The Sister Cities Project: A Catalyst for Societal Change
Sep 26, 2023Season 2Episode 15
Booked on Planning
In this months article episode we're taking a deep dive into the transformative Sister Cities Project. The brainchild of Sean McClondon, this groundbreaking initiative began with a straightforward social media post and has since grown into a powerful platform that breaks down racial divides, fostering tolerance and unity.
Turn up the volume as we dissect the Sister Cities Project and its profound impact on San Diego County. From its roots in the 9th-century sister city concept, we explore how cultural understanding and strategic connections have been fostered between the affluent and the underserved within the same region. We also unpack how this unique approach can be replicated in our own communities. Whether it's the Block Twins project or potential neighborhood-level sister cities initiatives, this episode is a testament to the power of a single idea to spark meaningful conversations and drive significant societal change.
In this months article episode we're taking a deep dive into the transformative Sister Cities Project. The brainchild of Sean McClondon, this groundbreaking initiative began with a straightforward social media post and has since grown into a powerful platform that breaks down racial divides, fostering tolerance and unity.
Turn up the volume as we dissect the Sister Cities Project and its profound impact on San Diego County. From its roots in the 9th-century sister city concept, we explore how cultural understanding and strategic connections have been fostered between the affluent and the underserved within the same region. We also unpack how this unique approach can be replicated in our own communities. Whether it's the Block Twins project or potential neighborhood-level sister cities initiatives, this episode is a testament to the power of a single idea to spark meaningful conversations and drive significant societal change.
You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, Bookworms, to another episode of Booked On Planning. Earlier this month we talked with author Leah Rostin on her book, Just Action, a follow-up to Color of Law, written by her father. In that episode Leah mentions their sub-stack, a regular column that updates, elaborates on and comments on the issues discussed in Just Action. So for this month's article episode we picked one of the many great articles that Leah has written to discuss, called Introducing the Sister Cities Project, creating connections between segregated communities in San Diego County. Like the Block Twins project that we discussed in the episode with Leah, the Sister Cities project was designed to break down racial divides by introducing residents of affluent and underserved areas of the same region.
Jennifer Hiatt:
The concept of a sister city has origins dating back to the 9th century, but the modern idea around sister cities came about after World War II. After Coventry in the UK was bombed during the Coventry Blitz on November 14, 1940, coventry's mayor, alfred Robert Grindley, reached out to Stalingrad, now Volgograd, as a way of creating links between cities and allied countries that also experienced devastating attacks. Sister city links now sprawl across the globe, creating pathways for cultural understanding and strategic diplomatic connections.
Stephanie Rouse:
You know that's interesting as we're reading the article I didn't think about how sister cities are actually a very common thing today, that Lincoln, Nebraska, has a sister city. It's like written in the airport when you leave, otherwise we don't talk about it. So it's kind of easy to overlook the fact that there are so many sister cities out there.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I actually wasn't entirely sure what the article would be about. I was thinking about the sister city concept. When I was growing up, my teeny tiny town also made the connection to a sister city, and it was so that we could learn cultural divides, and so I was trying to think of how, in this article, how the neighborhoods would come together. So that's what made me think about including the history of it.
Stephanie Rouse:
Yeah, and so the idea for the sister cities in this article sprang from Sean McClondon, who just put a message out on the neighborhood social media page saying if anyone wants to get to know someone who's black, wants to talk to someone who's black and just be friends, contact me. So that was very interesting and putting himself out there, which is really you don't see a lot of that, and he really created some meaningful relationships from this, which led him to create the sister cities project, starting with Solona Beach, a high income white city and a low income predominantly African American and Latino community that was to the Southeast. It started with personal contacts and groups working to advance social justice.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I think it's a fascinating way to utilize the idea of a sister city. The original concept was to bring communities who had experienced similar situations together and provide support as a community recovered and learn from each other successes and mistakes, but here McClondon turns the idea on its head and brings together communities that have almost nothing in common in order to promote familiarity and, ultimately, tolerance. As he said, we tend to live in our silos, making it difficult to understand and empathize with one another.
Stephanie Rouse:
This article really highlights the need and benefit of getting out of our silos to learn about how others live and experience our communities. I think it can be really easy to keep to our own networks because it can be hard to know where to even start. I think of where I live here in Lincoln, and while we don't have like metro area like San Diego to start a sister cities project, we could easily do it at the neighborhood level, much like block twins projects that paired residents of the same address one address on the north, one address on the south to meet and learn about each other's neighborhoods. As the article shows, all it takes is one person with an idea to get the conversation started.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I actually think that that's like what struck me the most about reading both just action and this article. So many of these changes have started just because one person who wanted to make a change in their community. Of course, just action provides examples of what governments and institutions at all levels can do to make changes as well, but so many of the success stories are just one person or small group of people recognizing a need and taking action to be the change that they wanted to see.
