 Hi everyone. My name is Stefan Norgaard. I'm a PhD student here in Columbia's urban planning program at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, GSAP. And today I will be moderating a lecture and urban planning series lifts panel event. This week we are joined by four practitioners and public leaders in the field of urban social change. Their work spans sectors from municipal government philanthropy research institutes and academia to international organizations. And notably all four of our speakers have worked in philanthropy. And today we will discuss and consider the historical and contemporary role of foundations in making and supporting social change in cities. Specifically, we're joined in alphabetical order by and you guys can maybe wave as I, as I call you out, Clarissa Ben-Como, Don Chen, George Mac McCarthy, and Maria Torres Springer. Clarissa Ben-Como is an assistant professor at Columbia GSAP and an independent consultant on human rights governance and philanthropy. Don Chen is the president of the Serna Foundation. George Mac McCarthy is the president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Maria Torres Springer is vice president for US programs at the Ford Foundation. In this conversation, we will discuss how philanthropy has had a long history of engagement with cities in the US and globally and urban development, city planning and visioning and civic participation. We will discuss professional pathways and career opportunities that support justice, social justice and cities. And our panelists will also reflect on several current challenges including the future of cities and urban life in the context of COVID-19 and ways that urban development organizations can support the advancement of racial justice. So I'll start with a few technical and logistical announcements and then introduce our speakers, and then we'll get started. So during the talk, I'd like to remind everyone to please mute your microphones. We will be recording today's lecture. So anyone in the audience who wishes not to be recorded should also please turn off your video input. The chat box should be used only for substantive discussion regarding the session. But if you have technical questions that apply only to you, please message myself or my colleague Jenna Davis, you can do so privately in the chat, and we'll try to resolve that. And finally, we encourage all of you to type questions into the chat box during the presentation. Jenna and I will be moderating them and taking a look and then after the presentation, we'll have time for a brief Q&A. We'll be coordinating the Q&A around two or two 10 p.m. and we'll do so with an attention to diversity and inclusion. And if you've already had a chance to pose a question, please allow others to do so before asking a second question. So with that, I'm delighted to introduce today's panelists. Dr. Como is an independent consultant about human rights, governance and philanthropy. She's currently advising Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health on research and donor funded programming to address gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health, and has taught in the university's Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. From 2010 to 2018, she developed and led governance programming for the Ford Foundation's MENA office, Middle East and North Africa office in Cairo, and addressed spatial inequality, research and capacity building for service provision and documentation and advocacy for urban policies that are inclusive for migrants and refugees. She's had a long career before that working as a researcher at Human Rights Watch based in Cairo and New York, among other institutions. Don Chen is the president of the Serna Foundation, where he leads the 100-year-old foundation's efforts to strengthen and further its commitments to social justice. Prior to his appointment, Don was director of Cities and States at the Ford Foundation, where his work supported urban development initiatives to make housing more affordable, promote more equitable land use practices, and empower communities to have a more powerful decision-making voice in American cities and in developing countries. Previously, Don was the founder and CEO of Smart Growth America. He led efforts to create the National Bacon Properties Campaign, which later became the Center for Community Progress, and Transportation for America, and managed a merger with the Growth Management Leadership Alliance. Mac is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He joined the Lincoln Institute in 2014 from the Ford Foundation, where he previously directed programming in the Metropolitan Opportunity Unit. Mac joined Ford in 2000 from the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina, UNC, and his work experience includes professor of economics at Bard College, a resident scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, visiting scholar and member of the High Table, and research associate for the Center for Social Research in St. Petersburg, Russia. Maria Torres Springer is vice president for U.S. programs at the Ford Foundation. She oversees all of the foundation's domestic programming for civic engagement in government, creativity and free expression, gender, racial and ethnic justice, future of work, future of workers, just city of regions, just cities and regions, and technology and society. Maria's extensive experience includes almost 15 years in public service with the city of New York, where she led three agencies addressing some of the city's most significant public policy challenges, such as housing affordability, economic development and workforce development, and throughout her tenure in the public sector and in previous roles in the nonprofit and private sectors. She has worked to create powerful partnerships among communities, business and government in pursuit of expanded economic opportunity and justice for the historically marginalized. So we've got quite an esteemed panel, as you can all tell, and let's get started with some questions. Why don't we start with you, Don? What roles would you say foundations have played historically in urban planning and city building efforts in the past in the American context? And how would you say these roles have changed in more recent decades? Thanks, Stefan. And I'm going to go with your suggestion that we try to keep our remarks to about three minutes each with these questions. And I also want to just thank you for organising us. We all have a connection to the Ford Foundation because most of us met there and we all work there. And so it's just a delight to be with all of you today. So I'm going to talk about a couple of things. I want to acknowledge first that there are a vast array of activities that foundations have supported in these fields, urban planning, urban developments, so on. It goes back practically to the beginning of the formal field of urban planning and even of philanthropy, but I'm going to primarily focus on the ones that I'm most familiar with through my career. I want to acknowledge that, you know, just to highlight some examples, in the 50s and 60s, the Ford Foundation was involved in supporting cities in the global south to develop what were called basic development plans. There were regional development plans in places like Calcutta and Delhi. Calcutta now Calcutta. And then of course later in the 60s 70s and beyond the community development movement. But the one I'm going to talk about primarily is the something that emerged with strength in the 90s and 2000s and that was the transportation reform movement and the smart growth movement. I was very involved in both of those. And the transportation reform movement, it sounds about as unsexy as you can imagine but it really came out of, in part, a combination of confluence of different movements there was the civil rights movement in which a lot of local leaders civil rights leaders like Marion Barry and various other folks in the 60s rose