Aging in Place

NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
For Release Sunday, June 24, 2001

THE LIVABILITY LEGION AT 26:
CREATIVE, STILL SAUCY

By Neal R. Peirce

WASHINGTON -- Imagine an “inside the Beltway” policy group that’s never lobbied, never appeared before a congressional committee, never engineered federal grants for clients.

Partners for Livable Communities, born 26 years ago out of the National Endowment for the Arts, fits that description. Nary a campaign dollar has even fluttered past its door. Yet Partners has made a difference in cities coast to coast by helping spark a quiet revolution against massive one-style-fits-all physical development in favor of returning quality, livability and urbanity to America’s cities.

In a generation when Americans were deserting cities by the droves, Partners in 1980 launched an “economics of amenity” program to convince cities and their businesses that there were greenbacks -- and civic gold -- to be had in investing in such alleged “frills” as parks and open spaces, museums and theaters and restored historic areas.

America’s megacities -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago -- didn’t pay much heed. But scores of mid-tier cities, from Indianapolis to Richmond, Chattanooga to Rochester, Pittsburgh to Orlando to Oakland, listened and drew on Partners’ counsel, ideas, networking assistance. From lively public squares to farmer’s markets to amateur sports and back-from-the-dead riverfronts, the fruits can now be found coast to coast.

A new civics emerged from these community-building struggles -- the idea that neither government, nor business, nor non-profits acting singly, can make a city whole. It takes all three, working in inventive partnerships.

In the ‘90s, Partners struggled with a critical issue -- “livability for whom?” Result: a “shaping growth” program to balance redevelopment with social equity and use techniques like community “charettes” to involve people from all classes and backgrounds in shaping the future of their communities. A multicultural society, Partners proclaimed, would be America’s greatest future asset.

Then Partners joined the voices proclaiming that metro regions have become the critical arenas for growth, economy and culture in the 21st century. Now it’s all the more vital to make downtowns “the capitals of our regions,” vital 24-hour-a-day centers fostering regional citizenship and creativity.

In one sense, Partners has always been a one-man act -- the vision of Robert McNulty, onetime official of the National Endowment for the Arts who teamed up with Nancy Hanks, legendary early chairman of the Endowment, to start Partners in the mid-’70s. Even as government support for Partners projects declined over the years from 65 percent to 6 percent, McNulty tapped communities for fees, industriously entreated foundations and corporations for support.

It’s a classic story of the energy, moxie -- and sometimes sheer bravado -- required of an entrepreneur in the non-profit policy world. The mark of McNulty’s success isn’t just continued existence of Partners (today a 10-person staff, $1.2 million-a-year budget); it’s Partners’ constant flow of new ideas emboldening and assisting communities across the continent.

Take his newest cause: the oncoming tidal wave of the elderly, destined to double, as lifespans lengthen, to one in five Americans by 2050. America can’t have livable communities, McNulty insists, without radical redesign of towns and suburbs, of housing, of services for people no longer able or allowed to drive.

On the agenda, McNulty suggests: truly walkable neighborhoods and town centers; special and expanded transit services; changing local zoning laws to allow “granny flats” (accessory apartments localities often forbid); finding housemates for lonely or failing elderly; nutrition counseling and medical reminders -- and much more.

So Partners is out trying to convince other national groups -- from AARP to New Urbanists and leaders of “smart growth” organizations-- to join in developing community audits “on how to think out of the box about how the elderly can age successfully in place.”

Still, Partners maintains its independence. In speeches across the U.S., McNulty sends a challenge to seniors: “Don’t be curmudgeons, just focused on your own Social Security. It’s not OK for you to vote down school bonds and other local levies. You need to work with youth, the generations behind you. Help create livable communities for everyone.”

It’s that edge of candor that non-profits worth their salt owe us all. The belief of Partners, since its founding, has been that dance, theater, the visual arts, are powerful community-building tools. The organization is backing varieties of experiments to let teenagers, in non-school hours, organize their own arts co-ops and develop the creative, collaborative skills they need for strong, independent lives.

In those programs, active artists work with young people who’d otherwise be prime candidates for gangs, crime, teenage pregnancy. Strong adult-youth bonds are formed. The youth learn to organize, solve problems, start registering profits. Self-respect, self-sufficiency get developed.

“Culture,” argues McNulty, “is a school-to-work strategy, a youth development strategy, and an economic enterprise strategy. Arts and culture are not indulgences but rather mighty allies in the complex community building process.” Back to its roots in the National Endowment for the Arts, Partners continues to fulfill an exciting mission for us all.

Note: The broad array of national livability activities, including multiple
local case studies, are included in Partners' recent book, Towards Livable
Communities, covering the years 1975 to 2000.