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While the physical features of spontaneous cities could be traced to complex histories of families, businesses, and organizations, the physical features of planned cities owe their origin only to the act of planning and speculation. This has severe consequences towards the sustainability of place as there will not grow any particular attachment by the residents, their presence there being only a temporary economic necessity and not the outcome of their life’s growth.
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Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That at least is the conventional wisdom. But things haven’t always turned out that way.
An even stronger finding is that the requirements of prosperity go way beyond material sustenance. Prosperity has vital social and psychological dimensions. To do well is in part about the ability to give and receive love, to enjoy the respect of your peers, to contribute useful work, and to have a sense of belonging and trust in the community. In short, an important component of prosperity is the ability to participate meaningfully in the life
of society.This view of prosperity has much in common with Amartya Sen’s vision of development as ‘capabilities for flourishing’.
The ‘iron cage of consumerism’ is a system in which no one is free.
It’s an anxious, and ultimately a pathological system. But at one level it works. The system remains economically viable as long as liquidity is preserved and consumption rises. It collapses when either of these stalls.
Prosperity without growth?
The transition to a sustainable economy
Professor Tim Jackson
Economics Commissioner
Sustainable Development Commission
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‘Enterprise education is about the next generation of entrepreneurs’ claimed one of the speakers at the LEGI conference in Leeds yesterday. And judging from most of the contributions that is a widely shared belief.
Which is bad news for me – because I think it profoundly wrong. And it is bad news for our economy too because it needs people with enterprising minds in every conceivable area of life.
And by an enterprising mind I don’t mean one that can put a price on the school magazine and sell advertising (and we wonder why proper educators fail to engage?) but one that is always looking at opportunities to improve, to innovate, to push boundaries and challenge limitations. A mind that believes it can help it’s owner to take some control over their future. To make good things happen.
Not a mind that thinks if I just keep my head down, do as I am told, be a good ‘team player’ (few entrepreneurs are good team players – this something they often have to work at) and work hard, the teacher will give me an ‘A’.
Enterprise education is NOT about the next generation of entrepreneurs. It is about the next generation of active, engaged, committed, creative and passionate citizens.
I love enterprise.
I love entrepreneurship too!
I am also passionate about education. (I taught secondary Science and Outdoor Ed for years).
But if you tried to engage me in enterprise education on the basis that it is about running businesses and selling the school magazine you would get short shrift from me too.
No wonder so many bleat about how hard it is to embed ‘enterprise’ in the curriculum. Surely few teachers want to be utilitarian agents of the employers, economists, politicians and The Treasury?
So let us offer a broader conception of enterprise. One that is about helping students to find their future and helping them to gain the powers that they need to make it a reality.
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Never discourage anyone … who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. – Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)
Never. NEVER! NEVER!
I wish the judges of enterprise competitions would understand the importance of this.
At the grand finals of a recent dragon’s den type event (which included the usual cocktail of local business people, ‘would have been’ apprentices and celebrity millionaires on the judging panel) 6 finalists were asked to pitch their ideas.
The setting was the enormous stage in the Main Hall of a local University. Powerpoint, radio mics, lapel mics, comperes. It had the lot.
The audience? A couple of hundred family and friends, enterprise professionals and housing types. Some of the finalists took to this platform like a duck to water. For others it was more like lambs to the slaughter. I suspect for none of them was this a situation that could REALLY be justified as a legitimate and essential part of their ‘enterprise education’. For most it was certainly not timely.
The task? Deliver a 6 minute pitch about your business/start up idea and then face 6 minutes of questionning, while dealing with problems with both sound and AV systems of farcical proportions. These were so acute I began to think they were deliberatley staged to test participants’ ability to think on their feet. I am still not sure if the computer maintenance business sabotaged their own powerpoint to make some sort of point?
And the judges seemed to have available to them one of two responses. The first were variations of ‘You have something’, ‘You will make this work’, ‘Whatever you try you will find a way’. At least one of the judges seemed to be able form this response based on just what people looked like!
The second was ‘You have got a problem’, ‘You have got nothing’, ‘It is terribly confused’, ‘Your name doesn’t work’.
It is hard to know which of these is responses is more dangerous.
I am sure the event and the competition that led upto it was a great success for funders. Lots of PR, a big dinner etc. But can we really say this is community engagement in enterprise?
I suspect that some of the competitors found the whole process deeply discouraging.
Interestingly the winner and runner up were both graduates. Another wonderful example of enterprise skimming?
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Community Anchors are independent, community-led organisations. They are at the heart of their communities, physically and psychologically. They are able to respond in a holistic way to local problems and challenges, by giving local people support to act.
Community Anchors come in many different shapes, forms and structures but they all share this basic purpose of animating and co-ordinating progress. You can read more about them here and here.
It seems that there is a high correlation between communities that experience successful regeneration and the development of effective Anchor Organisations.
This has led many regeneration funders to seek to establish Anchor Organisations in ‘failing’ communities in the belief that they can weave their magic and turn things around. And perhaps they can.
But I have a slight concern. I would hypothesise that Anchor Organisations emerge from communities that are already working actively at their own regeneration. They are a natural evolution as independent people and community organisations begin to reach out to each other in the realisation that only through association can they become more effective in their work.
Their success depends to a very large extent on the timing being right and incumbent diverse and fragmented community groups recognising that the development of a successful Anchor Organisation is in their best interest. This realisation and consensus can take many years to accrue.
If this hypothesis is correct then we should expect Anchor Organisations that have been artificially seeded by external funders to find it tough going. The local incumbents may not yet have reached the limits of their own development. They may not yet see the need for the anchor. They may see it as yet another project foisted on them by funders by more money with sense.
Instead of acting as midwifes to the birth of a wonderful new baby, regeneration professionals then end up putting a premature and often unwanted delivery into some very expensive intensive care – if the baby gets born at all.
I have had the privilege of working with some highly successful Anchor Organisations – which emerged from local people and groups in response to local circumstances and opportunities. I have also witnessed Anchor Organisations struggle to get off the ground – and most of these seem to have been primarily ‘funding’ and ‘policy’ driven, conceived by outsiders as an appropriate ‘strategic’ response to the needs of local communities.
If my hypothesis is right then Anchor Organisations are a naturally emergent property of communities that are already on the up. They are an effect of regeneration rather than a cause.
And instead of trying to seed them in communities where they perceive there is a need, funders should focus on facilitating local groups until such time as they decide that the time is right for an Anchor Organisation to emerge.
A leader is best when people barely know he exists,
when his work is done,
his aim fulfilled,
they will say: we did it ourselves.
Lao Tzu
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