Gigabit Broadband for the Urban Poor

Something interesting is happening in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. 

Cleveland is home to world-class universities and the Cleveland Clinic, one of America's most innovative hospitals.  In 2006, we named Cleveland as one of our Top Seven Intelligent Communities, and we honored it again in 2008 among the four cities that make up Northeast Ohio.  

But Cleveland also has the second highest poverty rate among US cities, just behind the automotive capital of Detroit.  Half a century ago, it was one of the engines of America's industrial prosperity.  John D. Rockefeller made his first fortune there.  But when American manufacturing lost its competitive edge in the Seventies and Eighties, the economy went south.  The descendents of that generation of entrepreneurs took their inheritances and moved to the suburbs.  Despite the hard work of a lot of people since then, the city still suffers.   

One of those people is Lev Gonick, CIO of Case Western Reserve University.  When I was in Cleveland in March 2008, Lev told me about a project he was working on.  Like many urban universities, Case Western is in a tough neighborhood.  As many as three out of five of the university's neighbors are on food stamps, the American food security program. Eighty percent of newborn children in the surrounding neighborhoods are enrolled in Medicaid, the health program for the poor.   In the current recession, mortgage foreclosures in the area are as high as one out every three households.  It is a place where poverty, ignorance and failure are the inheritance that is handed down from parents to children.

Lev's project launched in mid-November, shortly before the US Thanksgiving holiday.  The university is connecting 100 neighboring households to its gigabit fiber network.  University researchers, technologists and institutions in the region are collaborating to see if high-bandwidth online services can actually reduce violence and crime, increase graduation rates in science and math, and do a better job of identifying and monitoring chronic health problems.  Case Western students will be working with the households to identify their needs, train people to join the digital world, and study how they actually do.  There's an eye-opening idea for you: as part of its core curriculum, a major university will study how broadband can be used to address the most intractable social problems of urban America.  The best minds in medicine, public health, education and public safety will put the 100 households under the microscope to learn what works and what does not.   Eventually, the University Circle Innovation Zone, as the project is called, hopes to connect more than 25,000 residents. 

You can read what Lev has to say about the project on our Web site.  It's a fantastic example of innovation in broadband that also contributes directly to the educational excellence needed to create a knowledge-based workforce.  And for me, it was one more thing to put on the list of blessings received when I sat down to a turkey dinner on America's national day of gratitude.  Thanks, Lev, and the best of luck to you and all of the people and institutions involved.  The work you are doing may well change the world for the better.