164 years ago, Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, wrote these words:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Those words could just as easily have been written today about the critical crossroads where America stands today. Today, there is tale of two futures.
> One of foolishness and darkness; the other of wisdom, light and hope.
> One of top-down dysfunction; the other of bottom-up change.
> One of self-congratulatory status quo; the other of creative reinvention and disruption.
> One of antagonists fighting old wars; the other of protagonists and disrupters exploring new frontiers.
First, the foolishness and darkness.
Today, if you’re not angry about what’s going on in Washington, D.C., you’re not paying attention. Our federal government has never been more dysfunctional.
Too many of our elected leaders have driven into politically partisan cul de sacs and have become trapped in their own rigid ideologies with no apparent way out. Ideological purity trumps compromise and problem solving. Our federal government is going from one self-inflicted manufactured crisis to another — with no end in sight.
Too many are playing a zero sum game where the one who yells the dumbest thing in the loudest voice wins. As Tom Friedman has noted, we have too many elected officials who are at war with math, science, economics and common sense. Every day, Washington proves the old adage that the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Years ago, I moderated a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative, and the President of Iceland, Olafur Grimson, said something that really struck a nerve with me. He said: “The problem with you Americans is that you spend too much time waiting for Washington.”
Olafur Grimson was right — Washington is not the place to change the world today. Tip O’Neil famously said, “All politics is local.” I’ve come to believe that “All change
is local.”
The change in the world will come and is coming from change by us. It’s in our own backyards. On the ground. Most of all, in our cities and regions — where rubber meets the road and risk meets results. Cities and regions are the new ground game.
We are in the throes of a sweeping demographic shift from countryside to cities, and from drivable suburbanism to walkable urbanism. More than half of the population is huddled in cities. Cities make up only 2% of the earth’s crust, and 243 million Americans live on the 3% of our land that is urban.
Almost 60% of the world’s population lives in cities. This trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling its current size by 2050, at which point nearly seven of 10 people will live in cities.
And a diverse new mobile generation — the young and the restless — is moving twice as fast as all other age groups into close-in urban neighborhoods. The number of college-educated young and the restless has increased two to three times faster in cities than in the overall surrounding regions.
What does that mean? It means that more and more people, especially the young and the restless and the retiring and the restless, are driving less and want walkable urbanism where they don’t have to spend an average of 13 hours a year a stuck in traffic.
While there is no doubt that the rapid move to remote and hybrid work is here to stay, geography still matters.
In innovation, a company’s success depends on more than just the quality of its workers — it depends on the critical mass of the entire knowledge ecosystem that surrounds it. The magic is in the mix and creating constantly connected places. Constant collisions of people and ideas. It’s not just about industry clusters — it’s about people and idea clusters.
We are hard-wired to connect and collaborate, not just online but in person. While workplace flexibility is very important, the more face-to-face connection and collaboration, the more innovation and productivity.
Those cities that are reinventing themselves are embracing their failures as lessons learned and are celebrating and investing in their distinctive assets. No more putting themselves down or feeling sorry for themselves. These cities understand that failures and successes are not moments — they are trajectories. Our attitude will determine Cleveland’s and our region’s altitude.
To succeed, Believeland must be more than a slogan. It must be who we are. The future belongs to those cities and regions who can frame their opportunities and challenges, act in ways that demonstrate measurable progress, and connect and collaborate with the smartest people and the smartest ideas in the most places and in the most ways.
In my coming columns, I intend to highlight the innovative work of mayors like Justin Bibb and county executives like Chris Ronayne.
I’ve never been more pessimistic about the ability of making change from the top down; and I’ve never been more optimistic about the power of making change from the bottom up.
