Don't Leave Your Community's Challenges to the Professionals

Town hall in Red Bud, Illinois. Image credit: Flickr user Randy von Liski

I recently had the chance to take some workshops in conflict resolution, dialogue and mediation.  One of the most illuminating and counterintuitive lessons I learned in those classes is that, when we bring in lawyers and let the courts solve a dispute instead of dealing with it directly, we lose out on something significant.  Law professor Gerry Johnstone writes in his book, Restorative Justice: Ideas, Values, Debates, “If people are to exploit the opportunities provided by conflicts, they must not delegate their handling to professionals […] they must not let the state ‘steal’ their conflicts.” 

 By referring every dispute and clash to a court system instead of attempting to resolve things directly between parties in conflict, we are letting go of an opportunity to learn, strengthen community ties, and grow better for the future—so conflicts like this one don’t repeat themselves.  What would happen if we saw conflict as an opportunity for change instead of paying other people (with private and public dollars) to decide a case and find a “resolution” that tends to satisfy few of those involved?

I think this idea has a lot of relevance for local governments.  How often does something like this scenario happen in your city:  Residents begin raising concerns about the state of the neighborhood school building.  There are different ideas about how to resolve the outdated design, lack of modern air conditioning, and inadequate sports facilities.  Government leaders then get together, call in a few “experts,” request money from the state and roll out a plan for an expensive new facility on the edge of town. They trumpet their plan to residents and insist on votes for an additional bond measure to pay for the construction.  

Years later, the historic school building that served as a neighborhood gathering space for everything from bake sales supporting the local hospital to Fourth of July picnics and fireworks has been boarded up and abandoned.  Children have to take a bus for 30-60 minutes to get to class when they were previously able to walk 10 minutes.  The city is in a mountain of debt they will never pay off, let alone having a plan to afford the costly maintenance the new building requires.

Now rewind and imagine that the process had gone differently.  Imagine that residents—those who raised concerns in the first place, those who teach gym class and work in the cafeteria, those whose children attend the school and who perhaps went to the same school themselves when they were kids—are central to the decision-making process.  Imagine you and your neighbors get to lay out the problems the school building has and share ideas for how to address them.  Imagine you get a full picture of the costs for the immediate and the long term, and compare all your options, deciding together what will be best for everyone—not in a bureaucratic town hall meeting but in a conversation where ideas are hashed out and residents truly get a voice. 

Maybe an idea emerges to modify the existing school building?  Maybe the community college down the road can share their athletic space?  Maybe some vacant houses on the block could be turned into additional classrooms?  Any one of these creative solutions is likely to be easier and cheaper—a concern that residents who plan to live in the town for future decades and generations will take a lot more seriously than local officials who only have to survive the next election cycle.

Boxborough town meeting. Image credit: Flickr user Liz West

When our cities let government leaders make all the decisions about our community behind closed doors, we not only risk a bad outcome that wastes local tax dollars and doesn’t truly serve residents, we also miss a chance to learn more about our neighbors’ needs and concerns.  We neglect an opportunity to understand the values that guide our community so we’re better prepared for the next challenge or decision.   

Maybe after residents go through this process of developing a better school building, they’ll realize they also have some ideas for how to creatively and affordably improve the park down the street where school children often play in the afternoons.  Maybe they’ll have a better sense of how much they value the safety and wellbeing of all the kids in the town, and start thinking about whether everyone has access to good daycare or summer recreation programs.

At Strong Towns, we believe this is a far better vision for cities than one in which we keep investing all our hopes and dreams in electing perfect leaders who agree with all our viewpoints. (Spoiler alert: That rarely happens anyway.)  I would much rather that my city government be made up of excellent mediators and conversation facilitators, plus experts on getting specific tasks done that require expertise (like knowing how to pave a road or equip a fire department).  I would prefer this to a government made up of rulers, bosses and paper-pushers.

I don’t believe that our current cadre of government staff and leaders intend to do harm or are even doing a bad job.  But most are oriented toward a way of getting things done that is focused on funneling money, sifting through proposals and rubber stamping new initiatives—not directly listening to and working with constituents with depth and authenticity.

City Hall should be a convening place for conversations, not a house for the deciders themselves.  Isn’t that what representative government is all about? 

When the Department of Public Works plans to redesign a street, they shouldn’t start by consulting a manual, then referencing a budget proposal, then applying a formula and sending their staff out with cement mixers.  In fact, they shouldn’t even be planning to redesign a street in the first place.  They should be hearing from the people who live on that street that it’s full of potholes and it’s unsafe to cross.  And then they should be in conversation with those neighbors about what would make that situation better for them and others who might use the street. That conversation should be centered on residents’ needs, not merely checking a box that says resident input was accounted for.

An authentic process would give neighbors a chance to understand each other’s challenges more fully and prepare to handle new challenges together. Maybe in discussions about the street, neighbors learn about a young mother down the block who has struggled to safely walk her children to school. Maybe they learn about an elderly man who lives alone and needs help getting his groceries. Suddenly, the conversation is about how to improve the neighborhood so that everyone can prosper—it was never about just paving a street.

What would a local government focused on listening look like? What could we accomplish with a government full of great conversation facilitators and conveners? How much more strong and prosperous might our cities be if they were truly oriented toward those who live in them, and what could we learn in the process?

---

---