speaker-0: We are the roots, we are the right, hearts on fire, truth in eyes. From these blocks we build the towers, people, passion.

speaker-1: This is Places People Change, a podcast that explores what happens when neighborhoods stop being the target of change and start being the source of it.

speaker-0: From these blocks we build the towers, people, passion, power.

speaker-1: Welcome to Season One, where we explore belonging as the foundation for equitable neighborhood change. This season we will talk to researchers and thought leaders who are shaping the field of place-based development and to the practitioners on the ground making it possible. I am Sean Duncan, the founder of Congruence Consulting, and your host for Places People Change. We are living in an era of unprecedented place-based investments. The public, private, and nonprofit sectors are acknowledging the ways disadvantage has been deliberately concentrated in some neighborhoods and opportunity in others. And they are rallying together to reverse generations of this racialized and class-based disinvestment. Today we are speaking with two leaders who are influencing the growth of this field about why this level investment is necessary. And how we keep people at the center of this work. Dr. Rob Watson is the executive director of the Ed Redesign Lab at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and the faculty co-chair for cross-sector collaboration, where the focus is on creating thriving places for children and families.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Dr. Ben Lewis is the Vice President of Learning and Innovation at Purpose Built Communities. Within this role, he leads the Purpose Built Community Solutions Lab, coordinates organizational learning, and drives field building efforts. Both guests are leaders and institutions at the forefront of this movement.

speaker-0: Fill the towers, people, passion, power.

speaker-1: Well, Rob, Ben, thank you guys so much for making time for this conversation. I'm honored just to sit with you and learn from me today.

speaker-0: Yeah, happy to be here.

speaker-2: Thanks so much for having us.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Well, ⁓ so this is a podcast largely about the way people are shaping their places. But I wanna start with what is a place that has shaped you and your life in some way. Rob, let's start with you, man.

speaker-2: Sure. ⁓ it's pretty straightforward for me. ⁓ I'm from the the city of Poughkeepsie, New York. It's a small city in the Mid Hudson Valley of New York State. ⁓ I was born and raised there. ⁓ it's about ninety minutes north of New York City on the last stop on the commuter rail from Harlem one twenty fifth street. I grew up in the Northside neighborhood of Poughkeepsie. ⁓ and I think it's really the s the tale of two cities like everybody's town or neighborhood. You know, on one hand in the neighborhood I grew up in, a low income ⁓ a black male from a low income household like me, I grew up in public housing and w goes on to earn about fourteen thousand dollars in adulthood. There's about a fifty percent ⁓ chance of being incarcerated at some point in their life and in that same neighborhood, ⁓ people live to be about seventy three years old of any demographic, ⁓ compared it to about eighty five or ninety year old ⁓ ninety years old in nearby census tracts, even in a small city of thirty thousand. ⁓ and so I think that's like the tragedy of the place I'm from. But I was lucky. I was ⁓ raised by a village of parents, educators, aunties and uncles who really sh taught me my purpose was my community's purpose and that our aspirations and destinies were intertwined and you know I grew up in this place that has tremendous assets. ⁓ you know, the mid-hudson valley's a beautiful part of the country. I received a lot of supports from community and my cradle of career journey. And so ⁓ it's this it's this story of of a place that had had a hard time. ⁓ but also a place where a lot of people have rallied behind their kids and so ⁓ it's a place that I'm still actively involved with ⁓ to this day and people like Ben have actually been great supporters of us back home. So that's that's my that's my place as a product.

speaker-1: And that could be a good like quiz for our listeners. Can you spell Poughkeepsie? If you can, we'll we'll send you we'll send you one of the the branded coffee mugs that we don't have for this podcast because I don't know unless you're from there, I don't know. I remember because I remember when we were together back in February and you they were talking about the work in Poughkeepsie and like went back to my hotel room afterwards, like, ⁓ I'm so intrigued by this and I start to like type it in. I'm like, I think I'm just gonna need to push the microphone on this and just ⁓ j just say it and see see if I can get to it a little faster that way. Well that yeah, thank you for sharing that. That ⁓ that's that's beautiful. Then how about for you? What's the place that's ⁓ left a mark on you?

speaker-0: Yeah, I might pass that test. I've written Poughkeepsie many a time since having met Rob, so

speaker-1: ⁓ yeah.

speaker-0: I might pass it. so I'm from Bear, Delaware. it's a a small suburb, maybe twenty-five minutes south of ⁓ Wilmington, Delaware. It's right outside of Newark, Delaware, which is where the University of Delaware is. ⁓ it's kind of one of those those suburbs that people live in because it's right off of I ninety five and it's very easy to access, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore. ⁓ and it was a suburb that ⁓ was kind of built for for commuters. ⁓ so, you know, if you go to Bear today, what you're gonna see is neighborhoods where most of the houses look the same. ⁓ you're gonna see a lot of strip malls, ⁓ a very typical kind of East Coast suburb. ⁓ what is really cool about Bear is that it still is racially diverse and it was ⁓ racially diverse when I was growing up. It's about thirty percent black, thirty percent white, thirty percent Hispanic. ⁓ and that just kind of happened naturally. Whereas I'm sure we're gonna get into the in some parts of this podcast in many parts of the country that did not ⁓ whatever the racial dynamics are did not happen naturally. There was some policy that led to to that that being the case. ⁓ but for me as a a mixed race kid growing up, ⁓ it really was cool because when I would be in spaces with my family, it looked similar to the spaces in my neighborhood. ⁓ so it was a really kind of affirming ⁓ place for for me to to grow up. And then also it just kind of ⁓ sharpened my my lens on ⁓ race ⁓ and kind of you know created this reality where I just always noticed race in any ⁓ situation that I was was in. ⁓ and then, you know, as I I grew and and started to to get into to school and and work after that. ⁓ it was just ob so obviously clear that you start to see just disparities based on race and I just couldn't see see them. And that really was the motivation for the career that I got into where I I became an educator, teacher, principal, and then ultimately getting into this work. ⁓ but I think a lot of that came from ⁓ just my experiences growing up ⁓ and seeing such a ⁓ diverse array of people around me all the time.

