarily on ensuring that poor people are getting more of their fair share of the “economic pie”. Equity advocates have had little success, and in many cases little interest, in contributing to job creation or economic growth per se, or even to paying attention to selecting among equity strategies those that have the highest pay off in terms of increased economic performance.

But this is the other half of just growth – you need a compelling economic growth agenda as well as a commitment to fairness. You can’t assume that the proper balance of policy is struck in the balance of politics – that the business sector will worry about economic growth, that community advocates will worry about “the people,” and that politicians will sort out the differences. You cannot press for equality in a stagnant economy – as we have seen in dramatic fashion recently, when the economy doesn’t work, people don’t work. Moreover, poor people are most dependent on economic growth and most in need of the jobs created by a region’s economic drivers. Equity proponents, we would suggest, need a clear economic growth model and agenda and this is often missing in (in)action.

- Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Just Growth and the Future of the Next Economy"

 

"Just growth" is at the core of the tension - potentially creative - of saying "yes, and..." to DMC. It is the broader, deeper conversation we should have. It is the means by which we create a destination for all of our destinies. If it cannot be embraced in the governing structure of DMC legislation, it must be reflected in its operational values. This reflection can only be mirrored in an image of a future that encompasses both growth and equity.

One among us striking at the root

"...and to live among monsters is to live on the edge of hell." - Kenneth Burke

 

 

From her, I receive dispatches. These reports I would craft into parables as if each were a lesson rather than a summons. By transforming them into arcs of hope perhaps her stories will not break me. But they should. And I should let them. Not only break, but shatter.

 

"...The more we remind ourselves to think positively, the more immersed we are in the business of denying our despair at the struggles we see around us. We decide to move far enough to the edge of our culture to see it clearly. What is the norm and normal does not serve us well. Many of us have tried to live a "normal" life, and how is that going? I have taken vows that I have broken, I have hurt people that I have loved, and there is no self talk that will change that. If I can accept these struggles in myself, then my chances of seeing the struggles of others compassionately increases. This means we have to be abnormal and imperfect. We have to be willing to see clearly and to question what others seem to condone...."

- Peter Block, The Answer to How is Yes

 

 

So, she tells me, this night, in this city, there is a child with cause to fear her father. This fear she has in common with her mother as she has in common with her mother the same father.

Now: how is it I can think of anything else? I do, of course, but how is it that I do?
 

I recall a night when I was a child coming to an epiphany. The word for it came much later, but what came that night as I wondered if anyone else was laying awake in the dark was a certain, laughing realization that of course there were others. If not in the house, then somewhere. A somewhere that night that expanded beyond the house and out into a world that I knew to be round, where the sun was always somewhere rising and somewhere setting. A big thought.
 

Then came a bigger thought. Somewhere someone was getting up and someone was going to bed somewhere. Someone was eating breakfast. Someone lunch. Someone dinner. Right then. All this was happening. Even when I slept, it all was happening. All the time, somewhere. All the time we have in a day and all the things we do in a day was happening somewhere.
 

Not that night, but some other night: Somewhere all the things that happen to us is happening. Someone being born. Someone dying. All manner of births. All the ways we die. All the things we do to each other, somewhere is being done. Somewhere all the things we say to each other is being said by someone to someone. On and on.

Not that night, but yet another night: All the time, all the time we have and all we do or are is happening, now. There are so many of us that all of what we are must be happening somewhere. An incomprehensible din of all of it.
 

Not that night, but later: Only god could comprehend it. All creation happens at once. In any moment, all is available for review. All virtue. All sin. All the time. One constant hiss of everything, always. What more could god possibly need? What is god waiting for?
 

"...A demon denies time, change, growth, dialectic, and says at every moment: This can't go on! Yet it goes on, it lasts, if not forever, at least a long time....(Reasonable sentiment: everything works out, but nothing lasts. Amorous sentiment: nothing works out but it keeps going on.)

To acknowledge the Unbearable: this cry has its advantage: signifying to myself that I must escape by whatever means, I establish within myself the martial theater of Decision, of Action, of Outcome. Exaltation is a kind of secondary profit from my impatience; I feed on it....

Once the exaltation has lapsed, I am reduced to the simplest philosophy: that of endurance....I suffer without adjustment, I persist without intensity: always bewildered, never discouraged; I am a Daruma doll, a legless toy forever poked and pushed, but finally regaining its balance....This is what we are told by a folk poem which accompanies the Japanese dolls: Such is life/Falling over seven times/And getting up eight."

