Who's the Expert?

Recently, I attended a planning meeting for a potential new community development project in the Larimer neighborhood that focused on education. I showed up to the community center dressed in a nice shirt and jeans and found out quickly that I was extremely underdressed. I also found out very quickly that I was under-qualified. As we introduced ourselves, it was made clear that the "who's who" in education was there and the only reason that I even got word of it was because my field supervisor got an actual invite. As people said their names and who they were, I was impressed, no doubt, but I also started to notice that there were a fair number of people who had a title in education but were not within Pittsburgh Public, which would be the district most effected by this plan, and some organizations represented weren't even within the city limits. One of the women who was there, who happened to also be a formal principal, kept asking where the members of the community were. The answer was, 'community members were invited to come to a special meeting later that day and that all of the other meetings were "open" to the public'. Although, the whole thing felt like an exclusive secret club, one that I, as an educated person who was somewhat invited, felt as if I'd snuck in.

The meeting went on for a good while and at different times people would always bring up the community, its members, and the complexity of planning without the affected party (heck, it's complex even with the affected party present). The group that was trying to propose this project kept telling us that they included community people "every step of the way," when all I heard mentioned to corroborate that was the fact that they got to talk about mailboxes and housing logistics (legitimate but that's only one part). I had such conflicting feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, it felt like we were setting the community up for failure. On the other, it felt like the community had set itself up for failure. I thought automatically to Richard Florida's article in which he says, " Instead of handing over neighborhoods or even whole sections of cities to city hall or private developers, we’d be much better off enabling residents to take control of and build on community assets, engaging them in community-based organizations that can spearhead revitalization and build real quality of place." He makes a lot of good points but isn't the most clear about the best ways to turn this idea into practice.

So, in response, I have these questions:

1) How does that happen? How do we develop in a way that is align with Florida's sentiments? And is that the best way?

2) And who is running these organizations?

3) Who is the person (or people) that is actually going to establish (and maintain) McKnight's abundant community?

4) How do we organically provide the resources needed to revitalize a community without ignoring the community in the process? 

5) But then again, how do we get a community to even get invited to the discussion table, or better yet, start the discussion?

Here is a video that documents a community-based revitalization process happening in Portland:

What do you think? Is this going to work? Is this enough? Will it go anywhere? Is it sustainable? What does a community need in order to truly be able to "revitalize" itself? If Florida were watching this video would he support this movement or reject it?