speaker-1: Huh. Wow. Yeah, and and I mean you guys are ⁓ major leaders in this whole place-based field and world. ⁓ and I ⁓ w so I did this did this thing recently where I got onto the ⁓ the Google like Ngram search where you can kinda find out like how many times a word has been used and any digitized thing that Google can access. ⁓ and so I decided to put place-based, like place hyphen based in there to like, okay, what's been the cause I feel like it's everywhere now. And I'm like, but also confirmation bias or whatever, once you see it or hear it, if you're in it, like you're gonna pick up on it, all that. So you know, kind of like so from like the year 2000 to 2022, like it's increased five hundred and forty three percent. Like quite a spike, right? and so I'm like, okay. I mean I, you know, not a mathematician, so I had to do some double triple checking to make sure I'm like actually seeing that right. So I mean, so the good news is I feel like the word, at least the the idea of thinking about social inequities and social impact through the lens of places or neighborhoods is gaining a lot of momentum in a lot of different sectors, which is really good. But it also seems like it's gaining a lot of ambiguity and means something different to all the different people that might be using it at any kind of given time. Like ⁓ you can speak for your official institutional role or just you as a person, like when you think about place-based work, what what is that actually supposed to mean when we're when we're using those words out?

speaker-0: World. Yeah, I can start taking a stab at that. I I think I would I would that's all that's exciting though to hear those those stats. That's that's pretty cool. ⁓ so I I would describe PlaySpace as ⁓ it's a way to describe a program, ⁓ support or an intervention that happens in a particular place. ⁓ I th I think one way to help understand that definition is also to just think about out of the history of social services in the United States. ⁓ prior to World War Two, ⁓ the administration of social services was mostly in the hands of either churches or families. And there weren't necessarily wide scale programs ⁓ to ⁓ individuals or families or other groups outside of those two domains. ⁓ then you have World War Two, ⁓ and then after that you have the New Deal, and you know, part of the New Deal is ⁓ social ⁓ parts of a social safety net, which includes like unemployment insurance and Social Security. ⁓ and then you fast forward to the war on poverty. ⁓ and that kind of builds out more of the social safety net ⁓ program. So then then you have ⁓ things like Medicare, Medicaid, and other direct investments. ⁓ the thing about these kinds of investments is that they go directly to individuals or families. So the strategy behind programs like this is that You know, you provide folks with ⁓ the fundamental necessities of life, ⁓ and then that would allow them to be more successful. ⁓ these are all direct service interventions that go to individuals or groups. ⁓ and the difference with a place-based approach is that a place-based intervention goes to a place ⁓ instead of the individuals ⁓ or a particular group of individuals ⁓ in there. So you might think like one one example is a direct service approach in the realm of housing would be ⁓ housing vouchers ⁓ that would go directly to families that would help ⁓ make housing more affordable. A place page approach would be increasing the housing supply ⁓ of different types of housing at all income levels in a particular place. So I think that's one way to think about the definition of place based is to compare it to ⁓ direct ⁓ service. ⁓ the place based impacts the place and direct service goes to the individual or family.

speaker-1: Okay. And Rob Howard, for you, as as people ⁓ kinda outside the inner core of this movement are are asking you, like, Okay, I see you and your work kinda being involved in this place stuff, like what what is that? What's what's going on?

speaker-2: Yeah, and Ben and I would both joke about you know, there's a lot of jargon in in any exception. I think like you know, the lay person might be like, Isn't everything a place? Mars is a place, planet Earth is a place, is a place, Brazil is a place. ⁓ but the I you know, I think Ben was super thoughtful there about how he outlined it. I think, you know, the way I often explain it to folks is place based policies or place based approaches are taking some sort of target geography is Benteed up. And it could be a neighborhood.

speaker-1: Yes. Yeah, yeah.

speaker-2: It could be a city, it could be a region, particularly in rural areas when you're thinking about a place, but you're trying to create a strategy given how the you know how sprawling it might be. and you're thinking about outcomes that you wanna move. It might be you wanna reduce child poverty in this neighborhood, you might wanna increase life expectancy in this city, you might want to in this rural area, ⁓ increase high school graduation. ⁓ and you're trying to deploy a set of policies ⁓ that can improve outcomes at scale for people living in that geography. And you think you have to take a place-based approach because often that's where disadvantage lives most. ⁓ you're trying to address the unique characteristics of that geography. and think about outcomes you want to improve for people at scale across that geography. I know we'll get into a bit of like why what motivates us to pursue place based approaches in the first place. ⁓ I think this is a critical thing we have to do to improve outcomes for people at scale in the US and around the world for that matter.

speaker-1: Yeah, I'm wondering, like so ⁓ actually just this week I was having a conversation or with with with some folks who are somewhat they know they want to take a place-based approach in their community, but they're still kind of but they're like, we know we want to do that. It feels right, still don't know exactly what it means. And I was trying to do this distinction between like ⁓ based in a place versus place-based. And again, maybe this is like too jargony or s or something. But I was like, 'cause there are like whether it be philanthropy or even some nonprofits that simply say We are limiting our services only to people or organizations who are inside this specific geographic boundary. And some people would say that it's place based. And I'm like, well, that feels more like it's based in a place, but it doesn't to me, I would say it doesn't feel like a place based thing. I mean, is that distinction even helpful? And and how would you even let me tease it out a little bit?

speaker-0: Yeah, that's a good question. Good enough.

