USC Policy School Adopts New Mission Statement: Governance, Planning & Development Inseparable

The USC School of Policy Planning and Development has approved a new mission statement. Could you elaborate on it's wording, as well as on how the Los Angeles region's policy challenges and needs may have informed the school's priorities?

Our new mission is an expression of our strongly held view that today's challenges of policymaking and governance, planning and development, are inseparable. We believe viewing them in this manner is necessary if we are to address the central questions of how we govern ourselves in pursuit of a more sustainable, secure, and satisfying quality of life--in our community, within our nation, and in a rapidly globalizing world. Many of the questions this raises are not new – indeed, they are perennial – for our fields of public administration and public policy, planning, and development, but do require new ways of thinking about and addressing them.

In seeking solutions to major social and economic problems, we emphasize the uniqueness of individual places, and being cognizant of all variety of communities. No one size fits all today, if it ever did. Los Angeles and California are our living laboratories in this inquiry, though the issues raised and solutions sought are equally important in developed and developing nations around the world. In considering the economic evolution of Los Angeles, which you ask about specifically, Los Angeles, like megacities elsewhere, will prosper economically only by embracing changes in governance, policymaking, and planning across the three sectors, and in doing so investing in the education, social, and physical needs of the region, and attracting leaders equal to the task.

Can you elaborate on the rationale behind the specific language included in the new SPPD mission statement?

The most succinct statement of the new school's mission is that we are focused on "governance, place and community, in a worldwide context". Why do we say this? We use this language because "governance" reaches beyond the institutions of government and public administration to the networks of non-profit and for-profit organizations that are involved in everyday planning, policy making and implementation of public policy. It suggests that we need to rethink our institutions of government and, for example, in Los Angles and Southern California, we need to think about governance in terms of regional strategies commensurate with the regional scale of our problems.

We talk about a great deal about "place" and "place-based", and that comes from the growing appreciation of the ways in which planning and policymaking take into account the distinctive physical, cultural and economic characteristics of our communities in California. We need to weave together these dimensions, the emphasis on governance and the appreciation of place, to address the challenges we are facing today. That's a normative statement, as well as a practical statement. For instance, I know that you, David, have been deeply involved with the New Schools Better Neighborhoods initative. In bringing together stakeholders across sectors to improve conditions for specific schools and neighborhoods, that program weaves governance and place together into the kind of approach that is needed. And we need to do this with a clear view of how like issues are being addressed in other places like ours, if you will, in a worldwide context.

Why the need for a new mission statement, Dean? Why is the school engaged in repositioning itself?

USC is determined to behave strategically and position itself at the leading edge of higher education and societal change. Seven years ago, the School of Public Administration, which included public policy and health care administration, combined with the School of Urban Planning and Development, to form the new School of Policy, Planning, and Development. This gave us the opportunity to behave strategically, to think about governance not government, to focus on place and community as inseparable, not separate planning and development. We take as our starting point urban needs and the challenges facing our community and society, and do so in with interdisciplinary perspective.

USC is now the largest private employer in Los Angeles. Address please, the university's role, and the role of SPPD within it, in relation to a civic leadership role in metropolitan Los Angeles.

Over the last fifteen years, USC has made a concerted effort to participate collaboratively with our neighbors and the city. This is one of the continuing hallmarks of all three of the USC strategic plans over this period, that call for effectively translating our rhetoric (about working together with others in the city) into practice as members of the community. One outstanding example that comes to mind is the USC Good Neighbors program, which is the largest voluntary giving activity by the staff and faculty of USC, and is unique across higher education. It's our own mini United Way, if you will, through which this year the faculty and staff gave $800,000 that will be awarded to community groups collaborating with USC students and programs for the betterment of our neighborhood. Particular attention is paid to the education needs of the children in our surrounding schools.

Also, in SPPD, our students are one of our major bridges to the community, linking the lessons of the classroom to their work in the community. They do this through their jobs, their internships and residencies, and in turn, bring back new knowledge and insight about the challenges they see and the potential solutions for addressing them. Likewise, most all of our faculty research is solutions-oriented and involves involvement in, and engagement with, the community.

You, as Dean, have been working with Sunny McPeak, the Governor's Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing to inform transportation and housing policy. Could you address the role that academic deans, professors and universities now -- and could -- play in helping the state and our region to meet the growth challenges confronting California's infrastructure?

What I have been doing and I believe what we try to do collectively as members of the university community is add insights and information to the conversation about regionalism by bringing the best available research to the discussion. We contribute this information and hopefully exercise impartiality when assessing ideas and programs. This is one important way that the university gives back to the community.

As for my involvement with the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, I am the chair of the Mobility and Transportation Panel that Secretary Sunnie McPeak convened eighteen months ago. We just had a meeting in Sacramento at which all the partners in B, T&H reported on their performance-management initiatives. I was impressed with the efforts being made by the several BT&H departments in attempting become more effective and efficient through performance-based management. It remains to be seen if, in addition, they also become truly innovative, business-like enterprises. These efforts aren't always discernible to the public eye but they will become more so as the departments, together with the outside advisors, continue developing meaningful and readily understandable metrics of success. I see significant strides being made during extraordinarily difficult political and financial times.

In closing, you have announced that you are stepping down this summer as SPPD's Dean and taking over the leadership of the new Bedrosian Center on Governance at USC, a Center which will focus on civic participation and engagement. How do anticipate the Bedrosian Center addressing governance given that the public appears to have lost confidence in our public institutions and is quite cynical about politics?

Let me first speak to your point about public confidence, using B,T&H as an example. I think that the participants on the experts panel agree that there is a healthy degree of skepticism about government performance. This in part is why the only viable strategy for dealing with public sector performance is to develop genuine benchmarks for agencies and departments that will allow experts and citizens alike to view their activities in comparison with others across the United States and internationally. We need something against which to judge the performance of our public agencies. The effort underway in BT&H is not about just internal improvement; it's about improving performance.

That said, let me turn to the Judith and John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise. I want to emphasize that the name of the center includes both "governance" and "public enterprise." As we look into the 21st century, it's not clear whether government will continue to take the same form that it has had in the 20th century. New networks, collaboration across sectors, and more innovative and organic forms of government are emerging. We want to understand this transformation. The center will be a place where one can assess the performance of networks against, for instance, traditional government institutions in solving problems.

We will focus attention on the overarching architectural and design of our state's institutions of democratic representation and administration. The state's institutions were fashioned in the early 20th century according to the Progressive model, which served at that time to reduce corruption and address the needs for expertise in order to manage large systems. Now we need to think about governance in terms of new technology and the global world that we have entered, while remaining firm in the belief that democracy requires continual participation and involvement of all the members of society.