"The growth is in the person, not the place."

I thought of this quote the other day, as I was researching workforce development programs at community colleges for my summer internship. The quote comes from Melvin, a community college student we met at Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville. His was one of the most inspiring stories we heard during our time in Southside.

Melvin grew up in Mount Vernon, NY, eldest child of a single mother. He told us about succumbing to the temptations of the street early in life, fathering children and getting involved in drugs. After a stint in jail, and with his thirtieth birthday approaching, Melvin decided he needed to do something to turn his life around; he was determined to be a father to his children in a way his never was. He got a job driving a truck cross-country to pay his child support and keep his kids on the right path.

Melvin continued to better himself by moving south from New York to Martinsville, to go to Patrick Henry. He decided to relocate to Martinsville because he liked the people, and he thought the city was a place where he could earn a second chance. He enrolled at Partick Henry, got a job in the Athletic Department, and is now student body president. He hopes to get a job working at a community college so that he can help others like himself, looking for second chances.

Melvin's story drove home a few key points for me about the challenge of redevelopment in a place like Southside. First, the most important resource Martinsville has is the people who live there, who love the community and want make it better. Outside money can be a bridge to redevelopment, but truly revitalizing communities will need people to cross that bridge. Second, buildings are not a panacea to blight -- a shimmering downtown will not save Martinsville. Only deep investments in human capital, education, and healthcare can transform neighborhoods. And, finally, in order to get it's second chance, Martinsville needs to make it easier for its people to pursue their own second chances. The programs described by Dr. Angeline Godwin, president of Patrick Henry, are a great first step toward that goal. The community college's investment in the New College Institute, programs in advanced mechanics, and a new childcare center on campus for students will help Martinsville in it's transition to the new economy.

Can the hipsters save us?

One of the enduring themes of our trip was that of place-based development. One of our trip leaders describes this as “improving quality of life for folks where they are”. The directors of research centers, incubators, and businesses we are meeting with talk about it as “making Virginia a great place to live first and to work second”. A town planner described the competing challenges of development and gentrification as determining whether “the hipsters are going to save us”.

This challenge is the central research concern of economists like Elizabeth Currid, Ed Glaser and Richard Florida. Our trip demonstrated that many of the same arguments that are made about arts and culture as a driving force in the economic development of large cities also apply in smaller centers. In her book about place-based creative economies, The Warhol Economy, Elizabeth Currid argues forcefully that government policy plays an essential role in attracting or repelling cultural producers. Thoughtful policy-making (whether zoning, permitting or tax credits) can build vibrant and dynamic cultural zones. The first step is recognising that art and culture generate real growth and jobs. The role of governments, as Currid argues, is to do everything they can to leverage culture: as a tourist attraction, an amenity and as a job and wealth generator.

Against that backdrop, my three “place-based” lessons from the trip are:

1.  Physical place matters

The most successful community development strategies leverage the existing physical, cultural and human assets of a location. We were lucky enough to hear from Pete Eschelman about using Roanoke’s physical environs to design America’s toughest marathon (sidenote: it continues to amaze me that people will pay good money to be exhausted, hungry and in need of a shower. Most of my friendship with Nate Betcher has involved recognising how very little we have in common).

We also visited the gorgeous mixed-use warehouse district of Danville, which puts converted buildings in many major cities to shame. Finally, we were privileged to share in the story of the development of FloydFest and the growth of Floyd as one of the destination locations for those passionate about the American music scene.

2. Meaning-making matters

Arts and culture help people and communities make sense of themselves and their place in the world. They are means to feel heard, and included. Events like FloydFest put communities on the map, and give them a positive story to tell the world.

3. Community superheroes matter, but they aren’t enough

On our travels, we were grateful to be welcomed into the homes and workplaces of many social entrepreneurs – people at the very heart of a town or city’s revitalisation. It would be easy to characterise these powerful indviduals as the single catalyst for change in moribund economic landscapes. But the reality, of course, is more complex. Each of these individuals acknowledged that their own success was linked to community support, dedicated and responsive government officials and a manageable regulatory environment.

The arts and cultures of our cities and towns matter. They tell us who we are and whisper about what we might become. They enrich our communities in every sense. Currid again: "Creative industries require a different type of policy-making that cultivates the social world in which art and culture thrive." Some of the communities of Southside it appears, are well on the way.

"It's about the person."

It's not easy to write about the region where you grew up. This past week I thought frequently of the Yiddish parable that Professor Marshall Ganz used frequently in our community organizing class - "Who discovered water? We don't know, but it certainly was not the fish." When you have grown up shaped by a region, it's a challenge to uncover the deep currents running under that region - an even greater challenge to determine how best to channel them.

