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Reinventing Our Streetscapes: An Interview with Urban Tactician Mike Lydon

Lisa Mastny — Tue, 14 May 2013 11:18:37 -0400

In May 2013, New Dream spoke with Mike Lydon, our newest Board member and the founder of The Street Plans Collaborative, about his lifelong interest in cities and how he's devoted his career to making America's streets more walkable, safe, and enjoyable.

You’ve been involved with urban planning for most of your career. How did you first become interested in cities?

I grew up in a very small, classic midcoast Maine town. I always loved going “downtown.” So I became very interested in places with the same pattern of place, particularly those that were much larger. For me, it didn’t get much better than Boston growing up. This initial interest turned into more academic pursuits following the release of Sim City. I was 11 or 12 then. My interest only grew from there...

In 2009, you co-founded The Street Plans Collaborative. Can you describe what you do?

We’re an urban planning, design, and research-advocacy firm. What that means is that towns, cities, and organizations hire us to do a number of different projects with them. We work frequently on street design projects that make places much more safe and enjoyable for bicycling, walking, taking transit, etc. A big part of our work is writing- and researched-based, too. We’re nerds who love to explore new ideas and create content and expertise around them.

Why is knowing about a city’s history, culture, and diversity so integral to urban planning?

Knowing how a place developed over time, and where it is currently, is key to understanding how to advance the best elements of a town or city forward. We’re a very people-first focused firm, so past and present stories—not just written history—fascinates us and informs our work. We like telling and enhancing those stories to create an opportunity for new ones to be written in the future.

You went to graduate school in Michigan and have noted that Detroit is one of the most fascinating places in the country, for good and bad. Why so?

Detroit exemplifies all that is possible in the rise and fall of a city. There were few places as spectacular as Detroit in the first half of the 20th century, and few places as devastated in that century’s second half. However, Detroit is nowhere close to being the only city suffering from the challenges of decline. And 700,000 people still live there. I’d like to see Detroit as half-full, not half-empty. Detroit will continue to struggle, but it will also redefine itself moving forward, and that is where my interests lie. What comes next? What will Detroit be in the 21st century? We don’t know yet.

One of your recent projects was co-authoring two volumes of the guide Tactical Urbanism. Can you give some examples of innovative urban tactics that are taking off around the country?

We’re fascinated by short-term, inexpensive, often temporary projects aimed at providing benefits now, not later. Projects that prove concepts and help build support for longer-term investment in public space, walkable neighborhoods, active storefronts, and the creative repurposing of underutilized space. Some of the tactics we’ve researched at length are Open Streets, parklets, build a better block, guerilla gardening, and something we call Street Seats. All of these are expanding to cities and towns of all sizes in the United States. It’s exciting and proves the demand for quality towns and cities—places where people and community come first.

You’re a big supporter of the Open Streets movement. Can you describe what this is?

Open streets are when communities close streets to automobile traffic and open them up for walking, bicycling, jogging, and any number of community activities. These events can happen weekly, monthly, or annually. It allows people to engage in all sorts of activity within streets, which always comprise the majority of a town or city’s public space. Citizens come out and see their community from a different perspective, have fun, and often support local businesses along the route. We’ve tracked the growth of this movement from nine North American cities in 2006 to more than 100 today. It’s inspiring and reflects the desire that people have for community.

On a personal level, do you feel like your lifestyle is in line with the goals that you advocate for cities and communities in your work?

Yes, I do. I feel very little distinction between my professional work and my own life/lifestyle. If I weren’t an urban planner, I’d probably still be playing Sim City in my spare time and choosing to live in Brooklyn, NY, where enjoying a car-free lifestyle of bicycling and walking is easy.

When you’re not busy working on urban planning, what are some other things you enjoy doing?

Running, visiting museums, seeing live music, and traveling to other cities!

You recently joined the board of the Center for a New American Dream. What drew you to New Dream, and what role do you see the organization playing in encouraging the kinds of solutions you discussed above?

Much of what I’ve described is right in line with New Dream’s Collaborative Communities program, which is exciting. I see my role on the Board as a way to bring a different perspective from the planning and community development world, but also to learn from New Dream and help infuse my own work with the organization’s focus. After attending the most recent board meeting, I can tell that my position is going to be a lot of fun.

Before launching The Street Plans Collaborative in 2009, Mike Lydon worked for Smart Growth Vermont, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, Ann Arbor’s GetDowntown Program, and Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company (DPZ), an international leader in smart growth planning, design, and research. Mike is a co-author of T he Smart Growth Manual (2009) and the creator and primary author of The Open Streets Project and Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action, Long-Term Change. He is a regular contributor to Planetizen, a founding co-editor of the journal Living Urbanism, and was selected in 2009 as one of 34 Urban Vanguards by Next American City magazine. Mike speaks regularly on the topics of smart growth, tactical urbanism, planning and social media, and complete streets/active transportation. He is a CNU-Accredited Professional, and he encourages you to trade four wheels for two.

Big Media, Big Bullying, and What You Can Do About It

Emily Long — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:45:45 -0400

In the years since the issue of bullying has garnered national attention and increasing concern, most big media companies have created campaigns designed to prevent bullying or to otherwise give people an opportunity to speak against it and raise awareness.

MTV has A Thin Line, ABC Family has Delete Digital Drama, NBC airs anti-bullying spots via its public service campaign The More You Know, Nickelodeon has anti-bullying activities on The Big Help, and Cartoon Network has a Stop Bullying Speak Up campaign.

With efforts like these, it would seem as though big media has truly taken a step forward in reaching young people to stop the bullying epidemic.

That is, until you turn on the TV. On ABC’s The Bachelor, women snipe at each other as they compete for one man’s heart. All of these insults are captured on the Smack Tracker, thus cataloging an episode-by-episode breakdown of who said what about whom. In spin-off specials like The Bachelor: Women Tell All, snarky tweets from fans of the show are broadcast live, courting a dangerous game of one-upmanship as to which members of the viewing public can be the cruelest. All of this comes courtesy of the same company that puts stars from its scripted shows front-and-center in PSAs saying that it’s time to delete digital drama.

Tune into any one of The Real Housewives series on Bravo, and you’ll see more fighting and backstabbing. Check out Teen Mom or Jersey Shore on MTV for more of the same; perhaps you’ll also catch spots for A Thin Line. Watch E! or Access Hollywood for celebrity gossip, and ESPN for occasional glorification of athletes behaving badly. In the case of some of these shows, the connection to big media’s Astroturf anti-bullying campaigns might be harder to find, but they’re all there. Bravo is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns E! and Access Hollywood. Both ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Company, whose Friends for Change celebrity ambassadors want you to become an ‘accountabili-buddy’ and report bullying.

Big media profits from shows that promote hateful messages disguised as entertainment, also called ‘hatertainment.’ Their various attempts at ending bullying are moot when their own networks glorify, normalize, and reward the same type of behavior that most of us recognize as bullying and destructive. We cannot count big media as an ally when these companies are responsible for messages that can be so harmful for kids: in a 2011 study, the Girl Scout Research Institute found that 78 percent of girls who watch reality television believe that “gossiping is a normal part of a relationship between girls,” while only 54 percent of girls who do not watch reality TV agree.

In far too many documentaries and news stories, the blame for bullying has fallen squarely on the shoulders of parents, teachers, and school administrators, who are frequently accused of not taking enough preventative action. Big media companies need to also be held accountable for their role in fostering bullying behavior, and we must teach the basic media literacy concept of media as construction and an industry with a bottom line.

When watching reality television, ask your kids about what might have been left out, or how producers decide which portions of footage to use for a show. Talk to them about news, and why there is an entire industry devoted to reporting on celebrity gossip. Perhaps most importantly, ask them how they feel when they watch these shows. Moderating screen time is also a good step, as is being a positive role model—adults are not immune to hatertainment. Much like second-hand smoke has an indirect but powerful effect on our family’s health, hateful media also pollute homes in ways that may not be immediately recognizable. Yes, big media companies are powerful, but the real power lies in our own ability to filter their product.

