CDAD.detroit Declaration.plus

7/31/2019 CDAD.detroit Declaration.plus

1/5

Detroit Visions: CDAD, Detroit Declaration, & Others

The following eight statements communicate CDADs principles:1

1. Detroits revitalization requires a bold, new visiona vision that acknowledges the challenges created by decades

of population and job loss, while embracing the possibilities of a more economically viable and environmentallysustainable future.

2. Detroits revitalization requires a vision for the entire citya vision that includes a vibrant downtown and urbancore, stable and livable neighborhoods, as well as a strategy for re-purposing thousands of acres of vacant land and

buildings.

3 Detroits revitalization must include a long-term plan that guides both short-term and long-term resourceallocations. While it may take many years to truly reinvent Detroit, we can no longer afford to waste time and

money on failing strategies.

4. We must stabilize and reinforce Detroit neighborhoods that already have quality housing stock, dense

populations, and market appeal, and work to make these areas more competitive in the regional housing market.

These communities should be enhanced to improve the quality of life for residents through: a) local-serving retailand service businesses, b) better transportation options from mass transit to improved walkability, c) housing

varietyincluding permanent affordable housing options, and d) improved city services.

5. Vacant land and very-low density areas should be repurposed in ways that enhance the quality of life for cityresidents, create jobs, improve the environment and lay the groundwork for future redevelopment. New uses could

include open space, recreation, greenways, urban agriculture, alternative energy production or temporary land

banking. Residents of low-density areas should be provided incentives to relocate into denser, more stableneighborhoods. However, Detroit has enough vacant land that reuse strategies could begin with little or no

displacement of residents.

6. Implementing Detroits bold new vision will require unprecedented collaboration among residents, government,

business, anchor institutions, philanthropic organizations, and non-profit organizations including community

development organizations.

7. Community development organizations, which are neighborhood-specific along with city-wide non-profits

can make important contributions to implementing Detroits new vision and should be included in strategy

development.

8. Community development organizations play an especially vital role in Detroit neighborhoods, including:

Community organizing to resolve local problems, prevent crime and build cohesion among residents and

businesses

Serving as a bridge between government and private market forces

Vacant land management and reuse

Local housing and commercial development

1

http://detroitcommunitydevelopment.org/Right_Direction_Release8-7-09.pdf1
http://detroitcommunitydevelopment.org/Right_Direction_Release8-7-09.pdfhttp://detroitcommunitydevelopment.org/Right_Direction_Release8-7-09.pdfhttp://detroitcommunitydevelopment.org/Right_Direction_Release8-7-09.pdf


2/5


Detroit Declaration PRINCIPLES:2

Building on Detroits assets to create opportunity and options for a prosperous city and people:

Be welcoming and embrace our diversity. Move beyond mere tolerance of our differences to a true

commitment to openness, understanding and cooperation, and the inclusion of multiple perspectives both in

our neighborhoods and at the highest decision-making realms.

Preserve our authenticity. Celebrate and elevate that which makes Detroit uniquelocal art, music, food,

design, architecture, cultureto build a stronger local economy.

Cultivate creativity. Build an infrastructure to foster and promote emerging talent in one of Detroits

greatest strengths, the arts: music, film, visual arts, design, and other creative industries.

Diversify our economy. Create a culture of opportunity and risk-taking, especially by investing inentrepreneurialism and small, micro-business.

Promote sustainability. Embrace the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental benefit byretooling our infrastructure with green technology, adapting vacant buildings and open spaces for new uses,and creating healthy, family-supporting jobs.

Enhance quality of place. Create a comprehensive vision for transit-linked, high-quality, walkable urban

centers in Detroit.

Demand transportation alternatives. Invest in an integrated regional transportation system that links

communities and provides citizens with access to the jobs, health care, and education they need.

Prioritize education, pre-K through 12 and beyond. Create a culture that values the wide, equitable

educational attainment necessary to produce both economic opportunity and stronger citizens.

Elevate our universities and research institutions. Create world-class education, new technology, and

medical centers to attract and retain students and faculty from around the world.

Enhance the value of city living. Demand public safety and services to improve the quality of life forresidents.

Demand government accountability. Reward civic engagement with responsive, transparent, and ethical

governmental decision-making.

Think regionally and leverage our geography.Maximize our position as an international border city and aMidwestern hub between Chicago and Toronto. Forge meaningful partnerships between Detroit and its

suburbs to compete globally in the 21st century.

