RAIN Resources for Building Community A.T. in Nicaragua Homegrown Economy Bioregional Government
Page 2 RAIN November/December 1985 RAIN Volume XII, Number 1 November/December 1985 Coordinating Editor F. Lansing Scott Managing Editor Ralph Coulson Contributing Editor Steve Johnson (on leave) Circulation Manager Alan Locklear Intern Connie Cohen Contributors Mira Brown Alfred Glossbrenner Rebecca Foy Golden Kim Klein Morgan Miller Mark Roseland Kirkpatrick Sale Stephen Schneider Ethan Selzer Graphic Design Susan Applegate Printing: Argus Printing Typesetting: Irish Setter RAIN magazine publishes information that can help people make their communities and regions economically self-reliant, and build a society that is durable, just, and ecologically sound. RAIN is published six times a year by the Center for Urban Education. RAIN subscription and editorial offices are located at 3116 North Williams, Portland, OR 97227; 503/249-7218. Subscriptions are $18/year ($12.00 for persons with incomes under $7,500 a year). For additional information on subscriptions and publications, see page 39. Writers' guidelines are available for a SASE. Editorial and advertising deadlines are two months prior to publication date. RAIN is indexed in the Alternative Press Index and New Periodicals Index. Copyright © 1985 Center for Urban Education. No part may be reprinted without written permission. ISSN 0739-621x. Cover: A wind-powered water pump designed by the Center for the Investigation of Appropriate Technology in Nicaragua. RAINDROPS "Hey, look! RAIN's got a subtitle again!" Yes, it's true. We have a subtitle for the first time since we abandoned "Journal of Appropriate Technology" in late 1983. (In fact, our cover hasn't carried a subtitle since January 1980.) We've felt the need for a new subtitle for some time now; "RAIN," by itself, is just a little too cryptic. Several possibilities were considered and discarded: "Resources for an Ecological Society," "Ideas and Resources for Community Innovation," "Access to Alternatives," "Journal of Community Self-Reliance," and others. We found it difficult to convey what RAIN is all about in just a few words. Most of the subtitles we considered either seemed to emphasize just one aspect of RAIN'S coverage or were simply too long (how 'bout "Visions, Strategies, and Tools for Creating a Participatory, Just, and Ecologically Sound Society"?). But we finally arrived at a subtitle that seems to convey most of what we're concerned with in just four words: Resources for Building Community. "Resources" emphasizes our access function, our attempt to provide you with information about new books, projects, techniques, and so forth, that can help you become a more effective agent for change in your community. Of course, RAIN isn't all access; we also bring you articles that offer new visions, provide new frameworks for thought and action, illuminate connections, and so on. But our articles can be considered resources as well, as they are ultimately aimed at providing you with inspiration and clarity of thought to better do something. And what do we hope to help you do? In a nutshell, we hope to help you build community. "Building" emphasizes the positive orientation we take toward social change; although protest against the wrongs of our society may be justified, RAIN has always been concerned with how we can take positive action to create technologies, institutions, and ways of life that can right these wrongs. And we are mainly concerned with the initiatives that people can take within their own communities. Some technologies, economic arrangements, settlement patterns, and systems of planning and governance serve to build community; others serve to destroy it. That which concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, leaving others impoverished, destroys community. That which isolates people and cuts through relationships of neighborliness and mutual aid destroys community. That which reduces the control people have over their own lives destroys community. That which promotes conflict and violence destroys community. That which disrupts the ecological balances necessary for sustaining life destroys community. When we destroy commuruty, we create many other problems as well. Can it be that when we build community, we can solve many of these same problems? Is it worth a try? We think so. This Issue Most issues of RAIN are not designed with any particular theme in mind. But sometimes the material just seems to fall together in a certain way, looking almost as if we'd planned it that way. Much of the material in this issue is oriented toward creating various forms of community-based, participatory institutions. We have an article about "homegrown economics" in St. Paul, another on community technology in Nicaragua, and another about grassroots government as it might be practiced in a bioregional society of the future. The message in all three is that—whether we're talking about economics, government, or technological design—local control works best. In this issue we also bring you another "organizational how-to" article, following on the "Tools for Better Meetings" article we ran last issue. People working in community organizations that have more money than they can use (ha, ha) probably won't be interested in this month's article about fundraising, but we hope it's useful to the rest of you. You won't find a "Community Information Technology" section in this issue because its editor, Steve Johnson, took his networking proclivities over to Japan last month and found quite a few kindred spirits there. Some of what he discovered will no doubt find its way into future issues of RAIN. But those of you interested in appropriate uses of computer technology need not despair; we've got an article about computer communications by Alfred Glossbrenner, one of the leading experts in the field. Other Developments Some exciting things are getting underway around here. We are working to broaden RAIN's information base by creating some new networks. One, we are creating a national advisory board to bring in a wider range of ideas and