Emily Long is Director of Communications and Development for The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project), a nonprofit organization bringing critical media fluency education to youth, parents and educators in New York City. For more on this subject, click here.

Additional Resources on Media Literacy

Center for Social Media at American University is an excellent place to learn more about public media, and especially the fair use of media.

Media Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization producing media and study guides to help people of all ages increase their media literacy skills.

Media Education Lab at Temple University is a great place to start learning more about media literacy.

ParentingTeensOnline is a great resource aimed specifically for parents of adolescents.

The Smart Television Alliance is a group of national nonprofit organizations committed to improving what children see on television. (Disclaimer: this site is funded by Tivo.)

Common Sense Media is a nonprofit that rates current movies and television shows based on content appropriate for a given age group.

The Media Literacy Clearinghouse is Frank W. Baker’s treasure trove of resources about K-12 media literacy and state education standards.

"Fast Fashion" Isn't Just Trendy and Glamorous: It Has Consequences

Addison Del Mastro — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:21:51 -0400

If you’ve followed the news in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen the headlines about the factory collapse in Bangladesh.

With a death toll of more than 1,000, it’s the country’s deadliest industrial disaster ever, and bodies continue to be pulled from the wreckage. The collapse has tragically become the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry: anywhere, ever. And it’s the deadliest structure collapse in modern history, outside of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers.

All of this nearly a century after the garment industry ceased to be dangerous in the United States and the rest of the developed world (in places where the industry still exists and hasn’t been out-competed by free trade agreements, that is).

Bangladesh is a heartbreaking reminder of what the flip side of sustainable and conscious consumption looks like. And the disaster can’t help but shift attention to our own consumer habits. We can’t just lay blame on the building owner who built eight stories on unstable ground, or the regulators who turned a blind eye to the extra three stories added illegally to the original building plan.

Also culpable is every American and European consumer who happily bought cheap “Made in Bangladesh” items at the mall without a thought, and every trendy apparel company that contracted out mind-numbing work and inhumane hours to distant factories so as to manufacture the excuse, “we didn’t know.” It’s also the fault of socially blind free trade policies that have forced developing countries to sell their poverty to the highest bidder in the West.

It’s impossible not to feel rage that our unquenchable demand for fast fashion—cheap garments that quickly fall apart or become obsolete—has resulted in a disaster that makes New York’s infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, which killed 146 Americans, look like a minor accident. But anger is not the answer. There are real lessons that we can learn from this tragedy to make sure that our consuming behavior does not again create the conditions for a repeat of these events.

#1. We simply buy too many garments.

As Americans, we trash over 13 million tons of textiles, mostly clothes, each year. Nearly half of these items—from tuxedos to t-shirts—are still perfectly usable. According to the book The Story of Stuff, the fast fashion company H&M can produce a garment in under three weeks, and many clothing retailers, due to shortened production times and lower prices, have introduced so many fashion “seasons” that each season may be as brief as two weeks.

As retail prices and production speeds decline, wages and working conditions are pressed downward. Even though a decrease in demand for cheap clothing might eliminate some developing-world jobs, the jobs that remain have a chance to be better quality (if the other lessons here are followed) and might help an entire country develop more effectively.

#2. The standard of market competition must be changed.

Competition among businesses is often portrayed as a random force; however, there’s usually one ideal to which most sellers in the marketplace strives. Right now, in the garment industry (as in most other consumer goods industries) the dominant standard of competition is low price. Corporations and consumers alike have celebrated ever-lower prices since the rise of consumerism during the post-war era, and with the help of Walmart and other price-slashing retailers, we’ve increasingly moved in that direction.

But it wasn’t always like that, and it doesn’t have to be. If consumers demand more durable, less obsolescent, and more equitably produced garments, countries with exploitative industries like Bangladesh will actually find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. If we can shift the standard of competition to prioritize other factors than just the bottom line—such as social justice and environmental protection—such nations will feel the pressure to follow consumer demand and improve their conditions.

The days of company-owned factories with lifetime employees have long since faded into the era of the “Great American Middle Class.” Today, U.S. producers, especially of garments but also of items like cheap electronics, generally contract with suppliers around the world, who then sub-contract the actual manufacturing to a distant factory. The factory workers work for the sub-contractor, several steps removed from the company whose name will actually end up on the product.

Not surprisingly, it is impossible for U.S. companies to track everything that goes on in these distant factories, especially when corruption and finagling can result in so-called “unauthorized production,” in which a contractor sub-contracts manufacturing to an unauthorized factory, potentially one that fails to meet internationally recognized or even company-required labor, production, or building standards.

#3. Even the poorest countries need basic protections that everyone recognizes.

In addition to shifts in consumer demand, there needs to be basic protection of workers’ rights and basic enforcement of safety regulations. Some have argued that it would be inefficient for Bangladesh to have standards as high as those in the West. This is probably true. But to argue that Bangladesh should not be as highly regulated as the United States is not to say that the country should be building factories that are prone to collapse.

American retailers and distributors, as well as the federal government, should strive to enforce certain basic worker and environmental protections throughout the full length of supply chains, wherever in the world these may extend. This leads to the final lesson:

#4. Poverty and exploitation are not the only options.

One of the most insidious arguments made in the aftermath of disasters like the one in Bangladesh is that workers were not really exploited because they chose the work as the best alternative to grinding rural poverty.

One editorial proclaims, “Garment-factory workers in...the developing world are not victims. They have sought out this work, and they want to be agents of their own fate. They often get a raw deal, but they’re enduring these jobs because the jobs are an improvement over any other alternative—and their engagement with the West’s consumer markets can be the vehicle to greater empowerment.”

What this line of argument implicitly assumes is that there is no third alternative: textile work where wages are livable and conditions are safe. The editorial itself notes that as wages increase in places that meet these ideals, manufacturers inevitably move to lower-wage regions. As long as poverty is a commodity, trade with the West will not raise up these poor nations.

The fact is that our clothes are so cheap that to raise wages, and consequently prices, would improve the lives of developing world workers far more than it would hurt our wallets. We can have both affordable consumer goods and decent, responsible workplaces. What’s more, higher prices might help us think twice about our rampant consumer habits.

More than 1,000 people are already dead, and no amount of hand-wringing or conscious consuming will undo their deaths. But perhaps these deaths will not be in vain. Is it too much to ask if every time we hear a “Buy now!” commercial for the mall, or a discount shop runs a $5 shirt special, we say to ourselves, “Remember Bangladesh!”?

Addison Del Mastro is a student at Drew University and a former intern at the Center for a New American Dream.

The Future of Work? Get On The Lattice or Die

Liz Kofman and Astri Von Arbin Ahlander — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:58:54 -0400

It started out innocently enough: We were lounging in the sunshine with some girlfriends who, like us, were only days away from graduation.

Apropos the future, a popular topic, we asked our friends what they thought they would do when they had children. At first, they seemed confused. Could we clarify?

What we meant was, what would they do about their jobs when they had children, how would they make it work? We had expected answers involving words like “sharing,” and “flexibility,” or maybe even “sheer force of will.” Instead, our friends’ nearly uniform response was a fumbling explanation that they guessed they would take a couple of years off working. As in quitting? As in being a stay-at-home mom? What?

These friends of ours were intelligent, educated, and ambitious young women. None of them spoke about quitting with unequivocal enthusiasm, but rather with a reluctant sense of necessity. Never would we have thought that our peers considered their options so limited.

The crux seemed to be that most of these women (all of them middle or upper-middle class, in their early twenties) had been raised with stay-at-home mothers, and all of them believed that a parent staying home full time was the ideal childcare arrangement for young children. But why didn’t a single one of them mention the father of these future children when they talked about finding a way to balance their professional and personal lives? Why did they seem to think it was their burden to bear alone?

Riled up after our alarming lawn conversation, we tracked down some of our male friends and posed the same question to them: how did they expect to balance work and kids? Their responses were comically vague. The most common reference was to Little League, whatever that had to do with anything.

