r: How did city leaders respond to your first Better Block project and to the breaking of ordinances?
Roberts: By the time we tackled this first block, I’d already been thought of around town as this person who had been doing a lot of crazy projects, like streetcars and bicycling. [To learn more about Roberts’ activism in Oak Cliff and how The Better Block was established, see “The Power of One Person” on page 4 of this post] I had the support of a couple of my local council members. They saw the community was embracing these projects. Council members want to be on the popular side of the agenda. People get elected to city hall because they’re passionate about economic development but often get stuck in the machinations of city hall. The city leaders I had thought were the bad guys were actually the ones backing me, saying, “Keep going because you’re helping us; we’ve been trying to fight these things for years but our hands are tied.”
r: Did this first Oak Cliff Better Block project generate enough interest to revitalize the block? What is the block’s status now?
Roberts: Yes, there are active businesses in that block now. In fact, one of the businesses we set up—an art studio—is still going strong and is the anchor of the neighborhood. We’ve also had about $500,000 in funds allocated to the area to start some of the improvements we’ve recommended.
r: How did The Better Block catch on in other parts of the country?
Roberts: After the Oak Cliff Better Block project, a friend put an eight-minute video on YouTube that went viral. I didn’t think it would catch on; Better Block just happened to be one of about eight projects I was doing on weekends. However, The Better Block really resonated with people.
People kept asking us how we did it, so I put together an article about how we did it, about the fun parts, about how we got our insurance and our permits, and answered some logistical questions. Then we realized there were other cities beyond Oak Cliff that wanted to do Better Block projects, so we put up a website, allowing everyone to communicate and learn from each other. Now we’re consulting too; cities will hire us, and that has been fun. We’re really passionate about this idea of training and teaching.
r: What are you training other cities to do better?
Roberts: We were getting frustrated with the planning process. Most cities invite everyone to a town-hall meeting in which the most polarizing people in the community end up beating each other up until you get this extremely watered-down plan. Then consultants come up with this visioning exercise that costs tens of thousands of dollars, and they draw pretty pictures. Then they put together a bond package and maybe in a couple years they say they’re going to level a building and hope for bond money to build something, but the bond money never happens so they end up with a big hole in the ground. Then years go by and millions of dollars were spent and maybe something happens and maybe nothing happens.
Instead of a town-hall meeting, we want citizens to go to the site of the problem because people really want to pick up hammers, nails and paintbrushes. That was my frustration: I don’t want to just look at pictures of how beautiful things could be one day; I want to be able to fix something in 30 days. We proved we could do that with The Better Block, and we proved it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. In fact, money is an obstacle because it creates a fear of permanency; people start thinking, “I only have $1 million so I have to do this right.” If you want creativity, take a zero away from your budget. If you want ultimate creativity and sustainability, take two zeros away from your budget.