Social Capital

Investing in PEOPLE. 

In my opinion, this is one of the most important things we can do; as individuals (investing in yourself), as families, neighborhoods, communities, cities... all the way up to a national and even global level. 

I like to think of social capital in my own way as the collective qualities of people in a community, as a result of the ability to have their basic needs met and access quality care - ultimately enabling them to prosper and propel their community and economy forward in a positive way. But "social capital" doesn't come from nothing; it takes time to establish and there are essential components that build social capital.

Meeting basic needs (housing, food, shelter, etc., refer to an older post) but also creating equal and plentiful (and free) opportunities for quality healthcare and education, are just some key ingredients that build social capital. I also believe you can take it a step further and say that in order to maximize social capital, there needs to be a connecting and trusting relationship between the people and the governing system. So in difficult times or times of crisis, people feel secure and trust that their basic needs will be met by the system that's designed to support them - this encourages a level of comfort that allow people to take risks and those circumstances help churn out possibilities for a better society. 

When people do not have good access to, for example, clean drinking water, many other important aspects of their life come to a pause because they're forced to revert back to using some of our most basic human instincts to simple get by. Staying alive and healthy, feeling secure and free from danger will certainly become before more skillful achievements. So, social capital cannot be improved when people and communities are stagnant in this tier, instead it will dumb down communities. And on larger scales, whether we are aware of it or not, these affects will be felt across society, furthering inequality.

These ideas were sparked by an article I read by AECOM's Chief Sustainability Officer, mentioning the 3 types of capital and the current challenges we face with integrating them. The other forms of capital, natural capital (Earth's resources) and financial capital, along with social capital, are essential to each of our lives every single day. Author Gary Lawrence makes the most important point:

"In stark contrast [to natural and financial capital,] the only natural resource that actually improves through use rather than being diminished is human capital. The inventiveness, intellectual ingenuity and diversity of our species are unique to Homo sapiens as far as we know. When the human mind is given the space to be curious and the opportunity to explore, great things become possible. This does not happen when the mind is occupied with feeding and sheltering the human body, scraping a subsistence living from day to day."

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in managing and protecting natural and financial capital when it's really the human aspect that we need to absolutely secure. Because in order to effectively manage our resources and external challenges, we need to have the knowledge base built and capacity to do so intelligently, and of course always with future generations in mind.

_________

Read more at Environmental Leader 

Human Capital on Wikipedia
Social Capital / OECD 

"Shut Up and Listen!"

Since the advent of what we term "modern" and/or professional urban planning around the 1900's, it's clear that it may miss the point of what it's designed to do: plan for people. In my humble opinion, I believe this is partly because of a population explosion; before large cities we had towns and small villages - connected communities of people that, to a certain extent knew each other and worked for or with each other. As populations expanded, degrees of separation began to build between people, and we kind of forgot the most important element of all: each other. 

Dr. Sirolli is one of my Dad's friends who believes in a "person-centered approach to community and economic development," and he's been very successful with this. While it is not directly related to city planning, the messages he brings fourth are.

We must shut and up and listen. Listen to our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers; listen to our community. That's it. And yet while it seems simple, it's not easy. 

Dr. Sirolli makes another interesting point, he says that there is a problem with community meetings. "Entrepreneurs never come, and they never tell you, in a public meeting, what they want to do with their own money, what opportunity they have identified. So planning has this blind spot. The smartest people in your community you don't even know, because they don't come to your public meetings." This idea then, that Dr. Sirolli has capitalized on, has been to create a social infrastructure that hasn't existed previously, learning how to get people to come and talk to him and ultimately helping them based on their needs.

Some people might be wondering "well, what does this have to do with planning cities?" While in some ways, connecting entrepreneurs with a community's future brings the conversation to another level, at a basic level I can extract what's most important: Listening to communities, and not just communities, but individual people. Planners and community leaders shouldn't be there to direct but rather to connect, empathize, strategize, and represent. This builds trust, strong communities, even friendships.

In recent years it seems that there's been paradigm shift, putting the focus on the people of communities, with trail runs and experiments that involve everyone or "I Wish This Was" sticker campaigns. 

Final words from Dr. Sirolli's TED Talk:

"What we have to look at is at how we feed, cure, educate, transport, communicate for seven billion people in a sustainable way. The technologies do not exist to do that. Who is going to invent the technology for the green revolution? Universities? Forget about it! Government? Forget about it! It will be entrepreneurs, and they're doing it now."

__________

Links/sources:

Dr. Sirolli's TED Talk
Strategy and Business article about Dr. Sirolli
History of Urban Planning Wikipedia

I love Denmark ...

