Neighborhoods & Community Change

It was a pleasure to facilitate class with the group today; I learned a lot from the team, research, and class. Prior to class, I was interested to see real-life news in the neighborhoods that we used for the class activity (Financial District, San Francisco; Cheesman Park Neighborhood, Denver; Franklinton Neighborhood, Columbus). The Financial District went through the dot com boom and is home to several Fortune 500 companies (I mean, the name…).

Financial District

Cheesman Park has an interesting/disturbing history (Google “cheesman park haunted”). It was particularly interesting that the large park in the community is not available for private, fee-based activities, such as events, sports camps, etc. Although not everyone was happy about this, decision makers were adamant about not wanting to monetize park activity.

Cheesman Park

Franklinton was the first Columbus neighborhood and has been seen as a prime location for young professionals commuting to the city. There is an interesting split between East and West sides of the neighborhood, divided by the interstate, where the East side has developed into an arts district and the West is low-income and depopulated. In the context of our group discussions, it was interesting to think about how the numbers compare with the stories.

At the end of 2017, Columbus city officials announced this massive construction project in the Franklinton neighborhood… It will include ~1,700 residential units (10% of project), and the rest will be for office space, a hotel, and store fronts.

Of course, I wish we would have had more time to talk in small groups as well as expand the larger group discussion. Although there was agreement about where Damazon should land (in Falling Water Springs aka Financial District), I would have liked to talk more about the problem of not being able to make decisions that way in real life, or about how other fields – such as business – don’t have the same way of thinking. It would have been interesting to relate it to Anthony’s discussion of collective impact approaches/processes. I love the concept of collective impact and hope we will have more opportunities to talk about real strategies to achieve it, because that kind of collaboration and buy-in is tough! But important. How could collective impact approaches support revitalization and jettison gentrification?