 

 

- Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse

 

 

 And that's how I do it - think of anything else. Baffling reminiscence. Brooding "archetypes of instrumentality and desire."
 

So, she tells me, this night, in this city, there is a child with cause to fear her father. This fear she has in common with her mother as she has in common with her mother the same father.
 

In Walden, Thoreau writes, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
 

This night, in this city, she is striking at the root.
 

____________________

(originally posted elsewhere April 4, 2010)

The nine

"The corporation's governing board consists of nine voting members...."

The legislative language 

The corporation's governing board consists of nine voting members, as follows: the mayor of the city, or the mayor's designee, subject to approval by the city council; a member of the city council, selected by the city council; a member of the county board, selected by the county board;  two representatives of the medical business entity defined in section appointed by the city council from among five candidates nominated by the medical business entity; one representative of labor, appointed by the city council from among three candidates nominated by the Southeast Minnesota Area Labor Council; one representative of the city business community other than the medical business entity, appointed by the city council from among three candidates nominated by the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce; and two members, appointed by the governor.

The whole may be less than the sum of its parts 

It's not final, but suffice to say, no matter the sum of the members, the parts call out for consideration. For in this case, the sum may be less than the whole of its parts.

In recent days, the Post Bulletin has published reporting and opinion  regarding the openess of the procees by which this legislation (and the initiative it represents) has proceeded thus far. Not very, is the general conclusion. http://bit.ly/100w4EC; http://bit.ly/12PWoyL; http://bit.ly/18sahcm

Now acknowledging as well the power this governing board will wield (http://bit.ly/ZEYjFL), the PB raises concerns regarding transparency and accountability that have been simmering in some circles since the first of the year.

In response, we are treated to public officials whose responses range from indifference to contempt of concerns raised about these issues. Be clear: private enterprise is private. But, as Furst observes,

When you go to the Legislature and ask for extraordinary taxing powers, development authority and a half-billion dollars in infrastructure and transit funding, however, it's not a private matter.

"It's not asking too much," Furst concludes,"...to expect transparency and true community involvement as it moves forward."

Nine is not enough

Unfortunately it may be too much to hope for that the best means for transparency and community involvement moving forward will become available to us.

• The best means requires a DMCC board that includes the range and diversity of views adequate for representing the stakeholders impacted by and vested in the decisions of that board and the public funds being expended.
• The best means also requires that the "business entity consultant" implements a plan and planning process obligated to provide the board with the adequate input to secure and enhance the lives of all who are impacted by and vested in the decisions of the board and the public funds being expended.

Who on the conference committee (Norton? Senjem?) would step up to support these remedies?

To hold that the presence of elected officials appointed to this board will provide for accountability overlooks that these appointees remain accountable only to those constituents by whom they are elected, not to all those whose lives this board impacts. Nor is it sufficient to say that community involvement comes with marketing research, visioning exercises, and world cafes - however well-intended. Nor are public hearings where stakeholders are relegated to the role of petitioner and supplicant.

Meaningful community involvement comes only with a voting presence on the board sufficient to represent the community. 

Without adequate representation now and a strong commitment to the simple good governance of transparency and accountability, this "biggest economic development project in Minnesota history" will soon enough be reduced to something very much like:

UPDATE:

Turns out there are eight.

"...that thou mayest teach them"

FYI

Laying Down the Law

"lay down the law: to tell people what they must do, without caring about their opinions." (Definition of lay down the law from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

In a meeting late Friday, someone not only “lay down the law,” but – oddly enough - came prepared to do so. In what is a nascent conversation of what might prudently be done to more broadly consider what is now referred to in certain documents as the “non-clinical experience in Rochester,” an employee of city/county planning offered up an emphatic reading of the definition of “comprehensive plan” set forth in MN state statute. Concluding with a rather adamant observation, “And that’s all we can do.”

Two things: 

(1) A plan for lived spaces that does not include all the lives that are being lived there and what might be done for these lives to be better lived isn’t very damned comprehensive.

(2) When I asked – as one increasingly needs to do around here – “Who is ‘we’?” a reply came that seemed to very much want to include me. 

Really? Well, we’ll see.

Apprehensive planning

Rochester circa 2043

“A combination of 15 new skyway and/or subway locations are assumed as part of the DMC plan..." (p. 18)

"All of the planning efforts in downtown Rochester have identified a need to create public activity centers that can help define the non-clinical experience in Rochester… It is anticipated that these public spaces will need to be enclosed.” (pp. 27-28)

from Infrastructure Master Plan: Rochester, Minnesota, Revised April 10, 2013, Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc.