From: Something Not Rotten in Denmark, NY Times Opinion Pages, October 19, 2015, by Paul Krugman

Denmark:

• Scandinavian country with a population of 5.6 million
•  Welfare state - government programs designed to provide economic security
• universal health care
• free college education and student receive a stipend
• subsidized day care
• Working age families receive more than 3x as much aid as their U.S. counterparts
• Tax
• top income tax rate: 60.3 percent
• national sales tax: 25 percent
• tax take is almost half of national income
•  Ranks at or near the top on international comparisons of life satisfaction :)

Repost: Saint Paul reveals exciting plans for river balcony park

On September 24, Saint Paul Mayor Coleman presented the city's latest vision to improve the connections between the Mississippi River and downtown Saint Paul while improving the parkland and connections along the river between the Science Museum and the Union Depot. The current vision and model show exciting new features including additional linear and vertical trails, community gathering spaces, market spaces, a restaurant, a dock that welcomes people to the city though Union Depot and more.

This vision of reconnecting downtown Saint Paul to the Mississippi River has grown out of the 2011 Saint Paul Great River Passage Plan. That plan calls for:

• overlooks, and public stairs and elevators at buildings and bridges along the bluff 
• a series of outdoor rooms with panoramic views
• a great year-round destination for shopping, lunch or to relax with friends after a concert of sporting event
• daily lunchtime visitors and early evening entertainment programming
• a great streetscape that supports stronger pedestrian connections into Downtown, and a place in the Grand Round system.

While enthusiasm for the river balcony project is high, both the Mayor and city staff have been frank about the fact that this project is not expected to be completed in five or even 10 years. They have stressed that it is something that will evolve over the many coming years. Despite the long timeline, FMR finds it heartening that the city continues to plan for and work toward reconnecting with the Mighty Mississippi River--a feature that was long ignored and used as a dump.

_______________

This is a repost from Friends of the Mississippi River News, October 12, 2015 by Alicia Uzarek

Lessons in Walking & Cycling from Western Europe

Most of the cities in the United States evolved alongside and/or took off because of the automobile. Cities were planned and built with the car as the main mode of transportation; suburbs made possible thanks to cars. As a result we get wider streets, bigger blocks, lower density; whole metropolis areas that are excruciatingly spread out. This leads to the destruction of natural land and habitats, unsustainable development, and quite frankly it's just a waste that generates physical inefficiency on a massive scale.

European cities have been around much longer, and developed much of their infrastructure prior to the automobile being a widespread mode of transit. This is why Europe boasts cities with some of the best public transportation systems in the world. Railways were built beginning in the mid 19th century, but you can imagine before that it was just smaller dirt roads for walking and eventually horses. Early settlements weren't formally planned, rather they would have evolved on a needs basis based on accessibility by foot. Hence, comparing typical European and American cities might look like this (source):

It's no wonder that European city residents walk and bike so much more - everything is relatively close together. Few US cities use space similarly to their European counterparts - New York City, San Francisco, Boston would be the closest examples. I was thrilled to find an article comparing walking and biking trends between these places, with of course a focus on the countries that do it exceptionally well: the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. I pulled some great visuals from the article to check out. 

Walking and even more so biking in most US cities is simply unsafe. In addition to infrastructure that is built for and around cars, our brains and habits have been wired for driving. We've adapted to car-centric environments that largely don't incorporate any other form of transit at all, depending on where we are. Feeling safe - and knowing that our loved ones are safe - while traveling from home to school or work is probably the biggest factor in choosing a mode of transportation. If we don't have confidence in getting from point A to point B by foot or bike in a reliable manner, we won't do it. Yet ironically enough, cars are far more dangerous to life. This disconnect between perception and reality only exists because of the type of physical environment we've built and continue to build today. The good news is that many American cities are starting to catch on to opening streets to more than just cars.

Countries home to bicycle-friendly cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Berlin, where a third or even up to half of the people commute by bike, have far fewer casualties and injuries when compared to the US where a measly 3 percent travel by bike. This is a difference in infrastructure as well as habits and behavior. It is also convincing that as more people hop on their bikes, the safer the commute will become. This very trend of the "safety in numbers" has taken place in Denmark and Germany.