November/December 1985 RAIN Page 3 expertise to our operations. Secondly, we are creating a national correspondents network to alert us to innovative grassroots projects around the country. (You'll find a description of a regional version of this network in the Pacific Cascadia Bioregion Report. If you are interested in being a part of our national network, let us know.) Finally, we are continuing to add to our contributors network. Got an article you want published? Read any good books lately? Heard of any exciting projects? Drop us a line. Also, we've hired a marketing consultant to help us get RAIN into the many thousands of hands out there that we feel would be interested in it. You can help, too. Do you know of a bookstore, food co-op, etc. that should be selling RAIN but isn't? Send us names and addresses and we'll try to rectify the situation. Finally, we've got a new intern named Connie Cohen, and guess what? She can draw pictures! You'll find her artwork in two articles in this issue: "Government Nature's Way" and "A New Medium in the Making." We're happy to have an illustrator in our midst for the first time in a long time. —FLS LETTERS I enjoy and am always learning from your magazine. However, in John McKnight's article on bereavement counseling, I could not agree with the analogy between bereavement counselors and tractors. I am a psychiatrist and recently bereaved person and have done some research on bereavement lately. I believe that bereavement counselors (and perhaps counselors in general) are symptoms of deficits in a social order rather than stealers of natural community functions. They are of value chiefly to those who are socially isolated or are dealing with grief in a dysfunctional manner (that is, prolonged or absent mourning). In the same way counseling can be useful for those who, for whatever reason, did not obtain sufficient love or wholeness in childhood and suffer as a consequence. Granted it is a paid and artificial relationship, but there is often nothing else available as these people tend to be socially islolated and without the means of developing other resources. In an ideal social order, at least theoretically, these people either would not exist or would be cared for in another way, but now these people are here and they are suffering. I feel it is a legitimate and needed social role to help alleviate that suffering. Counselors and physicians also fill a need by adding to our cumulative knowledge of mental and physical problems and may, as a consequence, help in developing more effective prevention or treatment. Examples might include highlighting the social problem of child abuse or developing effective treatment for schizophrenics instead of locking them away or burning them as witches. There have been mistakes as there have been in every scientific field, but over time there seems to be a corrective process. ... Until the social order or its members mature satisfactorily, there will be a continued need for counselors. But these counselors have a continued responsibility to speak up about the social order that makes them necessary. Tom Meyer Areata, CA I have just read "Raindrops" (September/ October) in which you explain why you have dropped the umbrella term "Appropriate Technology" as subtitle and as partial definition of your social focus and are casting about for another umbrella concept that will adequately convey your purpose. I should like to share with you what has become for me a useful symbol and concept, serving a corresponding function in my own life and actions—the Miracle Whip Microcosm. I have a Miracle Whip jar, the quart- and-a-half size, into which I placed a bit of mud and some water from a stagnant irrigation ditch, and some of the assorted greenstuff which lived there. I poured melted paraffin into the lid, screwed it down tight, and sealed it up with electrician's tape at the edge. The jar has stood on my windowsill ever since. For the first six months the sealed jar showed slow but continuous change; the predominant type of algae was slowly replaced by a different kind, and the little animals that could be seen cruising around kept gradually changing in kind and in numbers. Now, five years later, the community in the jar remains approximately in balance, the animals using the oxygen made by the plants and the plants using the carbon dioxide made by the animals, each feeding each other assorted nutrients, and the bacteria and other invisible creatures filling and bridging the gaps between the various larger-scale parts of the cycle. This jar is a solar engine. Nothing is added nor subtracted except energy which enters as sunlight and departs as heat. All the other resources are totally recycled.... For me, the Miracle Whip Microcosm serves as a model of how the world works, on a number of different levels, and over the years has come to have ever deeper meaning for me. It is an icon, a symbol with profoundly ethical and religious, as well as economic, political, and biochemical lessons to offer.... The life-system of the world is an interconnected and—most importantly— an interdependent network of organisms, substance, and energy exchang«;s. The finite limits, the similarities between the earth and the jar, are starkly clear in the now familiar whole-round-ball picture of the earth as seen from the moon.... I have gradually, with the passage of years, given over the quest for personal and physical immortality and have transferred much of my survival urge, the assignment of ultimate value, to survival of the human species. Since the Miracle Whip jar reaffirms what any biologist knows—that stability and resistance to change is a necessary requirement for the survival of an ecosystem—then stability of the world (including human) condition should be the goal of every economist, sociologist, politician, parent, voter, taxpayer, national leader, legislator, realtor, "developer," banker, wage earner, farmer, or conscious person.... It would be useful to discuss and debate whether this model is appropriate for understanding the world and our place in it. Is stability, rather than constant growth, the desirable goal? Do I occupy a place in the system analogous to one of the entities in the jar? Are humans integral parts of the earth's ecosystem, or are we privileged and potentially immune to the imperatives of our bodies' chemistry, viscosity, and temperature tolerances, and the the unforeseen consequences of our actions? And if we do accept this as an appropriate model, what kinds and what magnitude of changes are compatible with survival of the system? With survival of the human species? How many people can the earth support at what levels and kinds of activities? What ethical principles are suggested by the jar? Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" comes to mind; appropriate technology, deep ecology, and Green politics are concepts that come from this model. What is the meaning of "progress" in this context? And finally, your unbrella concept and mine converge: surely the essence of the Miracle Whip Microcosm is community. Ted Merrill Mt. Vernon, Oregon