speaker-2: Ben and I have had some good chats about this. I think like, you know, there's nuance here and there's different views of the world, but I think like I think what you're getting at, Sean, is kinda like we might concentrate services in a target geography. That is and that is a good thing. And and some might just say that they feel like that's place-based, but and to support people who've historically been undermined or there's just not enough investment there, their legacy is of things like redlining. And yet another thing to complement that is to actually shift the conditions of that place. And Ben is much better positioned than me to speak to that. Through things like the built environment or economic forces, ⁓ things that are make that place a place where and I think about this often, I actually learn this a lot from our friends at Purpose Built and of the other national organizations in our movement. Like you might in my north side of Poughkeepsie actually create much better early childhood, much better out of school time, even better schools. But kids then might do well and then But that neighborhood still might have dynamics about it that make you want to leave and not come back. ⁓ so you did you did the service delivery part right, but I don't wanna stay in the north side of Poughkeepsie to raise my family when I become an adult as someone who grew up in a disadvantaged background. And so I think ⁓ there's another aspect of PlaySpace, I think that's much more about shaping the conditions and the purpose-built team and po and and Ben could speak much better about, you know, creating these neighborhoods of choice and things of that nature. So I that's something I think that's really shaped my evolution on how I think about this. Because I think many of us who came up, like Ben people like Ben and I, you came up in the education space, youth development space. We were often thinking about how to improve outcomes by service delivery type mechanisms, but it didn't necessarily mean that that place was gonna be somewhere that would try to attract people who wanna stay and raise their families or attract

speaker-0: The only the only piece I would add to that is ⁓ the Harlem Children Zone has this this helpful concept where they they call they talk about like a tipping point, like a neighborhood tipping point. And you know, so the Harlem Children's Own model involves programming for ⁓ youth along every stage of the cradle to career spectrum. So that whether you are a two year old or you're getting ready to go to college, there is high quality youth programming for you in a particular neighborhood. ⁓ And they talk about this concept of a tipping point where ⁓ you just saturate a neighborhood with so much programming and you reach so many kids and families that it just kind of becomes the norm that that is what happens in this neighborhood. And then once you get to that tipping point, then to Rob's point is that you start changing the the fundamental conditions of that neighborhood. This now is a neighborhood where every high school child gets college counseling or career ⁓ counseling. ⁓ And then the the condition of the neighborhood is is improved. So to me it's kind of like the the maybe the differentiator is like the goal. So like are we are we trying to ⁓ serve folks in this particular place in order to improve the overall condition of the place? That to me would be the the differentiator that would make it a place based approach.

speaker-1: Yeah, I I definitely remember my early days, you know, twenty years ago in kind of like nonprofit space, like a lot of the success stories was like the programs that got the kid out of the neighborhood, right? ⁓ and like yeah, and coming to this place, like, wait a second, why we may maybe what we need to be working on is the conditions by which we're trying to get people out of, right? Like and so that you want like the the whole thing about like neighborhoods of choice. We want people to be just Filled with an opportunity to rich life because of the neighborhood that they're in. ⁓ so I'm curious how you guys would speak to why we need these place-based approaches, whether that's just from an outcome lens or just from a history lens, like why not just more programs, more resources, more service delivery? Why do we need to be thinking about the places themselves as a mechanism to create social change?

speaker-0: Yeah. I mean I I think about that along lines of justice, honestly. Like in the way we would talk about it at at Purpose Built, is if you were to take a map of the United States and you were to look at where ⁓ does upward mobility happen, if you look at Raj Chetty's opportunity atlas and look at where does upward mobility happen and where does it not? In the places where upper mobility doesn't happen. In in those places, they're were some kind of policies or practices that happened that impacted the particular place, which then impacted the people that lived there. So one example is ⁓ if you think about the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, ⁓ if you go to the Lower Ninth Ward, you have to take a bridge to get there from the rest of New Orleans. That's because there's the industrial canal actually separates that part of the city or that that neighborhood from the rest of the city. The point of the industrial canal was to make a faster trade route between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River, ⁓ which would, you know, essentially save ⁓ a bunch of money for people that are trying to transport goods. But in order to do that, they had to put the canal through somewhere. And then that's just where they put it is in a way that cut off ⁓ the lower ninth ward. So what happened is that kind of set up a physical moat and barrier ⁓ from that separated that part of the city from the rest of the city. And the outcome of that was that oftentimes investments didn't make their way down there to the ninth ward. And one type of investment that didn't make its way down there was ⁓ a strong levy system. and ⁓ we all know what the outcome of that was. ⁓ one of the most devastating ⁓ disasters in in recent history and hurricane ⁓ cr Katrina ⁓ impacted the lower ninth ward. ⁓ Pretty significantly. But if you if you kinda take the chain of actions and say, like, what was the policy and practice that happened, which impacted the place and then ultimately impacted the people who live there, there's a story like that for every ⁓ place across the US that doesn't have ⁓ upper mobility. So for I think about it, and we think about it at at purpose build of like from a sense of justice, ⁓ that that is what happens. So then, you know, the response is the opposite of that. What is the policy and practice that's gonna implement influence the place in a positive way that's gonna influence the people that live there?