Then we asked some established professionals—mostly friends of our parents and older alumni—what would happen to an employee who took a few years of leave, and they told us such a move would likely stop a high-level career in its tracks. We poked around on the Internet and discovered that no American employer was going to grant a few years of parental leave anyway—they weren’t required to provide any at all, and the very best offered at most a couple of months, often to women only.

The Bubbles Burst

What started with a few questions about combining parenthood with a career snowballed into more and more questions about the day-to-day of corporate work culture in America—about flexibility (mostly rhetoric), about face-time (ubiquitous), about sick leave (not guaranteed) and vacation (an average of 10 days for the first five years).

As we contemplated our first post-undergraduate step, we suddenly felt like all the air had been let out of our balloon—our inflated collegiate egos a fine metaphor for the nation’s economy, we would soon discover. The new picture of working life that emerged was nothing like the one we had imagined. We thought we were going to have rocket careers, happy children, and passionate, supportive partners with stellar careers of their own. But when we tried to break all this down, it just didn’t add up. When, exactly, were we supposed to have children if 25-40 was when we had to prove ourselves at work? How were you supposed to bring kids up, if you and your spouse both work 50 hours a week?

We tried tinkering with various scenarios. What if you and your spouse work part-time while your kids are young, and then ratchet back up a few years later (you’ll have decades to catch up, after all)? No, we were told that scaling back, even for a short time, signals to employers that you’re not serious about your career, that you’re not interested in making partner, for example. Part-time wasn’t even an option in many jobs. But we do want to make partner! So do our friends, guys and gals alike! This work system was all wrong! As we prepared to receive our diplomas, we couldn’t shake the feeling that the game was rigged from the start.

Of course, our initial rock-star-by-30 outlook was incredibly naïve—but, admit it, you had similarly rosy expectations. Which leads us to another major realization we had: Our generation has a very poor sense of the options and limitations we’re likely to face, and how best to prepare for the work-life gauntlet. This is shocking considering how easily and routinely we research every other aspect of our lives (closest Thursday-night happy hour, cheapest flight to Kuala Lumpur, best hairdresser in a five-mile radius, etc.).

We found our collective cluelessness so surprising, and so disturbing, that we decided to do some research about how our generation, the so-called Generation Y, really sees the challenging dance move that is the work-life balance. We spent the year after graduation asking other college students and recent grads about what they were hoping for, professionally and personally, in their own lives and how they planned to achieve their goals. We traveled to New York, Madrid, Paris, Stockholm, and Moscow. We found interview subjects in bars and parks and online. We drank coffee in every café in Paris and beer in smoky underground members’ clubs in Moscow.

That’s right, it was a pretty tough life. We told our sponsors that this Grand Tour was about giving other young people the information we wish we’d had before graduating college, but really it was about blind self-interest. We were terrified. We figured we could at least learn from other people’s mistakes before we messed up our own lives. Maybe we could even help other Gen Yers in the process.

What we didn’t anticipate was that less than a year after we ditched our first job offers for tape recorders, a global financial crisis would spark a level of debate beyond our wildest dreams. We now live in critical times. The financial crisis in America and the consequent fallout constitute a potential paradigm shift. Suddenly, everything is up for debate. With men bearing the brunt of the layoffs, and taking it very hard, society at large is starting to question whether it’s healthy for one person to shoulder the financial well-being of an entire family.

With women becoming the sole-breadwinners in more and more families, the question of why women earn less than men—and what can be done about it—has new urgency. With people losing their jobs, and the benefits that come with those jobs, we’re starting to question whether an employer-based benefit system makes sense when a rapidly growing fraction of the workforce is freelancers and independent contractors. With finance disgraced, young people are wondering what careers will bring them respect and fulfillment. Tighter budgets have forced us, as individuals and as a nation, to think about what is really important. We’re at a point of transition. The question is: which direction should we go?

Our answer is simple: get on the lattice or die.

The Corporate Ladder

What the hell is a lattice? Bear with us for a bit. Surely, you’ve heard the term “the corporate ladder.” To succeed in a career you have to climb up the well-defined rungs of a ladder: Up, up, up, until—nope, just up.

The corporate ladder is a wonderfully clear visual—it’s also the epitome of inflexibility. There are really only two directions you can go on a ladder: up or down. There’s little room for sidesteps or pauses, let alone for backtracks.

Consider a Harvard study that surveyed alumni 15 years after graduation. They estimated the average financial penalty for someone who took a year and a half off and then returned to work. In medicine, that person earned 16 percent less than a similar doctor who had not taken time off, and that’s actually the lowest penalty—so keep at it pre-meds. Among graduates that didn’t get a graduate degree, the gap was 25 percent. For both lawyers and Ph.D.’s it was about 29 percent. And for people who work in finance and consulting, it was a whopping 41 percent.

And that’s for taking 1.5 years off. Not the two or three that our smart, ambitious girlfriends were talking about. Fifty-nine percent of an average finance salary is still a large chunk of change, even today, but what it means is that taking 1.5 years off puts you on a completely different track than the worker who managed, somehow, to stay on the ladder.

We might be okay with the inflexibility of the ladder model if we were guaranteed stability in exchange. That was the deal in past decades: Workers were often rewarded with a stable career and a gold watch at the end of a lifetime of loyal employment. But the working world we enter now looks very different from the one our parents entered then. The rungs of the ladder are not given; the ladder may in fact end, abruptly, after years of dedicated investment.

The reasons for the demise of the corporate ladder model are complex, but at the most basic level it comes down to flexibility. Our globalized, competitive world demands flexibility. Employers want to be fluid, hiring and firing with the market's increasingly fickle whims. For all the benefits of ladder careers in terms of stability and institutionalized knowledge, it’s just not flexible. So in the long run, it’s out.

What’s more, ladder careers only work for a tiny fraction of the workforce—the ever elusive “ideal worker.” The ideal worker can work all the time, year-round, and has few responsibilities outside of work. Guess what? The ideal worker is a man—a man with a stay-at-home wife to take care of everything else.

Perhaps our readers snicker at such a dated idea, but when you look at the corporate ladder world, it’s not set up for individuals to deal with family and personal responsibilities. Things like taking care of a sick parent or picking up your kids from school or even having kids for that matter! Nevermind that the ideal worker model is a recipe for a heart attack. Nevermind that in the past 30 years there has been a momentous increase in dual-earner households and single-parent families. Nevermind that today, the majority of college graduates are women. Companies still expect that a man with a stay-at-home wife will show up at the office.

Even if men still wanted to shoulder the financial burden of their family alone and women were dying to give up their careers to tend the hearth and all that, the Mad Men set-up just isn’t a possibility for 98 percent of us anymore. Most families need two breadwinners to pay the bills these days. That’s the 21st-century reality.

So, what is life like for dual-earner families in a corporate ladder world? First of all, get ready to put in a whole lot of hours. Over the past 25 years, the combined weekly work hours of dual-earner couples with children under 18 at home has increased by an average 10 hours per week, from 81 to 91 hours. At the same time, with anxiety about the future and getting into college at an all-time high, parenting has actually become more intensive. But the majority of employers still expect their employees to act as though they have no other responsibilities outside the office. It’s downright taboo to use a family commitment as an excuse in a work setting—it may be superficially accepted, but it’ll “mommy-track” you faster than you can say “Baby Björn.”

The U.S. government has been pathetically slow to respond to the changes in our society. Here’s a shocker: the U.S. is one of only four countries in the world—and we’re talking about the whole world, not just developed countries—that doesn’t guarantee some form of paid parental leave. The other three countries are Papua New Guinea, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, employers in the United States have to offer 12 weeks of unpaid parental leave, but that only applies to employers with over 50 employees.

More importantly, who can afford to take unpaid leave? Workers aren’t even guaranteed any paid sick leave or vacation. In the 2011 study, “Failing its Families: Lack of Paid Leave and Work-Family Supports in the US,” Human Rights Watch calls a spade a spade: the situation for American families today is a human rights violation.

