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C200: Leadership for Great Neighborhoods

2011 April 4
by Jessie Clawson and Dan McGrady

< Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood; photo: Dan Bertolet >

We all know that cities are the way to go. The better the city, the better off we, and the planet, are.

Founded three years ago, Leadership for Great Neighborhoods (LGN) is a coalition of community and neighborhood leaders, residents, business owners and other stakeholders that shares the Citytank philosophy that cities are the answer. But while Citytank’s vital role is to educate, inspire, to contradict orthodoxy and to shake things up, the mission of LGN is to engage at the neighborhood and city-wide level, with the goal of making Seattle more livable, more exciting, more fun.

The question is how will LGN do it?

To paraphrase Mary Elizabeth Lease, we are going to write fewer white papers and raise more hell.

What does this mean? We engage at the neighborhood level on planning, land use and zoning issues to make sure neighborhoods have the proper tools to shape their community. We also work with city leaders to make sure proper funding tools are available to pay for the things that make neighborhoods livable and attractive to people from all walks of life. We hold city leaders accountable in our quest to help Seattle achieve it’s full potential.

We look forward to Citytank and LGN working as a complementary pair: Citytank provides the insight, the ammunition, the information, and the creativity to help advocates bring about the changes we need to make Seattle work better for its people. LGN deploys the foot soldiers working in communities and at City Hall to make Seattle live up to its ideals.

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Jessie Clawson and Dan McGrady are conspiring to get the City of Seattle in gear through Leadership for Great Neighborhoods.