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah.

speaker-2: Yeah, just building on what what what Ben said, I think all of the challenges and the opportunities of this country play out at a hyperlocal level. ⁓ and Ben teed up Raj Chetty, who's a giant in in in in our world and a lot of his research has motivated much of the modern play space play space movement, you know, his research showing that, you know, with you know, half mile radius of where you grow up is the leading determinant of ⁓ of who you get one of the leading determinants of who you get to be later in life. So when I talked earlier about ⁓ the lack of economic mobility in my old neighborhood, incarceration rates, life expectancy, ⁓ it's often playing out at that neighborhood and hyper local level. ⁓ and so if we want to reclaim this American dream that has defined our country and it's and it's ⁓ the idea of this place, we have to we have to reckon with ⁓ the neighborhood. We have to reckon with very hyperlocal considerations, but also for a question of pride and and identity. I think ⁓ surely everyone ⁓ has some connection, good, bad, or ugly, to the place they come from, to the neighborhood they grew up from. And often, and also if you had a good experience or a good set of opportunities, it's often, you know, my neighborhood had this or the parks were this or my school system was that or my faith community was why. ⁓ it's and so it's often at the hyperlocal level You know, both that power of place as our friends say or the tragedy of place play out. And so if you want to think about what it's gonna take to get our society into a place that we're all proud of, you have to you have to think at that level. You have to be hyperlocal. ⁓ and you have to think about how the places that we come from shape us for for better or for worse.

speaker-1: Yeah. I sometimes do a th thought experiment with with groups is to say like let's just assume that that your city is a is working perfectly. And of course everybody's like, no, there's not there's a million problems here, there's it's not working perfectly. But the d more of the idea of like it is working exactly the way it was designed to work. And if you can at least start with that, like if this city or this neighborhood is producing exactly what it was designed to produce, like well then then what is that design? Is it programs, is it policies, is it deliberately harmful things or deliberately like extractive things like what what went on to to get us in the place to where this these are the results that's being being created. And and so then we begin to ask different questions, not about like how do we fix those people or provide things to help those people, but to say what what does it mean for for us to to your point Ben about justice, what what does it mean to to reinvest deeply in these places, to see opportunity for every kid that that's born in that place. ⁓ you mentioned Rise Chetty a moment ago, Rob. I'm I'm curious like The current place based movement as it's continuing to to grow and and get more partners and people around it, like what are some of the origins of that? Like, where did we begin to s see this like neighborhood as this profound determinant of life outcomes? Like where did that kind of come from and come kind of what's some of the pieces of the movement that that got us here?

speaker-2: Yeah, I mean I I I don't know. I don't I I the idea of being hyperlocal goes back to when we were all in Africa. So like I don't wanna twenty first century invention. I think we'd have to pull it our friends on history and anthropology to like really answer that question. But but I think, you know, but people like Raj, I think in the you know, the field of economics, but there's been people like William Julius Wilson and other fields like sociology and you know, so like who've really done this. And spoken to it going back some time. And that's just in the US. There's many folks around the world who did this. But I think, you know, Raj in particular, his group Opportunity Insights at Harvard have been able to do a few things that I think over the years have been really powerful and have shown things that I think people have felt in their own experiences for a long time. So one was this idea of the declining American dream, right? A kid born after World War Two had a about a ninety plus percent chance of running more than their parent in adulthood, someone in the born in the nineteen eighties. Like me, you're been into coin flip, you have a 50% chance, and some of the most recent birth cohort data showed it's even 48% now. So for the first time in a modern era, a kid ⁓ has a less than 50% chance of earning more than their parents in adulthood. So that's a big challenge to the to the to the idea that this country is a bastion for economic mobility. and so that was a big idea. And then the other kind of follow-on from that work was you could look, you could create a map in the US of Where economic mobility and the American dream is still alive and well. And typically what you saw in the first round of research Raj and his team put out was ⁓ there were parts of the American dream ⁓ of the of the United States where that was really alive and well, parts of the Midwest, parts of places like Boston, a lot of concentrated poverty in the s in the US South. But then one of the big innovations that I think motivates a lot of the place-based movement, it's a a big thing that we talk about often, is you can go down to any city or region in the US. And the same variability you might see between Minnesota and ⁓ I don't know, a part of Alabama, you will see that same variability in a city. In ⁓ in New York, you might see a certain set of outcomes in a South Bronx versus in the Upper East Side. ⁓ in my hometown of Poughkeepsie, you see a difference of outcomes on the south side of Poughkeepsie than the north side of Poughkeepsie. ⁓ and so it it motivates us again that like neighborhood is something we have to reckon with if we want to Create possibility for all. But I'd say whether you're looking at it from a public health lens, an economics lens, a sociology, an educational policy lens, all of the major traditions that have something to say about how to improve the lives of people, I think have something to say about taking a place-based neighborhood even approach to improving the lives of people.

speaker-0: Yeah, I think it's ⁓ it's as early as as as Rob said, it's as earlier as our earliest ancestors. And also it's just that's also kind of just pretty natural in that yeah, people want to live in a good place. and I think the concept is old as time. ⁓ I think the the recent, ⁓ there's been more research to back it up and then also more large scale efforts to make it happen. But I think we're just kinda c continuing on a a long history of trying to improve places and do so in the best way and do it in service of what the vision of the residents who live there is.

speaker-1: It it is funny that it feels like such a novel idea for for the US to come into this like a awakening of the power of place. ⁓ because it but it but it's because most of at least most of my early entrance into caring about racial inequity and injustice and economic inequalities, like it was so focused on the individual person and how you support them with what they need or how the individual person makes better choices. And of course the agency of the individual is not in question here, but like the ability to think beyond the individual person or the family unit to think about actually our neighborhoods and our communities are a they are a thing and they they exert this influence on our so yeah, being able to like make the unit of change larger than the individual seems to be a very difficult thing for the US to do. And so it feels like so we're kinda it's like we're waking up to something new that's like, now this has been around as long as humans humans have been around. So w welcome back to the party ⁓ and how you, you know, begin to think about these things.

speaker-2: You go back to like the Detocville stuff on ⁓ understanding civic associations in the US, you know, in the eighteenth century. I mean local local control, community led work based on the place I'm from is at the DNA of this country too. It is true that we also have a hyper individualistic part of our narrative, but I was also a very community centered local control, you know, the you know, the the tyranny of, you know, when ⁓ people at the national level are making decisions for us. But you know, to what I think Ben teed up earlier things like the war on poverty at the Civil Rights Movement, we had to create these national level policies because of the original sins of our country in terms of oppression. But often the you know, as we think about how to make those policies real. we have to have enabling conditions on the ground at the neighborhood level to make it happen. But I do think, you know, the question of neighborhood as unit of change or place as unit of change has been with us really since the founding.