to prominence by opposing urban renewal highways going through black neighborhoods and many types of developments like that. And also environmentalists opposing road construction. Here's a an example of that. I don't know if you can see that on my camera but I hold it to my face you know end of the road was like a citizen's guide against over building highways back in the 70s and 80s. And those were mainly led by environmentalists and so it was a confluence in the 90s to read literally rewrite the federal law, the coalition that came together, funded by foundations like the certain foundation and many others. And the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, otherwise known as ST, and that spawned a whole broad coalition building effort, multiple disciplines. It also birthed what we call now the smart growth movement, where you know, transportation folks, social equity advocates, housing advocates, those basically who care about urban planning to try to reform the way in which America's communities grow. Back then we call that social equity, Angela Blackwell of policy link was one of the founding board members and equity was the watch word. And now we in the field tend to talk more about social justice. But I think it really spawned increasing efforts to try to get more grassroots communities community leaders involved in urban planning from the bottom up through coalition buildings and various things and I'll just to kind of tie the things together. This was a publication that we produced, you can't see it really called choosing our community's future a citizen's guide to getting the most out of development and that was published by SGA back then so those are a couple of ways in which foundations have been involved. The last thing I'll say here is, I think it's hard to really characterize the trends but I think in the 20th century, there was a lot of effort among foundations to pilot and scale with the assumption that government would do a lot of the scaling. And then there were private public partnerships like we saw a lot of during the community development era. And then with the smart growth and transportation reform movements funders really tried to orchestrate activities and build ecosystems, and organizations of groups that could work together. And then more recently, our focus has been to try to focus on building the strength of local organizations and local leaders because they're most familiar with the challenges that they're facing and those are those are the types of organizations that often get overlooked by foundations because they tend to be small and very community based. And I'll pause there. Thanks. Anyone else have thoughts on how foundations have supported either the field of urban planning or a specific urban development or urban planning initiatives in the past and in the present. I'll say that, you know, the, some of the stuff that Don alluded to was, you know, reflecting on the efforts of philanthropy particularly the Ford Foundation and some of the larger national foundations to actually build a field of practice the community development field really didn't exist before the foundations got together and decided that they're going to find a way to create a new institutional structure that was going to become a bridge for capital and other forms of support to neighborhoods and cities and that that was an effort that really took place over about three decades it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, a hit and run kind of thing it was, it was a deliberate, you know, political, economic and philanthropic effort that I would say had an indelible impact on the, on the way cities have grown and in some cases prospered and it's other cases not prospered. But really, it's a signature piece of work from philanthropy that you can't, you can't ignore. Yeah, thanks Mac. And, you know, Clarissa, we were talking a bit about the American context but what about the global context. Would you say there have been historical differences between foundation support of planning efforts in the United States and in other countries or or global South countries as they're sometimes called these days. Well, for better or worse, there are a lot of similarities. I think with a general trend has been very similar to the trends in international development thinking. So, as Don pointed out, you know, things start off very much technically focused and focused on funding government. So 50 60 70s are really about support for technical advisors, seconding people setting up legal and policy frameworks, production of experts through creating schools of urban planning, funding higher education, those sorts of things. So you don't get the same shift in kind of participatory work that you get in the US until later, which I think also speaks to the fact that foundations for the most part were US based and didn't have a broad geographical impact. So even the Ford, for example, had a large number of offices didn't look localize its program staff until quite late and I think for that level of engagement you really need to have people embedded in the country who understand and are from the country that they're working in that came late for or didn't come at all for many US foundations. 80s and 90s you see a greater emphasis on civic engagement participation human rights, democratic participation, which has its parallel to the US but it's really about building civil society capacity to demand rights, strategic litigation starts up. And you know the South Africa context that's kind of one place where it all comes together right. So foundation support for civil society and government to try to shift and address the legacy of spatial inequality from anti apartheid period from the apartheid period. 2000s 2010s are really a shift place based approaches, multi country networks networks that include the US. This is where you get the shift to participatory budgeting right to the city movement building. So foundation supported a lot of national and cross multinational cross country, learning and mobile mobilization platforms, things like logo link, Communities Coalition, the lead up to the MDGs and SDGs and Habitat three really a lot of support for helping to connect and mobilize across those types of issues and advocate around them. But also interdisciplinary approaches and networks so you see with Ford and with melon, bringing in the arts, bringing in anthropology social science, just trying to come at the issue from different angles. And also, especially in the 2010s addressing urban refugees, Syrian crisis, you get Ford coming in on these issues, OSF, that's networks of mayors, trying to figure out how that works in place. And interestingly, kind of a new throwback to an older era of funding the production of experts. And this is also where you get a support for new kinds of urban planning expertise and experts so what does a southern lab vision of urban planning look like so support for the Indian Institute of human settlements, African Center for cities, those types of and what does what does that look like and how does that shift how we understand planning and planning approaches. We can talk later on on what that looks like but don led the at Ford led the push on this with the multi country initiative called just cities that programmed across social political economic entry points with very much a human rights based approach in multiple countries. Helen had its architecture and urbanism and humanities initiative also started around 2012 Rockefeller did a little bit of a throwback with its, with its 100 resilient cities they went back to the older model of putting a resilience expert in and then had to readjust when they kind of rediscovered what we had learned the first time in the 50s and 60s about some of those limitations. But I think that for a lot of it for foundations. It's always a back and forth between how you engage with private sector civil society residents government and what's the right balance because