E-book editon of "Cities Within A City: On Changing Cleveland's Government," by Burt W. Griffin

E-book editon of "Cities Within A City: On Changing Cleveland's Government," by Burt W. Griffin -- I was talking this morning to Bill Callahan about the city charter hearings under way; Burt Griffin's 1981 book came up as an integral topic in our conversation. Burt worked in Washington for a while, and has some instructive thoughts to offer on urbanism.

Lo and behold, searching for data on the internet, I found that the entire text of the book is here. Just click on Table of Contents, and you'll find each section and chapter at your fingertips, or your mousetips, or however we would phrase that in this electronic age.

One of my points for Bill was that, since we have the PR weenies beginning to whack away at public opinion about Cleveland City Council, as evidenced by yesterday's PD masterwork, it's time to go on offense, to wit: Each ward of the City of Cleveland should have equal standing with similar-sized small towns or suburbs, each councilman should have the same authorities in and control over his ward as mayors have over their cities, and each ward should be relatively autonomous in governance and in the delivery of services to the constituency.

Here's a bit on Burt and his book, from the Cleveland Memory Project:

Cities Within A City: On Changing Cleveland's Government
by Burt W. Griffin
Originally published by
the College of Urban Affairs
Cleveland State University
1981

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Burt W. Griffin retired as judge of the Common Pleas Court of Cuyahoga County, Ohio in 2005, after 30 years of service. From 1966 to 1975, he served as a legal aid lawyer in various capacities, including Executive Director of the Cleveland Legal Aid Society and National Director of the Legal Services Program, U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity.

He was Assistant Counsel to the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy during 1964.

Judge Griffin has been a lifelong resident of Greater Cleveland. He was born in Cleveland's Hough section in 1932, lived in the Shaker Square area of Cleveland from 1937 to 1960, and has resided in Shaker Heights since then. Judge Griffin was graduated cum laude from Amherst College with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in 1954, and from Yale Law School with a Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1959.

He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Urban Studies at Cleveland State University.

This edition contains the complete text as found in the 1981 print edition of the book, along with some enhancements developed to aid in navigating this site. The site is hosted by the Cleveland State University Library and is presented here with Judge Griffin's permission.

PERMISSIONS CREDITS DISCLAIMER

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy: Joining the Blogosphere

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy: At Lincoln House - March 2008 -- Well, they MetTheBloggers over a year ago, and now here they come with their own blog. Apparently, it's contagious. Welcome to the blogosphere.

putting wiring and cabling underground

FindLaw for Legal Professionals - Case Law, Federal and State Resources, Forms, and Code -- Since prior to the First World War, in the times of Mayor Newton D. Baker, the City of Cleveland has had fairly intelligent ordinances on the books for the discreet handling of public utilities. This link speaks to electrical wires, and the same ideas should apply to telephone wires and fiber optical cable, and refrigerator-sized boxes on treelawns. I'd say that now we have SB117 rolling towards us, we need to revisit why it's in the public interest to put utilities underground, out of the way, out of sight, out of mind, and secure against compromise by terrorists and nasty weather, and the occasional careening automobile.

Let's start talking about making the utilities invisible. We've had the idea for about 100 years and, like the 1903 "Burnham and Root" plan, The Group Plan, we still haven't fully executed it. That says something about our community, and about us.

We need to make sure the interests of the public are served first, and those of the utilities are served someplace after that. I wouldn't want to build a business in a city where my lifeline, my electrical and fiber optic cable hookups, were exposed to as much risk as they are in Cleveland. Cities with thriving commerce like Dublin, Shanghai, London, and Paris realized this long ago; business goes where it's generally welcome.

Here's a writer's recounting of the wireless renovation of Brugge that paid dividends, once it created community capital. Like Cleveland, Brugge was at one time one of the richest cities in the world:

The city fell on hard times and became such a backwater that neither side bothered to bomb it during the war. The place was poor for a long while, and only began to recover during the 70’s.

But then Brugge found that History had dealt it the same kind of weird backhanded favor it did when it made Ireland too poor to put chemical fertilizers on its fields and pastures (for which reason its grass-fed beef is now famous all over Europe, and its organic produce
is becoming that way). Brugge had been ignored… and hence all the great old buildings of its medieval inner city had been perfectly preserved.

The city began renovating itself and (in a very smart move) putting all its utilities underground. Phone, electric, cable, fiber, everything went under the paving stones. Satellite dishes are not permitted to be visible on the outsides of buildings: everybody in town has affordable thousand-channel cable and broadband, and if you want something more exotic, as long as you can hide the hardware from the tourists, you’re fine.

As a result, you can walk through the Markt and all the streets around it and see nothing that reminds you of this century…except the things inside the shop windows. A big problem, there, for this is one of the great shopping towns of northern Europe.

Hunter Morrison unchained

Meet the Bloggers » Midtown Brews: Hunter Morrison--I first became acquainted with Hunter back in the late 1970s; I was recently arrived back in town from Atlanta, a newly minted Realtor with a focus on older properties, hanging out with all the young visionaries promoting Ohio City, downtown living at The Park & The Chesterfield, the reintegration of Hough, Clevelanders for 1,000 Families (Garrett Brodhead), adaptive reuse, and all the other cool things that were happening in Boston and Baltimore. Then, Hunter fell silent for a while, but now he's back, and he's speaking the truth, embellished only by a happy turn of phrase every now and then. This podcast of our February 1st sit over at Webtego's conference room is something we all must listen to, and then listen to again. There's history, hubris, and a glimpse of the future of the region.