To give you some perspective, out of the top 20 economies in the world, 18 guarantee their workers at least 30 days of paid vacation. In Sweden, new parents have 18 months of paid parental leave, which they can split as they see fit and with two months reserved for the father. Sweden also guarantees unlimited days to take care of sick children. Yes, Sweden’s family policies are exceptional, but America’s stand out as being exceptionally bad.

Are we freaking you out? Don’t panic. We’re not going to lie to you: it is scary out there. And despite reading countless books and reports and articles on these issues, we haven’t come across one magic cure-all. The best antidote to the inflexible ladder culture we’ve found is embracing and pushing for a whole new culture: A lattice culture.

What Is A Lattice Culture?

A lattice looks like several ladders combined into a sort of web. On a lattice, the possible path is not simply up or down like it is on a ladder. You can choose to move up, down, diagonal, to the side.

A lattice allows you to pause, to slow down, to switch jobs and fields more freely than a ladder does. The lattice is the model for a career track characterized by flexibility. And, ultimately, it is a model that takes into account the reality of modern workers. It means you wouldn’t have to completely get off track to fulfill your personal commitments or adventures.

Sounds great. But how do we get there?

The truth is that it's going to take serious changes to our current ladder culture, especially to the way we as a society think about work and career building, for a lattice lifestyle to be possible for a significant chunk of people. We're not there yet. Not even close. That said, there is hope.

There are people out there in the U.S. who, despite all odds, are successfully leading a lattice-like lifestyle. For example, bloggers Amy and Mark Vachon have recently come out with a book that is full of couples who rearranged their lives to make a lattice lifestyle work. Often this involves both people in a couple asking employers to go part-time or to flextime. Flextime means you work the same amount of hours, but you choose your own start and end times. It enables you to work four-day weeks, for example.

We have to be honest with you. These kind of arrangements are not possible for everyone. We talked to a computer programmer in Moscow who told his employer he would like to work from 7 to 3, instead of 9 to 5. His services were highly valued, the company had an accommodating outlook, and his employer agreed. On the other hand, a TV producer we talked to in New York asked his employer for extra vacation days instead of a raise and the employer flat out said, “Nope, against company policy.” Not all employers are going to be agreeable.

Switching to a lattice lifestyle, even if your employer is willing, also means readjusting your expectations. You really can't have it all, all the time. A flexible lattice lifestyle will probably mean that you earn less money, at least for a time. If you want to be the CEO of Coca Cola by the time you're 35, you can stop reading right now. It's not going to happen. We realize that someone has to be the CEO of Coca Cola. For now, that person is probably going to be a man with a stay-at-home wife. It's true: 97 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are men. Of the women CEOs, only 30 percent have children. But this doesn't have to be the case in the future. There are alternatives, even at the very top.

Take job-sharing, which we learned about while talking to a newspaper editor in Sweden. He shares his position with another person. When he went on paternity leave, the newspaper wasn't left scrambling because the top position wasn't in the hands of just one person. They were prepared. Another alternative we heard about was hiring temporary workers to fill in for those on leave; this way younger workers can cut their teeth in a position with real responsibilities and the company can have a test run to see if they are worth hiring full time.

In Europe, and especially in Scandinavia, whole societies are increasingly working together to make a lattice culture possible. The government guarantees generous leaves, and employers support these leaves with their own, internal policies. In France, freelancers pay into an unemployment fund, so that when they experience gaps in employment they too have a safety net.

In the U.S., we’re still scrambling. We still live in a ladder world. But in a society where golden watches and 40 years in one company are rarities rather than norms, where female labor-force participation and changing masculine expectations break down the model of the ideal worker, where people jump from job to job, and perhaps from field to field, where innovation and risk-taking are key to success, the ladder is outdated. The lattice is the present and future.

It would be nice if all of society recognized this. Because we can achieve so much more together than we can as mere individuals. It’s asking a lot for you alone to make demands of an indifferent employer, as opposed to if new national policies were backing you up. Without a doubt, America needs employment reform: universal health care, paid parental leave, sick leave, and vacation policies would be a good start.

But until our society gets its act together and offers workers and families those basic building blocks of a lattice lifestyle, individuals are going to have to make it work themselves. There is no blueprint for this. But after researching the hell out of these questions, and interviewing students as well as young and seasoned professionals for hours upon hours, we’ve come up with some basic advice.

5 Tips for Getting on The Lattice

#1: Become educated about the realities of the workplace and the career you would like for yourself.

You should do this early, preferably when you’re still in college, but it’s never too late. Research the hours and conditions required of the particular career you’re interested in and weigh that against what you want for your personal life. As work-life balance crusader Nigel Marsh said in his 2011 TED talk, “Certain jobs and career paths are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family." Think corporate law, management consulting, investment banking, CEOdom.

Be realistic. Talk to people you admire. Don’t just ask them about what graduate school they went to and how they got their first job, ask them about the challenges, ask them about how they balance their work and family lives practically and emotionally. You may not love what you hear, but you’ll learn.

#2: Decide what is really important to you.

Whether it’s being geographically mobile, or working in the outdoors, or having control over your time, or being in a position of power, or being a very present part of your children’s lives, or living lavishly. Be honest with yourself. Make sure you know what it is you want so that you don’t find yourself, 10 years down the line, with a life that doesn’t fit you. Again, be realistic. If having a flexible schedule is high on your list, for example, come to terms with the fact that you may not be able to have a professional career that gives you a great deal of managerial power. If you want to be a very hands-on parent, don’t count on being able to balance that with a 60-hours-a-week gig.

#3: Talk openly with your partner about all the tricky stuff early on—what you expect from one another, who’s going to do what and earn what.

It can be a pretty awkward conversation to have, but it’s necessary if you’re going to be serious about somebody. Love works in mysterious ways, but love may not be enough if you find out, too far down the line, that your spouse has wildly different expectations when it comes to division of responsibilities at home.

#4: Don’t be afraid to ask.

Do your research, make a good case, and you may be surprised how much your employer will be willing to accommodate. You create value and employers really are loathe to lose a solid worker. Workplace culture can change. But it will take a critical mass of employees demanding more flexibility. Let’s each take one for the team, Gen Y.

#5: Know what you want.

Find out what a certain career will demand of you and how that weighs against your personal goals. Make sure you and your future partner are on the same page as soon as possible. Most of all, pause in the rush to excel that you’re caught up in, and ask yourself the important questions: What kinds of hours and working conditions come with the particular career I’m thinking of pursuing? What kind of standard of living do I want to have? What do I expect from a partner? What does he or she expect from me?

It’s a mistake we all tend to make, skipping over the tough questions, because, well, they’re hard. But, remember, articulating the question is the first important step toward finding the answer.

This excerpt is adapted from an essay that appears in the new ebook collection from Shareable Magazine, Share or Die, which is now available in paperback, Kindle, and iPad formats. A series of forays into uncharted territory, this graphically rich collection of essays, narratives, and how-tos is an intimate guide to the new economic order and a must-read for anyone attempting to understand what it means to live within the challenges of our time.

Living the Dream Series: Meet Ashley Whittenberger of Cosmic Acres

Edna Rienzi — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:26:45 -0400

Meet Ashley Whittenberger, the first featured “Dreamer” in our new “Living the Dream” series. Over the coming months, we'll be introducing you to folks from around the world who are living lives focused on “more of what matters.” If you or someone you know is living the New Dream, please contact us—we're looking for inspiring stories to share!

Ashley is the blogger behind Cosmic Acres, where she writes about leaving her “mainstream McMansion on a half-acre of manicured hell" for "a modest manufactured home on 10 acres of undeveloped heaven.” Through her blog, Ashley shares her story of transitioning from a life focused on consumption and excess to a simpler way of living. After recently retiring from running Interiority Complex (the successful design firm she founded in 2002), Ashley is now pursuing her dream of writing and creating art, full-time.

What does “the good life” mean to you? And how did you come to this vision?

FREEDOM. For us, the “good life” is having freedom to live our lives in a way that reflects our own personal values and passions. It’s hard to find freedom if you’re enslaved by debt and large financial commitments, or if you allow yourself to be confined by the mainstream vision of life in America. We’ve simply tried to eliminate those things that get in the way of our freedom.

