Collaborative planning in the context of deindustrialization
A qualitative evaluation of comparative cases in Northeast Ohio
Thomas W. Hilde, Joanna P. Ganning*, Wendy A. Kellogg*, and Meghan E. Rubado*
*Cleveland State University
In the early 1990s, along the once-industrialized Mahoning River in Northeast Ohio, a small-town mayor faced a challenging set of forces when trying to solve local problems. With the steel industry long gone, the town’s future had been hindered by a series of low-level dams and industrial contamination in and along the river. These and other serious problems extended across the region – through other small, river-adjacent towns and nearby Youngstown.
Solving these problems would require forging relationships with neighboring towns and state agencies, writing grant proposals, and administering project management, all for projects that would take decades to see through to completion. That’s a tough set of conditions for a mayor serving a four-year term. Meanwhile, population loss and economic decline had strapped the town’s fiscal capacity and left the mayor with minimal administrative support.
Adding to the challenge, municipalities in this area had rarely collaborated with one another. High school football rivalries, territorialism, and mistrust had often undermined the potential for partnerships on regional-scale goals, such as river cleanup. Even the larger city of Youngstown was in a weak position to lead partnerships, having experienced enormous population loss and fiscally struggling to provide basic services. The other small communities nearby were generally in the same situation. Even though working together would have helped these communities solve their resource challenges, there had historically been strong barriers to collaborating.
An hour north and a couple decades later in the Cleveland region, dozens of planners, mayors, nonprofits, and other stakeholders gathered to discuss a regional framework for developing a county-wide network of hike and bike trails and greenways. The group had a long history of working together, and enjoyed standing relationships with state and federal agencies. How did they do this?
Both of these projects eventually found success, winning awards for regional collaboration. However, they got there in very different ways. The Cleveland group’s path toward success generally follows the guidance of scholarly research related to regional collaborative planning. The Youngstown-centered group’s journey was quite different.
The eventual success of the Youngstown-based project illuminates the necessity and challenges of developing new regional institutions and capacity in the context of deindustrialization and population decline, which happened in some unexpected ways.
In the Youngstown-based case study, the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative, success would not have been possible without the prolific engagement of a project champion. Planners and public officials may not be prepared to identify or support such individuals if they believe collaborative planning should resemble the Cleveland case from Day 1. Where the Youngstown case largely rested on the intense engagement of a project champion, it also strategically limited public engagement. In planning and public administration, this constitutes a controversial finding. Early on, public engagement was strategically kept to a minimum, and we found that this probably avoided fatal traps in the initial phases of the project. This pair of findings contradicts prior research on regional collaborative planning.
Nearly all academic literature on this topic was developed for growing regions. We expected the context of decline to introduce unanticipated dynamics in regional collaboration. However, for all intents and purposes, the Cleveland region also is not growing. Yet, the more controversial findings from the Youngstown case did not emerge in the Cleveland case. Why?
Maybe you’ve heard the jokes about Cleveland’s river catching on fire? It turns out that the event catalyzed the development of policies, partnerships, and institutions that would lead to collaborative networks and norms decades later, fostering projects such as our comparative case study, the Cuyahoga Greenways. The project was convened by regional and county organizations that have a rich history of environmental collaboration dating back to the passage of the Clean Water Act. In addition, it builds on years of advocacy and past collaborations for trails and bikeway development in the region. As a result, participation was widespread; Cleveland and 42 other local jurisdictions in Cuyahoga County participated in the planning process, along with regional agencies, non-profit organizations, and members of the public.
Our recent article investigates whether and how contexts of Rust Belt decline extend or deviate from collaborative planning theory. We find that two case study projects are distinct in their contextual conditions and collaborative processes. The context of the Youngstown case illustrates how the slow process to change institutions delayed efforts to restore the Mahoning River and its riparian corridor to stimulate economic development, although stakeholders eventually overcame these delays and formed new partnerships. Our results also suggest that the collaborative planning literature, which for the most part suggests public engagement from the start, is insufficiently tailored to assess collaborative projects in the context of decline – particularly where collaborative institutions, professional networks, and trust are weak.
Thomas W. Hilde is an assistant professor of Urban Planning at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. His research focuses on fostering sustainable and resilient development for neighborhoods, cities, and regions.
Joanna P. Ganning is an associate dean for Faculty Affairs in the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education at Cleveland State University. Her research focuses quantitatively on the economic development narratives of contemporary U.S. communities marginalized by location or socioeconomic status, with the goal of enhancing the quality of life for everyone.
Wendy A. Kellogg is a professor of Urban Planning at the Levin School of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University. Her research focuses on sustainability planning, neighborhood planning, and watershed governance. She has published work in Public Administration Review, the Journal of the American Planning Association, and the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management.
Meghan E. Rubado is an associate professor of Public Administration and City Management at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. Her research focuses on U.S. local politics, public service provision, and inter-local collaboration.