Towards a Beautiful Politics: The Next Great City Initiative

Neighborhood Networks, the organization I helped found, was one of the early supporters of the Next Great City initiative. So I was there last week when its ten point program to provide “renewed energy and strength to our neighborhoods and city” was unveiled. I was also one of the folks who, from time to time, criticized the initiative for not being bold enough.

Sure, we need to improve transit stops as the Next Great City suggests. But we need much more dramatic improvements in our transit system. Yes we need to adopt modern zoning. But, even more we need a bottom up process by which neighborhoods can adapt a reformed zoning code to their own circumstances. Of course we need public access to our waterfronts. But, to do that, we need to stop the casinos and develop a plan that finds space along the waterfront for everything that belongs thereā€”parks, a bike path, residences, schools, an a working port with thousands of new jobs. And so on.

I initially thought that this ten point proposal was too tame, too undemanding, too safe.

I was wrong.

As I sat listening to the wonderful presentation of these ten ideas, I finally got the political logic of this effort, which was spearheaded by Christine Knapp and Karen Black.

Implementing a series of ideas that will improve our quality of life without costing a great deal is not just an end in itself. It is a powerful tool we can use to change the culture and spirit of politics in this city. And that, really, is the most important thing Philadelphia has to do in the next few years.

For too long, our politics has been static and unmoving, depressing and, sometimes, revolting. The most immediately critical issues of the dayā€”crime and education and economic developmentā€”have been either ignored or, in the case of economic issues, have been debated in ways that are narrow and cramped. And all the other issues that so dramatically affect the quality of our livesā€”about what our neighborhoods look like; about our access to beautifulā€”or potentially beautifulā€”parts of the city; about the daily grind of dealing with an unfriendly transit system thatā€”all these important issues are also ignored by our government.

No one really expects the Mayor and Council to talk about the quality of life issues we all deal with every day, because they spending too much time making the deals with each other and with the connected people who are able to use politics to need to fix the particular problems they face as homeowners, as business people or as leaders of neighborhoods.

Our politics won’t change until we start addressing the broad questions that affect all of us, until we start talking about how to make life better for everyone, until we develop a vision of what a great Philadelphia would look like.

The implicit political strategy of the Next Great City initiative is to start that conversation with proposals that, precisely because they are not costly can be easily accomplished. And the plan, I think, is that once we win on a few of these issues, we will learn that politics can be different and better. We will, in other words, develop the hope, confidence and enlarged expectations we need to put forward bolder and even more imaginative ideas to make our common life better.

Without those small victories we won’t ever develop the hope we need to seek, let alone win, the big ones. We really do have to change the culture and spirit of this city in order to move forward.

A friend of mine, Hannah Miller, often uses the world “beautiful” when many of us would use the word “good.” She talks about a beautiful public policy or a beautiful rally or a beautiful candidate. I used to wonder why she did that. It’s not, I’ve concluded, just that she is a talented artist as well as an activist. I think it is that she recognizes how important it is to change the culture and spirit of our politics. She is, perhaps without knowing it, using the word “beautiful” in a way that is close to the ancient Greek word “kalon.” That Greek word is sometimes translated “beautiful” and sometimes “noble.” Those English translations point to a central part of the meaning of “kalon.” To be kalon is to be is to be inspiring. Something beautiful draws us towards it and encourages us to emulate it. Something noble motivates us to be noble ourselves and to encourage nobility in the world.

More than anything else, we need a politics in Philadelphia that people find motivating, attractive, and inspiring. We need a beautiful politics, one that encourages citizens to work together to make our city a truly wonderful place to live.

Much of the time, we actually have such a politics in our neighborhoods and civic associations. The citizen engagement we see there really is a beautiful thing. And it keeps our neighborhoods alive even when they are neglected, or worse, by our government.

But, for too long, politics in the city as a whole has been left in the hands of those who care mostly about the benefits they will get from the next deal they make. Or who think mostly of how their faction can get a little bit more than some other faction. In this kind of politics, someone loses every time someone wins. It is a politics that does little to address the concerns we all have, mostly because all those special deals and factional conflicts keep getting in the way. It is a politics that is, in short, ugly.

And what we get from our government is ugly, too: A deteriorating and expensive transit system. A Department of Human Services that can’t protect our children. Health centers with waiting lists six months long. Schools so inadequate that they, far more than taxes, drive people from the city. And on on, through the whole depressing litany of failure and greed, corruption and waste.

As I listened to Karen and Christine and others talk about these ten small steps, I saw that they were pointing towards a different kind of politics: a politics in which we can all win. A politics that helps us articulate our common goals. A politics that might actual realize the potential of Philadelphia. A politics so beautiful that people begin to feel that nothing is beyond us, if we will just work together to make it happen. I have been calling this a politics of hope on the campaign trail.

And I see now that the small steps of Next Great City initiative can help us take a really big step towards creating a politics of beauty and hope in Philadelphia. They are not enough. But I endorse them whole heartedly. And I am grateful to everyone who worked so hard to present them to us.

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