We came to the vision after we visited Marfa, Texas, during an epic road trip through West Texas, where we stayed at a unique campground and vintage trailer community called El Cosmico. We absolutely loved the simple, peaceful, eco-friendly setting and were reminded of how little we actually need to be happy and comfortable. The tipping point was when we came home to our over-sized home (the “McMansion," as we call it) in the ‘burbs, and all the darn weeds had popped up after we returned. It represented the exact opposite of what we had just experienced.

So, basically, this was a weed-inspired vision. You’ll just have to read more here.

What’s the one thing you enjoy most about your lifestyle?

Having the freedom and flexibility to be able to live life on our terms and being able to go with the flow of OUR lives, not the life that the advertisers, marketers, and big for-profit companies say we should have. Running our own businesses and home schooling our son also allows us a lot of flexibility in how we choose to schedule our lives, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Is there anything at all about your life these days that you really wish you could change or improve?

I wish I could wiggle my nose and have all of the housework, laundry, cooking, and cleaning done. At this point in our journey, I’m still trying to find the balance between simplifying and being realistic (and efficient) so that I can work on activities that are fulfilling the highest and best use of my time every day.

Tom Shadyac, who has been a very inspiring person to me during this journey, says, “You cannot die without ever having told your story; you cannot die without ever having expressed who you truly are.” I firmly believe this, but sometimes find myself asking how will I ever express who I truly am if I’m stuck doing cooking and Cinderella work? (I'm exploring ways to fix this as we speak and will be writing more about it on my blog.)

Tell us a little about the work that you do.

After retiring from the interior decorating company I owned and operated for a decade, I'm now pursuing my dream of working as an artist while also serving as the creative director for the vision I have at Cosmic Acres.com. I recently moved my studio to a space shared with a cool group of emerging and established artists. The move has helped immensely so that I can focus more on “telling my story” and less on all that Cinderella work I mentioned earlier.

Describe some ways that you are involved in your community.

I’ve learned to dig deep in doing what I love instead of being spread thin in too many areas. When we made the big lifestyle change, I halted all business travel, “un-joined” several volunteer organizations, and resigned from two board positions so I could spend more time focusing on my family and on the work that I’m truly passionate about.

Last year, I was very lucky to able to go through the Texas Master Naturalist program, which helps to develop a core of volunteers who provide education, outreach, and service dedicated to the beneficial management of natural resources and natural areas within their communities. Now, I dedicate most of the volunteer time I have to that and focus specifically on activities related to youth—helping to educate the kids in our community about local natural resources and natural areas through the outdoor and nature club that I’ve helped to launch.

Additionally, we have found some wonderful new friends and neighbors in our little rural area who all share a common interest in healthy living, sustainability, building community, being responsible consumers, and living well right from where we are. Our neighbors are truly inspiring and have taught us a lot in the short time we’ve known each other. Keeping up with the Joneses takes on a whole new meaning with our lifestyle. We’ve also joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm that is in walking distance from our house, and we enjoy helping there when we can. Not only do we get high-quality organic and fresh produce, we also get to connect with other members so we can all share resources and help each other out.

Just this afternoon, the CSA farm owners, my son, and I rode over to another member’s house to check out her chicken coops, borrow a brooder set-up, and let her download her knowledge of all things chicken onto us. What a wonderful experience—Google can’t touch that!

For many, your lifestyle is considered “outside the mainstream.” Does this present any challenges, and if so, how do you deal with them?

All in all, for us, I’d say the challenges have been few. (Personally, it was far more challenging for me to live “inside the mainstream”!)

The only thing I was truly concerned about when moving from the ‘burbs to a more rural area and toward a more simplistic way of life was that we would feel isolated. I’ve found it’s quite the opposite, and we feel completely supported and blessed to be near such a lovely group of forward thinking, kindhearted, enlightened, authentic, and grounded people.

We don’t see the materialism, consumerism (unless you count the amount of feed our animals consume), gossip, and drama we saw so often in the ‘burbs. Out here, we’re more focused on when the next rainfall will be, how to make sustainable improvements to our homes and land, cooking up healthful meals for our families, and what animal we’ll be adopting into our menageries next. There’s not much time for B.S. out here.

Please describe any new skills or hobbies that you’re really excited about or that you would love to learn if you had the time and resources.

I would love to have a small medicinal herb garden and plan on starting one next year, after we have more infrastructure set up (i.e., raised beds, rainwater collection system, and a small greenhouse). Expanding on that, I’m interested in learning more about sustainability, self-sufficiency, homesteading, and how to live well right from where we are.

To satisfy my creative side, I’d love to become a better artist and writer, and to develop Cosmic Acres into a resource for inspiration for other like-minded “cosmic” chicks and mamas like myself!

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

From Byron Katie, who is one of my favorite spiritual teachers: “All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment.” This quote helps ground me when I start looking around our place and getting overwhelmed with the projects I perceive we need to complete around our place. The truth is, we have all we need in this very moment, and I’m very happy with that.

Thank you SO much for this interview, and for the opportunity to reflect on our past 18 months here at Cosmic Acres!

VIDEO: Local Entrepreneur Showcase

Wen Lee — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:51:38 -0400

An Entrepreneur Showcase — also called a Pitchfest — is a fun event that brings together local business entrepreneurs (who need funding) and community members (who want to invest in local projects).

In this video, New Dream highlights an Entrepreneur Showcase hosted by Seacoast Local in Portsmouth, NH.

The video is part of the Guide to Going Local, the second in a series of guides that New Dream is producing for our Community Action Kit. Watch for the Guide to Going Local — launching in June 2013!

About the Community Action Kit

The New Dream Community Action Kit is a creative, fun, and easy-to-use online Kit that promotes collective action and civic engagement to build more sustainable, healthier, and happier communities. The Kit consists of a series of guides to help people around the country organize and implement projects in their own neighborhoods. Each guide is divided into four “Action Idea” sections, each containing a written introduction, step-by-step tips for how to carry out that action, and a video featuring a successful community case study. The guide concludes with a listing of recommended resources and organizations.

Learn more about the Community Action Kit here. To receive the latest updates join the New Dream mailing list!

New Dreams for the Future

Wendy Philleo — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:17:57 -0400

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, as an environmentalist (or when I’m listening to other environmentalists), I come away with one of three emotions: fear, dread, or guilt. And what that does is it shuts me down. It makes me either feel bad about myself—“I’m not a good enough environmentalist,” “I’m not doing enough”—or I want to go crawl into bed and hide under the covers.

This does not make a movement. It has its place—it’s important to understand the science and to acknowledge the magnitude of the crises we face. But we also need to remain hopeful because we have to engage more and more people, and to do that we need to paint a picture of the possible. Brain science shows us that positive and attractive visualizations open our capacity for innovation and imagination. Social change emerges not only from the push of the problem, but also from the pull of the possible.

So let’s go beyond talking about green living or even saving the planet. Let’s talk about a future where, yes, we use fewer material resources, turn waste into wealth, and mimic the efficiencies of nature, but let’s also tie it to well-being. What about, as environmentalists, talking about moving toward a golden age of leisure, a golden age of creativity, of arts and culture, of community abundance, of nature and wilderness, of spiritual connectedness?

We need to take back the dialogue and tap into our traditional values—traditional values of freedom, self-reliance, community, and independence. We want to emphasize liberation, not sacrifice. We want to promote values alignment and modeling of lifestyles based on freedom— freedom from debt and work overload; self-reliance—not being dependent on the corporate marketplace and fossil fuel industry for all our needs; and community—in terms of strengthening both social relationships and economic ties between producers and consumers.

We need to flood mainstream culture with demonstrations of living better that also happen to leave a smaller footprint. Let’s start off with the positive solutions that make our lives more enjoyable and shine huge spotlights on these solutions—on people and places where change is already happening—to show that we can adjust and adapt. It’s exciting to see evidence of where transformation is happening, where people are building systems of sharing and collaborative consumption, where they are creating community energy, supporting local economies, and new ways of doing business that are sustainable for people and the planet. When we “see” the future, we can start to build it.