none of those does it on its own. Yeah, thanks Clarissa and me let's let's turn to Mac now. What would you say some of the concerns or the undersized of some of these historical or ongoing efforts have been both the concerns of philanthropic overreach for example by elected officials in in the 1950s and 60s, or some of the concerns today about the relationship between philanthropy and democracy. Would you say that these have also extended to the urban development and urban planning fields and sectors. Oh, absolutely so am I muted. No, let's see. Okay, so. So, so step on the, the, really, the, the effort to regulate foundations actually came from an effort in Cleveland where I think all the gray areas program of the Ford Foundation completely overreached, and it became kind of a shadow local government. And it ended up calling forth congressional kind of scrutiny and it became the last time really any kind of real regulatory influence was imposed on philanthropy where they limited the kind of activities that philanthropy could do and they also required the philanthropy would do a minimum kinds of activities like spend a minimum amount of their endowments. That was the, you know the basis of most of the critique of philanthropic efforts fall into, I don't know two or three different categories. One of them is a lack of accountability right I mean the philanthropy really isn't accountable to anybody except IRS and the IRS is not a very good regulator to only make sure that you spend enough money every year. And it's not accountable to either its grantees nor the places that it works and so the biggest critique from local governments is that philanthropy can come in and set up its own kind of shadow power structure that then becomes either an aid or a problem, depending on its orientation to local government. The other thing that the other critique is kind of, I would say mostly critiques are well founded by the way, having lived through both sides of this. The delusions of grandeur that philanthropy brings is philanthropy wields what seem to be considerable resources but really pale in comparison to the resources that the public sector wheels. So, somehow philanthropy thinks that so for them to throw millions of dollars at a problem will then somehow call forth billions of dollars of public money, because the whatever things they demonstrate on the ground are going to be that smart. Don kind of alluded to that when he talked about the idea that philanthropy will pilot something and then hand it off to local government to bring it to scale. And then it doesn't always feel like bringing things to scale that were invented, were devised by philanthropists who might or might not have kind of the best ideas in mind. And then the last critique is really, you know, the other one about philanthropy is that philanthropy in general tends to have ADD right, a lot of fascination with new shiny objects. There's no tendency to flip from idea to idea. No real commitment, a long term, in any particular place. And then philanthropy will just change course on a dime and they leave lots of places kind of hanging. So, recently, over the last, let's say five or 10 years, almost all the big philanthropy in the United States decided to stop funding housing work. So they came back to housing now that housing has become such a crisis issue but MacArthur forward, most of the big philanthropy decided they're going to just look going a different place. Most of the philanthropy just gave up on rural work about 15 years ago. And, you know, most philanthropy in the US now is not really doing anything as place based, but is doing what they call people based philanthropy which is a little bit more abstract and sometimes a little bit harder to connect to the outcomes that you're trying to achieve. So I would say those are the kind of the main areas of critique. And it's something that I think, you know, plan to be should take a little bit more seriously but rarely does that happen, right. And, yeah, I mean, given those past and ongoing concerns or criticisms. I'd love to bring Maria in here now. And especially since you're now the current Vice President of the Ford Foundation's work on US programs. Maria, how would you say the foundation is working in cities today. And would you say the Ford Foundation has kind of learned from the past and developing its current grant making strategy. Thank you. I'd be happy to lend a couple of perspectives to what's a terrific conversation. I think it's a little bit of a Ford reunion here and so I appreciate in particular, Clarissa bringing in a lot of the voices and perspectives and approaches of other foundations for better for worse. Those on this call might be getting a little bit of a skewed view of the role of philanthropy but we'll try our best. I wanted to focus on a couple of areas with regards to how at least Ford works in cities that might be relevant to this discussion. First, how we view cities and certainly many other funders as both venues and vehicles for for social change, of course it's often been said right that cities are the frontline laboratories of democracy, and that they need to be both organized and be held responsible for their roles in upholding the essential principles of and strengthening democracy, and they can either lead by example, or by opposition. And so there's there's a lot of agency that cities have in in a functioning democracy. And the other thing is that, you know, we've been of course quite focused on combating the, the roots of inequality and perhaps inequality is most visible in cities given that the top 1% and those at the bottom of the income live so closely together and so what that means or that the actors on the city level, policymakers, activists, and everyone in between that there's a very important and acute and direct set of conversations policy debates about inequality. And so right now, for instance, in a number of cities, policy issues running the gamut from housing to economic justice and the role and the role of workers, given the recovery criminal justice. So hopefully we'll get to talk a little bit later about what equitable recovery might look like in place, given the state of the world today. So these are all policy discussions that happen in ways that mean something to real human beings in cities, and both those actors and their philanthropy, I think has when we do our jobs well, there is support that can be provided in order to advance those issues in ways that actually improve people's lives. The other thing that I'll say is that one of the things that has evolved, and we're in the middle of this so there's been some good progress but so much of this work has a much longer are that part of the recognition of what does it mean to have impact in cities is that cities don't exist in isolation that they are part of regional state formations that are that have to be tended to in order for the issues and policy concerns of cities are actually can actually get affected and impacted. So as an example of that. Right after the 2016 election, for instance, we made a shift and don led so much of this work and this was a real evolution in our place based programming where we started looking beyond cities so including but not limited to cities and looked at states, and so the city's role in a, and a larger geographic area to, in order to advance the type of issues that matter most of people all the policymakers that I mentioned before, but then you include voting rights and reproductive rights and more on criminal justice I mean these, these are wins that can be achieved at the state level. But what that would what requires then is really supporting and building out the type of civic infrastructure that allows organizations to actually be in relationship to work together. And that not just in these episodic moments of campaigns, or elections, but over a longer stretch in order to actually achieve those wins. So this was a pivot that we made in in six different states, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Texas, Louisiana and Florida. And I mentioned, I mentioned that because there is, I think, as with all philanthropic institutions, the, the role of geography of strategy is one that I think necessarily has to adapt. And that we need to, we have been confronting and need to continue to confront the fact that so much of what it means to push for and achieve the changes that a lot of the partners that we work with are hoping for, ultimately is about power. And hopefully we'll, we'll get into that a little bit but that has really affected not just who we fund, but, but how we fund, and, and I think those are changes that will be for the better over the long run. I'll stop there. Great. And, Don, your president at certain foundation, how would you say your strategy is different from a similar to the strategy at the Ford Foundation there. So that question, you know, all foundations are distinct. I would say ours is distinct from a lot of other foundations in that we, we have learned a lot of tough lessons, you know, many of the comments from our previous speakers are really about, you know, students have thought that they could do a lot, came in with some money, and some ideas, and then learn some tough lessons and I would just reflect on certain as experience. You know, we had a Hooper Brooks who was at the Regional Plan Association, you know so very much coming from the planning field. And I think it was recorded, as I said the transportation reform movement, smart growth and various things and I think so much of that work was very impactful, very rich, but I think two important lessons that we learned along the way were, and this would expand on I think across the field, there was an underestimation of just how much money is out there to influence urban development, and the fact that foundations really, you know, need to take that into account when we want to influence things or want to support organizations to have that influence. And the other major thing that I think we underestimated was the political influence. So nowadays when I think about the work that we're doing, you know, I think about these questions about like who, you know, if you're trying to change the dynamics of development in a place to really benefit communities, especially communities of color low income communities. And the key question is like who owns all the property who owns, you know, as Sasuke Sasanoff and says who owns the city. And that's very hard to find out generally, and who are the power brokers who have has the influence. So out of that experience, one thing that we really try to focus on a lot is how to build political influence. And really strengthen organizations, you know, for their own sake, not for some kind of set of goals that are just held at foundations but really be a good partner with community based organization organizations and to help them organize and network across the country and even across the globe. Some of the activists call that trans local organizing and then the development of expertise within and with communities I know that a lot of scholars from places like Columbia work with community based organizations actually I dug up this book from Jason Corburn who used to be an assistant professor at Columbia Street Science is one of the first. This is like from 20 years ago. He was one of the first scholars that I encountered in my career who really put a lot of emphasis on the importance of local expertise and the fact that, you know, people who have day jobs, you know, can develop a really sophisticated understanding of the planning process and, and that, you know, that's an important thing for them to have a voice in decision making so that's been an exciting thing so that's the way in which we've learned a lot. Just in terms of the differences with for I mean Ford is way bigger so as a medium sized foundation. We really try to get our dollars to go as far as possible, not just in grant making but also in our impact investing where we take our dollars from our endowment and try to leverage the heck out of you know, whatever we can and leverage, you know, private capital and other money to have an impact in these types of areas I think for really large, you know, one of the largest foundations for it it's it's easier to do that and have a huge influence in the sector for medium sized foundation like us it's we have to just be very strategic about how to deploy our funds because we just have less of it. Great. And Mac over at the Lincoln Institute for land policy. What is your organization thinking about urban development and urban planning right now and how does your organization both work with and sometimes push back against philanthropic organizations. Yeah, so, so step on so we're what we call a private operating foundation so we work with we ever an endowment, but we're not allowed to make grants we have to actually run programs. And so, part of our work is to figure out the right kind of programs to be run. But just to back up for a second you know the thing is about philanthropy I think that you know, something we should all appreciate is that if we look at the world as it three big sectors right, the public sector the private sector should be at its best, which should be fortifying the civic sector to kind of ride herd on the public sector and the private sector to make sure that they're doing their jobs and a nice checks and balances kind of way. But over the course of the last 40 or 50 years, we've seen the private sector becomes so powerful that it's really overwhelmed both the civic sector and the public sector. And the capacity of the public sector has been diminished so severely that we think it's time to find ways to fortify the public sector again because when it you know when it all comes down to you know basics. The quality of life for most people is delivered by their local government. And even though we obsess about things that orange creatures do on Twitter at midnight. What we actually find out is that the local government is the thing that makes sure that you get your clean water delivered or not if you live in Flint. You know, make sure you have roads and you have all the other infrastructure that makes your life livable. And most people can't even pick out their local government from a lineup if they were asked to right. So for us, we decided that our job, at least for now is to fortify the capacities of local governments to do the work that needs to be done to make people's lives livable and better right. And that means to be able to provide them with new tools new training new approaches to being able to do things, including the creation of new kind of tables or coalitions of organizations of people that think differently about how you make your local city, or your local metro region work better right. And part of that is hoping to connect those different places that are working in different ways with each other to become, you know, self supporting kind of networks. And that sounds all pretty abstract but it you know it comes down to some pretty basic things like how do you help local government to find the revenue they need to actually pay for the services. Now that they're going to deliver or to invest in the infrastructure they need to deliver those services. We help them find new land based revenues from land value capture from doing a better job of collecting the property tax, and also doing a better job of managing and planning how they spend that money. We find ways to get you know planners better training and better support, and we find ways to use all of our expert networks to kind of fortify each other so that's basically our approach and it's, it's, it's place based but it's based in. It's it's focused on themes of activities that really end up resulting in higher levels of capacity, particularly for local governments. Fantastic thanks. And Clarissa and others as well. What do you all think students at GSAP whether in a