Page 4 RAIN November/December 1985 I SCATTERED Mushrooming Nuclear Free Zone Movement In 1982, there were but three nuclear free zones in the United States. This summer Jersey City, New Jersey, became the 100th city in this nation to join the NFZ club. Four of these also ban the investment of municipal funds in businesses that hold nuclear weapons contracts. There are 125 more NFZ campaigns in progress, including two legally binding ones against the navy in Key West and New York City. Beyond the local level, there are two statewide NFZ initiatives pending, in Oregon and Massachusetts. On a global scale, 1982's 250 NFZs have multiplied to today's 2700, including five NFZ treaties, the most recent of which declared the entire South Pacific, the birthplace of America's hydrogen bomb, to be nuclear free once again. (Source: The New Abolitionist, September/October 1985.) New Coke Badfor Old Economy The ongoing arguments over which Coca Cola formula is better are basically matters of—pardon the pun—taste. However, in Madagascar, the arguments have a bottom- line impact. That nation's leading export is vanilla, which is part of Old Coke's formula. Sales of vanilla to Coca Cola amounted to 30 percent of the world market, so the new vanilla-less Coke, plus falling prices for this favorite of flavors, were a cause of major concern in Madagascar. But, the return of "old" Coke may herald a vanilla-scented economic recovery there. (Source: Seeds, October 1985.) AIDS Research Posing Dilemmas In this country. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is headline news, and is receiving ever-increasing medical research funding. Generally, treatment of other health problems has not suffered due to the attention or money given AIDS. In places such as Africa, though, money for any new medical crisis must often be re-allocated out of existing funds, and AIDS research could cause a drop in the resources available for ongoing public health problems such as malaria and other tropical diseases, which claim many lives each year. This is the concern of the Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Halfdan Mahler, who feels that the organisation's health goals for the continent by the year 2000 might not be met if AIDS receives funding based on its notoriety rather than on its real impact on the populace. Accurate information on the spread of AIDS in Aftica has been hampered by slow information gathering. Another WHO official stressed that the biggest threat to health care improvement on that continent remains the world economic situation, followed by natural disasters and civil wars. (Source: All Africa Press Service Bulletin, September 30, 1985.) Women's Work andAgricultural Research Priorities A recent study of agricultural research in Africa provides some interesting evidence of a male bias in that field. There are two assumptions basic to almost all agricultural research done in the developing world: that cash crops are more important than locally consumed food crops, and that the roles of women are unimportant in the planning, development, and implementation of research. The cash crop emphasis is a colonial legacy, continued today in the guise of export-intensive development policies. As a result of this, the best land and the preferred laborers (men) still are devoted to these projects, and the bulk of research efforts benefit them. The net result is that food crops for local use, and the women who traditionally provide the labor to produce them, have been marginalized in access to land, technology, information, and credit. For example, agricultural researchers do little work on mass production of improved equipment for tasks done largely by women and largely by hand, such as weeding, pre-storage food processing, or transport of food from the fields. Overlooking these areas inhibits national development, as in Tanzania, where expansion of the maize crop was stymied by the unavailability of labor to weed the extra land available. Other research aimed at local food crop improvements has sometimes been ineffective because the wrong people were taught. In the Gambia, rice irrigation techniques failed to succeed even after they had been shown to the men three times. The women who actually tend the rice crops were never instructed. In Nigeria, "appropriate technology"’ oil presses proved inappropriately scaled to the bodies of the women that worked them in the villages, leading to unanticipated declines in production. Even in cash crop work, women's roles have been undervalued. They perform significant amounts of the work, and now are family income earners on a widespread basis in Africa. But, women are having difficulty building on these modest gains. Loans for farmland improvement and new equipment, or memberships in agricultural organizations, are dependent on the collateral value of land. Since the land that women work is less productive than that used for cash crops, its cash value is lower. There are remedies available to correct the male biases in Third World agricultural research. Moving field research stations closer to the villages where people live and work is one. Agricultural research staff need to know who really performs what village and household duties, and where, when, how, and why they do so. Also, they need to be able to analyze social, economic, and cultural information, as well as scientific data. Additionally, any research that results in less time spent by village women on household chores would also increase the time available for them to devote to agriculture, and to better care of their children, both of which would improve the overall quality of village life and tend to increase productivity. More specific steps include: recruiting more women into agricultural training institutes (currently only about 20
November/December 1985 RAIN Page 5 SHOWERS percent of graduates are female), re-orienting research toward sustained-yield food crops and away from cash crops, making information flow both ways between research stations and women in the fields (to learn as well as teach), and providing women with technical training as their field tasks become mechanized, since mechanization usually means men take over the work. (Source: CERES, FAO Review on Agriculture and Development, May/June 1985.) Farmland Protection Policy Act Reconsidered For 50 years, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has worked to protect the deptij of U.S. soils. In the 1970s, a specially-selected staff spent two years developing an excellent report on the loss of breadth of U.S. soil due to conversion to non-farm, primarily urban, uses. In 1981, the conservation thrust of the report was publicly supported by Secretary of Agriculture John Block, and later that year. President Reagan signed into law the Farmland Protection Policy Act (FPPA), designed to halt farmland conversion as a result of federal agency actions. So far, so good. But what happened to FPPA after becoming law provides some insight into the more quietly carried out revisionism operating alongside the well-publicized actions of the administration. In the 18 months following FPPA's becoming law, USDA developed criteria to implement the act. The criteria received wide acclaim, except from those who wanted to retain total freedom to use their land for maximum personal gain. Early