From Planning Practice to Academia

Norman Krumholz
1986 Journal of planning education and research  
pro rite yeai neij By tracing his journey from city planning director to director of a technical assistance center within a large ] , university, Norman Krumholz explores the importance of bridging the gap between the study and practice of planning. In so doing, he states that each of these very different worlds has a great deal to gain from I ™ the other. star Norman Krumholz has been elected president of the APA. He served as Cleveland, Ohio's Planning Director from 1969 to 1979, and is now
more » ... rector of the Center for Neighborhood Development at Cleveland State University. I left Cleveland City Hall in 1979 after ten years as city planning director. I had not lost interest in the excitement and importance of local government. To the contrary, I believed and still believe that local government is a place where a planner with ideas to sell can successfully impact public policy for the benefit of many people outside the economic development process. I also remain convinced that planners can help strengthen the capacity of political leadership to respond to a responsible conception of the public interest. In order to help shape public policy, planners must influence other, more powerful actors, such as the mayor and members of the city council. This requires both a program and access to these politicians. In 1979, following Cleveland's bitter recall election and the subsequent default of the City on its fiscal obligations, I lost my access to the mayor's office. Under unceasing attack, Mayor Dennis Kucinich adopted a closed, bunker-like position and no one except his closest confidants were allowed into the policy-making process. Since I was not a member of the mayor's inner circle, and had no chance to influence events, it seemed appropriate for me to leave and try to implement my ideas from a different platform. The vehicle chosen for this effort originally had nothing to do with Cleveland State University. The vehicle was to be a free-standing, non-profit, neighborhood oriented technical assistance center with its own board and staff. This center was to be funded by local and national foundations and perhaps by the city as well. Its purpose was to provide technical assistance and intermediation with government agencies and banks on housing and economic development projects undertaken by neighborhood based community development corporations (CDCs), which were growing in number, competence and programmatic range. In many respects, the center, which a former Cleveland planning staff member and I designed, was to carry on the neighborhoodnurturing work which had been underway in the city planning department since the 1970s. We believed that working with neighborhood organizations was an appropriate part of what we called "equity planning": an effort to advocate the needs of Cleveland's poor and working class people and to provide direct planning services to those residents of Cleveland who had few, if any, options. We shared common agendas with these groups on a number of issues. For example, they provided a countervailing political force to demands by downtown interests for tax relief and capital improvement projects; they pressured city bureaucracies to improve the delivery of public services to the city's neighborhoods; they were willing to try and rebuild their neighborhoods' physical environment; and they argued that neighborhood considerations were frequently more important than regional considerations and that grandiose programs must sometimes U1V( aire the goo T the mei A;:, Col sen oh stre
doi:10.1177/0739456x8600600112 fatcat:ebinu7bit5eu3p4hw3gtbzx3ai