Mentioned are his directorship at the Center for Regional Studies, David Sweet, Youngstown State, George McKelvey, the Hough Development Corporation and Kucinich, the planning award garnered by Youngstown 2010, "co-convening," the condition of Youngstown prior (peeling paint, bad attitude, and no place to go but up), Urban Strategies out of Toronto, and the vision statement of Youngstown, which entails the extraordinarily liberating effect of accepting that they're a shrunken, small city. There's also the I Will Shout Youngstown blog, the European experiences from Newcastle and from Dresden, and the idea of dying and reviving cities aligned with the idea of dying and reviving gods in our culture, along the lines of Sir James George Frazier's Golden Bough. I think that somewhere around here comes mention of the old Cleveland networks and David Hoag, Alton Whitehouse, and Joseph Gorman, and a distinction made between the old hierarchical and the new networked structures. Then come Jay Williams, Tim Ryan, Alvin Toffler, and phrases like "a buzz going on," "anomaly of the comeback city," "take the dreams and boil them down to the deals," "you've got to celebrate your successes," "megapolitan areas," "the commutership," and what happens when "the 'me' gets replaced by the 'we.'" He also talks of Jim Rouse and Faneuil Hall, Hope 6, the exploitative history of milltowns and the steel industry, black boxes, identity, Volney Rogers and the first metroparks, intrinsic value, the concept that "retail follows rooftops," values, authenticity, being very siloed and very parochial, and Tim Ryan's basic question of "Who are we collectively?"

There's incredible value in this podcast. There's also passion, concern, and a bit of outrage. This is one of the more significant offerings of the MTB "portfolio"--make sure you listen to it soon.

like a tumor

Clinic, city consider new Euclid Ave. traffic plan--Like a tumor, the Cleveland Clinic just continues to spread and to grow, now wanting to take out a chunk of Euclid Avenue itself. It's already been the urban renewal shill to take down a whole neighborhood, and now it wants to become a "campus" and sprawl across and overlay the existing grid of streets. ("A Clinic spokeswoman would not comment on specifics, but said the hospital wants to calm not only traffic but also the patients, employees and other pedestrians who now face an unfriendly swath of cars and concrete. "--how ghastly!)

I view this as the height of arrogance and a clear signal that they just have too much money. It's time for a redistribution. We want our money back.

The Clinic already has its own bus system (RTA's not good enough for its employees) to shuttle Clinic commuters who opt to drive to work from remote parking to their jobsite.

It already has constructed enclosed walkways from building to building (like those things we had for the kids' hamster habitat) so that Clinic commuters need never set foot on a Cleveland city street, yet alone be breathed upon by a native Clevelander, one of those quaint figures down on the sidewalk.

It's figurehead has the hyper-preppie name of Toby.

It just has too much money, and not enough sense not to press it's luck. It's grown fat on us, and now it wants to take yet more. Let's start saying "no" to any more incursions from the Clinic into our public spaces and our public purse, and let's start taking back our money, and our heritage. We've had our pockets picked long enough.

I missed this in November: Frank Mills and the Urban Paradox

CATALYST CLEVELAND :: Viewpoints--Frank Mills wrote this viewpoint a few months ago, and it did not get into my purview until just now. It's a good read for anybody interested in basic talk and cutting to the chase, actually getting something done instead of just talking about it. I also see in COOL Cleveland that Frank is over at David Allen Moss' FUTURE Center on January 30th.

Urban Paradoxes founder Frank A. Mills invites anyone who is a "graffiti artist, psycho-geographer, urban explorer or interested in public art, urban planning or are an urban social worker" to join him at CIA's FUTURE Center for Design and Technology Transfer for Tuesdays@FUTURE on Tue 1/30 at 4:30-6:15PM Info and Info and Info.

Here's the lead-in thesis to the November piece:

The problem in Cleveland is that our Community Development Corporations (CDCs) are quasi-public agencies funded by block grants administered by individual City Council members. But the mayor's appointees in the city administration also control funding and directly influence what CDCs can do.Given the history of CDC funding in Cleveland and how it has driven some CDCs to poach in other CDC territories for funding, I do not believe you will find any CDC willing to demand that politicians or developers address the real quality of life issues that revitalize neighborhoods, including the creation of strong neighborhood schools.As I work in neighborhood revitalization around the country, I see strong neighborhoods and schools emerging in cities where CDCs are (1) grassroots initiatives, both adult and student, (2) funded privately, usually by a combination of resident and neighborhood business dollars, and where (3) businesses are willing to become directly involved. When foundation or public funds are used, they almost always come after a strong grassroots plan has been put in place.

so who's in the dark ages, really?

University Circle Blog - Friends of the University Neighborhood--I just had to drop what follows as a comment on the cheerleading going on at the University Circle blog for the misnomer corridor, where people have the opportunity to whiz through Cleveland without ever having a Cleveland resident breathe on them. EEEEWWW! Here's my comment:

I don't believe the Opportunity (for whom?) Boulevard (?) is a good answer either. Increasing bus riders and rapid riders is. Increasing Cleveland residency is. Making it quicker and easier for people to drive blithely through established Cleveland neighborhoods isn't; suburban people working in a host city should conform to the city; the city should not have to conform to the fact that the suburbanites have made impractical decisions about where they live and where they work. Nor should we have to economically support their distaste for mixing with native Clevelanders; we should not subsidize racial, ethnic, and social intolerance. Having neighborhoods with all social strata and all income levels, much like a small town, would have the effect of reducing the need for heroic roadbuilding. Let's get real, for a change. Our common financial resources are not unlimited. Work with making incremental, sensible, economical improvements to the rich city we already have.