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Festival of Neighborhoods, Talk of Community

By Staff | October 21, 2018 Newswire

If you haven’t been to Asheville in a while, GO.

Besides its beautiful natural setting, the city has experienced a renaissance in the last several decades, as travelers, retirees and those looking for a more Appalachian pace of life trickle in from around the world.

Walk the streets of the city’s Art Deco downtown, and Asheville’s energy jumps at you. Everywhere, niche shops selling everything from artisan honey to tattoos fill with boisterous patrons.

But there’s another side to this growth, because population growth brings benefits but also challenges, such as infrastructure keeping up with development and a rising cost of living.

Then there’s the intangibles—as North Carolina cities like Asheville grow so quickly, how do they keep their community spirit?

Does it get harder to come together with your neighbors when you don’t know as many of them any more?

We’ll talk about questions like that at our upcoming civic engagement forum ReCONNECT to Community, being held in Asheville Nov. 27, the first of six forums in our ReCONNECT NC series, being held throughout the state over the next three years, each focusing on a different aspect of civic, social and economic “reconnection.”

Some of these same questions were also addressed at the Festival of Neighborhoods, an event held in Asheville Oct. 27 by the City of Asheville.

“It’s really good for people to be able to meet their representatives,” Asheville’s Neighborhood & Community Engagement Manager Brenda Mills said during the festival, where attendees could meet a number of community officials from the cities’ various departments, such as planning, public safety and police. From questions about in-fill development to roads to keeping up with development, the attendees’ event questions didn’t surprise Mills. She hears questions like that every day.

In fact, city officials across North Carolina hear questions like that every single day, as the Tar Heel state continues to boom with growth. Asheville is no exception. The Appalachian city’s population has grown from 54,022 in 1980 to 89,121 today.

What better place to hold our forum ReCONNECT to Community, in which we’ll hear speakers like New York Times columnist David Brooks, community leader Tru Pettigrew and UNC Asheville history professor Darin Waters talk not just about civic engagement as a whole, but the specific challenges of building community in a growing, fast-changing state.

We’ll also have five community initiatives (including Asheville City Schools Foundation!) telling their stories of how they’re increasing civic engagement in their neck of the woods.

REGISTER NOW for the forum at emergingissues.org!

Published in Newswire.
Tags: Civic Engagement, ReCONNECT to Community, Western NC

IEI First in Future: Lucy Russell, Institute of Politics Five Communities: Rural Opportunity Institute

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David Brooks is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, a position he began in September 2003, as well as an Executive Director at the Aspen Institute. He is currently a commentator on “The PBS Newshour,” NPR’s “All Things Considered” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He is the author of “Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There” and “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.” In April of 2015 he came out with his fourth book, “The Road to Character,” which was a number 1 New York Times bestseller. Mr. Brooks also teaches at Yale University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Dr. Darin J. Waters is the Executive Director of the Office of Community Engagement, and an Associate Professor of History at UNC Asheville in Asheville, North Carolina. As a professor, Dr. Waters teaches courses in American history, North Carolina History, Appalachian History, African American and Brazilian History. He also specializes in the history of race relations in both the United States and Latin America. In his role as the Executive Director of the UNC Asheville Office of Community Engagement, Waters works closely with campus and community leaders, representing an array of community-based organizations, to strengthen and build new partnerships for and with the university.

Waters is the co-host of The Waters and Harvey Show on Blue Ridge Public Radio. He currently serves as a member of The North Carolina Historic Markers Commission, the board of the National Blue Ridge Heritage Area, the board of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial of Historic Asheville, and the North Carolina Civil War History Center. Find out more about his work at darinwaters.com.

Mary Lou Addor serves as the NC Sentinel Landscapes Partnership & Adjunct Assistant Professor out of NC State University. Addor is a leader in the areas of leadership and professional development, facilitation and public participation, conflict management, team building, negotiation and coaching. She is the former director of the Natural Resources Leadership Institute. She is concerned with the ongoing, systematic process of implementing effective organizational change.