professional master's program for urban planning or other programs at GSAP. What are some professional pathways or opportunities or things to do both personally and professionally to support social justice and cities. So, so some of the things that I would really want to emphasize are the things that go beyond GSAP. I mean, it's an intense program people get really focused on getting through an intense workload and making the most of their time. But as has come up in this conversation. It's really also about educating yourself about the underlying systems that hamper social justice. So we know they're huge issues around financialization of housing land and property we know their systemic racism. All kinds of marginalization. What are the mechanisms and the intersectionalities that are affecting housing outcomes and planning outcomes. Who else can give you some insight into that. So there are all these other disciplines that are really rich that you know, be talking to folks in the arts be talking to folks in the social sciences, you know, the some of the most interesting urban planners, I know of in Egypt have also have degrees in anthropology. You know that the intersections can be really interesting and those conversations about what you're seeing from those different perspectives can be really rich. I think another thing that we don't talk about enough in the US or globally is what does it mean to be a good ally. So, what's an ethical partnership as you're going out into the field. Whether as a planner or researcher. Can you commit to ethical sustained partnerships in the communities where you want to have impact. That means sharing resources and risks. That means supporting local leadership leadership in the design means sharing credit for good outcomes. There are a lot of questions to sustain the do no harm principle because a lot of folks are going to end up in UN agencies or corporations or government. Being tasked with implementing projects that are going to be harmful and becoming more skilled in how to find internal allies and external allies to push back against those kinds of pressures. I think the other thing that often folks don't think enough about is the possibility to start up your own projects outside of these existing systems and organizations so architecture and urban planning. And most of the world are really elite fields that draw people from elite backgrounds. But they're often a lot of possibilities for working outside of the traditional prestigious places so they've been in Egypt and Lebanon for example a whole number of small kind of think do tanks that have come up that are basically function as consultancies, but also get some grant money, who are doing really innovative community based work. They've been behind a lot of the, the response to the destruction and be root after the explosion, and a lot of community based work. Those are sustainable at a scale, and they can really actually have a significant input on on projects and policies. Those are the kinds of things. Thanks Clarissa. And if do other folks have thoughts or ideas about about that question about personal or professional opportunities to support social justice and cities that that you'd like to add. Thank you Clarissa that was fantastic. A lot of really terrific advice in what you just shared. I'll just plus one a couple of ideas that you mentioned. But every every potential opportunity personal or professional in various sectors to really broaden the understanding of the work beyond the technical skills. And I think that's one of the best sees because there and I say this is someone who worked in government for, for a long time, and it is. It is tempting to view the work as a series of technical things that have to happen in order to get a project or a setting projects done. In the face of accountability for better for worse that in government looks like the political cycle, a new cycle that it without the experiences either yourself, or because you have been in relationship with communities and with people who are the most impacted or the center of what needs to be changed. It is, it's just all too easy in my, in my view to fall back on the things that technically need to be done versus all of the work that is clearly can harder more systemic that need to be done. So the second thing that I'll say is, despite what I just said about about city government is that it's all I always I encourage everyone to spend some time doesn't have to be a long time in local government. It's just nothing quite like having to confront what is needed in order to. If you're if you're doing the job properly really deliver the type of service the type of programs the type of response from government that communities and people deserve. And so, but time spent in government time spent with it with a civil society organization and advocacy organization, all of these of course allow and more and more people are viewing you know this work. And as it is it should be as interdisciplinary and that you're not just kind of in one place for a very long period of time, but it's that athletic athleticism that I think allows us to be better interdisciplinary thinkers and ultimately better in the roles that we are in so that that you, you are less get risk of caricaturing someone in a different sector or any different role versus figuring out what it means to work, even though you might disagree on on specific tactics works toward work towards a particular hopefully I would just add another quick thing and for planners it would it's really useful to develop one specific tool and that's a tool that allows you to map how power works in the places that you work. And power mapping tells you kind of the underlying structures and how decisions are actually made and understanding that that gives you sometimes the tools you need to do to to circumvent these power polls that will push people in directions and very often are unaccountable and a lot of that power is exhibited by developers and developers are notoriously not very transparent, and they don't have very much accountability to much other than shareholders, and you got to be careful because they're able to marshal lots and lots of political power and push people around, but power mapping is such a fundamental thing and I think that it's rarely taught in planning schools. Thanks for everyone's comments. Don, do you want to weigh in or you. Are you set up. I guess I'll just say that in keeping with the power mapping theme, you know the other big influences capital finance, how the money works. That is so critical. I wish I had taken a municipal finance class and grad school, but had to learn all that stuff on the job. So, that's often, you know, not extremely opaque to community members and if you're going through a professional program. I'd say like learn about how that part of the world works. Thanks. Thanks. Just to add on to that. There's a link though the jargon for these other fields. So, and that's something that that, you know, be being able to talk to the language of a city official. To get to make your argument to them in their own language understanding how they run their budgets understanding all of those processes really gets you an entree point that you wouldn't have otherwise. Thanks. Yeah, absolutely agree and and thanks for all that advice. Let's go with one final question and then open it up because it looks like we have a number of fantastic questions in the chat box. But I'm curious about how philanthropies and foundations, including private operating foundations are thinking about the current moment and the multiple crises and challenges of COVID and systemic racism and potential crises in democracy or elections administration. Maybe let's start with you Maria. How is philanthropy weighing in in this intense moment for American democracy and the economy and on racial justice. Yeah, no, well it, you mentioned crises and it's multiple crises it's a cascade of crises. There's no shortage of metaphors