Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
— Albert Camus
As previewed in this space last week, Bruce Katz spent most of October 22-23 in Birmingham. Vice president of the DC-based public policy think tank The Brookings Institution, Katz has an international reputation as an expert on policies and trends that are shaping the future development — or lack thereof — of cities throughout the world.
“Urbanization is the unifying narrative of the 21st century,” Katz said while here, promoting the idea that urban density is the key to spurring a climate of “open innovation” that generates momentum to transcend economic, political, demographic, cultural bounds and establish a true sense of regional community.
“What happens in the core affects everything else,” Katz said. “It has a multiplier effect that radiates outward.”
In Birmingham, Katz spent a lot of time touring the city, taking in the “good bones” he found in locales from downtown to Ensley to Woodlawn to Vulcan Park. He also spoke at two events (one with paid admission, one free to the public), where he communicated in a straightforwardly matter-of-fact style that lent his words a certain implicit logical force. At one point in his Friday afternoon lecture at UAB’s Volker Hall, Katz noted in passing that Birmingham is the 49th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, and then quickly circled back to make a point.
“It’s really important for Birmingham to think of itself as a Top 50 metro,” Katz said, and a murmur of revelation and assent radiated through the room. It’s not rocket science, as Katz himself emphasized, almost apologetically, at both speaking engagements. But he also seemed to have picked up on the remarkable, and apparently reflexive, tendency of our community to take pretty much any situation, any issue, any challenge, any opportunity, and complicate it so thoroughly as to make its solution seem like rocket science.
Katz made it clear that he’d seen a lot of things that impressed him, assets that Birmingham can and should be leveraging to establish and sustain itself as a global player. UAB’s medical and research capabilities topped the list, but he also took note of the city’s stock of historic buildings, applauded efforts by city and transit officials to establish a Bus Rapid Transit network, and said there are opportunities for residential and commercial revitalization in any number of neighborhoods across the city.
In short, Katz was eager to give Birmingham credit for what it is doing well (or, in some cases, perhaps beginning to attempt to do well). And he was just as eager to have Birmingham begin giving itself credit for those things, and using them as the foundation for “finding out who you are,” and growing “with intention and purpose.”
“Birmingham has gotten a little taste of what it could be,” Katz said of the “renaissance” that has taken hold in some quarters of the city over the past several years. “But there has not been a lot of intention to it. It has happened organically.”
At both events, some of Katz’s most incisive comments came in response to questions from the audience, which was a mostly professional crowd on Thursday night, and primarily academics and students on Friday. Unburdened as he is by our quaint local custom of putting a higher value on politeness than on hard truth, Katz delivered some bracingly frank remarks that, whether or not he knew it, struck a few body blows on our scattered sense of priority.
Katz was asked how his call for investment in the urban core squares with the local business community’s support for the Alabama Department of Transportation’s plan to spend $5 billion or so public dollars on a highway project — the Northern Beltline — that will bypass downtown Birmingham and fuel another generation of suburban sprawl, in diametrical contrast to what is happening in forward-thinking cities. Here’s his reply:
“That’s crazy. If you’re not focused on the core in a really coordinated way, you can’t even talk about the city or the region in terms of economic health, or of being competitive with other metros. You’re just subsidizing sprawl. Now is the time for metros to recognize the value of density. This is 2015, not 1960.”
On metro areas as the economic drivers of the 21st century: “Primarily because of our aging population, we’re experiencing a structural shift in what government does, at both the federal and state levels. The federal government is becoming basically a health insurance company with an army, and many state governments are simply irrelevant when it comes to investing in innovation. Cities and metros aren’t governments, they’re networks. They’re really the only functioning part of the system, the only places where the innovation that feeds real prosperity happens.”
On Birmingham’s self-image, and how that ties into prospects for sustainable growth and progress: “I don’t know if Birmingham has a clear idea of what it wants to be. I’ll quote Dolly Parton: ‘Figure out who you are — and do it on purpose.’ That’s great advice. Build out your economy with intention and purpose. Find your game changer, that one or two things that really put Birmingham on the map.”
On the role of UAB in attacking poverty in Birmingham at the community level: “Shame on us if we can’t figure out how to connect poor neighborhoods with that tremendous engine of growth. Again, it takes intentionality.”
On the value of working partnerships that bring together perspectives from all segments of the community — county and municipal governments, businesses, educational institutions, nonprofits, neighborhood groups, individual citizens — around common goals: “If you want Birmingham to compete on a global stage, you need to collaborate. If you don’t, you are going to lose out. You won’t be able to attract or retain the kinds of businesses and jobs you need to grow and thrive. Your kids will leave, because they won’t have the opportunities [that are available elsewhere].”
On getting past the racial mistrust that continues to make it difficult to build consensus on critical regional issues: “Stop talking about it. Just do it.”
On the idea of metropolitan government for Birmingham and Jefferson County, and its relative value as a civic cause: “You’re not going to have unified government. That’s just not gonna happen. [Instead], the municipalities just need to stop stealing from each other and find ways to work collaboratively on building the regional economy.
“Trying to consolidate governments is a fool’s errand. There are more important things you can be doing for the future of the region. I wouldn’t even put any time into it.”
On what it takes to drive a progressive regional agenda forward: “Don’t wait for unanimity. I’ve worked in the U.S. Senate, where 51 is victory. Find the people who really want to make things happen and get to work.”
One thing that Katz was not asked about was plans for building a domed stadium/multi-purpose facility adjacent to the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex. I don’t want to put words into the mouth of our learned visitor, so I can only voice my suspicion that he would find spending a half-billion dollars in public funds on yet another relic of Birmingham’s outmoded approach to economic development on a par with the craziness of spending another 10 times that on a road that leads to nowhere.
More importantly, I think I know why the dome question was never posed. Call me overly optimistic, but I’m fairly certain it was because both of the rooms in which he spoke were populated by smart folks — people smart enough to know without having to be told that a dumb idea is a dumb idea. Or, to put it more constructively, people smart enough to know that we can put our public resources — along with our individual efforts and the collective civic capital build through collaborative successes — to much more broadly beneficial uses.
All that requires is changing our way of thinking — and doing. Small chore, right? Nothing to it. Birmingham is really good at integrating critical changes in the local culture. Unless you look at our virtually unbroken history of passive-aggressive hostility to changes in the local culture, whether critical or not. Change, either making it happen or adapting to it once is has, is not our strong suit.
Regardless, that was the core of Katz’s message to Birmingham. Whether our community is capable of such is a question for which the answer will come day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year, decade-by-decade. It’s all a matter of Birmingham figuring out what it wants to be when — or, making the wrong choices or failing to take effective action, if — it grows up.
It’s all a matter of doing something that no generation of Birmingham citizens has ever done: Taking control of our own destiny. Making Birmingham what we, the citizens of Birmingham, want it to be — and, in the process, gaining entry into a world of new and limitless opportunity. Entering the metropolitan revolution on the side that is going to win — and, indeed, already is.
We should get started.