Through a glass darkly

Rochester, MN circa 2018/2023/2028/2033/2038/2043

 

This "Infrastructure Master Plan" was "revised April 10 2013". One assumes earlier versions have existed for some months (years?). Yet, in all the forums where questions were raised the answers to which are in this plan, it was neither referenced as even existing, much less produced. OK, so Mayo Clinic's affairs are those of a private, nonprofit corporation, and so, private. But, one reads in the introduction to this plan that:

"Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. worked with Mayo Clinic and the City of Rochester to develop this Infrastructure Master Plan to forecast an order of magnitude estimate of the infrastructure improvements that will be required during the next 20 years to support the anticipated growth of Mayo Clinic and downtown Rochester as a global destination medical center (DMC)."

Note: "...and the City of Rochester." The affairs of the City of Rochester are, or should be, public. So, when representatives of the City of Rochester sat before various audiences hearing the questions the answers to which are in this document, why did they neither reference or produce it? When such questions appeared in the press, where was this document being kept?

Did members of our legislative delegation know of this document? Did the House and Senate chief authors know of this document? Why didn't they reference or produce it?

How, then, is it finally produced? On the website of an out of town newspaper.

 

It mostly makes me sad that we have been held in such low regard by these public officials. Especially since we have been reassured in all these forums that we should not be concerned nor worry because nothing will or can be done without the oversight and approval of our public officials. With them, we are instructed (sometimes scolded) rests the accountability and transparency we fret about needlessly. Well, tell me again how this works, because so far I'm just not seeing it in quite the same light. Not even close.

 

A shattering great wind

Rochester, Minnesota circa 1883

What power had I Before I learned to yield? Shatter me, great wind: I shall possess the field. - Richard Wilbur, Two Voices in The Meadow "Between 7:00 PM and 7:05 PM, the tornado moved northeast through northern Rochester.  Charles Wilson's barn on College Hill was about the first building struck and demolished.  The tornado then unroofed W. S. Booth's house.  The cupola of the court house was lifted and dashed through the roof to the auditor's office.  Two chimneys on Albert Harrington's new residence were blown over and broke the rafters.  The steeple of the Methodist church was blown over and through the roof.  It pressed out the east wall and crushed through the audience room and eventually ended up in the basement.

Possible Tornado Track through Rochester, MN

The steeple of the Congregational church, where 35 children had just returned from a picnic, was blown off.  Fortunately, no children were injured. The Baptist church's roof was injured slightly.  Nearly every tin roof of the business blocks on Broadway was blown off.  Geo. Stockings's new brick  grocery store on the corner of Fourth and Broadway was demolished with its contents.  Vedder's block of three stores had the roof taken off and south side blown off.  Vedder's Farm Machinery depot was unroofed and badly wrecked.  Van Dusen & Co.'s elevator had about a third of the roof blown off and south side badly injured.  Whetton & Judd's elevator was unroofed.  Horton's elevator was cut into the middle and on-half thrown on a freight train on a side track.  The Rochester Harvester works buildings were completely demolished.  The Zumbro flouring mills had a portion of the third story blown out bodily and the whole structure is badly wrecked.  He had apparently left the mill to go home when he was killed by the storm.  The engine house and cooper shop were wrecked, two car loads of flour were blown into the race and eight cars on the track were turned over.  John M. Cole, the proprietor of the mill, was found dead in the street between the mill and his residence.  He had apparently left the mill to go home when he was killed by the storm.  The Chicago & North Western Railroad yards received severe damage from the tornado. Box cars, buildings and stock pens were destroyed.  Mrs. Gilbert Smith's house, standing west of the Asylum, had the roof of the main part blown off.  A railroad bridge was blown down. Trees and debris are scattered throughout the streets and great rolls of tin roofing were strewn around the business thoroughfares.  Chickens, absolutely devoid of feathers but otherwise uninjured, were found unharmed on North Broadway.

Over 135 homes were destroyed and another 200 were damaged.  All of the dwelling houses destroyed were occupied an owned by people in moderate circumstances, principally laborers, who lost everything they owned.  These buildings were mostly north of the railroad track.  Through the district, oak trees were stripped of their foliage, nearly all of them being twisted, broken and   blackened.  Sidewalks were carried away and fences were gone.  Household effects, or rather the remnants of them, were strewn all over the place.

Will Reicke was picked up by the tornado, hurled across the Zumbro River and deposited near the Oak Wood Cemetery, where all the gravestones had been blown flat.  He escaped with a broken leg, a fractured wrist, and minor injuries."

source: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/?n=aug211883tornadoes