Forum on government change

By DONNA STEINBERG
Reporter Contributor

The Regional Information Network (RIN) will make a difference in how Western New York adapts to impending changes in the basic structure of society, Perry believes.

Perry is a political economist widely recognized in the fields of urban and suburban political economies, regional economic development, public administration and politics, and urban redevelopment.

"The next two decades will be an era of political and government restructuring" as government follows changes in the marketplace, he said. "Our urban lives are not contained in any particular government or political structure any more.

"We are living cross-border lives. The trouble is we continue to divide up taxes and resources in some sort of ultimate battle," based on boundaries of the past, he said.

As governments grapple with problems, they can use RIN on the Internet as a forum for communication, whatever their level of technological sophistication, Perry said. He works with a task force of technical community information users who help define what the RIN should look like. "The RIN will be a state-of-the-art source for information on government change," he said.

Perry contrasts the RIN approach with the old "ivory tower" system, where the university acted as the dominant center of knowledge-the data base-and the community was dependent on university experts for access. Instead, RIN is like an "electronic table," where users throughout the community, and beyond, can get together and share information independently. His job as a professor is to "listen to the community and then interpret what they need and create a model or network" for communication.

"The university is trying to provide mechanisms to enhance the way people talk to each other about change," learning from the mistakes of the '70s and '80s, Perry said. During those decades, as Buffalo's manufacturing base suffered a series of downturns, university experts were unable to convince area leaders that the setbacks represented a fundamental change in the structure of the economy, and not merely a cyclical issue.

"We could not produce the regional response needed," he said. "This time we hope we do our work better."

Perry holds permanent posts as the Albert A. Levin Urban Scholar at Cleveland University's College of Urban Affairs and as a senior faculty fellow at the Rockefeller Institute, New York City. His work on developing and implementing RIN continues his contribution to regional issues as a member of UB's governance project.

Perry was one of five faculty members appointed by President Greiner three years ago to study Western New York government. Kathryn A. Foster, project director and assistant professor in the Department of Planning, School of Architecture and Planning; Alfred D. Price, associate professor in the Department of Planning, School of Architecture and Planning; Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the UB Center for Urban Studies and associate professor in the Department of Planning and Department of American Studies and John B. Sheffer II, interim vice president for public service and urban affairs, are the other members of the project.

They examined 123 jurisdictions across 16 service areas in Erie County, developing a clear definition of structure, efficiencies and inefficiencies in service delivery, inequity in tax delivery and changes in demographics and issues of representation, among other concerns. The governance project findings, shared with the community more than a year ago, continue to attract interest from outside the university.

"We're not in the political leadership business," Perry emphasizes, in explaining how his focus has resulted in the RIN, which is funded through Sheffer's department. He sees UB's role as providing diagnosis, not prescriptions, serving Western New York leadership in developing a better set of diagnostic tools.

Perry is the author of many books, including "Police in the Metropolis," "Violence as Politics," "The Rise of the Sunbelt Cities," "Managing Local Government," "Building the Public City," "The Cleveland Metropolitan Reader" and "Spatial Practices."

His current research and writing projects focus on the changing qualities of the American city. He is expanding on a chapter of "Building the Public City" in a historical study of the effects of what he terms Americans' "public selfishness."

"We want public works, but we don't want to pay for them," he said. He is studying the relationship of public debt and large-scale public works, the fiscal and physical crises of the state and resulting political responses, such as the "Contract With America."

Another project he has termed "The Splintering Metropolis" looks at "the new American city" and issues of space and making of space. His view of the city transcends the borders of Buffalo and "this 19th century analog we have in our head."

"The city is Amherst. The city is Lackawanna, Springville, Niagara Falls, Walden Galleria, the new airport, the MRI machine in the suburbs, the hospital downtown, the therapist's office...," Perry said. He lives on the West Side, but, like other area residents, he continually crosses borders in his daily life.

These "wonderfully exciting spaces" become "sharp shards of urban rejection for others," the people who can't get in, Perry said. "We shop, we live in a splintered metropolis," as if the 19th century melting pot somehow were dropped on a very hard floor.

"The city of today is just shattered across that floor, spread out, diffuse, broken, as sharp and unsatisfying for some people as any violently broken piece of glass can be.

"If we don't engage these issues, then we'll be forced into the same sorts of decisions in 15 or 20 years that this region was forced to when it wouldn't engage the issues of economic restructuring." he said. "It's time to engage these issues."

Perry's goal is "planning based on the way we live our everyday lives," he said. "Planning should be about the everyday life of the city.

"These are really fun projects for me. They go right to the heart of what I think contemporary planning should be about in Buffalo and Western New York and the whole Niagara Frontier.

"There's no better place to be a scholar and citizen than right here," he said.

Perry paraphrases "my sainted Irish grandmother" on motherhood to emphasize that "A planner's work is never done. The one thing a planner knows for sure is that once a project is put into action, tomorrow's agenda will be the problems caused by that action," he said.

At home in Buffalo, Perry confronts the problems of the splintering metropolis from another direction. For more than a year, his wife, Judith Kossy, has been living in San Diego as second-in-command of the San Diego Dialogue, working on a regional economic development agency that even crosses international borders.

"We live in a global space," Perry said, conducting their relationship with one part visit and phone call, two parts fax, e-mail and cyberspace and "three parts loneliness."

"I've got one of the greatest jobs in academic planning in the country, and she's got one of the greatest in economic development planning on the continent." As his wife would put it, Perry said, "I'm theory, and she's practice."

PHOTO BY DON HUEPEL