speaker-1: Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's good. It's interesting to think about that. The the even the this the swing that like Putnam was talked about where there was an era where we were more hyper individualistic and we move toward this sense of like communal solidarity and civic engagement. And we're we've kind of swung out of that, right? And and there's this invitation to like can we swing back? And and that's not even like an income thing of like neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage. It's like in neighborhoods of all stripes and kinds, like the need to re weave, like civic connectivity and local democracy just belonging at just a just a basic kind of neighborhood level.

speaker-0: Yeah, I think to it's a it's a resource thing. It's not an inspiration or or an aspiration thing. So in a purpose built, ⁓ any neighborhood where we are invited to partner, ⁓ there is always a group of residents ⁓ who are deeply committed to making that n that place be as good as it possibly can be. They have a v a clear vision for for how to do so. ⁓ so there's not a lacking of ⁓ inspiration. aspiration or ambition. But the question is, ⁓ do they have the ⁓ commensurate resources to truly live that out? and that that is where I see a ⁓ distinction. And and you know, if if you see like a federal programs or philanthropy or other ⁓ national organizations like the work that ⁓ Rob and I d ⁓ do, ⁓ that is the goal is to provide the the resources to match the level of ambition and aspiration among ⁓ neighborhood residents, but that that is there and the the commitment and the idea is there. It's obviously more obvious to any anybody who lives in a neighborhood anywhere, ⁓ than it might seem in somebody's more national conversations.

speaker-1: We are the roots. We are We are so grateful to have you listening in to these rich conversations about place-based people-centered social change. Places People Change is not only the title of the podcast, but it's also the title of community engagement resources you can download and put into practice today. If you are looking for sound principles and practical tools to drive neighborhood level belonging and shared action, you can check them out at DiscoverCongruence.com slash resources. And are there like and like there's a lot of different players kind of i in this particular space. Are there f for folks who maybe are are in the early journey of coming to kind of to terms with the the current place based movement, are there key when you talk about like there's it's the resources piece, like we gotta make sure these are present in neighborhoods. Are there some fundamental domains of work that you find are maybe not everybody's working on them that's doing placepace work, but these seem to like Here are some common kind of domains of work that are really crucial for if you're gonna partner with neighbors and neighborhoods for this this change, these are the kind of domains of work that often get focused on in the place based work.

speaker-0: Yeah, I think there's different domains. I'll just I'll name a a few. I think ⁓ a lot of the a lot of the spaces that Rob and I are in is ⁓ a lot of our focus is on children and families. but in particular ⁓ looking at what are the conditions in a neighborhood that really impact ⁓ children. ⁓ so you know when you see a lot of the ⁓ kind of national organizations, like ⁓ Harlem Children's Own or a Strive Together, ⁓ purposeful communities or partners for rural impact. a big part of the approach is ⁓ child well being. as ⁓ kind of the driving the driving force. ⁓ what else, Rob? What would you add to that?

speaker-2: Yeah, I think I think yeah, our our part of place based work is definitely focused on improving outcomes for young people and families along a develop a developmental continuum, really prenatal to career, cradle to career set often in our field. ⁓ but there are other, you know, approaches to place based work. I think a few things I'd put on the table to build on what ⁓ Ben is saying, kind of regardless of whether your golden place based strategy is more child centered or it's things like, you know, It's an issue area like health or it's about more economic development or all of the above is, you know, typically these efforts are cross sector ⁓ in some way. ⁓ it's about bringing leaders together across sectors because no one institution or sector alone can get it done and that we're gonna have to create value propositions across these sectors to move the work forward, to improve some aspect of well being for for people in the place. ⁓ and at of as we said earlier, lives in a a type of geography. There's typically some set of data. That folks are using to make decisions in that geography to inform how people are living today, to set an aspiration for how we want them to live tomorrow, different types of outcomes in the child space. You often use things like academic outcomes or things like child poverty. ⁓ There might be health outcomes. ⁓ I think a key aspect of this work done well ⁓ is there's some sort of intermediary organization or backbone organization or community quarterback organization and purpose built communities network. that wakes up every day and it's the job to be an air traffic controller, a quarterback, to see the larger set of actors, to see what different service delivery mechanisms are, to see what different types of institutions are doing, to see the politics of a geography or in a region and who and who's in what camp and how to make changes, they say, when change is hard and and align actors towards that vision. To think about how to pay for the work. Ben talked about resourcing earlier. So how do we stack If we're gonna bring actors together, how do we do things that no one institution can pay for on their own and bring in different ways of financing, public and private, to support the different aspirations of a geography? And then we talked about earlier that idea of cradle to career. How do we create that kind of seamless continuum of of services, supports and opportunities? So both at the program level but at the systems level. So how do we in early childhood increase the amount of ⁓ High quality early childhood programs or the number of spots and everything from the pedagogy in the early learning community all the way to what do we have to do to create more revenue streams so that we have a sustainable financing mechanism for early childhood the way we do in K-12. Right? So these are the kinds of moves that I think ⁓ folks are often grappling with, with this cross-sector work at the local level. ⁓ and so again, kind of you're having that cross-sector, and then you know, a big, I think, piece different. Some groups do this better than others. I think Purpose Built does this really well is sometimes cross-sector efforts at the local level can be very systems focused but not include residents. Some can be very resident focused, but not include the systems that often create the enabling conditions. And I think what we're seeing now, and it's really exciting in our field, is there's a growing set of all of the above. You need resident strategies, you need the mayor to do some things, you need the business community to do some things, you need state policy to do some things. ⁓ but You need to have different levels of infrastructure as our friends and strive together say civic infrastructure to make it all happen and and and really do the work in the most comprehensive and compelling way that we all hope for.