Growing up in Salem, Virginia in the early 2000s, my friends and I had always heard that the cities, towns, and counties to our Southeast were on the brink of crisis. Just beyond the Roanoke Valley and through the rolling hills at the foot of the Appalachian mountains, we knew there were silent giants in the mists of Bassett and Martinsville - smokestacks of factories that had shut down long ago, sending thousands of workers away with children to feed and no clear road to a new job. Years later, when I worked in Governor Kaine's Constituent Services Office at the start of the Great Recession, we heard far too many stories of expiring unemployment benefits and proud breadwinners having to ask for help. Far too many of these calls came from Southside.

The stories were tragic, vivid, and anyone who wants to understand the region has to know them. We were fortunate on our trip to hear the incredible reporting and research of Roanoke Times reporter Beth Macy, working on her upcoming book on one of these manufacturing giants, Bassett Furniture and the people in the town of the same name. I also managed to drag with me from town to town a copy of Dale Maharidge's and Michael Williamson's amazing book Someplace Like America: Tales From the New Great Depression. Like Macy, Maharidge and Williamson brought to life vignettes of the human tragedy of the economic transformation of the past three decades. Tragedy isn't the full story of course, but we shouldn't pretend to understand economic transitions without bearing witness to the stories of those lost in transit - those, like the title of Maharidge's previous work, who found themselves left out of the new economy and stuck on a road to nowhere.

How do you rebuild an entire region? That was the question on my mind from the moment this trip started, and the answer came at a lunch at Patrick Henry Community College on Thursday. Student Body President Melvin Johnson is a former truck driver from Baltimore who, having driven through countless regions, chose to park once and for all in Southern Virginia. In the course of telling us his powerful, personal story, he told us, "Growth isn't about a place; it's about a person." In other words, revitalization of these communities had to focus on the people themselves, on investing in human capital. As we heard many times, the region did not want to incentivize another factory to set roots into town that would simply leave once those incentives disappeared. Melvin had captured perfectly the policy response to the shifting American economy and the decline of the American manufacturing sector. Invest in your people.

The trip laid out a beautiful range of examples for Melvin's summary. I'll briefly touch on four:

First - education. One of my fellow classmates, Alejandro, made a powerful point. In every single meeting, whether professional or political - every leader focused on the importance of investing in education. Martinsville, and its partner in development, the Harvest Foundation, have invested millions of dollars in the New College Institute so that Martinsville residents can get a bachelor's degree, master's degree, or certificate without leaving the area. In neighboring Danville, they built a gleaming monument to advanced study known as the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. Measured by investment, education has become a huge focus of local leadership.

Second - lowering the barriers for entrepreneurship. Whether in Virginia Tech's KnowledgeWorks or Danville's small business incubator (currently at full capacity), or Martinsville's incubator (currently at 85% capacity), local governments in partnership with educational institutions are investing in hubs of entrepreneurial spirit - where new businesses can get off the ground and potentially swap ideas and inspiration.

Third - protecting home-grown businesses. We saw this most vividly in Floyd, where our attempt to get pizza from a chain was politely corrected - because it was a chain. Whether by rebuffing the expansion of chains, or by boosting local businesses, the belief that each dollar spent in a local store as opposed to a chain (a higher multiplier effect for the Econs out there) was widespread and widely accepted.

Finally - the retraining of the former manufacturing workforce. At Melvin's school, Patrick Henry Community College, the average age is 27 (I won't disclose Melvin's age without his consent, but suffice it to say he's above average in many respects). The schools in this region are overwhelmingly open for former plant and factory workers looking to retrain. And with federal programs like Trade Adjustment Assistance through the Department of Labor, many of those workers can receive federal assistance to get the skills they need for today's job market in Southside.

The investment in human capital was astounding and powerful, but it certainly isn't perfect. There are far too many older workers caught at the worst moment in this transition. They find themselves too old for retraining, and too young or too poor to retire. And the Virginia social safety net has some particularly wide holes - to be eligible for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, an adult without children cannot make more than $8,940 in an entire year. And the jobs in this new economy lack the stability and security that was a staple of this region in the heyday of American manufacturing. While investing in the next generation of Southwest Virginia entrepreneurs, the Commonwealth should make sure it takes care of the previous generation and builds a secure net to catch those entrepreneurs who take the jump and fall short.

Leanna, one of the leaders behind Martinsville's New College Institute, talked about the nontraditional approaches this area of Virginia is taking as it rebuilds. "If we just thought in the box of what an economist thought we should be," Leanna told us, "We just wouldn't be here." Instead, this part of Virginia has chosen to invest resources in its people - spending money on education, incubating small businesses, protecting home-grown entrepreneurs, and retraining workers for the jobs ahead. It's a truly democratic form of economic revitalization. Leaders are spending money not to recruit some larger manufacturing firm, but to give each and every citizen a powerful education and the skills to attract new jobs or even create their own. Though the smokestacks of Southern Virginia have gone quiet, the classrooms and office hallways are livelier than ever.

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A quick note of thanks - to Hy and Dan for organizing an incredible experience, and to every single person who packed into that fifteen-passenger van with me all week. There's no better way to "discover the water" of your own home than a guided tour with some brilliant, insightful, and hilarious friends.

