December 15, 2024

For those of us longing for a Lowell City Council meeting that shared a strategic vision for the city rather than debating which pothole to fill next, Christmas came early this year when Mayor Dan Rourke, at last Tuesday’s council meeting, briefed the council and everyone else on a strategic undertaking that Rourke called “the single biggest vote in the last 50 years in Lowell.” After learning more about the proposal, I don’t think he was exaggerating.

Here’s a summary of what this is all about: Back in September, Mayor Rourke traveled to Toronto, Canada to attend an international conference on sustainable urban development. While there, he encountered representatives of several organizations with a track record for investing in urban development projects that have revived blighted areas of cities around the world (although none yet in the United States).

In sharing their success stories, these organizations were also seeking new opportunities. That's where Lowell comes in. The city is fertile ground for the redevelopment of troubled areas, but so is every other Gateway City in Massachusetts. What sets Lowell apart is the city’s past successes including ongoing efforts at sustainability; the presence of Lowell National Historical Park; the vitality of UMass Lowell; a diverse population; and the cultural vibrancy that comes with that. As Rourke succinctly put it, Lowell checks all the boxes.

As for the bigger picture, this all flows from the United Nations “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” which was adopted by the UN member states back in 2015. Central to this effort are 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” or SDGs. Here they are:

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*

Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

A constellation of organizations around the world has emerged to support these goals. One of these is the Urban Economy Forum (UEF), an organization that collaborates with the United Nations to implement the above-listed Sustainable Development Goals with a particular focus on Goal 11 which is “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

The Urban Economy Forum has in turn created something called the World Urban Pavilion which, according to its website, “is a knowledge exchange hub to share best practices, innovation and research in urban development and revitalization from countries around the world. The Pavilion envisions people centered, sustainable cities that are planned through data analysis, driven by innovation and informed by the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals].”

After looking at a variety of websites and articles, it seems that Urban Economy Forum is a facilitator that brings together investors, outside experts, and communities in need of and open to revitalization. Because it is global in its scope and because its efforts are completely aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals, this program gives a city like Lowell access to investors that would not otherwise be available.

On every website I visited in this inquiry, sustainable housing development was prominently mentioned, and Lowell certainly could use more of that.

What is the price for Lowell for this opportunity? As I understand it, the city must commit to being the poster city for this effort in the United States, since no other community in this country has yet participated. That price certainly seems affordable, even desirable. It harkens back to the glory days of Lowell National Historical Park when global celebrities like Prince Charles (now King Charles of the United Kingdom) visited Lowell to see historic preservation in action.

In November, several city councilors accompanied Mayor Rourke back to Toronto where they met with many of those involved in these programs and learned much about how they were implemented in Toronto and of all the benefits that have flowed to that city and its residents as a result.

Finally, the council voted unanimously on Tuesday to authorize the City Manager to enter a Memorandum of Understanding with the Urban Economy Forum with the goal of making the city of Lowell part of this program, so we will be hearing more about it in 2025.

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The Urban Economy Forum would not be the first United Nations-related enterprise underway in Lowell. Since 2018, a group of dedicated volunteers has worked to make Lowell the first UNESCO Learning City in the United States.

UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It defines a learning city as a place that:

“…supports and improves the practice of lifelong learning in the world’s cities by promoting policy dialogue and peer learning among member cities; forging links; fostering partnerships; providing capacity development; and developing instruments to encourage and recognize progress made in building learning cities.” Learning cities exist because they mobilize resources in order to:

· Promote inclusive learning from basic to higher education,

· Revitalize learning in families and communities,

· Facilitate learning for and in the workplace

· Extend the use of modern learning technologies

· Enhance quality and excellence in learning

· Foster a culture of learning throughout life

The earliest proponent of this undertaking, retired UMass Lowell professor John Wooding, made the case for Lowell back in 2018 when he wrote:

“All the elements [needed to be a Learning City] are already here. The idea of Lowell as an educational hub is built into its DNA going back at least to Patrick Mogan’s vision in the late 1970s of Lowell as “an educative city.” The National Park was part of that vision and is a vibrant educational force. We have the institutions: a major research university, an excellent community college, and an excellent school system. We have the museums and art galleries, we have the artists of all kinds and heritage workers, and we have hundreds of community groups most of which offer educational. As is often said, you can go from kindergarten to a Ph.D. and never leave the city.”

Each year since 2018, the Lowell City of Learning group has staged a festival, usually in the spring, that celebrates all the learning opportunities, both formal and informal, that are available in Lowell.

Consequently, I was heartened to see on this week’s city council agenda a motion by Mayor Rourke requesting the City Manager “to work with the City of Learning Committee and Congresswoman Trahan to help secure ‘Learning City Designation’ from UNESCO.”

Synergy is defined as “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” Pursuing both the Urban Economy Forum housing investment opportunity and the UNESCO City of Learning designation simultaneously is a good illustration of “synergy” in the operation of local government.

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My assertion in last week’s newsletter of the city’s emerging strategy of arresting homeless people as a way to curtail the collateral damage caused by the homeless generated a thoughtful and thorough email from a downtown dwelling reader.

The reader first reported that the adverse impacts I mentioned as plaguing the South Common and its surrounding neighborhood – discarded needles, human waste in doorways, and trash strewn throughout – affected all of downtown; not just the South Common.

On my parallel assertion that the city lacked a comprehensive development plan, the reader observed, “It is impossible to pursue any plan when downtown is so plainly be-knighted by homelessness. If the homeless are off the streets, the city immediately becomes more livable, and everyone is more free to pursue their plans. All of the conditions are right for the next surge of growth in the city. Make it feel safe, and the plans will take care of themselves.”

But the part of the reader’s response that I found most interesting, and helpful to further understanding the problem, is that much of what is done now in terms of providing shelter and meals, doesn’t help solve the issue but just perpetuates it. Here’s the key observation:

“Homelessness is not a crisis, it is a chronic condition. On the individual level folks slip into this through bad luck, bad choices, and abuse by others. The details of their paths are as individual as they are. The path out involves establishing safety, receiving long term support, and hard work on the self. Again, unique for each individual. The first step is having a safe indoor home. Feeding people while allowing them to live in tents is just another form of abuse. Every night they spend in the cold, afraid for their lives is a further deepening of their trauma.”

In these observations, the reader is not wrong. The most effective way to address this would be to treat each of the approximately 200 hard core homeless individuals in Lowell as the social equivalent of an intensive care patient in the hospital. Just as staffing the intensive care ward at Lowell General is a huge cost, so would this effort but thus far, society and the community have not been willing or able to make that level of investment. That leaves the question of what do you do in the meantime? You cannot let people starve of freeze to death. Sure, if you cut those resources, the individuals partaking in them would be forced to change how they are living, but that outcome seems too much of a gamble. Better to keep providing survival levels of food and shelter while at the same time devoting more and intensive resources to the situation. But as usual, that’s easier said than done. In the meantime, it’s important that we all give at least as much support and understanding to downtown residents and business owners as we do to the homeless individuals themselves.