This week our field staff and local volunteer leaders are in town to regroup, recharge, and restore each other before jumping back into the fray next month. Hearing their plans for next year, I can only admire how they are widening their influence. We are now being sought out by elected officials, environmental groups, community activists, even Wall Street investment bankers as the people who know how to get things done.
After 15 years at ULI, I am delighted with our 'overnight' success. Just as climate change and failing infrastructure are becoming popular causes, we are in a position to do something about both, bringing together megacommunities to take on megaproblems.
"The megacommunity concept goes far beyond such well-meaning single-sector approaches as sustainable development or corporate social responsibility, both of which often represent an ongoing obligation or duty rather than a collective movement toward a mutual aim," according to the authors of The Defining Features of a Megacommunity published in Strategy + Business (6/12/07).
"Unlike public–private partnerships, which typically focus on relatively narrow purposes... megacommunities take on much larger goals...A megacommunity initiative combines focused conversation, deliberate development of leadership capabilities, and results-oriented action in an open-ended network of leaders from multiple organizations."
That's exactly what we are doing. Now that some smart guys at Booz Allen Hamilton have defined it, maybe others will take a closer look at what our District Councils in Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., are doing. Their ongoing work is producing megacommunities in these metropolitan areas to take on megaproblems. Stay tuned.
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