speaker-0: And I and I appreciate Rob's point about the ⁓ the intermediary. I think that is ⁓ kind of a distinguishing factor for a successful place-based approach because you need, as as Rob said, you need a group of people that wake up every day and think about how to serve the people who live in a particular place in the best way. ⁓ and you also need an organization which is going to align investments ⁓ that come from various places. in service of a resident's vision. So like one way to think about the actors, I think, is in terms of like concentric circles. So maybe like a the middle circle is like the intermediary wakes up every day, works and supports and serves a particular place. Some folks call it backbone purpose book communities, we call it a community quarterback. ⁓ and then around the next circle out you have organizations that would otherwise work in silos, if not for that intermediate or intermediary organization. So this is your YMCA your school system, your ⁓ TFIs, your hospitals, ⁓ who have a particular mission, which is in a particular domain of life. Yeah. ⁓ and they might they'll go forth on their particular mission, and it's the intermediary's responsibility to bring that into whatever the place is. And then you go even further out and you got another circle. These are like the enablers. So this is like the awesome work that Rob and the team at Ed Redesign do. You think about universities, you think about funders, you think about policymakers. ⁓ who are the folks that have a funding portfolio that focuses on ⁓ place-based partnerships, a ⁓ federal policy program like Promise Neighborhoods or ⁓ choice neighborhoods, ⁓ or the Institute for ⁓ Success Planning or the Fellowship for ⁓ Place Base Leaders at the Ed Redesign Lab. These are the enabling Things that make this whole thing work, ⁓ all in service of the work that the intermediary is doing at the local level.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, that to me, that's like one of the the signs that am I doing place based work or not? Is like to to what you both are saying. Like we when you wake up every day, are you thinking about getting that program fulfilled or that thing built or this service delivered? Or are you, Rob, do your metaphor of the air traffic control? Are you waking up thinking about how the entire ecosystem is is operating within itself and and you're tying these pieces together and like And that's a specific type of leader. To your point about the leadership trainings or just that like I can tell a place-based leader when when you ask them about their work and the way they start reflecting and the and the way that in their head, all of these pieces are tied together and it ⁓ and the the web makes sense to them. Where for I think a lot of the social impact or nonprofit space, like it's so very like ⁓ not even siloed as if like trying to avoid being connected to anyone else, but siloed instead of like a this very specific thing I need to get accomplished, right? But like place-based work is this this ⁓ ability to think in systems and to work ⁓ work across all of that. And ⁓ and I'm and also the ability to to do what you're saying, Rob, about like there's resident strategies and there's system strategies. And a lot of times people live in one or the other and we've got to bring them together. ⁓ I am curious about like why is that? Like, I mean, why is it not enough just to make better education and build more affordable housing and make safer streets or just Why not just do all the systems work that we've disinvested and done so much damage to over the years? Like why does there by necessity have to be this sense of like residents have to remain at the center of this work, you know, start to finish? What is that about?

speaker-0: ⁓ I mean I think like one reason is that I think different different policies and programs are gonna hit different places differently. and that's that's just the reality, just and that's part of the beauty of of life, ⁓ is that places are different and the people live within them them are different. So one example would be if you think about the way the US public education system is funded. So say there was like a ⁓ federal program and it was going to provide funding to schools, ⁓ on an equal basis. ⁓ some schools in some places are gonna end up with more than others because some places are able to supplement that funding with local donations, ⁓ depending on the wealth of the parents who live in that particular community. So like the ultimate goal might like, ⁓ we're trying to like level the playing field, but you're gonna have differences in how that overall policy hits different places depending on the local dynamics of that place. So like that's a reason why it needs to be specific to to the place. And also different groups of people have different goals ⁓ and different visions for for their ⁓ their community. And I think the other thing is like that's what you risk is when you don't keep residents at the center is you risk ⁓ putting in place something that doesn't actually meet the goals of residents or even at worse is counter to them. And we've seen that happen in history before. Think about some of the worst examples of urban renewal or eminent domain. in some cases it was like, let's improve the infrastructure in this place. But in the process, we're gonna disregard the local economy or the social capital that was built ⁓ between folks or what people actually want ⁓ to happen here. So in some in those cases you do more harm than good. I think that's that's that's how we see our focus on residents at purpose built communities is like a a betterment of those efforts and the key way to do that is you gotta focus on you have you have to ⁓ center residence in everything.

