Evaluating a Communities Civic Infrastructure

Making the Local to Regional to Global Connection

A neighborhood in a city is nestled within the larger context of an urban region.  When neighborhoods are empowered to defend the livability of their area of town without an accompanying understanding of problems in the broader context of the region they live in, then one neighborhood’s victory can become another’s loss.  This leaves government agencies to broker the differences.  While remedying conflicts between self and communal interests should be a public sector function, the tensions and conflicts can be lessened, and become more creative and innovative, if neighborhood activists understand the problems their neighborhoods face in the context of a region. A few regions in the United States, including Portland and Minneapolis, Minnesota, have enacted policies that force neighborhoods, as well as cities and towns in the metropolitan areas, to consider social and environmental issues in terms of regional equity.  For example, siting hazardous dumps or placing social service facilities are decisions made in a regional context to ensure some areas are not unfairly impacted.  Organizations like the Coalition for Livable Future (CLF) in Portland also provide a way to solve problems within a regional context.  CLF provides a way to avoid costly and drawn out civic struggles, and thereby lowers the cost of community governance.

Beyond the region, there is a need to put local actions in a global context.  The saying ”think global, act local” has never been more needed or more possible.  In fact, local may be losing out to the global.  As Putnam notes, “technologies like the Internet mean that our connections with people around the country and around the world are getting closer, while our ties to our neighbors across the street are weakening.” Pew Charitable Trust data demonstrates that citizens access national, but not local, news online, and there is evidence (*9 citations) that long distance social networks are strengthened at the expense of local ones.  Online capacity makes organizational membership loose, “drive by,” quick to form, and quick to dissolve. On the positive side, there may be an increase in intra-organization communication that gives local groups more national and global ties.  In terms of the individual, online participation may increase expressive forms of citizen participation, strengthen distant connections and the power of individual or small collective action, while, on the negative side, citizens may retreat to private comfort zones.

Deliberative Democracy

Though Putnam has thoroughly documented the decline of civic life in America, it is sometimes forgotten that his critique is not solely about the declining number of citizens involved, but also the nature of that involvement. He noted that collective action has declined more rapidly than expressive forms of individual action (e.g. letter writing). There is, he said, “more single issue blare and declining civility (Putnam 2000, p. 46).”

In the Wisdom of Crowds, Surowiecki (2004) does not advocate mob rule.  There is an important distinction between “wise” crowds and unruly mobs, and much depends on how communication is structured.  Ask most bureaucrats how they feel about relying on the wisdom of citizens and you get a  negative response, likely because they have experienced a poorly-facilitated process.  We too often confuse opportunity for citizens to publicly express their opinion with true and effective citizen participation.

Fortunately, there are a growing number of practitioners and theorists who are developing deliberative democratic processes to capture the wisdom of citizens. Communicative planning theory promotes citizen participation in which knowledge is socially constructed.  Participatory research focuses attention on the need to include citizens early in any process when the ground rules, original questions, data selection, and analysis typically narrow the scope for participation into simplistic choices between limited number of options.  Other civic process models attempt to balance power differences and make use of different types of knowledge.  For example, Participatory rural appraisal--ways of utilizing local knowledge and analyzing and including that “data” in assessments and implementations, and Beneficiary assessment – processes that focus on experience of the recipients or those effected – are two examples.  Organizations such as the Kettering Foundation, Center for Deliberative Democracy, and the American Democracy Project have developed creative processes to involve citizens in substantive dialogues rather that rudimentary public processes like public hearings.

Civic Life: Audiences on the Edges

A healthy civic structure depends on the continual renewal of the contract between citizens and government, and the innovative and effective involvement of several key populations that define the cutting edge or frontline.

The Young

Civic engagement institutions and practices need to evolve to accommodate the culture of the young.  The collapse of traditional civic life in Portland’s history reflects this need.  When the established civic institutions refused to accommodate the new ways of the young –the baby boomer “graduates” of the social movements of the 1960s – those young people created their own institutions that, over time, replaced many of the traditional ones.  These “boomer” institutions may themselves be challenged by today’s youth, especially the “digital natives” who grew up immersed in global electronic media. These digital natives may be impatient with old style face-to-face meetings.

Elders

At the opposite end of the age spectrum are the elders of a community, now an especially large number with the graying of the baby boomer generation who possess both great wealth and slack resources. Elders need to be incorporated effectively into civic life, and efficacy is the key word here.  Elders’ place at the civic table should not be a purely honorific one.  As with any society, there needs to be a means to transfer wisdom.  Wisdom involves a longer civic narrative timeframe that can be difficult to incorporate into everyday civic life.  There is an alarming distancing of young and old activists  due to the differential use of the Internet by the young and old for civic involvement.  Elders are more comfortable with face-to-face  than virtual engagement in civic life.

