Can a City Be Compassionate?

By Timothy Beatley

Mayor Greg Fischer believes so — and he's made it a defining goal for Louisville, Kentucky. As a new mayor coming from a business background, Fischer saw the importance of putting values front and center, and compassion is in line with what he wants to accomplish. Now in his third term, compassion has become the centerpiece of his vision for the city.

He defines compassion as "respect for each of our citizens so that their full human potential is flourishing." Empathy is not enough, he says; compassion is a more active word and implies putting values into practice. It also has to do with equity and interdependence, a deep sense of fairness, and an acknowledgment of how intertwined all living things in a city are.

"It is much more difficult for everyone in the city to see the interdependence they have on each other," Fischer says. "They may not look the same, they may live in different parts of town, [have] different economic situations, but we're all interconnected in terms of our common fate."

This is a different view of cities than we often see. Cities are places where individual achievements and excessive competition usually prevail — that image of the elbowing, bustling city comes to mind, where everyone is out for themselves, trying to get ahead, with little consideration for each other or their environment. Instead, Louisville is putting a priority on "kindness, compassion, love," Fischer says.

The city has pledged its commitment to these ideals by affirming The Compassion Charter, a succinct but powerful four-paragraph document that impels us to "always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves," "work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures," refrain from "inflicting pain," and "transcend selfishness." More than two million people and over 70 cities, including Rotterdam, Cape Town, Tucson, and Denver, have affirmed the charter, but few cities have so successfully translated its words into policy, planning, and environmental action as Louisville.

Three girls help spread mulch in the yard of their day care facility as part of the Mayor's Give A Day Week of Service in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo by Maggie Huber.

Reshaping the culture

As mayor, it's Fischer's job to help shape the culture of the city, which he describes as "the most powerful thing a mayor can do." He describes his work fostering compassion as a form of "social innovation."

One way that manifests is through the Mayor's Give A Day Week of Service, a week in April when citizens are challenged to volunteer and help out in a variety of different ways. There are community trash cleanups, tree plantings, and collection of food. Volunteers help paint and rehab houses, build beds, and even construct "little libraries" for neighborhoods that need them. Last year, some 205,000 volunteers participated — about one-quarter of Louisville's population. Fischer tells me this is a record.

Compassion also influences policy in Louisville, from affordable housing and homelessness to health care. Education has been a special focus. The city's Compassionate Schools Initiative, which involves 25 public elementary schools, is introducing and testing a new curriculum that emphasizes social and emotional wellness and mindfulness.

Cultivating compassion through nature

Learning about nature and connecting with the natural world is itself a way to cultivate empathy and compassion. Recent time spent at the Chattahoochie Hills Charter School, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, demonstrated that for me.

I spoke with teachers and students about how this school works. It is not a single large school building but organized as a series of smaller structures (two classrooms per building), designed so that kids move between and around the buildings. Kids come prepared with coats and boots to spend time outside and take their math or science assignments to the nearby woods. There are farm animals and food production gardens, leaving many young students with aspirations of becoming farmers when they grow up. According to the principal, the respect students learn for nature carries over to respect for each other.

I was therefore especially interested to hear how Fischer's agenda of compassion might connect to Louisville's agendas of environment and sustainability. After all, how we coinhabit and share spaces with urban flora and fauna must surely be about compassion.

According to Fischer, Louisville has taken innovative steps through its lens of compassion to overcome inequalities in the city through "environmental medicine." There are dramatic differences in the life expectancies of residents — a difference of 12 years, he tells me — between the leafiest neighborhoods and those without much nature. To better understand the distribution and impact of air pollution, the city created a unique program called Air Louisville 2014. More than 1,000 volunteers agreed to have their inhalers monitored and geo-tracked with sensors that collected information on air quality. The city is now using the study to steer tree plantings to its neighborhoods most in need of a green canopy.

The University of Louisville is helping with this effort through a new program called Green Heart, which investigates the impacts of tree planting on the health of underserved neighborhoods in the city. This project, Fischer tells me, will clearly "demonstrate how dense, vegetative medicine can make people healthier."

In the future, the mayor wants to use trees and nature to more effectively tackle the city's growing urban heat problem. And he has just launched an initiative called Lean into Louisville, designed to confront discrimination and bias in the city.

For Fischer, the city ought to be understood as a laboratory, as a venue for experimentation in what compassion can do for all residents.

"The city is a platform for human potential to flourish," he says.

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities project.