2http://declaredetroit.wordpress.com/declaration/

2
http://declaredetroit.wordpress.com/declaration/http://declaredetroit.wordpress.com/declaration/http://declaredetroit.wordpress.com/declaration/


3/5


Kamran Mofid:3A Spiritual, Moral and Ethical Understanding of our Society and Economy

(http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-7)

Steps to take:1. Begin a journey to wisdom by embodying the core universal values of the Golden Rule.

2. Revolutionize economic thought by interdisciplinary focus on how to share economic benefits justly for the

common good.

3. Change the economy fundamentallyby creating a new vision and model of economic development, based

clearly on the goal of sustainable human well-being; seek ecological sustainability, social fairness and

economic efficiency.4 Ecological sustainability recognizes that natural and social capital are not infinitely

substitutable for built and human capital, and that real biophysical limits exist to the expansion of the marketeconomy. Social fairness implies recognizes that the distribution of wealth is an important determinant of

social capital and quality of life.

4. Recognize that the economy is part of the biosphere. The global economy is a subsidiary of the natural

order. Economic policies should be attuned to the limited capacity of Earth's biosphere to provide forhumans and other life and to assimilate their waste. Photosynthesis and sunlight are as essential to the

framework for economic budgets and expenditures as the laws of supply and demand.

5. Establish new institutions committed to fitting the human economy to Earths limited life-support capacity,which will effectively conserve the planets ecological resources and enforce laws against overrunning

Earths limits.

6. Be fair. Recognize humans as part of an interdependent web of life on a finite planet, and recognize therights of the human poor and of millions of other species to their place in the sun.

7. Expand the discussion of economic policy and ecological limits on the global economy beyond top

government officials, professional economists and narrow, short-term solutions focused on the bottom lineof private powers.

8. Begin serious educational debates about teaching virtue, building character, moral and social development,

and bringing diverse people together for the common good.

Questions to ask:

What is the source of true happiness and well-being? What is the good life?

What is the purpose of economic life? What does it mean to be a human being living with finite resources?

How can the global financial system become more responsive and just?

How can the world make the global trade system more equitable and sustainable?

What paths can be recommended to shift the current destructive global political-economic order from

unrestrained economic growth, profit maximization and cost minimization, to material wealth creation that

also preserves and enhances social and ecological well-being and increases human happiness andcontentment?

How can society overcome poverty and scarcity with limited natural resources? How should we deal with individual and institutionalized greed?

What are the requirements of a virtuous economy?

What religious or spiritual variables should be considered in economic/business ethics and economic

behavior?

3 Founder of the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (Oxford, 2002), Co- founder/Editor ofJournal ofGlobalisation for the Common Good and a member of the International Coordinating Committee of the World

Public Forum, Dialogue of Civilizations.

4 Another way of referencing the Triple Bottom Line of environmental health, social justice and economic

prosperity.

3
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-7http://www.globalisationforthecommongood.info/http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/jgcg/http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/jgcg/http://www.globalisationforthecommongood.info/http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/jgcg/http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/jgcg/http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-7


4/5


How are these components to be integrated with economic theories and decisions?

What role should universities play in building an integrity-based model of business education?

What should be the role of the youth?

How might the training of young executives be directed with the intention of supplying insights into the

nature of globalisation from its economic, technological and spiritual perspectives, to build supporting

relationships among the participants that will lead toward action for the common good within their chosen

careers? Indeed, is ethical, profitable, efficient and sustainable capitalism possible?

Conclusion and Objectives: We need a new economic model, enabling us to deal with new challenges, rather that

rescuing and bailing out a discredited and bankrupt model, philosophy and theory. The long-term solution to the

financial crisis is to move beyond the "growth at all costs" economic model, to a model that recognizes the real costsand benefits of growth. We can break our addiction to fossil fuels, over-consumption, and the current economic

model and create a more sustainable and desirable future that focuses on quality of life rather than merely quantity

of consumption. It will not be easy; it will require a new vision, new measures, and new institutions. It will requirea redesign of our entire society. But it is not a sacrifice of quality of life to break this addiction. Quite the contrary, it

is a sacrifice not to.

SDAT Final Report; A Leaner, Greener Detroit (http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab080216.pdf):

1. Detroit is at a critical point in its history. Its problems and difficulties are real and intense. As the globaleconomic crisis deepens and the automotive industry goes through a wrenching transformation, they can easilyseem overwhelming. At the same time, the citys opportunities are substantial, and achievable. If those

opportunities are to be seized, and the citys economic decline arrested, however, radically different thinking will

be needed from that which has brought Detroit to its present condition.

