Polly Talen is Knight’s program director for Duluth.

I found myself not particularly surprised by the findings of the survey in the Duluth-Superior Area. It very much resonated with what I have seen over the past seven years since I joined Knight as its program director for Duluth. Community aesthetics are critical to resident attachment and the region's openness and welcoming to various demographics as well as its social offerings both need improvement.

In 2003 Knight intensified it work in the region by starting with a community listening exercise with community leaders that Knight sponsored with Professor Ned Hill. Those 45 interviews were my first up-close look at the region. Until that time Duluth was largely a place my family stopped to get gas and snacks on our way to Canada for our summer vacation. And given my parents hated wasting a moment of daylight in the Canadian wilderness, we were usually driving through at about 1 a.m. to get to Canada first thing in the morning.

So I began my Duluth-Superior journey of learning about this great place by listening to some of its most committed citizens articulate what they thought were the region's biggest opportunities and biggest challenges. Through this we identified the need to approach economic development regionally, to bring the private sector and new leadership to the table, to support building a culture of entrepreneurship, to make development transparent, predictable and civil and at the same time work hard to maintain the great aesthetics everyone so appreciates about the region. It was also recommended that more be done to create a welcoming community to both newcomers as well as graduates of the areas colleges and universities.

Lots of good things have happened over the past six years. To name just the ones in which Knight has been directly involved makes an impressive list: APEX was launched to provide support to area businesses; the Duluth community charrette was conducted and continues to work on its recommendations; the community foundation sponsored its Speak Your Peace Initiative and the Knight Creative Communities Initiative; Superior has taken a close look at development opportunities in its downtown; Northeast Entrepreneur Fund launched the Greenstone Group, a ten year initiative to accelerate entrepreneurship in the region; and updating the arcane zoning codes in Duluth is making progress.

And many other great things are in the works that I hope to learn more about that will impact both social offerings and openness, including efforts to identify specific spaces in both Superior and Duluth that would be part of new arts districts and launching of www.thedusu.com aimed at connecting young adults to one another and to the community.

Oh, did I mention that the youngest of the 45 leaders we interviewed was none other than Duluth’s mayor, Don Ness? He arrived looking even more youthful than his years in a tennis sweater and shorts. After he left we all said to ourselves, “He certainly has a great vision for the future of this region.”