in 1984, FPPA's critics were reassured, via a speech by a USDA Assistant Secretary to the National Cattlemen's Association, that there was nothing to fear from FPPA. When the law was presented in its final operative form a few months later, the number of FPPA criteria had been reduced from 16 to 12, and more serious thre£its to the effectiveness of the law were to follow in the way the administration set up the regulations for enforcement. First, any land zoned or recently planned for non-agricul- tural use was declared "committed for urban use," and exempt from consideration under the statute. Also, it was determined that for land to get the protection of FPPA, local SCS offices had to receive a request to do an evaluation, which then had to be completed within 45 days or the land in question became free from FPPA control. Compliance with evaluation requests within that time frame would have been difficult in any case, but only 20 percent of SCS staff had been trained to do the evaluations by the end of 1984, and the availability of training materials in Washington, D.C., had not been widely advertised. Moreover, the Land Use Division of SCS, which provided the staff that wrote FPPA and prepared the training techniques and materials, is being disbanded, which will make it more difficult for staff to interpret the laws intent. While Secretary Block and President Reagan quietly stood by, the FPPA has been essentially neutralized from within the Department of Agriculture, and prime farmland remains relatively easy to convert into business parks, suburbs, malls, and cash. (Source: American Land Use Forum, Spring 1985.) MOVING? If you're moving, please let us know. With a month's notice we can make sure you get each issue of RAIN. But if you don't let us know, you may miss out. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't usually forward RAIN's class of mail. Attach your address label here (or copy it carefully): New address: NAME_________ _____________________________________ ADDRESS ____ ______________________________ ^ CITY------------------------------------STATE ■ZIP NAME ______________________________________ ADDRESS__________________ ^_________________________ CITY-----------------------^------------- STATE______ ______ ZIP EFFECTIVE DATE-------------------------------------------- Mail to: RAIN, 3116 North Williams, Portland, OR 97227
Page 6 RAIN November/December 1985 WHERE DOES OUR MONEY COME FROM? Transfer Payments: 14C FROM: The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future St. Paul's Homegrown Economy: Self-ReHance in Action Future. It is available for $5 from the Office of the Mayor, 347 City Hall, St. Paul, MN 55102. RAIN: What are the key principles of St. Paul's Homegrown Economy? Morris: The Homegrown Economy stems from the self- reliant city concept. The key principle is that the city meets as many of its needs as it can through its internal resources—that it produces as many of its material goods as it can from within its geographical borders, and that it also meets its emotional and human needs from within its borders. So the self-reliant city emphasizes both economic development—relying on internal resources—and a sense of responsibility for the weak and the needy. Human caring and sharing networks are as important as business development and new production techniques. RAIN: How did St. Paul's program get started? Morris: In the early 1970s, the city of St. Paul underwent a charter change and an electoral change. The charter change was that it became a strong mayor form of government. A new mayor was elected, George Latimer, in 1976. During the next few years he reorganized the city government to make it a much more efficient and streamlined organization. The city government began attaining a sophistication in a number of different development techniques, in both small business development In past issues ofRAIN, we have discussed various projects designed to help local economies become more self-reliant by developing their internal resources and reducing their dependence on imported goods. While projects such as Kodak's Regeneration Project (see RAIN XI:4, page 26) and Rocky Mountain Institute's Economic Renewal Project (see RAIN XI:5, page 18) are just beginning to apply the principles of self-reliant economic development to specific locales, there is one city where these principles are being put into practice in a big way: St. Paul, Minnesota. Started by Mayor George Latimer in 1982, the Homegrown Economy project was conceived of as a way of stimulating local economic growth in a time of municipal cutbacks and general economic recession. Much of the inspiration for this project camefrom David Morris' work with the Institutefor Local Self-Reliance in Washington, D.C., and his writings on self- reliant cities (see below). Recently, Morris was hired to work in St. Paul to further develop the Homegrown Economy concept. We called Morris in St. Paul, and he graciously granted us the following interview. For further elaboration on some of the general ideas he discusses here, you might want to read his books—The New City States (Institute for Local Self- Reliance, 1982) and Self-Reliant Cities: Energy and the Transformation of Urban America (Sierra Club Books, 1982). For more information specifically about St. Paul's Program, an attractive booklet has been put together called The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's
November/December 1985 RAIN Page 7 and real estate packaging, that it did not have before. The city also developed a program where the neighborhoods are intimately involved in overseeing development policy within their borders, and they are involved in some of the capital improvement budgeting programs of the city. The city also developed an integrated energy policy in 1979-1980, which culminated in a number of specific programs, the largest of which is the largest hot water district heating system in the country. That was completed last year, a year ahead of schedule. So the city had been moving toward a unifying principle for several years. I crossed paths with Mayor Latimer in the late 1970s, and he was intrigued by the concept of the self-reliant city, and especially the “new city states." He invited the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to work with the city to conceptualize a development strategy based on that concept and establish development criteria that would be used to evaluate new ventures. The last few months I've been here full time. Tm here to help make the metaphor of the city as nation one that is as widespread as possible among the residents of St. Paul. RAIN: Can you give me examples of some of the kinds of self-reliant industries that you're trying to promote there? Morris: Yes, but it isn't just industries. There are many different parts of the concept of local