Some years ago, a common bumper sticker offered this advice: “Think Globally. Act Locally.”
Never has this advice been more salient.
Climate change is global, yet its effects are experienced locally. Some communities are hit by harder and more frequent storms, or drought, or wildfire. Some communities are seeing their fossil-fuel-based economies falter as energy production shifts toward renewables. Some communities are working to do their part by looking ahead and reducing their climate footprint.
All of these communities are grappling with change. All of these communities are working to build their resilience and shore up their capacity to adapt to the ground shifting below their feet.
The housing crisis in the U.S. is national, and yet it is in local communities where people actually live and struggle to meet the needs of current and future generations. According to housing expert Jenny Schuetz, “Nearly every U.S. city and county zones a majority of land exclusively for single-family detached homes,” which contributes both to sprawl and a lack of housing options for people with modest incomes. Even where, as in California, strong pro-housing policies come out of the Governor’s office and State Legislature, the local level is where many final decisions are made.
These communities also are grappling with change. These communities know the people who already live there but not the people who could live there.
Climate change and the need for more housing are just a couple of the many challenges we face.
Working through these issues calls for our most grounded science and engineering, our most forward-looking planning, our best collective thinking. The head part of developing and implementing sound and equitable policies – that’s a given.
What’s also true is that we need heart connections to be able to pull together and be creative in the face of uncertainty and adversity. We need heart connections to be able to “see” people who seem different and even foreign to us as potential neighbors and allies.
It’s heart connections that build the trust that make necessary problem-solving head work possible.
Civity’s mission is to help local communities create space for these heart connections to grow – to build the relational infrastructure that allows communities to function. And, increasingly, local leaders are recognizing the value of having the heart, relationship-building conversation before diving into the head, issue-based conversation.
This “conversation before the conversation” brings an intentional relationality that, like a few drops of oil, makes the gears of community decision-making turn much more smoothly and effectively. Connecting the head to the heart makes for more collaborative, productive, and sustainable problem-solving in the face of climate change, housing, and all the other issues we care about.