speaker-2: Yeah, I think and Ben Ben hits on you know that quote the the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I mean there's really been a lot of policies in history of this country that were not paved with good intentions. They were just trying to oppress groups and put a a a foot on their throat. But there's also a lot of policies that actually did even there been there were parts of it that were really about trying to do good things. ⁓ a a a a case that I often tee up in a course that I teach that Bed and I used to teach together years ago is ⁓ ⁓ of our friend Alan Cohen based in Dallas in the ⁓ Child Poverty Action Lab he leads out there. And it's ⁓ one of our early parts of our course and it's and it's really getting at why it's important to involve residents, kind of this design from a human-centered design point of view, the end user, the person who's experiencing the thing you're trying to fix every day in the actual coming up of the solution itself. So famous the in the in this in this ⁓ example ⁓ in Dallas County, only about forty percent of eligible families were accessing WIC, this federal program, to support fa families with either expecting or who have, you know, n infants, toddlers that are accessing kind of, you know, things to for for for nutrition and r and related support. So it's a critical kind of social safety net program that's been shown to get ⁓ families and kids off to a good start to life. but It's money being left on the table every year. In this case it was Dallas County, ⁓ even though families were eligible, they're just not accessing it. And the question is why? And often this is the example of like policies get rolled out with good intentions, but you don't have the ground level insights, as Alan would say, to actually make that policy meet its full potential. And so they ended up doing this whole human design effort. They partnered with IDO and others to look at it, and they did and they ended up unearthing a number of things from, you know, the transportation displacement challenge. to get to the social service agency to get your WIC eligibility secure, to what it's like when you go to the social service office and what does it actually feel like to be in that office? How are you treated as a person from a certain economic background? How long does it take? What's the processing time once you're there when you also have to feed your family and get your kids and get maybe have to work a job? Or when you go to the supermarket, how clearly labeled are WIC eligible products or not? ⁓ and so one of the things Alan says it's one of my favorite things is he says he ⁓ he so what did we decide to do? We did the radical act of having people talk to each other. And so he's a workshop called Moms and Bureaucrats. And he has moms who are WIC eligible, have experienced the program in some way, sit with the heads of WIC for Dallas County, and they get to voice over what it's like.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-2: What's confusing. And you have these bureaucrats, many who are well meaning. They're in social service agencies battling it out on the front lines of care. And together they reimagine WIC and increase drastically WIC enrollment rates in Dallas County. It's an example of something my mom was a WIC mom. I've my mom was on food stamps as a kid. I know what it was like to be at the grocery store with my mother and like and so like it's an example of well-intentioned policy, meets ground. not executed with any sort of resident centered approach. And so we leave money on the table. And that money being left on the table creates all sort of ⁓ unfortunate trajectories for that generation of children not accessing that program.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean it so there's it is funny because like how many businesses would would try to operate with not really thinking closely about how customers actually behave, you know? And but but again and and I and I actually appreciate how much you're emphasizing we're not talking about the ill-intended people out there. And there's plenty of them. Like we're actually talking about the policies, the people, the programs, the institutions who actually do care and really want to see change, even those because of that proximity gap. And that lack of of like intimate knowledge, like we risk like just wasting time and money and not really reaching our goals. But but is there also something about just like like belonging? Like being I know for purpose, but like that's become a a a a a a meaningful concept in the way that you guys are thinking about the neighborhoods you're working with. Like how does this like centering residence connect with this need for belonging or why that matters in in place-based work?

speaker-0: I mean I think I think a lot of it is getting back to our roots as people. That that is ⁓ part of being human is ⁓ connecting with others in in community. And we got we have a lum number of forces at play that are prevent we're not gonna get into that. We go to AI and everything. but there's number of forces at play that are that are making that more more challenging and and you know, you think about what is a way to facilitate communication or connection, it's in a particular place. With your neighbor. person that's just right next to you, the person that you you rub elbows with when you're waiting with your kids at the bus stop, or you're going down the street to the store to pick up some food for for dinner, or you're walking at the park with your dog and you run into somebody. so there's that element of it. And I think the other thing is that ⁓ there's a lot to be said about like the collective action and community building that comes from it when you when you get together. with people and accom accomplish something. ⁓ I think it's true for like a sports team, it's true for like a a team at work and it's true for a group of neighbors. ⁓ so, you know, that's one thing that we have started to do ⁓ more in in partnership with our network members at purpose built ⁓ communities is ⁓ bringing folks together ⁓ around a particular project or particular challenge and then facilitating an opportunity to make an improvement and whatever that that area is. And then like the feeling of connection and and community that comes from that. that's nothing small at all.

speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And I think there there's something too it's it it's like it's the way that you go about it has to be like deeply rooted in people forming community, but that's also like the highest outcome too. Like at the end of the day, if people are seen and known and loved and cared for, like that's the highest good, right? You know, and like and part of why all these other systems are are so problematic is not just like, ⁓ I'm not making enough money, which obviously matters, but it's like the all these systems are s are are weakening our ability just to be people in community with each other. And I'm you know, and there's of course like there's a million ways to think about community engagement or being resident centered or involving the local people in the decision making bre like there's all like how do we know that we're doing it well if we're really putting residents at the center of this work. ⁓ what what's the what's the evidence that that that we're doing it the way that it ought to be done in ways that are really healthy and and yeah.

speaker-2: Yeah, I'll say a few th I I think obviously there's like ways to ways we might care about measuring quality of life for all people at the local level, right? And we talked about, you know, you can measure that we know how to measure now economic mobility, to what extent are you doing better than the lot you were born into, life expectancy in a place, you know, there's a lot of work done that's been done on social ties. you know, social connectedness, civic engagement rates, things like this. so I think we have quite a bit of ways to talk about quality of life. I think we have a lot of work though to still think about other ways we might capture the dynamism of a place. I would say like more from a framework point of view, or there's ⁓ a colleague, Peter Levinette Tufts, who's an expert on democracy and civic life, and he says that There's kind of three things you need to have a robust civic life, and I think this is true at the local level especially. ⁓ and it and and it's and it's in a and then it's a permanent way. It's not just a one off like we wanted to fix this issue and then we go home and don't come back. It's like ⁓ but the places I've seen that are dynamic and whether it's a housing problem or, you know, a lead in the water problem or it's a schooling issue or it's trying to make our neighborhood safer, ⁓ there's three kind of Key aspects of the continuum I call out. One is like a robust civic life has to create places for people to deliberate and and learn together because it's not just about me telling you what I think. It's because none of us are sufficiently with it smart enough or have seen everything enough to fully know everything. And so I have something to gain by learning from what you or Ben might teach me about where you come from in your view and something I haven't thought of. And that that's an fundamental point of democracy, right? Is like we have to understand people different from us that come from different walks of life and reckon with things that didn't happen to me and how I grew up. And that that in that deliberation, particularly when we can learn to deliberate and understand and even learn to deg disagree well, that that can unlock something special. But then we can't just stay and talk and we have to do things together. We have to do some sort of public work, Peter talks about and ventee that up and kind of have For working on and a purpose, but we have to create something of value together, whether it's building that that park, it's it's using participatory budgeting to imagine the top three priorities we want in our neighborhood, or whether it's saying we need a new early learning center because it's a desert in our neighborhood and childcare is broken, ⁓ and creating some together. But then the third thing, which you teed up, Sean, is all of that should aggregate up into a permanent infrastructure around enduring civic and trusting relationships. And relationships, right? Like when you have your boys or your close family friends or people in your work life, right? It's not just about one thing and one moment in your life. That's a lifelong friend. That's a lifelong relationship. And when communities and neighborhoods have those lifelong relational elements to them, we know that kids do better in school. They they have people access better choices on housing. They unlock new possibilities on how to make improvements on things that they've they've been challenged with. And there's a lot of research now. We've actually just put some out recently on the power of relationships. ⁓ so I think I think it's it's thinking about understanding the deliberation, the act of building things together and in relationships and having a geography defined by that relational trust. And that's not always easy to measure. We have to get back to the but I do but I do think the places I admire the most, the places in this movement that I study, ⁓ You know, the n we're in the north side of Poughkeepsie, I'm a big fan of the north side of Spanish, South Carolina. And ⁓ when I when I go to places like that, I see they have real civic spaces to deliberate, civic spaces to act, and civic spaces to maintain and build relationships all the time.

