Like almost all other cities, Lakewood is chasing dreams. That is not a negative; I’ll take a chance on the pursuit of the extraordinary over the ordinary any day. There are innumerable “best of” lists for cities, and Lakewood has been glowingly recognized in several recently--but if you drill down to what distinguishes the highest-ranked cities, it’s always related to livability and sustainability. Our dreams need to encompass a wide-angle-lens view of sustainability as it applies to community-building. If we desire our dreams to be everlasting and our efforts fruitful, true sustainability can only be achieved if it takes into account economic, social, and environmental aspects. It’s becoming very clear that how our cities are planned, developed and re-developed, how they welcome new residents, how they accommodate all income groups, and how they prioritize human capital and natural resources are becoming more and more crucial to urban sustainability.
We need to look at Lakewood and beyond through the general recognition that we have not always been open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the impossible. This not only applies to Lakewood, but also to the big city next door-- Cleveland. We may at times dream big, but act timidly--when these times demand bold and decisive actions. As Lakewood teeters on the edge of exceptional, we must acknowledge that the world is governed not by the predictable and the average, but by the random, the unknown, the unpredictable--big events or discoveries, or unusual people--that have big consequences. Change, more often than not, comes not uniformly but in unpredictable spurts.
Change is coming to Lakewood, but how much and in what form will often come from outside forces. We need to balance our habit of making predictions in a largely unpredictable world with our perpetual surprise when events not predicted happen. I argue that we can do more to not be caught by surprise, but rather be pleasantly surprised. There is no place else I would rather live in Ohio than Lakewood. As another year draws to a close and a new year beckons, we have much to be grateful for here in the “city of homes”. Scattered here and there, in our fine city, the seeds of a new, more local and durable economy are taking root. But sowing the seeds of change is always a delicate process and the proverbial economic storm clouds are an ever-present menace looming on the near horizon. We need to take stronger measures to buttress ourselves from the worst elements of development and re-development. It will be the fierce preservation of what we already have that will best position our city to capture the growing thirst for Lakewood-model livability sweeping the nation--in particular the younger generations.
Simply put, there has been a profound structural shift--a reversal of what took place when the majority of the baby boomer generation chose to drive more and be at home less, when far-flung and isolated suburbs boomed and flourished as center cities emptied and many inner-ring suburbs withered. Lakewood never withered, in spite of national and state land use policies stacked against us; we have stood the test of time. There is now an ever-growing understanding that for too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. It is time to instead preserve what the market increasingly wants: mixed-income, mixed-use walkable cities and inner-ring suburbs. Yet another survey shows that baby boomers want yet another re-do of their economic misadventures and seek to join with the Gen X and Gen Y generations in a desire by many to live in more pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented, mixed-use environments that de-emphasize auto dependency. Recent surveys show that majority of all age groups are likely to prefer historic inner-ring suburbs as their high-density destination--but not the isolated subdivisions of the 20th century.
I relocated to Lakewood from Oregon in 2008, and I spent ten years in Portland, Oregon from 1992-2002; during the height of its renaissance in which I witnessed many of the intrepid urban planning decisions take shape. People often look to Portland as the “Holy Grail” of high-density urban planning and design. Portland is one of the most-praised cities in contemporary America. Many people ask me--Is the hype real? To some extent, yes it is. The second question I’m always asked is--Why did you leave? At the time, I chose to pursue this life-long romantic notion I had to live in a small-town rural setting--which was both an educational experience and a cultural abyss, but that is a story for another day. But the important point I always make is this: Portland didn't invent bicycles, warehouse districts, fine coffee, good beer, organic and local food, high-density or light rail, but it understood the future implications of them for America's smaller cities first, and put that knowledge to use before anyone else.
The longest journey begins with a step, but you have to take it. Portland did it at a time when nobody else did. In an era when most American cities went one direction--malls and sprawl--Portland went another, either capturing or even creating the energy of a new age. Portland’s old neighborhoods and city center once teetered on the edge of ruin. The inner-city home and neighborhood where I once lived was considered a slum just thirty years ago. Lakewood compares very favorably to Portland. Having a much smaller population (52,131 versus over 500,000 people), it is like a smaller, more condensed version of Portland’s many older neighborhoods. My wife and I often comment on the parallel universe of our Portland/Lakewood experiences--we often refer to Lakewood as being Portland without the annoying ego.