to to describe what what we've been through this past year, and that that there are so many moments that that one could view as as watershed, but you know I have to say that the murder of George Floyd, which is one in a seemingly unbroken string of unjust deaths, unjust black deaths in the hands of law enforcement was a moment that that both of us made all of the crises economic and health related that compounded that, but in many ways also kind of brought to the fore, and then even clear way that what is needed, it's not just relief it's not even just recovery. What it is, in many instances a full reimagining of a lot of the systems in which we operate. And so all of that is to say that very few institutions certainly not philanthropy in general, and it was really ready to confront that unanticipated multiple set of crises. So what that means is you kind of have to throw the rule book out. And that starts with a recognition that we don't have all the answers. It starts with a recognition that we don't have a current playbook and so you have to do different things and you have to, and you have to do more, and that it has to be more than the typical payout for example in a given year, and more than the current set of grantees who you might be funding and so for us that has meant really trying to utilize in our, in our case, the market by the issuance of a billion dollars for the bonds in order to increase our payout this year for example, it also meant really shedding all of the stuff that philanthropy has created over time that just makes it hard for organizations that receive our funding to do what they do well and so all of the flexibility that's needed, doing more and more of multi-year general operating support, really trying to listen to grantees, all of that has just been even more necessary and I think you're seeing the field do more and more of that. And that has been terrific. In terms of some of the policy areas, I thought I'd just name a couple that I think are pretty critical. One is the, the commitment to the types of organizations, racial justice organizations who are at the front lines of this work. And I think what we saw with the protest from Minneapolis across the city, it really across the globe, that was a collective people taking to the streets in a collective expression of grief and frustration. And so, but these are the organizations who are powering the transformation. And so philanthropy is ability to fund those types of organizations in particular black led organizations by popular organizations, we think is just really critical to making sure that those protests lead to structural change. And the last thing that I'll say, which is part of what it means not just to recover but to reimagine is to make sure that we learn from disasters both natural and man made of the past, and ensure that as many cities, states, constellations of factors, put forward and try to implement their various recovery plans that we avoid those things that meant in the past, certain people recovered certain communities recovered, but too often, the same communities that have always been left behind continue to be left behind either in a pandemic scenario or in a growth scenario. So those were those are a couple of areas that we're really squarely focused on at Ford, and obviously there's a, the, there's no shortage of ways that we need to support the organizations that are at the front lines but it certainly starts with with us being as honest and humble as possible about about what philanthropy can can do in this moment. Thank you. I'm just being mindful of the clock why don't we move to some questions and I think we'll have some opportunities to continue engagement on this question of the current moment and philanthropies role in it. Okay, you mentioned you have a spoken question. Why don't you go ahead and ask the panelists, your question. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for all the panelists for for sharing your knowledge with us today. As a daughter of working class immigrants, I am particularly interested in developing that collaboration between local governments, communities, officials and philanthropies to really address the really complex problems we have at this time. It feels to me because it's not bound by these democratic or sorry bureaucratic rules, or the tendency to shy away from innovation, but at the same time it scares me to think that big donors can shape the ways policies are perceived. You know, don't get me wrong, I love the work of foundations like for foundation, but if we zoom out, we see that at the end of the day, it is big donors and typically old white men who set the priorities. I think there's a diverse range of employees carrying out the operations and program visions. It also makes me think about how philanthropies may may take away resources from governments who could have tax donors wealth for services, instead of creating foundations. So I guess, what would you say to me to convince me to convince people like me young progressive people that philanthropy is a just is a viable structural avenue for change. Thank you. That's not an easy one to answer, by the way, but you know what's interesting about that is that the what most people don't appreciate about philanthropy is that philanthropy is playing with public money. And everybody acts as if it's some kind of beneficence of some donor some rich white guy that created all this money and it actually is the tax structure and it's the, it's the regulatory structure that basically allows philanthropy to exist and to do the things that they do with as little accountability as they have but you're right it's it's it's not a democratic institution at all and it and it and if there's anything I'm crying out for reform. I think it probably is philanthropy because people don't appreciate the extent to which the economic benefits of putting money away for particular purposes are actually completely outweigh kind of what the money could be used for otherwise if we're in the hands of the government. And one of the worst kind of interpretations of what philanthropy is saying, we're smarter than the public sector and we'll take this money and use it better than the public sector, even if, you know, we're not accountable and that, and in many cases, and I'm being overly critical because frankly, the best people I've ever worked with my life, I worked with at the Ford Foundation, and they came and they were committed and they did they wanted to pursue these ideals right. But they also, you know, yet understand that big philanthropy like the Ford Foundation is only the tip of the iceberg of philanthropy. There's 60,000 foundations in the United States, 40,000 of whom have no employees right. And forget about donor advice funds right that sit there and have no requirements for how that money is spent. Anyway, is the inequality that created philanthropy is perpetuated by philanthropy, and it doesn't necessarily undo all the problems that were created as part of it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go you need to go to philanthropy to help philanthropy to be better right. And we need to continue to push to make it do the work that it should be doing as opposed to the work that it doesn't do while his money sits on the ground. So, I mean, it's really is a tough question and I would say that, you know, the real object of our scrutiny shouldn't be big philanthropy like Ford. It should be all those billions and billions of dollars sitting idle and donor advice funds with no requirement to do anything right. So, if we can figure out a way to leverage that money. A lot more could happen and the right kinds of things would happen right. I would just end Mac both and not transparency for both. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I also think it's a great question and I like Max advice, you know, I think, like Maria said, in addition to going into public service in the public sector going into philanthropy to see how it works and also really trying to have an influence on the expectations and accountability that we as society have on that sector is really critical. I think it all does boil down to this question of accountability philanthropy is just about the most unaccountable sector in American society I mean I'm hard pressed to think of another one that has less accountability mechanisms in place governing it. And at least within the part of philanthropy that I sit in which is really social justice and racial justice philanthropy. I think a lot of a lot of us the people that we work with most closely are, you know, pretty self aware about those unequal dynamics and you know, like, I would be in favor of congressional oversight that's different, you know, requiring more pay out for transparency measures but you know that is something that. Well, I think the good thing is that we see in the last, you know, five to 10 years, much more scrutiny, a lot more critics authors, various folks really shining a light on philanthropy and they're unafraid, because frankly philanthropy has this power of being able to dish out lots of money and therefore kind of doesn't encourage tons of free public debate on this topic but I would like to see much more robust debate on that front from an urban planning standpoint. And one thing that I just really learned about when overseeing our work on climate change in and work with indigenous peoples communities in places like Brazil and others is this notion of f pic free prior and informed consent. There's a basically a set of measures or a principle that, you know, any major donor like a, you know, whether it's a, you know, sovereign wealth fund or a, you know, aid agency or a foundation, or, you know, a big corporation or or what not, should not come into a community without the communities say so the free prior informed consent of community groups. I think that is a really important concept that we should bake into more mechanisms by which folks come in with big ideas and big money to, to create social change because it's, you know, inherently like a top down non democratic idea to do that type of thing. So, so I appreciate your, your question. There are a lot of challenges within the sector and I think a number of us are really trying to grapple with those in the moment. Thanks. As someone who's done a lot of programming globally, I think part of what's also to keep in important to keep in mind is not to assume that government is efficient and effective for everyone. So, part of the role that I see for philanthropy is, is power building for marginalized populations. And if you're not contributing to that, then I think you need to have a real second thought about about what your role is. In, in much of the world and certainly in the US as well. You can't count on political participation to get people what they want because the systems are so skewed. And if philanthropy philanthropic money is going to address that that's a good thing that the accountability issues are still all there. For me in my time at my almost nine years at Ford, one of the, one of the things that I feel the worst about was take on drivers of capitalism, and really do more to take that apart. I think to the extent to which we can push money to empower and build movements for folks that otherwise don't have a voice in a political process. That's really important. Thank you. Thanks everyone. We have a question earlier from Emily Jaster writing I live in Cleveland. I work in a neighborhood that's nearly downtown but was severely harmed by redlining. Many of the buildings in this neighborhood are abandoned and in disrepair while the community has had some strong community centers for youth. While it has some strong community centers for youth, it lacks key resources, such as a grocery store. And there's a fear that this area will be a target of gentrification due to proximity to downtown. How can urban renewal projects use the space of abandoned buildings and improve the built community without contributing to gentrification and rising housing costs. So, please feel free to comment on that and Don, maybe we can start with you and then, and then move to Mac. This question of development without displacement, how should we be thinking about it, whether drawing on the case of Cleveland or more broadly. Sure, this is a great classic question. It's an age old question. And I'm just going to go straight to, you know, principle that I think is really critical and that is to ensure that there's ownership or some other kind, you know, mechanisms for control over what happens in the neighborhood is so critical. And then from Mac and from Larissa and others that during my years at Ford was that when community based organizations, community leaders, local elected officials commit to a number of mechanisms to have that control. And then they can really try to ensure that development serves the needs of people in those communities, rather than turn it over to like some, you know, free market process that that really doesn't have a connection to community which unfortunately is is quite common. You know, all of that is very hard to do, you know, gaining ownership and control over sites, having a comprehensive community development strategy to figure out how to deploy. Capital and also how to attract people to come in and actually do the types of development that you'd like to see is really hard but there are a lot of great organizations that do it. And in fact Cleveland has a great ecosystem of community development organizations, like I think it's called community progressing neighborhood progress Inc. and others that are that are very mature and sophisticated and effective. And then the last thing I'll note is, there's a really. It's really critically important to have vision, a vision for what your community wants to become through a democratic process so participatory visioning planning processes are really important so that the neighborhood you can generate a critical massive support behind where the community wants to go and then try to attract people to do it, and hopefully have that be a, you know, a positive thing for developers as as well and more importantly for community members who would stand to benefit from those improvements. So the quick answer I would give is, you got to get control of the land. This neighborhood sounds like huff to me so I don't know maybe it's not huff but in any case the, you know, the only mechanism I've seen that's had durability in terms of being able to help to improve a place and to preserve community control is a community land trust. It's not used as primarily as it should be but if the community can get control of the land and and use that model for both community input into the decisions made about how it gets redeveloped and also finding ways to preserve affordability and other kinds of serving aspects like making sure that you get the right kind of commercial development grocery stores instead of instead of liquor stores or check cashing stores right. That that can work right and it has worked in a limited degree in places like New Orleans and it's worked to a much greater degree in places like Burlington Vermont. The idea of being able to then execute a plan on land that the community controls is the board work against you know, displacement. You want economic development you want even a little bit of gentrification if you mean if that means improvement of the land improvement of the dwellings and all that what you don't want is people to be displaced unnecessarily or involuntarily right. In order to do that you have to get the community to be part of that decision making process and controlling the land is easiest way to do it. I don't know whether that that's, you know, off the table in terms of the value of the land and the cost of doing it but if there's public subsidy around a lot of the land might have already reverted the public ownership and gain the public to convey it to a community