Stephanie Rouse:
And we really highlight that in the episode with Leah she talks about activists are really who should start this work, that it shouldn't be coming from top down government level. I found the program structure really interesting. The ego exchanges are where the residents learn about each other and discuss issues impacting their communities. And then there's an ego hub that supports African American female entrepreneurs, connecting them with support, training and mentorship from residents in the affluent partner city. And then, last, the ego agency is a job training program in digital marketing for youth in the disadvantaged community. So the program goes beyond just having conversations and educating white residents about the racial disparities that exist and really provides opportunities to resources and connections.
Jennifer Hiatt:
The echo collective here in Lincoln provides similar support to refugee immigrant women as the ego hub provides to African American women. I think it would be really interesting to see if echo collective could be a launching spot to have similar conversations and educational opportunities in Lincoln. We are a much smaller community, of course, but it's still difficult to break out of our social circles.
Stephanie Rouse:
That's a really good idea to look at different organizations that are already there and use those maybe as a structure to start a project like this, versus just going out and building from the ground up. So another example of the benefits of such a program was when there was a vote in the county to raise fares on the commuter rail. That would greatly impact the residents in the lower income areas of the county. The new group united their voices and spoke out against the increase. And often in public and meetings we don't hear from the people that are most impacted because they don't have the opportunity to attend our public meetings. But when we have groups that represent a wide variety of backgrounds, representatives that have more time and the opportunity to attend these meetings can really advocate on their behalf.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I think that this might be one of the most important takeaways from the articles and from just action. When we understand other people's needs and points of view, we can do a better job of advocating for the needs of everyone. I hate to say it, but political power is so important and I wish it wasn't so vital to community and economic success, but the reality is that it is, and most of that power is held by the more affluent members in our society. It is vital that we keep creating these points of contact that empower all members of a community to speak out against every kind of injustice.
Stephanie Rouse:
Very well said. When I was reading this article and through the episode with Leah and reading Just Action, I started thinking about who my block twin would be and I was a little bummed actually, because I live on an east west street and the west version of my address lands in the middle of a city park and I attempted to kind of translate what the east west version of my address would be if I went north and it wasn't an industrial park. But we do have a very fairly good grid system in the older parts of our city that would work really well for this type of project using north south street addresses. But I also thought at the neighborhood level it would be really neat to maybe pair some of our low income neighborhoods with more affluent ones, like our country club neighborhood with our Clinton neighborhood.
Jennifer Hiatt:
Because we can't help who we are. I also looked up my block twin after the conversation. I live actually on like this really weird, strange diagonal. It is a North South road but it's not going to have a comparison address. But my next door neighbor lives on a true North South, so I use their address and, as you said, Lincoln is kind of split North South, with the South part of town being the newer, more affluent area and overall I live almost smack in the middle. But it's technically a South address and I actually have to admit I almost never go to the North side of town, Do you Not as much as I?
Stephanie Rouse:
probably should.
Jennifer Hiatt:
Yes, same, and so I was surprised to see that, even though the twin address would be really in the heart of our city, there were actually some unpaved and minimally maintained roads on the North side of town for my map twin, so that was kind of disappointing. But I actually agree and think that your idea of partnering with the neighborhoods to neighborhood might be a better way of starting a conversation here.
Stephanie Rouse:
Yeah, especially because in Lincoln we have such a strong neighborhood network of neighborhood organizations and the neighborhood representatives from each neighborhood organization meet every month, so it would seem to be an easy project to get up and running.
Stephanie Rouse:
So one difference between the Black twins and the sister cities project is the way people became involved. So for the Black twins, the artist organizing the project reached out to the residents and paired homes and asked for participation, getting a pretty high rate of participants and involving residents that may not be involved in social justice work, but through the program they learned quite a bit about how others live and how others were living in their neighborhood. The sister cities project, on the other hand, recruited people interested in making positive changes in their community and already are participating in social justice advocacy work. While I'm sure they still learn from others in the project and help make connections and mentor young entrepreneurs, they were already pretty open minded and supportive of making positive changes. I think both are great and worthwhile projects to replicate, but it feels like projects like the Black twins that recruit people that may not have been actively looking for ways to help, is just a little more impactful because it changes minds and helps kind of break down barriers.
Jennifer Hiatt:
That was a really excellent point that I did not take away, and so I appreciate you pointing it out. You're right, the idea of reaching out to people who were just living their lives and now are open to making a change is pretty awesome. We hope you enjoyed this article episode on introducing the sister cities project creating connections between segregated communities in San Diego County. If you want to download a copy, head to the link in our notes and search using the article title.
Stephanie Rouse:
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