So we can redefine our own American dream. We can rethink what success means. What the “good life” is. What true wealth is. We can reclaim our future. Right now, our future has been hijacked by those who only talk in terms of gross domestic product and growth-at-all-costs. Essentially, a measure of raw economic output has become virtually synonymous with social progress, locking us on an unsustainable growth path and leaving us in the dark about many important dimensions of social justice, well-being, and environmental sustainability

But, at New Dream, we are seeing real opportunities for change. Below are a few trends that I’m excited about and that I believe we can build upon to have an impact on changing our consumption patterns and improving our quality of life.

Increased calls and action for new measurements of progress. Former World Bank economist Joseph Stiglitz has noted that, “what you measure affects what you do,” and if “you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.” We need to expand efforts like the Geninue Progress Indicator, the Happy Planet Index, the Human Development Index, and the Ecological Footprint, so we can share our vision of the future using different indicators that measure more of what matters to us all. New measures of progress and success can help tell us if we are moving toward the future we want. And some states are leading the way on this front, including Maryland and Utah.
Collaborative consumption, or the peer-to-peer economy—in other words, sharing. More and more people are seeing the inefficiencies of ownership: why be burdened by owning and caring for all that stuff when you can rent it, share it, or borrow it? When New Dream created our Community Guide to Sharing, we found so much innovation going on in this area. It’s about access over ownership, about paying for the benefit instead of for the product itself. It’s about reusing or reselling or regifting rather than throwing away. It’s a whole new opportunity to reimagine the American Dream from ownership toward sharing what we have, and sharing the skills we have with others to strengthen our communities.
Reskilling. Just witness the explosion of Maker Faires, “repair cafes,” and urban homesteading. The feeling of satisfaction you get from being able to grow your own food, build your own things, make your own repairs, or even generate your own energy is fundamentally energizing. Over the years, we have seen a tremendous loss of basic skills such as carpentry, sewing, and cooking from scratch, as we’ve become more reliant on the mass marketplace for just about everything. This in turn makes us less secure and more dependent, which is the burgeoning movement for self-reliance is so important. And this desire for more self-reliance and community capability cuts across ideologies: it appeals to many Americans, regardless of whom you vote for at the ballot box. This common value is something we need to build on, to help all of us build our skill sets and our community.
The local food movement. In the last decade, more than 3,000 new farmer’s markets have been created. We’ve also seen encouraging growth in strengthening local food systems. For example, in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Local Food Hub helps connects small local farmers with retailers. And while food aggregation and distribution is at the crux of the Hub’s operations, the organization does much more, focusing on farmer education, community outreach, and equal access to local food. Together, these programs support economic development, job creation, community health, and farmland preservation. In the past, small farms have been locked out of these markets because of missing infrastructure, delivery minimums, insurance requirements, and lack of time. Meanwhile, local institutions and businesses have not always been able to access a consistent supply of local fruits and vegetables. So growing the local food hub movement is key.
Relocalization more broadly. Over a decade ago, New Dream began promoting Buy Local campaigns because we were finding that more and more people want to make a meaningful connection with their local businesses. We’re seeing a shift in cultural values: in their consumer lives, people want simplicity, traceability, transparency, and participation. In May, New Dream will release its new Community Guide to “Going Local.” Going local is about placemaking, about creating a local identity, about not being “Anywhere, USA.” It’s about limiting big-box intrusion, using more local and regional resources to meet our needs, connecting investors with entrepreneurs, and connecting business owners with the communities and natural places on which they depend. It’s about investing in ourselves and our relationships to create local healthy economies. This is an opportunity to refocus the American dream toward local businesses that are the backbone of our economy.

In all of these ways, we have an opportunity to re-imagine the American Dream—to one that emphasizes community, ecological sustainability, and a celebration of non-material values. And the time to act is now. Our hyper-consumer and environmentally destructive culture takes its toll on us beyond personal dissatisfaction and dependency. It takes a toll on our communities, taking over our civic spaces and diminishing local culture. It burdens us with debt, marginalizes nature, and weakens our social capital as people socialize less and work more.

To reclaim our future, what we need now are new examples, new stories, new narratives, new role models, and new heroes to help define ourselves and provide us with alternative social realities that are plausible remedies for our own circumstances. That means we need models for change in urban settings, rural settings, surburbia. If we are to make the transition to a happier, healthier, and more sustainable, future, we need a new set of social norms across geographies and income levels.

We at New Dream want to help foster the spread of good community ideas through our Collaborative Communities program and by helping our members and others find each other locally to take action together. Stay tuned for our upcoming member meetups and new resources to help groups implement change in their own communities and cities.

As Americans, we need to have the courage to re-envision the world and then have the courage to share that vision, and to help people find the path to it. Together, we can imagine a New American Dream.

Wendy Philleo is Executive Director of the Center for a New American Dream.

Making Responsible Business a Reality: An Interview with Etsy’s Matt Stinchcomb

Lisa Mastny — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:35:36 -0400

In April 2013, New Dream spoke with Matt Stinchcomb, Vice President for Values & Impact at the online marketplace Etsy, about his efforts to make the company—and the wider business community—more ecologically, socially, and economically responsible.

You’ve worn many hats at Etsy, but your current position is to coordinate “Values and Impact” for the company. Can you describe what this means?

My work tries to address two main questions. The first is, how do we work with all teams at Etsy to ensure that the company’s mission, vision, and values are integrated into the activities that we do every day. So this means looking at everything from who we’re buying milk from to who we do business with on a larger scale. The second question is, how do we most effectively use Etsy to maximize ecological, social, and economic value in the world? As a company, we’re in the business of “doing good,” so we want to figure out how we can use our business to train other businesses to build a lasting and fulfilling world.

How did you first get involved with Etsy? Do you have a background in business or the arts?

I was the original marketing person at Etsy—the first employee after the three founders. Before that, I was in a band (The French Kicks), so it’s not like I had a professional background in web development or even marketing. A few years after being hired, I moved to Germany to help with Etsy’s international expansion, and lived there for two years. After I moved back to the U.S., I took over marketing again to head up a new team on brands and social responsibility.

I think many Etsy shoppers aren’t really aware of just how “responsible” a company Etsy is (thanks in large part to your efforts). Can you talk a little about Etsy’s work in this area?

I learned pretty early on that most of what is billed as “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) is actually pretty bogus—it involves a lot of greenwashing and trying to project a good image. We wanted to be sure that Etsy was about being a good business at its core—that is, making the business be the agent for change. Real “responsibility” is about having actual impact, not simply atoning for bad things that you do.

A big problem is that CSR often becomes a siloed function of business, with only a few designated people paying attention to this work. At Etsy, we want to make it so every person, every team in the company, is doing it. So I collaborate with a small team of four who essentially serve as internal consultants to the company. In many ways, I’ve created my dream job.

I’m new to this world in a lot of ways. Like I said, I don’t have background in working for a mission-driven business. Actually, no one at Etsy was a business person, so we didn’t really know the rules, the status quo. We just knew that a lot of times, what was supposed to be the “right” way to do something felt awful. We want to reimagine commerce, how business is done, and to serve as a model for others.

What are some steps that you are taking to achieve this vision?

Right now, we’re limited by our own time available to address this. And our personal time is complicated by the fact that, as a planet, we don’t have much time to deal with some really big issues like climate change. So one of the things we’re asking at Etsy is, how can we maximize the company’s impact in the time we do have?

For instance, we’re trying right now to convert the Etsy offices to 100 percent solar power and are in the process of getting bids for this transition. But the bigger question we’re asking is, how do we help the 1 million small businesses on Etsy become solar powered? One idea is to offer incentives, like saying, if you switch to solar, we will feature you more prominently on the site.

What are some of the challenges you face in your work?