2. Detroit must recognize its reality as a far smaller city than it once was, in population if not land area, andreconsider its land use, its economy, and its transportation network around that reality.

3. Detroit must adopt bold, visionary but realistic strategies, pursued in bold, sustained, long-term fashion.

4. Detroits key players in both the public and private sector must work together. In that respect, city governmenthas a critical role to play. Ultimately, city government is the glue that can hold a city together. If the city

government does not perform that function, no one else can step into its place. This is another reality that Detroit

must confront, and decide whether it can re-invent a city government that can not only deliver needed publicservices, but that can offer both vision and leadership to the community, bringing all of the public and private

stakeholders in the community together to build a new Detroit. At another level, building greater cooperationand engagement among the many governmental and private entities across Southeast Michigan needs to be a

priority.

5. Detroit must plan. What Detroit needs, though, are not pretty picture plans, but specific, practical action plansto achieve particular goals, whether it is the urban agriculture initiative, the green jobs initiative, the anchorinstitutions initiative, or the larger strategy of reconfiguring the citys land uses around the reality of a far smaller

population. These plans cannot be hatched by a handful of people behind closed doors. A process is needed by

which the entire community both comes to understand the new reality, and participates in the process of framing

the strategies that reflect that reality. Only in that way will those strategies have the public support that will beneeded.

4
http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab080216.pdfhttp://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab080216.pdf


5/5


David Korten: The Great Turning

We humans face a choice between two contrasting models for organizing our affairs: the dominator model of

Empire and the partnership model of Earth Community.

After 5,000 years of organizing human affairs by the dominator model, the Era of Empire finally has reachedthe limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain.

A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and a falling U.S.dollar is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life.

There is no technological fix for the human crisis. The underlying problem is a consequence of social

dysfunction and the only solutions are cultural and institutional

We now face a choice between a last man standing imperial competition for what remains of Earths natural

bounty and a cooperative sharing of Earths resources to create a world that works for all. Empires power depends on its ability to control the stories by which we humans define ourselves and our

possibilities. Whoever controls the prosperity, security, and meaning stories that define the mainstream

culture, controls the society.

The key to changing the human course is to displace the prevailing Empire prosperity, security, and meaning

stories that define dominator hierarchy as the natural and essential human order, with Earth Community

prosperity, security, and meaning stories that celebrate the human capacity to live in cooperative balancewith one another and Earth.

Healthy children, families, communities, and natural systems are the true measure of prosperity.

To end poverty, heal the environment, and secure the human future it is necessary to turn from growth to thereallocation of resources as the defining economic priority. Eliminate harmful uses (military, advertising,

sprawl, and financial speculation), increase beneficial uses (environmental regeneration, food and energy

self-reliance, health, education, and productive investment), and give priority to the needs of those the old

economy excludes and represses (the desperate, hungry, and indentured).

Security and social order depend on strong, caring communities based on mutual responsibility and

accountability.

All being is the manifestation of an integral spiritual intelligence seeing to know itself through the on going

creative unfolding in search of unrealized possibility. We humans are a choice making, choice-creating species that can choose to create societies that nurture our

higher order capacities for compassion, sharing, and commitment to the well-being of all.

Meaning is found in discovering our place of service to the whole.

http://www.davidkorten.org/BulletPoints

Detroit Food Justice Task Force Shared Basic Values:

o Transparency; operations of all member groups are viewable by all. This includes transparency of

finances, decision making, partnerships, etc.

o Open source knowledge share; knowledge and experiences are shared freely and openly. It is important to

share our "recipes for success" so that we can stand on each others shoulders rather than recreate the wheel.o Participation, accessibility and replicability; information concerning successful models of urban

agriculture are made accessible to as many people as possible so that they may engage in farming and

participate in the greater network.

o Environmental, social and economic regeneration; urban agriculture is more than just sustainable; it

creates and strengthens environments, communities, and economies.

o Cooperative ownership; the benefits of urban agriculture are shared fairly with all who participate.

o Appropriate technology; technologies that benefit urban agriculture are researched and utilized, provided

that they maintain consistency with the vision, mission, and values.

o Earth connection; many believe that there is a spiritual, comforting and even healing component as people

work with soil in an outdoor environment.

5
http://www.davidkorten.org/BulletPointshttp://www.davidkorten.org/BulletPoints

CDAD.detroit Declaration.plus

Documents

Transcript of CDAD.detroit Declaration.plus