Newcomers

One of the challenges for many communities, including Portland, is the inclusion of increasing numbers of newcomers from other states and nations, as well as the role of, in Portland’s case, a small, but wealthy new class of developers that are taking advantage of environmental amenities in the region. How can the civic narrative and infrastructure adapt to incorporate these groups?  Many immigrants to the Portland area have been drawn by the story or myth that the city has created, but they may not understand the elements of this story as translated into rules, regulations, policies and mores.  Then there are the many newcomers who arrive without much knowledge at all of the prevailing narrative.  In effect, the community needs a “welcome wagon” process to enroll people into the community’s storyline while also continually  adapting the storyline to new input and perspectives.

Disadvantaged

A community, like society, is, as Martin Luther King said, judged by how well it treats its most disadvantaged.  The disabled, poor, and minorities demand unique and innovative venues for effective civic engagement.  What may be under-appreciated is just how many may see themselves as “disadvantaged.” A robust civic engagement process is multi-leveled and flexible, accommodating people who are better at writing than speaking, those who think in terms of stories rather than numbers, and those who learn by doing as well as by studying manuals and policy documents.

Challenging Groups

One of the clear historical lessons from Portland’s civic story is that because the established order of civic institutions closed the door or were irrelevant to young people and newcomers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these constituencies created new civic institutions for themselves and their issues.  The “insiders” did not listen to the new challenging groups, let alone learn from them or alter their institutions or civic actions.  As a result, the older institutions began losing members, and the attention of the community, as reflected through the media (Johnson 2002), turned to these new institutions and causes.

It was Hegel who stated that we are doomed to repeat history if we do not learn from it.  Portland’s civic life is now dominated by the baby boomers who were turned away by old civic Portland.  It is not clear if they will end up making the same mistake as the previous generation.  Will they learn from and accommodate the challenging groups, those outside the main stream?  In Oregon, one challenge comes from groups that have successfully overthrown elements of Oregon’s progressive land use system.  At times there is a sense that the established environmental groups are under siege and need to hold their ground against an anarchistic or regressive force.  Listening and learning does not, in this case, mean adapting or even accommodating.  It means understanding the rise of this new form of challenging collective action.  To whom does it appeal?  From this knowledge it may be possible to forge practices that accommodate changes in the civic sphere.

Diverse Population

A civic infrastructure that includes a diversity of perspectives is good and just, but there are perhaps even more important reasons to advocate for diversity in civic engagement venues.  As Surowiecki (2004) argues in The Wisdom of Crowds, diversity, along with independence and decentralization, are the three basic elements that allow for the wisdom of groups to emerge.  In several examples, he illustrates that groups made up of only “smart” people don’t come up with the best solutions to problems. If you assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge, you're better off entrusting major decisions to them rather than to only one or two people, no matter how smart. The more influence we exert on each other, the more likely we will believe the same things and make similar mistakes.  Diversity contributes not only additional perspectives; it is also easier for individuals to say what they truly think.

The Occasional Citizens

In any community there are a limited number of citizens who can commit  the time and resources  it takes to be a “professional” citizen.  Appointment to governmental citizen advisory groups often requires a substantial commitment of time not available to most.  Neighborhood associations provide one avenue for citizens to get involved who have less time or expertise; however, neighborhood action involves  on-going meetings and tedious rankling over contentious issues.  The “occasional” citizen who possesses some interest and worthy ideas needs a different kind of civic process.

Citizen juries, more popular in Britain and Australia than in America, are one way to involve the “occasional” citizen.  Citizen juries operate in different ways depending on the community and particular problems being solved, but in general a citizens' jury generally aims to provide an opportunity for people to express an informed view on a subject according to their own principles. The jury is made up of people who are normally drawn at random from a local population.

There are still other civic innovations that can be employed to involve citizens in local public policy debate and community problem solving. For example,  deliberative polling attempts to use television and public opinion research to involve citizens.  A random, representative sample is polled on an issue.  Following this baseline poll, members of the sample are invited to gather at a single place for a weekend in order to discuss the issues. Carefully balanced briefing materials are sent to the participants and are also made publicly available. The participants engage in dialogue with competing experts and political leaders based on questions they develop in small group discussions with trained moderators. Parts of the weekend events are broadcast on television, either live or in taped and edited form. After the deliberations, the sample is again polled on the original questions. The change in opinion represents the conclusions the public at large would reach if people had the opportunity to become more informed and more engaged by the issues.