self-reliance. For example, there's a program to encourage invention in the local school system in St. Paul. The feeling is that wealth is created primarily by invention. Most entrepre- neurialism creates a new business that might funnel money into that business that would have otherwise gone in another direction. That doesn't necessarily create new wealth for the community. But invention, especially where it means doing something with more efficiency, is really the root of creating new wealth. Inventions themselves become important exports from an economy. So what we're trying to do is teach the concept of invention to school kids and then also to encourage invention throughout the city as whole. The city is encouraging invention inside the city government by supporting city employees who come up with new products, to help them get patented and help begin marketing them at the same time as the city is helping to expand the invention program in the elementary school system. So that's one example of self-reliance. Another example is the matter of import subsitution for energy, through both a major conservation program and a major substitution of local resources for imported resources. The city has a shared savings program for multifamily rental housing which has already invested three quarters of a million dollars. Shared savings means that a third party agency comes in and does the conservation work needed for a building at no risk to the owner of the building. We are expanding it this coming year—with all private financing—to over a million dollars. The district heating system I mentioned before was a way of increasing the efficiency of energy consumption in downtown St. Paul by about 30 percent. It substituted coal for gas—coal is cheaper than gas and therefore the system is cheaper, but coal itself is obviously imported into Minnesota as well, so the next step is to substitute wood for coal. The twin cities suffer from Dutch Elm, and about 40,000 tons of waste wood are cut each year and then dumped. There's a quarter of a million dollar disposal cost attached to that, so what the city is doing now is chipping the wood and buying a fluidized bed combustion boiler which can burn both coal and wood. The hope is to replace from 10 percent to 40 percent of the coal with wood. This would reduce disposal costs by WHERE DO OUR INCOMES GO? dollars per capita 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 I FROM: The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future /
Page 8 RAIN November/December 1985 a quarter of a million dollars a year, generate a million dollars of revenue by selling the wood to a district heating company, and reduce the pollution scrubbing costs that would otherwise have to occur for a coal-fired boiler. So there's a systemic benefit to the economy that's much more than a million dollars for that particular operation. Another example has to do with St. Paul's very interesting geological structure. Most cities either have granite or sand under their feet. St. Paul has limestone and then sandstone underneath that. The city has 7,000 acres where there are about 10 feet of limestone and under that about 80 feet of sandstone before it hits the water table. And it turns out that undergound construction is cheaper than surface space construction, and the operating costs might be two-thirds cheaper. So the city is now going out with requests for construction bids to begin construction of the city underneath St. Paul. The entire 7,000 acres would not necessarily be built, but there is more square footage possible underneath the limestone layer than exists in commercial space on the surface of the entire city. So it can be a very dramatic project, thereby freeing up the surface of the city for other more valuable operations. So those are some. I could keep going, but you're getting the idea that a self-reliant city is not a specific business, but it is a spirit, if you will, of a city. We'll soon be starting a labeling program that will label homegrown products so that people will know where they come from. Our feeling is that when people know where goods are made, they will tend to buy their neighbors' goods rather than goods from outside the area. So that will be a public education program. The city has appropriated a quarter of a million dollars for a product development seed capital fund, and is now in the process of getting matching money from the private sector in the city to set up a fund for specific ventures that are related to the self-reliant city. RAIN: As I understand it, import substitution is one of the real keys to creating a self-reliant city. Are there any general criteria for what makes a product a good candidate for import replacement? For example, if I were a "homegrown entrepreneur," where would I look for business opportunities? Morris: First of all, let me say that import subsitution is important because it gives you an initial dynamic; import substitution is a dead end if that's the only thing that you're doing, which is why we're also looking at the concept of invention, because you can get exports from invention as well as make things more efficiently. But to answer your question, there are many places you could look. The best thing to do is a balance of payments analysis of the city, which we did, and to isolate or identify those sections of the city where the larger sums of money are leaving, and then see if you can develop mechanisms—a business, a financial forum, and so forth—for retaining that money locally. It turns out, for example, that one of the largest sums of money that is leaving St. Paul and not coming back is federal taxes. The Midwest, unlike certain other parts of the country, loses an enormous amount of taxes to the federal government that it does not get back. St. Paul gets back considerably less than a dollar for each dollar that it pays out. The city doesn't have direct control over that, but the mayor is raising the issue again and again to make people aware that there are some places in the country, especially the Midwest, especially the areas of the country that are hurting in the current recession, and especially the agricultural sectors of the country, that are actually exporting capital to the rest of the country through federal taxes, while areas that are not hurting at all are importing capital from the rest of the country. That is more an education in national political strategy than anything else, but we've also identified energy as a significant factor in a poor balance of payments, and that led to the kind of strategy that I mentioned before. Health turns out to be another major problem area that can be resolved to a large extent at the local level. So the best thing to do is to start mapping the resources of the city as if it were a nation, and begin to look at the balance of payments and the balance of trade, and then begin to identify those sectors where "native businesses" can begin to have an advantage. RAIN: Many of us of learned in Economics 101 that national divisions of labor and trade between regions make for a more efficient economy, and that each region should specialize in its production according to the principle of "comparative advantage." The concept of a self-reliant city flies in the face of that understanding. Pipes for St. Paul's downtown district heating system. The system is the largest in the country and is designed to operate on any fuel. (FROM: The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future)