Update

Well, we successfully rambled through the Roanoke Valley, New River Valley, and Southside Regions of Virginia.  Our trip was jam-packed with great experiences and awesome learning experiences; to those we met along the way, thank you for your generosity in sharing your time and your perspectives.

Just a quick update -- though our trip is complete, our reflections are only just beginning.  In the coming days, we'll be posting thoughts here as they come to us.

More than just a Speedway; more than the stats would suggest

On Thursday we were in Martinsville, a city in southside Virginia with the highest unemployment rate in the Commonwealth.  As of March 2013, the unemployment rate was 14.4%; it has been north of 10% for the past five years.

Martinsville and the surrounding county of Henry were among the areas hardest hit by the offshoring of manufacturing in the 1990s and 2000s, with textiles leaving first and furniture manufacturing following shortly thereafter.  Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, approximately 18,000 people have lost their jobs.  In a community of roughly 75,000, you can imagine the broader societal impact.

However, if you dig a bit deeper you begin to uncover a reawakening in the area.  Though the unemployment rate remains very high, it has fallen four percentage points in the last year.  Most of this was driven by the expansion of existing businesses in the area, but also the addition of new, more entrepreneurial ventures.

The spirit of entrepreneurship was prevalent in our meetings with Mayor Kim Adkins, who is starting a small business herself, and other community leaders.  Mayor Adkins in particular highlighted the recent efforts to change the culture around new business development in the region.  She specifically highlighted the strength of broadband in the area, as well as the new businesses that have opened recently in the area.

Our afternoon panel included City Manager Leon Towarnicki, Director of Community Development Wayne Knox, Community Zoning Officer Susan McCulloch, Kathy Rogers, Executive Director of  Piedmont Arts, and Leanna Blevins from the New College Institute.

Wayne kicked off the meeting by telling us that Martinsville is "more than just a speedway;" indeed, our discussion highlighted the increased role of regionalism, a greater focus on the community's existing assets, and improvements in education and workforce development. [for reference, Martinsville Speedway hosts two NASCAR races each year, nearly doubling the city and surrounding counties in terms of population].

The three big takeaways from this meeting were really the increased role of "thinking regionally;" an increased focus on developing the community's existing assets; and a renewed focus on education and workforce development.  The work across the region to promote collaboration (for a future post, no doubt) is really impressive, and the work that's taking place in Martinsville, particularly at the New College Institute, was promising.

The latter of these was closely linked to our first meeting in Martinsville, with Patrick Henry Community College.  Here, we met several local leaders, including Dr. Angeline Godwin, PHCC's President, Rhonda Hodges, Dean of Workforce Development, Melvin, the Student Body President, and Jeff Kohler of GENEDGE Alliance.

In general, it was encouraging to hear about the work that PHCC is undertaking in an effort to break the cycle of unemployment and poverty.  Dr. Godwin in particular provided a compelling narrative on changing the mindset of the current and future generations, so that they too don't fall behind their peers.

Not only our hosts, they gave us a tour!  Rhonda Hodges highlighting Martinsville.

Throughout all of our meetings, a spirit of resolute optimism was clear.  Whether it was the renewed focus on workforce development and education via the New College Institute and the efforts at PHCC; or the entrepreneurial spirit of the city government, it was obvious that Martinsville is moving beyond its past.

Efficient farming

I spent most of my early childhood in a village in South-East Romania. As soon as I learned how to walk, I had to follow my grandparents to the field where they worked using saps and rakes. Soon after I learned how to milk a cow. I always assumed that this is the way farming is done all over the world. Little did I know that in the developed world this kind of farming is a thing of the past. During our LSS Trip to Virginia I had the opportunity to talk to an American farmer and dairy producer. He showed us the technology he uses to milk his cows. I was blown away! With two employees he is able to run a farm with 140 cows. This would not be possible without modern technology. What was even more striking though was  that he said this kind of technology has been around from before he was born. His father had been using automatic milking technology from 1925. I wanted to call my grandma and tell her. When they say Romania is 50 years behind America, they are being polite. If in the 1990s we lacked technology that had been in America since the 1920s, it means the technological gap is much grater than 50 years.

The Burden On Our Community Colleges

We're on our way to Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville today, and I stumbled across an interesting article on community colleges on the ride there. Perfect timing for some thought-provoking questions.

Of the Obama Administration's goal of 8 million post-secondary graduates by 2020, 5 million of those are expected to come from the country's community colleges. And community colleges, compared to other four year institutions, are taking in a growing share of students from low-income communities.

Is this too much to ask of our community colleges in a time of declining state support for higher education? A new report from the Century Foundation takes a comprehensive view of the system as it is and the challenges ahead. The report comes to a difficult conclusion (of course with some solutions and proposals in there as well):

Today, community colleges are in great danger of becoming indelibly separate and unequal institutions in the higher education landscape.

More on the report here: http://nyti.ms/14Sw0Hm