Just like Lakewood, Portland is real. It's not about marketing gimmicks pushing false benefits, rather it's about addressing very real issues regarding how cities change and sustain themselves. Portland's legacy is largely a positive one. It is undeniable that Portland played a major role in making the nation respect cities again, seeing their potential with fresh eyes. Portland was the right city, in the right place, at the right time. Here in Northeast Ohio, I feel that Lakewood teeters on the edge of being the same if we position ourselves accordingly--the right city, in the right place, at the right time. I have that feeling living here--I have felt it before.
But though Portland can't be copied, it can be an inspiration. Many of its ideas can and have been adopted elsewhere. Whether most cities will succeed in reclaiming their urban cores is not yet known, but it's a fight worth fighting. Without Portland, we might not even be trying. Cleveland is trying and may finally be getting it right, as well over 10,000 people now call downtown Cleveland home--that can only benefit Lakewood more and more as those numbers continue to increase. However, there is one way Portland today is very unlike Lakewood. Portland now routinely tops “worst of” lists for being one of the most expensive places to live in America; in particular when you compare wages and home prices. Even though real estate values have plunged by over 20% in Portland, housing still remains prohibitively expensive for too many residents as unemployment there has exceeded 11% for nearly four years and underemployment remains a chronic two-decade-long problem. Today, Portland's performance isn't bad, but given all of its advantages and low degree of difficulty, it should be a lot better. Why is this? I have been thinking that perhaps Portland was a bit too livable. Portland was in the 1990s what San Francisco was in the 1960s: a hip, not-too-expensive place for young slackers to go. Ohio will never be as hip as Oregon--but Northeast Ohio is hip in a more subtle way--we just don’t go around beating our chests about it. Excessive chest-beating can have its disadvantages. When the promo for the cable television series “Portlandia” makes the claim that, “Portland is where the young go to retire,” it is an attempt at humor but also is an absolutely true statement. People, myself included at the time, move to Portland for values and lifestyle; more for personal than professional reasons--just like so many of us here in Lakewood. However, over the course of the past twenty years, Portland has become the “Mecca” for American trust fund youth. In fact, the term “trustafarian” was coined during my time in Portland to describe the preponderance of non-working, free-spending, ultra-wealthy under-forty populations. I don’t foresee that dynamic overtaking Lakewood anytime soon, but I’m sure we all wouldn’t mind a modest level of home value appreciation. It will be forthcoming in random fits and spurts with the cultural shift taking place.
Lakewood, our “city of homes,” remains affordable to diverse income groups. That, in my opinion, makes us stronger than Portland--more real, more grounded and more welcoming. The working class can actually afford to live and enjoy the Lakewood lifestyle. That is something that we must preserve for our long-term sustainability. Lakewood counters the dirty little secret that Portland tries to suppress--the fact that it has become a revolving door of short-term residents, as nearly one-half of the people who have moved to Portland in the past two decades have been recycled every five years. As the people who've had to leave Portland because they couldn't find affordable housing or real employment there can attest, in order to take advantage of its justly famous high quality, sustainable lifestyle, you first need a roof over your head, a mortgage you can afford and a decent job. It's not livable if you can't live there. Thankfully for many of us, Lakewood is and remains livable--like Portland once was when I first moved there nearly twenty years ago.
When I am asked to compare the states of Ohio and Oregon, I don’t think of “the lake” versus “the mountains”; “snow” versus “rain”; “Maple Trees” versus “Douglas Firs”--no, I think of the year 1979. That was the year that the Portland metro area adopted an Urban Growth Boundary (it became a statewide mandate for all cities and towns by 1990), thereby restricting development in rural and open land while targeting development, preservation and re-development in denser, urban, and older parts of the metropolitan area. This, in effect, was the birth of the Portland story--proof that good policy solutions offer lasting benefits, in particular the prevention of sprawl. If there were to be a policy solution to the Ohio sprawl problem, this would be a great place to start. Sprawl, in my opinion, is the biggest environmental problem for the Northeastern Ohio region. The fact that we have basically flat-lined as a regional population-base the past two decades while at the same time paved over 25% more land is both a tragedy and a blow to our regional sustainability. This dynamic greatly impacts Lakewood and hinders our efforts to enhance, preserve and build upon our cities assets. Sprawl is one thing when the regional population is growing. When population is stagnant, as it is in our region, sprawl simply means more miles of roads to maintain for the same number of commuters, more schools for the same number of students, and more sewer lines for the same amount of…well, you know what I mean.
So where do we go from here? We are already there. People are looking at us and looking for us. We teeter on the edge of everything people desire in a more livable and sustainable future. We also teeter on the edge of economic challenges as the rest of society catches up to places like Lakewood. Public attitudes and desires are dramatically shifting and we need to capture the energy of a new age. Lakewood is the right city, in the right place, at the right time.
