The OMF SMART Curb Collaborative met in Cambridge last week with the 90+ other grantees of the USDOT’s SMART Grants program. The OMF was grateful to join the SMART Summit and share reflections from the two-day convening.
Here are some of our biggest takeaways from meeting with the Curb Collaborative in Cambridge last week:
Former Indianapolis mayor and current Derek Bok Professor of the Practice of Urban Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Stephen Goldsmith
1. Effective change management is an essential part of local civic innovation.
SMART Curb Collaborative members welcomed a presentation and discussion led by PBOT’s Art Pearce and with additions from Curb Collaborative partner Stephen Goldsmith on change management in city government. Collaborative members were encouraged to consider all of the ways they might gain buy-in for curb projects within city government, from building up relationships with the procurement department (hint: sharing cookies never hurts) to ensuring elected officials are given ample opportunity to learn about curb policy and the valuable outcomes of the effort right from the beginning. Change management at any level can be hard, but the Collaborative cities know they have a network of peers they can rely on as they push ahead.
2. Building a curb inventory is just one step. Maintenance and accuracy is another.
Many of the SMART Curb Collaborative projects involve creating a digital inventory of curbs by identifying the regulations and policies present in every zone of the street. The end goal is to make this digital inventory available to curb users and create more dynamic policies and pricing. Many of the Collaborative members have started this process of identifying and digitizing the curb in their pilot area. Yet this first step is just a snapshot in time and presents the question: how do you keep a curb inventory up to date? And how do you ensure that the inventory you do have is actually accurate? Both steps of repeatedly validating and updating the inventory take a significant amount of time — and are far more costly and labor intensive than the initial inventory. There is no easy answer or silver bullet: the Collaborative members expect to continue sharing ways their cities plan to approach keeping their inventories up to date.
3. Cities have unique opportunities and challenges in implementing federal grants
USDOT SMART Grants are awarded to cities, counties and states. Most of the SMART Curb Collaborative members are cities, with the exception of Miami-Dade County. The bulk of the other FY 22’ and FY 23’ awardees are not cities, however. State agencies have their advantages: they can be better prepared to receive federal grants as it’s a more common and established process in state government. Yet cities have advantages, too: because of their local level, each of the SMART Curb cities have developed and started significant community outreach to bring key local partners into their projects. Technology and infrastructure is only a fraction of the work that the Collaborative cities are working on: bringing neighbors, business owners and local delivery companies together is a huge part of their projects.
The Collaborative will meet next in the fall. Before then, several cities are considering their applications for the Round 2 SMART NOFO and the ways they can scale their pilot projects with this next, larger round of funding.
Members of the SMART Curb Collaborative in Cambridge, July 2024.
Learn more
If you want ot learn more about the SMART Curb Collaborative and the lessons the members are learning about civic innovation at the local level, join us in LA in November for the OMF Summit. Get your early bird tickets now for the OMF’s one-day event.
Curb Collaborative members from Portland, Boston, Seattle and Miami socialize during the SMART Summit.
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