City governments often get a bad rap. Cleveland's government is especially vulnerable to dismissal, what with that lingering "mistake on the lake" thing. But some informed government watchers — at Harvard, no less — like what they see, at least in terms of the city's willingness to cooperate with communities in building a better future.

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, recently recognized the Strategic Investment Initiative (SSI) — a partnership between the non-profit Neighborhood Progress Inc. and the City of Cleveland — as a "Bright Idea." The newly created Bright Ideas program "is designed to recognize and share creative government initiatives around the country with interested public sector, nonprofit, and academic communities."

"My understanding is that this [honor] is fairly unusual," says Walter Wright, Neighborhood Progress's senior program officer. SSI involves the city, but grew out of Neighborhood Progress's work with community development corporations. Today it includes the CDCs in Tremont, Detroit Shoreway, Ohio City, Slavic Village and five other communities. Neighborhood Progress describes SSI as "a market-driven approach that incorporates a deeper investment in neighborhood planning, a concentration of resources on larger-scale project investments and the introduction of more comprehensive strategies to improving quality of life through green spaces, public art, and neighborhood stabilization strategies."

The Bright Idea designation is "basically an honorific," Wright says. But he welcomes the opportunity to discuss the SSI model with like-minded folks from around the country who will learn of it thanks to the nod from Harvard.

Source: Neighborhood Progress Inc.
Writer: Frank W. Lewis