November/December 1985 RAIN Page 9 WHAT DO WE SPEND FOR OTY SERVICES? dollars per capita FROM: The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future Have conditions changed recently to make the concept of self-reliant cities more appealing? Morris: Yes, I think that several things have changed recently. But first, let's look at the theory of comparative advantage. The theory was developed by David Ricardo, but people seem to forget that Ricardo said that the theory of comparative advantage becomes irrelevant if capital becomes mobile. In his time, in the 1820s and 1830s, capital was not mobile, and so therefore there was some rationale for the theory. But he himself said if international economic conditions changed radically, the theory would no longer hold. Well, of course, the economic conditions have changed very radically at this point, yet people are still quoting Ricardo, which I think he would find amusing. There is a reason for trade and competition because the presumption is that competition will force you to improve your product or the quality of your service. But that doesn't necessarily need to be a global competition; it could just as well be a municipal competition or a regional competition. The question of comparative advantage presumes that you can produce a product cheaper than I can because of the inherent conditions of your area. But again and again what we discover is that you produce a product cheaper because: (A) the exchange rate allows you to do that, and/or (B) you pay your labor a much lower price and they have worse working conditions. Neither one of those has anything to do with quality or efficiency, so it would seem to me that if you're talldng about a theory of comparative advantage that says that I will be driven out of business mostly by other businesses that are not as efficient as I am, then it seems that the theory begins to fall apart. That is, it falls apart, not as a fact of life, which it is, but it falls apart as a theory that one would want to use political power to support. In the last 150 years, we made a decision in this cbtin- try to have long distribution systems. That was a political decision. So we paid at public expense for the railroads by giving them property on either side of the line, we paid at public expense for massive irrigation systems so we can have the kinds of farms in California that would not have been tenable otherwise, we allowed the pollution from those farms to run off at no cost to the farmers, we paid at public cost for the building of the interstate highway system, we paid at public cost for the excavation for canals and locks, so basically what we did is that we made a national decision that it was inherently good to ship tomatoes from California to Maine. Once we made that decision we then invested enormous amounts of public money to make it cheaper to ship a tomato from California to Maine, and now in 1985 we hear that we shouldn't try to raise tomatoes, at least on an extended basis, in Maine because its cheaper to bring them in from California. Well, it may be a false statement even now, but even when it's true we find that it's true only because of the subsidies that have gone in the front end in the last 40 or 50 years. So that's a long answer to a short question, but the question that you raise is the central issue that faces local self-reliance. My feeling is that if I can extract the maximum amount of useful work from a given resource, and if I can extract more useful work from a given resource than somebody else, then I am economically competitive within the rules as I develop them. But I'd add one thing. That is that research and development plays a very important role in creating the production systems with which we live, and if we make a decision as a nation that we will invest the money to create the technologies that will allow local self-reliance to be economically competitive with centralized, globalistic systems, we can have that come about. But we
Page 10 RAIN November/December 1985 have not in fact made that decision at this point; we've made the opposite decision. RAIN: Do you know of other cities that are undertaking any kinds of programs similar to what you're doing in St. Paul? Morris: There are a number of city officials that have contacted the mayor of St. Paul, and have come out to visit. There are many cities that are embracing part of the concept. One has to remember the context in which this is happening. Number one, the baby boom is coming to power in the cities. That is, the bulge in the population curve is now in their thirties and forties, and when you're in your thirties and forties, you gain the first rungs of power in your society, which means you become the entrepreneur, you become the small business president, you become the head of a local bank, and you become the mayor and the city council. So you begin to look locally, just because that's the age of the population. The second is that the country as a whole is growing older. That's not just the baby boom, the demographics of the country as a whole is that we're an aging popula- ^ tion. And with an aging population, we're putting down roots. People don't move as much now as they did 10 or 15 years ago. And so there is a revived sense of place in the country, that wasn't there 10 or 15 years ago. The other major development is that there have been significant federal cutbacks. And with significant federal cutbacks, one finds that cities are forced to be creative— sort of the self-reliance of desperation, if you will— especially in meeting the human needs of their local citizens. A Profile of the Homegrown Economy 1. Local ownership 2. Employee and community participation 3. A willingness to take risks 4. Inventiveness :■ 5. Getting the most out of local resources 6. Substituting local goods and services for imported products 7. Preventing problems from arising rather than treating them after the fact 8. Expanding exports FROM: The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future And the fourth major change is that the world economy has changed such that people begin to understand how we're all buffeted by forces that appear to be beyond our control, and there's a longing for us to gain more control on the local level. So when you put all those pieces together, what it means is that there's a dynamism at the municipal level that was lacking 10 or 15 years ago. And that dynamism tends to be focused in an entrepreneurial way around business development—business development that uses creative financing, business development that perceives the role of the city as entrepreneur, as venture capitalist, as equity funder, and so forth. So there's a new dynamic occuring, but that is not necessarily a self-reliant city. When the mayor of a city AN AGING COMMUNITY percent of population 70 0 0-15 16-64 over 65 age In years FROM: The Homegrown Economy: A Prescription for St. Paul's Future
