?When you look at the contributions different groups bring to the table, you wonder why people are still being excluded.?
NLC First Vice President James Hunt, councilmember, Clarksburg, W.Va., posed this issue to Advisory Council members during their recent meeting at the Congressional City Conference. Discussion of ?Building a Nation of Inclusive Communities? kicked off the morning half of the meeting agenda.
Hunt reminded the Advisory Council of its work on Mayor Bob Knight?s Undoing Racism: Fairness and Justice in America?s Cities and Towns agenda and remarked that NLC?s work on that issue had a profound effect on him. He also cited the work of another former NLC President, Charles Lyons, who selected Divided We Fall: Inequality and the Future of America?s Cities and Towns as the focus of his agenda.
Placing the Inclusive Communities agenda in the tradition of these earlier efforts, Hunt asked the Advisory Council to devote its attention to the question of how local elected officials can ?create constructive partnerships and coalitions to build a nation of inclusive communities.?
Hunt cautioned that such an inquiry would not be easy work given sensitive community dynamics. He said that ultimately, cities and towns have much to gain by developing strategies to become more inclusive.
During small group discussions following Hunt?s remarks, Advisory Council members actively explored three questions: What does an inclusive community look like? What promotes the emergence of an inclusive community? What are the barriers to promoting an inclusive community?
The Advisory Council then turned its attention to the topic of economic vitality. This topic emerged from the ?Trends and Changes? work led by the Advisory Council in 2003 and 2004.
Feedback from multiple NLC leadership groups and members over the past two years highlighted this as a priority topic.
The Advisory Council used this meeting to identify some key themes around the topic.
Advisory Council members heard from Vice Mayor Hannah McKinney, Kalamazoo, Mich., who wears two hats as both local official and academic ? she is chair of the Department of Economics and Business at Kalamazoo College.
She presented her research on the future of small metropolitan areas in the changing economy.
McKinney expressed concern about the amount of ?policy space? that cities actually possess to effectively influence economic events.
McKinney shared her insights regarding ways smaller cities can cooperate within larger regional economies to survive destabilizing economic shifts.
Amy Liu, deputy director and co-founder of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, outlined a new economic research project underway aiming to pinpoint how truly competitive metropolitan areas are created.
Noting that 87 percent of the U.S. population lives in metro areas, she cited six forces that are shaping the future of metropolitan economies: globalization; the shift from manufacturing to services; the shift to a knowledge-based economy; technological innovation; corporate restructuring; and standardization in the capital market.
The meeting was led by Advisory Council Chair Steve Burkholder, mayor, Lakewood, Colo., and Vice Chairs Luis Quintana, council member-at-large, Newark, N.J., and Cynthia McCollum, councilmember, Madison, Ala.
The Advisory Council plans to join a number of NLC leadership groups in Denver, Colo., June 16-18 for a joint meeting exploring economic vitality in greater detail.