One of the best things about working for a company like Etsy is that I don’t have to justify why “doing good” is important. I can take a lead role and don’t have to provide the financial justification for, say, avoiding paper cups. But at the same time, the company is growing—we’re at 400 people now. A lot of our employees come from more traditional backgrounds and are used to business as usual. They may not know how to implement best practices in a workplace where they don’t only have to look at the economic impact of their decisions. It goes against years of training for people, and sometimes it takes time for people to “get” our unique business culture.

Another challenge is finding scalable solutions, especially as Etsy grows. We also need to get better at collecting data, so we can really measure the impacts of the actions we take. Data is the key to everything—it makes you accountable, and it makes others take you more seriously. We need some basic baseline data, such as what is the ecological footprint of the Etsy marketplace? What’s the impact of shipping second-day air versus other ways? Through the different options we provide, we want to help shoppers choose wisely.

As a company, how far do you feel like you need to go to create change? Can you really influence every supplier and every customer?

The reality is that we can’t depend on the government for things to change, so we have to use the power of business to encourage a sense of responsibility. But we also need to make sure that, as a company, whatever we’re encouraging people to do is also the easiest path for them to take. We need to break down barriers. And often it means starting small. I’ve made this my own personal mission. I feel like I have no choice but to devote my life to having a positive impact. And I have a bigger chance with Etsy than anywhere else. I have access to 50 million people—so the question is, how can I leverage that impact?

What are some ways that you envision doing that?

One of our major projects, which will eventually spin off, is OpenImpact.org. It’s still under development, but the goal is to have a platform where businesses that are doing innovative and responsible things can teach other businesses how to do those things. It’s focused on businesses like Etsy that have a community with an aggregate audience. We’re working with a lot of mid-sized tech companies that are community based, since they tend to be run by younger, more open-minded people and have the ability to reach a lot of people. We’re also looking at B Corps that are building networks or communities

We’re finding that there are a lot of people who want to do things in a different way. But they need information, and models. Ultimately, the best thing that Etsy can do is be successful—to make money. If we can prove that we can still return value to shareholders, then we’re showing that a different way is really, truly possible. And so far, we’re doing it.

You must be really busy. How do you find time to balance work and life?

Etsy is very focused on employee well-being and has developed a lot of indices to measure this. We’ve tried really hard to instill a “guiltless” culture so that, for example, fathers feel like it’s ok to take more than two days off after their child is born. Chad, the CEO, took six weeks off when he became a father. And I have a two-year-old, and another one on the way, so we’re well aware of the challenges of balancing family and work.

I try to leave at 6 p.m. every day and not work at home, but it’s hard because life and work are so connected these days. It’s hard to be present, mindful, and not looking at your phone. There’s also the expectation that e-mail is immediate. It dictates your day—you spend most of your time responding to messages and doing other peoples’ stuff. I’m trying to start a schedule where, on Fridays, I don’t have any meetings and only check my email once in the morning and once in the evening. The rest of the day, I’ll do things like walk in the woods, go to a museum—things that create space for strategic, big-picture thinking.

I’m trying to make this alternative Friday schedule a pilot program at Etsy, involving a few people across the organization. As a test, we divided them into three groups—one group had to take an hour-long walk a day and have tea together, the second had to set goals at the beginning of the day and only complete one task at a time, and the third could only check email three times a day. The email group really freaked out, because for a lot of them email provides guidance for the day, and they weren’t always sure what they should be working on.

How is the alternative Friday approach working out for you?

The pilot program is supposed to launch this week, so I’ll let you know how it goes! For me personally, to be honest, I’ve been unable to have a meeting-less Friday yet. But I really want to do this! There’s a world of inspiration and ideas out there. I really like the idea of a four-day workweek and then one day of self-improvement. My wife and I own some land upstate, and part of me really just wants to walk in the woods all day…but I would work too!

You’ve recently joined the board of the Center for a New American Dream. What drew you to New Dream, and what role do you see the organization playing in addressing the kinds of challenges you discussed above?

[Executive Director] Wendy Philleo contacted me out of the blue last year with questions about potential partnerships between Etsy and New Dream, and I immediately wanted to find out more about what you guys are doing. One of the things I’ve been working on at Etsy is Etsy Local, the idea of having a more local push and helping to create robust local marketplaces. Outside of work, though, I’m also interested in a lot other things that New Dream works on—seed libraries, tool libraries, time banking, the new economy movement, etc. It’s a great resource for people, so I’m excited to be involved!

Matt Stinchcomb is VP of Values & Impact at Etsy. He is also a musician, a screenprinter, and a budding photographer. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and young son.

VIDEO: Organizing a Cash Mob

Wen Lee — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:44:06 -0400

Want to show support for your local neighborhood shops and restaurants? Organize a cash mob.

Cash mobs are a fun way to bring people together to support local businesses. On a set day and time, a group of community members arrive at the same time at a selected local business to shop. This brings business to the store, shows local entrepreneurs that the neighborhood values them, and allows people to gather and meet new friends.

In this video, New Dream joins a cash mob for a local shop in Roanoke, VA. Why not organize something similar in your town?

About the Community Action Kit

Learn more about the Community Action Kit here. To receive the latest updates join the New Dream mailing list!

Going Screen-Free at Home: It’s Not as Hard as You Think

Edna Rienzi — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:03:20 -0400

This April 29 through May 5, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is promoting Screen-Free Week, encouraging people to turn off their TVs, video and mobile games, and other screens that they use for entertainment. New Dream’s Edna Rienzi shares her own experiences in creating a “no-TV” family.

I don’t usually admit this to people, but my kids don’t watch much television.

I tend to keep this fact about my family quiet because I’ve found that people generally react in one of two ways: 1) they get defensive and feel the need to justify their TV choices to me, or 2) they completely dismiss me as a modern-day hippie who just doesn’t get what it means to live in the 21st century.

But I’m outing myself now because, as my kids get older, I’ve learned something that seems completely counter-intuitive: my life is actually easier these days because we have enforced strict television rules in our home.

I originally made the decision to limit TV in our home before my oldest daughter (now nine) was even born. I had come home from one of my prenatal appointments with a packet of freebies that included a parenting magazine. One of the articles quoted the American Academy of Pediatrics’s recommendation that children under two should not watch television.

At this point, I had already started to feel overwhelmed by all the shoulds and shouldn’ts of pregnancy and parenting (Don’t eat deli meats! Read to your baby in utero! Pick a sleep strategy. Get your newborn on a feeding schedule! Feed on demand!) There were so many decisions that you were supposed to have an opinion about, and every issue seemed to have very vocal parenting camps on opposing sides. But the rule “no TV under two” seemed like an easy, straightforward piece of advice to follow (and it was given by doctors!), so I clipped out the article and filed it away.

Then my daughter was born, and my life turned inside out. Suddenly it felt like I didn’t have a minute to myself. After a few months of struggling to get through my days, I started asking friends and family how they managed to take a shower. Or cook dinner. Or stay sane. Several people encouraged me to get Baby Einstein videos and a bouncy seat. So I did, and I tried it for about a week. And it scared me.

It was so tempting to just sit my daughter quietly in front of the TV. Just one more email, I would tell myself. It’s educational, right? But I knew I was rationalizing. And I was really alarmed at how hard it was for me to pull her away from the screen. So we got rid of the videos, and tried again.

At that point, it was the TV habit (both for her and for me) that worried me more than anything. I don’t have a problem with all TV—in fact, there are shows that I absolutely love. And there have been shows that have really and truly been educational for our whole family (if you haven’t seen the Life series from the Discovery Channel, you should check it out!).

But, as Stephen Covey writes in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: "There is so much good on TV—good information and enjoyable, uplifting entertainment. But for most of us and for our families, the reality is more like digging a lovely tossed salad out of the garbage dump. There may be some great salad there, but it’s pretty hard to separate the trash, the dirt, and the flies.”

And even if all TV were good, enjoyable, and uplifting, you still have to consider the tradeoffs. As Covey points out, it would take an “enormous amount of benefit from television to trade off the time that could be spent with family members learning, loving, working, and sharing together.”