land trust wouldn't be out of the community. So like right now we've been working with land banks that have been now moving land out of the land bank into community land trust as a way to redevelop and control it. And you have a great land bank in the Cuyahoga County so that would be the first place I would go to say, What do you got in our neighborhood. If it's not half it's probably one of those neighbors nearby anyway. So that's my thoughts. It's actually, it's not far from Huff. It's just the central neighborhood where I'm sure. Um, but the organization I'm with is also in the half neighborhood and some others. So thank you so much. Thanks anyone else on this question Clarissa or Maria or we can also move to some other questions from folks. Great. We have a question from Ron Johnny about the work of an on Gerard Gerard us on philanthropy and democracy and the role of philanthropy in preserving wealth concentration. I'm sorry I butchered that name. Ron Johnny are you with us still. And if so would you like to elaborate on your question at all. Hi, I think my question is quite concise it's on and get it out of us. He has written extensively on how, um, you know, philanthropy because I think people have already sort of covered this so I guess my question is kind of jumping off that but like how does it perpetuate certain concentrations of wealth, especially in like micro credit institutions in the global south, where it's sort of, you know, perpetrated the debt economy among low income communities so it was sort of jumping off that and wondering what you think about it. I think on and makes a lot of great points in his writings. He's also just a great communicator, you know, able to paint issues and, you know, pretty clear terms and and very engaging ways. You know, I think that one of the really central arguments that he makes is that there are a lot of very wealthy people right now who who are alive today who have created foundations and are therefore wielding their personal influence disproportionately by setting up foundations and then, you know, having the foundations do things that kind of further their personal interest in it. It's very much in the realm of like Rob Riesch and Erica Colrinus and, you know, others who have written extensively about this type of Edgar Villanueva is another author who've, you know, written about the kind of anti democratic aspects of philanthropy and I again I think a lot of those points are very valid. For foundations like ours and I'm just talking about certain for it at the moment, you know, we are legacy foundations. And so it's a little different from from, you know, current big donors when you have people who are no longer related to the founders running the place and, you know, but at the same time, you know, we've learned a lot of hard lessons and, you know, frankly, over the decades have, you know, demonstrate a lot of hubris and some of the work that we've done and, you know, foundation there's such a wide variety of foundations out there that I think it would be good for us to learn from these experiences to have some humility and and recognize like what actually works in communities if we truly want to empower communities to have control and the ability to change the destiny in their places. What really works is it is it going to be like a national foundation flying in and dumping a bunch of money and then leaving after five years. Does that make the difference or is it going to be building the community capacity and the strength of organizations in a more sustainable way. So those are the types of things that that I take into the work that we try to do. If I could just go ahead, Maria. So, I, you know, I think that this has been a time, whether it's the past year or certain the last years of increased scrutiny, where the philanthropy kind of at its own peril, you know, should not ignore critiques like the one that Anon has been has been describing and I think he rightly roast certain sectors of philanthropy for in many ways, of course being a creature of capitalism, and this this this contradiction this tension that I know we all live with of in many being the product of a system that we're trying to dismantle. So like all of that is all of that is true, and we should be under scrutiny and those questions should come and I'm talking philanthropy. In general, I think it would be arrogant for us to think that we as philanthropy can take down those systems by ourselves, but we can certainly try and try in a way. With any luck, and where the people who are working in philanthropy, the leadership of philanthropic organizations, the boards that govern them, not just resemble more and more. The diversity of the country in which we live in and the diversity of the communities we are trying to serve, but are living into those values in it, none of us are there yet. And, but I personally think that it is that type of scrutiny and that type of questioning that allows us to not bring our hands or to engage in like self legislation all day long, but to actually do better, and to find ways to make the markets work harder for justice, ultimately. Yeah, I'll just say that it's philanthropy is not, philanthropy is not monolithic and modern philanthropy has definitely moved in the direction of vanity with a lot of these large foundations being very much with Don described as, you know, living donors making their own kinds of ad hoc decisions about how money is being used. But even, even some of the more established philanthropy doing like for example, you mentioned microfinance work, microfinance is really predicated on this odd notion that we just impose capitalist systems driven by debt to generate entrepreneurial activity that will actually somehow confront poverty. There's been no evidence that microfinance actually reduces poverty. And it certainly doesn't have any durable reduction of poverty. And it's no small wonder when you give people loans at interest rates of 3040 60% annual rates to go and, you know, trade with each other. You know, the irony of philanthropy is that it's created by inequality, right. The inequality is what actually made it possible to have philanthropy. And I guess it was Audrey Lord said that you can't dismantle a master's house using the master's tools or something is something that effect. And here we are using the same tools that we're trying to confront if we're trying to take on the thing that we really need to take on which is inequality of not just economic inequality but power inequality in the world right. I'm just going to add the way that this plays out outside of the US is really important to because you have in some places, even a more extreme version of foundation structures that are linked to individuals or families who are very reluctant often to step outside of a purely charitable because they don't want to take on structures because they're in systems where their ability to survive relies on their maintaining good relationships with power holders, so they can't be critical of the state. And so things that the Ford Foundation has done in various places like the Middle East has been to be part of efforts to professionalize a sector in ways that then can pull out interventions that are not on their face confrontational but still address some of these drivers of inequality and what in a particular context. Great. Well, I think we're at time here and so I just want to say to all four of our panelists on behalf of Columbia GSAP and the urban planning program in particular. Thank you all so much for taking time out of your day to share some thoughts with us today. And it was a very dynamic conversation and great engagement so thank you all so much. And this will be recorded in on the GSAP website and there won't be lecture series next week because it's election day. Everyone please make sure to vote. And if you're able and hopefully we will see some change for the better next week and see everyone on November 10. Thank you all. Thank you.