speaker-0: I think the other piece I I'd say you'd see you'd see this in Spartanburg too is like ⁓ real resident and community ownership. and I think when you s when you talk about like centering residents, there's there's like a spectrum, right? Like on the low end of the spectrum is you're a real estate developer, you work in a department of the city, and you have to check the box of having a meeting with residents at some point in order to get something done. So you schedule a meeting, four people show up to it, maybe And then you put out your public announcement and say we did resident engagement. That's the lowest end of the spectrum. I think on the highest end of the spectrum is ⁓ resident ownership. And whatever happened in that particular neighborhood, the residents are at the helm and they actually own the out the process and the outcomes of it. I think there's like a tangible way that you could think about that in terms of like actual ownership over the land and the things that are on it. ⁓ But there's also a more intangible way to some of what Rob was talking about, about like the dynamics and the ways of connection and the social infrastructure. Do the residents actually own that? ⁓ in a particular place. I was I'm thinking about like what was successful setting residents look like. ⁓ to me that's the proxy. It's like do they own this place, the process and the outcomes that it produces?

speaker-1: Yeah, do they own it

speaker-2: And then the purpose belt team taught me that one that whole control your land, control the destiny piece, you know, I used to think, as you would if you're like, what did you used to think and now you think I used to I used to think what years ago, like my North Star was like, if I could just get these kids a really good education, you know, some good economic opportunities, then we might just have figured this thing out. And that's a part of it, and it's a critical part. But if you don't own anything, does the anyone in the upper middle class or the upper Yeah do they say w you don't need to own none? D no, there's intergenerational wealth transfers. Trust me, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts now, so I see all sorts of stuff I didn't see. I'm like, ⁓ now I see. Well a lot of it to bend point's ownership and who gets to decide and how does that decision get to be made of what type of business or not will be in my neighborhood and will we have access to high quality food and grocery stores in my neighborhood or not. So like and why? And so I I've really been inspired a lot by

speaker-1: But

speaker-2: ⁓ folks in the purpose-built communities network who've really shown me, you know, people like Mashonda Taylor in Birmingham when she took me and our mayor and our city council chair around, we all grew up in our north side of Poughkeepsie and we were like, man, they own housing. They have stood up businesses. They have created grocery stores and places to do cultural activities. And so this is a neighborhood. This is a serious neighborhood. This is a seri a neighborhood where people living there are setting the vision versus just outside forces. And it's not that outside forces have to be bad, but it's how do you work with those outside forces while centering what residents themselves envision for their place.

speaker-1: Yeah, even if you're an outside force who intends good, you're still an outside force. Right. And like the the measure of you doing it well is is this ownership stuff. I rem Ben, I remember Carol Naughton, ⁓ CEO of Purpose Belt one time like like saying something about she like hated the hated well, it sounded like she said I hate community engagement. I was like, wait, what ⁓ clean my ear out. What did she just say? Because I purpose built is all about like the people, you know. But what she was saying was she she just doesn't like that term because it's so much of that lower end that you described, Ben, of like, okay. We got out there with a clipboard. We we engaged the community. Now we're moving forward with our plans. But like you guys describing, like this is about ownership. It's about belonging. It's about trust and connectivity and civic power. And like that's that's the beautiful stuff. And like yeah, I'm so grateful that the two of you are two of the leaders in this field, in this movement, constantly convening people and creating thought leadership and training opportunities, resourcing folks, like I'm just grateful that you guys are shaping the future of this work. I'm grateful that I I get to know you and get to be around you guys and just really thankful for this conversation today and I just appreciate all you're doing, guys. So yeah, thank you so much for this today. The evidence has never been more abundant or clear on two fronts. First, the unit of social change is not the individual or family, it is the neighborhood. And second, our efforts to bring about place based change will falter no matter how well resourced or strategically planned if they are not people centered. Join us for our next episode where we will take a close look at a real story of place-based people centered change that is unfolding in the neighborhood of Franklin Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania. We can't wait to share this inspiring story of a remarkable partnership creating meaningful impact. Thank you for listening to Places People Change. Visit us at placespeoplechange. com for extended interviews, more information on our guests and their work, show notes, transcripts, and resources to go deeper. Please subscribe and follow us wherever you get your podcast. Special thanks to Acia Butler and the Residents Association of Greater Englewood for the use of their song People, Passion Power, as the music for this series. Find out more about them at raginglewood. Places People Change is brought to you by Tim Rhodes, producer and A V engineer, David Park, producer and booking manager, Lucas Duncan, production and design assistant, and me, Sean Duncan, your host. We are the roots, we are the rise, hearts on fire, truth in our eyes. From these blocks we build a tower. People passion power.