Different times, different influences

I grew up with the TV habit, and I first noticed its impact when I was in college. I had a couple of roommates who had grown up with very limited television time, and they both had such fun hobbies and interests. (My greatest talent at the time may have been my ability to sing the theme songs from shows as varied as “The Facts of Life” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”) And their approach to relaxation was so different from mine. When we finished exams, I would plunk down in front of the TV and just zone out—whereas they would make art, read, go for a run, call friends…. it just didn’t occur to them to relax in front of the television. And the truth is, I didn’t actually feel relaxed after vegging out in front of the TV—I felt sort of numb and weary, whereas they seemed energized.

All that being said, my childhood TV habit pales in comparison with those of today. When I was growing up, there were only certain times of the day that had programming for kids: Saturday morning cartoons and prime-time sitcoms, with the occasional after-school special. Outside of that, I spent most of my free time outdoors, playing games and riding bikes. And I read for hours every day.

I’m so grateful I didn’t grow up today, when a kid can always find something to watch on TV, because I’m certain that, instead of a childhood filled with books, I would have succumbed to the lure of the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon.

These days, children between the ages of 2 and 5 watch an average of 32 hours of television a week, or over 4.5 hours a day! And it gets far worse as kids get older. Today’s 8-to-18 year olds spend an average of seven hours and 38 minutes a day using media entertainment, such as TV, social networking sites, electronic music players, and video games. (And that doesn’t include texting, which adds an additional hour and 35 minutes to the schedule!)

The ad trap

When my daughter turned two, I reconsidered my strict no-TV rule. At that point, I realized that it wasn’t just the TV habit that scared me; it was also the messages that advertisers were promoting. The average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements a day! And most of these ads are designed to make us feel badly about ourselves.

As Brené Brown points out in I Thought It Was Just Me: “If we don’t believe we’re too fat, ugly, and old, then they don’t sell their products. If they don’t sell their products, they don’t make their house payments. The pressure is on!” And what’s the impact of these appearance expectations? Approximately 7 million girls and women in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder. Eighty percent of 13-year-old girls have tried to lose weight. Fifty percent of girls between the ages of 11 and 13 view themselves as overweight.

Advertisers have discovered fairly recently that younger kids are a gold mine—and they’re going after them. So not only are new toys and cereals and gadgets being developed and marketed constantly to kids, but so are products that were previously targeted only at adults.

Christine Carter with the Greater Good Science Center had an interesting piece in The Huffington Post about the fact that Victoria’s Secret is now targeting teens and tweens with their “Bright Young Things” campaign. At a recent fashion show, they hired Justin Bieber to perform while supermodels strutted around him, dressed as scantily clad toys!

I now have three daughters, and the statistics on eating disorders worry me. So I work really hard to model positive body image behavior. When I talk about food, I always focus on health rather than weight. I never put myself down (in front of them, at least) about my appearance. And we always emphasize that it’s the inside of a person that counts.

Does that mean that they’re completely unaware of the appearance expectations out there? No, because as Brown points out, “[t]rying to avoid media messages is like holding your breath to avoid air pollution—it’s not going to happen.” But I have managed to fight back against the powerful, billion-dollar beauty industries. By not letting my kids watch TV (other than our family movie night), the advertisers are not permitted to enter my house with their damaging messages and images edited for perfection.

By turning off the television, we have asserted primary control over the harmful messages that will reach our kids. I know it’s just a matter of time before one of my girls hears school friends complain about being fat and having to go on a diet. But I’m hoping that, when this occurs, my daughters will have such a strong belief in what it really means to be healthy and beautiful that these appearance expectations will just roll right off their backs.

And, of course, the advertising problem is not just about appearance expectations. It’s also about a constant stream of messaging regarding the latest and greatest toy, accessory, or gadget that you MUST OWN immediately. What kid doesn’t get the “gimmies” after being exposed to these slick, well-produced commercials (which often tie into the very show that they’re watching)? Again, I don’t have to deal with the gimmies as much because we don’t permit commercials in our home.

Taking the leap: My family’s strategy

I know a lot of you reading this might feel scared, because you obviously want to protect your children but you also don’t want to give up the convenience of having a babysitter on demand. I completely understand that. But here’s what my experience has been: kids whose screen time is limited become extremely good at entertaining themselves. For one thing, every kid I know whose family enforces strict TV rules is an excellent reader. Why? Because when you’re bored and you’re not allowed to flip on the TV or computer, you’ll pick up a book.

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal in 2010 called “How to Raise Boys That Read,” which referred to a study about the effects of video games on academic ability. The study found, not surprisingly, that boys who had video games at home spent more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffered substantially. The article concludes that the “secret to raising boys who read…is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.”

In addition to filling my shelves with good books and taking weekly trips to the library, we have a closet of art supplies. We keep paper and crayons visible and easily accessible in the kitchen. We have lots of great board games and puzzles. We have a piano and a basket of instruments. At times, my kids need me to be more involved than I would be if I just let them turn on the TV, but as they get older, my involvement gets less and less. The truth is that the hardest time for us to enforce the strict screen rules was when my daughters were toddlers.

In Mitten Strings for God, Katrina Kenison describes how difficult it was for her and her family when they first decided to give up TV: "I especially hated losing that sacred viewing hour between 5 and 6 p.m., the hour when my tired, cranky children were happy to flop down in front of the television while their tired mother got dinner made and on the table. Jack was two at the time, the age at which if he was not watching TV, then I had to be watching him."

I remember reading that passage and feeling relieved that I wasn’t the only one struggling with the no-TV rules. And I was very inspired by her solution: she put her five-year-old to work and stuck her two-year-old in the sink and told him he was “washing dishes.” As she observes, “[i]t still required more of me, but I got something back, too—happy times with my children.” And over time, she found that it got easier.

Although I didn’t end up sticking any of my children in the sink, I did come up with activities that I pulled out only during the pre-dinner craziness. Play-Doh was very popular because my kids often would pretend that they were cooking whatever I was cooking. We also got a little kitchen playset that we put in our kitchen, and ironically, as they got older, they would often pretend to host their own cooking shows while I cooked.

Limiting TV time

As I mentioned before, we do watch a little bit of television. Every weekend, we let our kids take turns picking a Friday “family” movie. I say “family” because sometimes my youngest picks something that my oldest absolutely does not want to watch, so she watches something else later with me or her dad. Or, one of my older kids picks something that is not age-appropriate for the little one, so we don’t all watch together.

Sometimes it’s a movie that we own. Sometimes it’s a movie from the library. Sometimes we watch something on demand or that we’ve recorded on DVR. The requirements are that the movie has to be something that my husband and I consider age-appropriate, and there can’t be any commercials. So lately, that has meant that either my husband or I has to sit through the 20th screening of the recorded McKenna American Girl movie so one of us can forward through the commercials.

We’ve chosen this route for two reasons. First, I was worried that if we banned television completely, it would seem like a forbidden fruit and, as they got older, they would want to sneak away to friends’ houses to watch. Second, I was worried that they would often feel left out with their friends if we didn’t expose them to at least a bit of television. And, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t think all television is bad. There are so many wonderful movies and shows that we really want to share with our kids.

This strategy has worked for us, but I’ve heard many other parents talk about different strategies that they have found successful. I know one family that lets their kids watch a pre-approved show or movie (with no commercials) for one hour every night as they get dinner ready. I know another family that lets their kids watch as much TV as they want as long as they pick a movie from their very small collection. Because the collection is so limited, the kids don’t often indulge in long TV-watching marathons. I’ve heard of another family that got rid of the TV completely (they told their kids it was broken), and they couldn’t be happier.

You have to find what works for you and your family. And the truth is that, if your kids are older and have already acquired a TV habit, setting screen limits will be very difficult at first. And you’ll probably have to commit to spending much more time with them than you usually do. But, as the habit diminishes and your children adjust to finding and creating new forms of entertainment, I think you’ll find, as I have, that parenting becomes both simpler and more enjoyable.

For great resources on how to unplug the television in your home, including a toolkit and action guides, visit the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

Edna Rienzi is a former lawyer, current mom of three, and volunteer with the Center for a New American Dream.