November/December 1985 RAIN goes to Tokyo to invite a Japanese plant into the city, that's not a self-reliant city. When a city tries to get the federal government to give it a major grant for a certain development task, that's not a self-reliant city. So you can have an entrepreneurial city, you can have an aggressive city, you can have a city that's very sophisticated in its economic development strategy, but that will not necessarily be a city that emphasizes the criteria of a homegrown economy or local self-reliance. One other comment is that I'm finding that although there is a great deal of creativity occurring now in entrepreneurial development around the country, there's much less creativity going on in the social service networks or the city governments. The self-reliant city embraces those different pieces as a whole. RAIN: How can the citizens of a community help promote the self-reliant city concept in their own cities? Morris: It's the citizens of a city that will make the metaphor true or not. What the mayor of St. Paul is doing is selling a metaphor. He's saying, we will become a self-reliant city. We will generate a significant amount of our wealth from our internal resources. We will use our ingenuity to develop new ways of doing things. But mostly a mayor is a tribal chief. He develops the metaphor, he develops the message, but it's the people of a city that either buy into it, and by doing so translate that philosophy into actual projects and activities, or do And so what we're doing in St. Paul at the present tii in a number of different ways is reaching out to wider and wider segments of the local population to engage them in discussions about what the concept means in their own particular realm: what it means for the housewife, what it means for the truckdriver, what it means for the city employee. Let me give you one example. There's a local woman who three years ago was making peanut butter cookies for her kids, and decided that her measuring cup was inappropriate for the task she was doing because every time she had a new ingredient, she had to wash it out thoroughly. So she invented a new measuring cup. The cup has a movable bottom, and the marks on the side of the cup are actually grooves, and you can lock in the bottom at different levels so you can measure the amount that you want, and when you're finished you can push the bottom up to the top and use a knife to just wipe it off in one motion. So it's easily cleaned. She just got a patent last fall, and she's now marketing the product. Well, there's a person who looked at an ordinary, everyday way of doing things with different eyes and has created new wealth by making a process more efficient. That's an average person who has much to teach other people in the community. □ □ ACCESS: Community Economics Economic Development Incorporated (EDI) PO Box 4587 Boulder, CO 80306-4587 EDI is a venture capital firm that specializes in worker-owned companies controlled by minorities or people who have been economically disadvantaged. It was formed in 1983 by a group of investors who wanted to test the possibility using venture capital techniques, rather than charity or government programs, to create employment for those with limited economic opportunities. By building leadership skills and providing needed start-up capital, EDI helps create businesses that will enable low-income people gain more control over their communihes and their own lives. EDI is in business to make money for its investors in a manner that promotes certain social and political goals. Some of the social and political criteria that guide EDI's investment decisions include the following: provision of safe and healthy working conditions, a commitment to worker ownership and participation, enhancement of local self-reliance, protection of the environment, and generation of new jobs in low-income communities. In addition to providing capital for new business ventures, EDI offers a managerial service for its clients that assists in developing managerial skills, conducting market analysis, creating a business plan, and so on. —FLS Trusteeship Institute, Inc. Baker Road Shutesbury, MA 01072 Trusteeship Institute (TI) promotes the development of cooperative communities in America. It derives its inspiration primarily from two sources: Mahatma Gandhi's theory of trusteeship and the success of the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. Gandhi's theory of trusteeship holds that all political and economic activities should be democratically controlled by those affected by them and managed, in trust, for the welfare of society as a whole. TI's founder and president, Terry Mollner, believes that the best example of trusteeship in practice in a modern industrial society can be found in the Mondragon Cooperatives (see RAIN X:4, page 14). Mondragon is the top producer of appliances and tools in Spain. It has created 20,000 worker-owned jobs as well as a sophisticated cooperative community that includes a cooperative bank with nearly 400,000 depositors, a network of consumer cooperatives with 120,000 members, a cooperative education system, cooperative housing projects, and a cooperative insurance company. Trusteeship Institute promotes the development of similar communities in this country by providing assistance to groups creating new worker-owned businesses and helping establish financial institutions operated according to trusteeship principles. Additionally, TI organizes conferences and does consulting on socially responsible investing, and teaches people how to establish community land trusts, form nonprofit organizations, and run meetings and other affairs cooperatively and efficiently. The institute also offers three publications written by Terry Mollner: Mondragon Cooperatives and Trusteeship (1982, $22); Trusteeship: The Inevitable Alternative to Capitalism and Socialism (1982, $1.50); and Mondragon: A Third Way (1983, $1.50). "Cooperativas," a 20- minute film about the Mondragon Cooperatives, is also available for rental from the institute. —FLS