The article cites a number of strategies that have worked well in European cities and can encourage more walking and cycling in the US. This includes cracking down on safety; policies that promote walking and cycling but also restrict car use like auto-free zones. Bike infrastructure can look different depending on the place as long as it includes elements of comfort and safety, clearly marked bike lanes or separate paths, allowing width for more sociable rides. Right-of-ways and separate bike traffic signals, or even cycle super highways like this new one in Copenhagen, called the "Cykelslangen" or "cycle snake." Additional techniques for more biking and walking include traffic calming, integrating these trips with other methods of public transit, compact mixed-use development, introducing these concepts from an early age, more training, traffic regulations, and broader policies like road capacity, limiting park spaces, and taxes on cars and fuel. Finally it's necessary to keep in mind that a combination of techniques are needed to have successful rates of walking and biking, and no one strategy should be used. American cities have a few fantastic models, but we shouldn't expect to get the same results by duplicating something else. Each city must formulate what will work best for its people, because only those people come first... and last!


Sources:
The New Climate Economy / Chapter on Cities
Transportation Research News / Walking and Cycling in Western Europe and the US 

Another interesting opinion:
Yale Environment 360 / On Biking, Why Can't the US Learn Lessons from Europe 

Germany: Learning the Rules of the Road in Primary School

Last year during my extended stay just outside Munich, Germany, I came across the following:

It may be difficult to see the scale in the picture, but it's an enclosed mini-road system where children learn the safety standards for cycling. The schools in this town of Vaterstetten require that students pass a test, ensuring that the streets stay consistent with safety and sharing the road. The test is given in primary school, more than a full decade before Germans are able to obtain a driving license. Getting a license in Germany as well as Denmark is expensive and time-consuming. My cousin Lara in Munich and host-sisters Jose/Emma in Copenhagen likely paid upwards of $2,000 USD and spent more than 50 hours for theory and professional instruction for a license. And more than often a license does not come with a car; this is also incredibly expensive in these countries. I will grab some numbers from copenhagenize.com: 

In Denmark a basic compact car will cost you about 100,000 DKK. ($17,400). A new Honda, depending on model, will cost between 200,000 DKK ($34,700 USD) and 500,000 DKK ($86,900). A new BMW, again depending on model, will set you back between 400,000 DKK ($69,500 USD) and 2.5 million DKK ($434,360 USD).

And finally, fuel prices. The price per gallon of gasoline is nearly triple in Germany and Denmark, compared with the US. Currently the US average is $2.32 per gallon; $6.07/gallon in Germany; $6.34/gallon in Denmark. 

I will end on this statistic (found once again on copenhagenize.com):

Bicycle: 63 cents net profit for society. (3.65 DKK)  

Car: $1.15 net loss to society. (6.59 DKK)

And keep in mind, this is in Denmark, without the massive subsidies for autos and fuel.

WOW. Maybe we should be building mini-roads to train and test our children for cycling in this country, and better bicycle infrastructure to go along with it! Cycling is beneficial in sooo many ways... 

Clover Valley Farms Projects

I often think of the amazing experience I had as the live-in Intern at Clover Valley Farms. I want to share the many projects we worked on over the course of the 2013 summer, one of which, the farm blog I kept, helped me launch this project! 


Animals: Poultry, Hogs, Turkeys, Layers, Bees

We raised about 300 Cornish Cross Broiler and Red Broilers and 50 turkeys. These happy animals were kept in 10x10 pens moved daily for new forage. The turkeys took over one of the orchards for the last part of their lives. At about 10 weeks they were processed and sold on site. In addition to meat birds we had laying hens. A couple dozen eggs were collected twice daily and sold to friends and neighbors.

   

The hogs arrived small, feisty, and shy. They were also part of a rotational pasture system, allowing them to forage in new territory once they had nearly dug their current one up. These were my favorite buddies, if you can tell by the picture of me joining in their wallow.

  

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) at UMDuluth Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI): I helped Cindy with her IPM project, tracking pests in CVF and UMD orchards to inform more environmentally responsible pest control practices.

The Garden: beans, greens, squash, potatoes, corn, onions, cucumber, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, radish, peas...you name it, we probably had it!

The Greenhouse: Cilantro, dill, parsley, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme. Herbs were harvested fresh for meals, dried for herb mixes, and used to infuse homemade vinegars!

Fruit: 3 apple orchards, grapes, high bush cranberry, juneberry, currants, gooseberry, wild berries

    

Planting & Pulling: The berm in front of the greenhouse was cleared and planted with a variety of fruit bushes! I also helped plant a new orchard with 3 varieties of apple for a total of 50 new trees.

     

  

Cooking... And Eating!!!

Wildlife: Readers who are unfamiliar with Minnesota, the northern part of the state has a very unique and spectacular biome that supports diversified flora and fauna.

Old Fashioned Bartering: Cindy and Jeff would trade goods with friends for things like this beautiful handmade crock!

Dog Training: Honey joined us during my time there so I learned some serious dog discipline

Other Adventures: Community events, Great Lakes Aquarium, bike rides, hikes, Lake Superior swimming!

  

 

Thanks for reading!