Page 12 RAIN November/December 1985 ACCESS: Cities ----------------------------- ^_______ I__ Institute for Local Self-Reliance 242518th Street NW Washington, DC 20009 In addition to ILSR's work with the Homegrown Economy project in St. Paul, the institute works in several other program areas as well. The overall goal of these programs is to help make the city “an efficient and equitable system, one that extracts the maximum value from its human, material, and technological resources." ILSR provides information on the many aspects of local self-reliance in a variety of ways. Publications such as The New City States help bring the concept of the city as nation to a mass audience. ILSR has conducted seminars and training sessions on waste utilization and economic development all across the country. It has developed a computer network to disseminate information on model systems, new enterprises, contacts, and references. And ILSR staff helped KRMA-TV in Denver to develop A Community for All Seasons, a program aired over more than 50 public television stations. The institute also conducts technical research, the findings of which have been published in technical papers such as Waste to Wealth, Be Your Own Power Company, and Nutrient Flows in Metropolitan Areas. Institute staff also provide direct technical assistance to communities. Assistance in developing recycling programs and solid waste management plans has been provided to Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, and many other cities. ILSR staff have also worked with the Minnesota Department of Energy and Economic Development, the Missouri Cooperative Extension Service, and the Nebraska Energy Office to help develop energy and economic policy. In addition to all these far-flung operations, the institute has been working in its own neighborhood as well. ILSR has developed a youth leadership organization in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. called Around the Comer to the World. The organization conducts training for local youths in administering youth councils, fundraising, newsletter production, and related skills. Enterprise development is stressed as well, and three businesses have been created: a rehabilitation and weatheriza- tion service, a compost enterprise, and a clean-up service. —FLS Strugglefor Space: The Greening ofNew York City 1970-1984, by Tom Fox, Ian Koeppel, and Susan Kellam, 1985,165 pp., $15 from: Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, Inc. 72 Reade Street New York, NY 10007 In the early 1970s, it was illegal for a private citizen in New York City to care for a street tree or have a compost pile on an open lot. Now, about 450 community- based gardens bring life to formerly vacant lots there. These gardens occupy over 150 acres of land, involve 11,000 people, and represent nearly 34 million dollars of investment—80 percent of which is donated labor. That turnaround, as described in a new book entitled Strugglefor Space: The Greening of New York City 1970-1984, has resulted from a blend of causes, such as market conditions, idealism, fiscal crises, and grassroots activism. The 1950s and 1960s saw a drastic increase in disinvestment—abandonment, arson, and demolition—in NYC. Many concerned and skilled people began to see that something needed to be done about these urban wastes, and the recession of the early 1970s gave some of them the leisure time to pursue their concerns. In the mid-1970s, NYC nearly went bankrupt, which caused severe cutbacks in services such as parks and recreation. The city's residents had to learn to provide more for themselves, and were more than willing to do so. The combination of all these factors provided ample opportunity for the development of community gardens. Urban gardening was not a new idea. Back when many New Yorkers were recent immigrants, small gardens allowed both cheap food and a sense of cultural continuity to newly arrived groups. During World War II, Victory Cardens supplied food and proof of patriotism. After the war, though, the idea withered, leading to the abandonment of land so in evidence by the 1950s. The community gardens of today, which primarily serve the needs of lower- income neighborhoods, are more than food and flower baskets. They include trees, painted wall murals, barbeque pits, benches, and play equipment, making them year-round attractions, even for those too young or old to participate in gardening. And, these gardens are resistant to the twin blights of vandalism and neglect, largely because they are developed by local people who watch out for them. When this greening of NYC was beginning, city officials were slow to approve. One group that came to be known as the Green Guerillas planted their first garden area in a rubble-strewn lot, only to have it bulldozed away. A few years later, after the gardens became more common, other problems cropped up. For one thing, most community gardeners are technically squatting on the land, and have no legal right to it. They can be evicted on very short notice. Under Operation Green Thumb, begun in 1978, gardeners began getting one- year leases on the lots, for a dollar a year. Still, it was very easy to get rid of a garden after the growing season. Two more methods have been developed to deal with this: some groups have gotten long-term leases, and other have bought their land outright with help from the Trust for Public Land. Now, the story comes full circle, with market conditions again presenting a challenge and an opportunity to city residents. In the 1980s, disinvestment has been replaced by upwardly spriraling land values, especially in the NYC borough of Manhattan. For example, a community garden space that has been producing several hundred bushels of vegetables yearly has recently been reassessed at 10 million dollars—giving its tomatoes an equivalent value of 1,000 dollars each. This kind of economic pressure has caused Manhattan to lose about 10 pecent of its community garden space during the 1980s. But there is hope here, too. In the last couple of years, community gardeners have begun negotiating with developers and the city to maintain green spaces when garden land is sold for development. Frequently, space for gardens is being retained, which makes the developments more attractive, and hence more salable. Everyone benefits. Viewed citywide, the movement toward community-based, community-controlled, and community-benefitting gardens in New York City is growing. While Strugglefor Space is not particularly well-written, its story is valuable, and the details of how the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition gathered data to make the case for community gardens, and the resources and bibliography provided could guide similar groups nationwide to begin, better maintain or improve their efforts at greening their cities. —RC
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