Eric Higbee: How to Master the Art of Community Engagement

Eric Higbee is a landscape architect and writer who teaches university courses on community engagement at the University of Washington Department of Landscape Architecture. He works on community design and planning projects through his award-winning landscape architecture practice, Convene.

Today, Eric joins Tiffany to discuss the importance of community engagement, why attempts at this kind of engagement often fail, and how to succeed at it.

• Click here for a computer-generated transcript.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 0:00

  Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the bottom up Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Owens Reid. I'm excited for today's conversation because I think it's going to touch on a topic that maybe we don't talk a ton about at strong towns, but that, but that, I think, is really important. I feel like at strong towns, we spend a really decent amount of time talking about the built environment, the concrete elements of the city, and how those more tangible elements of the city affect the flourishing of that community and its long term resilience. I think that's so important. But we also recognize that part of what it takes to build a resilient place is the intangible stuff, the human relationships, the connections and communities and conversations that have to come together, that have to happen in order to really shape a vision for the future of our towns. I wrote a column about this for strong towns a long time ago, and in it, I write about the difference between the polis and the herbs. So this is kind of an old idea, kind of ancient Greek idea. But the idea of the polis is that the human community that has to come together to really shape a vision and decide on values and decide on what is our place actually going to look like? What's it going to stand for while the herbs, that's all the built stuff, so that's the rose, and that's the, you know, the sewer system and the houses and the shops and all of that. And so I think, you know, part of the conversation about building resilient place, you have to take both into account. You have to think about the herbs, but you also have to think about the polis. Thinking about the polis is really important, but it can also be kind of tricky, you know, because it's not as straightforward of an issue. How do you help the members of a community come together and do that vision casting work? How do you help them have productive conversations, and how do you design processes of engagement that actually lead to productive outcomes? Today's guest is going to talk to us about all of that. Eric Higby is a landscape architect, community organizer, writer, researcher and teacher, residing at the intersection of place making and community building. He regularly publishes his writings and research on civic engagement, social cohesion and place based communities in his subseq newsletter called The answer is community. Eric also teaches courses on community engagement at the University of Washington. His award winning landscape architecture practice convene works with diverse communities throughout the Pacific Northwest on community design and planning projects. Eric, welcome to the bottom up Revolution podcast. Thank you. It's great to be here to start off. Can you share with us a bit about your professional journey and how you came to focus on place making as a tool for community engagement?

  Eric Higbee 2:31

  Yeah, so my background is in landscape architecture. And landscape architects, for those who don't know, are the folks who shape and design public spaces, so things like parks, plazas and streets and gardens. And I started off my career working for big, big public projects, high profile civic plazas in the heart of downtowns. But after a few years, started to track myself back towards what originally attracted me to, my to the profession and my passion, which was working with communities directly in that process of shaping the built environment. So things like running community meetings to hear community ideas about what they want to see and then turning them into designs and then working together to build them. So most of my 20 years of experience has been either with my own practice or nonprofits on projects that involve communities. I've worked with dozens and many diverse communities, but over the over the course of that work, I really witnessed some really, really incredible stories of people coming together, building relationships, transcending their differences, and kind of jump starting their civic hearts, sort of sense of pride from, you know, knowing that you belong and live somewhere and so like, yes, the places we create are really important. We need more of these third places, the social infrastructure that's often left out of our cities and towns, so people can meet. But I've really come to believe that it's really in the process. It's that that meeting, that visioning, that collaborating together in the places where we live, that's really where that magic happens. And so my journey has really been about trying to, like, pop open that hood and look in that hood and look in there and try to figure out, like, what's going on? Is there something what's there something special in there that might be helpful for addressing our larger social challenges around social fragmentation? Can we take that and scale it up? And can we even retool our professions and the work of community engagement to become essentially a vehicle for social cohesion? And it turns out, I think we'll get a chance to talk about this, that if you look at the social psychology of like, if you're interested in creating the conditions for people to bridge differences and strengthen kind of a shared identity of place, you really couldn't find a better way to do that than community, engaged placemaking. There's something about the scale, the work, the context of place, what's at stake and the results that really checks all those boxes.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 4:40

  Awesome. Yeah, I think it's interesting that you saw that process and found it to be something that was energizing, rather than something really, really frustrating. Although I'm sure you've had lots of frustrating moments, but I feel like when most people talk about community engagement, you know, we're all on the verge of pulling our hair out, but you saw that and you're like, Wait, there's something here. Was that. Surprise to you, just kind of your own, like reaction to that. I'm

  Eric Higbee 5:04

  just, yeah, I think I got really lucky. There's a lot of people go into the built environment profession, so Architecture, Planning, landscape architecture, et cetera. I do get a little cynical, because a lot of those processes go off the rails pretty quickly, or are very more extractive. I was lucky because I was a little choosy about the work. On the particular projects. I got to do a lot of really great like community garden and like small schools and stuff. And then the nonprofit that I worked for also had that as a mission. And so even though I've had my share of not great experiences, I think the positive ones have really outweighed those and helped drive my interest and passion in the subject.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 5:41

  So in the course of your career, what were you noticing about how civic engagement, or community engagement happens in this space? Can you share this? Maybe what you were noticing about what was working really well and what wasn't working that well?

  Eric Higbee 5:55

  Yeah. So when I look around at how community engagement is practice, it's probably like 90 some percent of what I see out there. It's just kind of a random number. But by close, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't really leverage the the opportunity of bringing people together as a tool for strengthening community, right? It's used, slowly, as a as a process to solicit input, to inform some sort of design planning, a policy decision, which is really great and really important, right? We should be doing that. We should be listening to communities like the things that are shaping the places where we live. Should have community input. But there's this incredible missed opportunity that's that's kind of just left, like on the cutting room floor here. And so what I see a lot in practice is things like online surveys and open houses where, like, no one, no community members really talk to each other. Exchange idea, or exchange ideas are basically kind of one on one conversations with designers, or that no one talks to each other. So the other thing that's happening that I see out there is that a lot of community engagement processes are just kind of going sideways, right? There's a behavior at the national level that's kind of filtering down to the local level, the way of just, just a way of behaving. And so with both these things, I see practitioners, people who are convening and leading these process, these conversations around with communities. They're choosing approaches that really minimizes the interactions between people because they're kind of a they're afraid of conflict, and they can still check the box for like, okay, we can listen to community, they don't really have the scales or resources to really to manage that, and I think what's happening is we're missing out, because at the same time, those are also the opportunities for people to meet and connect and build a shared vision and shared identity, and we're missing out on those opportunities. I

  Tiffany Owens Reed 7:32

  think what you're saying is really interesting, because I feel like the times that I've thought of community engagement, I feel like most of the time, it's focused on reacting to what someone else has decided for the community or designed for the community, rather than just facilitating conversation between the people who live there and create an opportunity for people like you said, to meet each other, maybe to have conflict, but healthy conflict, you know, but also to shape a vision and get clear on like, what do we actually want? So I think that distinction you're pointing out is actually really helpful. Actually really helpful. I think at articulating maybe something that has broken down and how we look at community engagement. Because maybe it shouldn't always be about what some consultant is going to do to your downtown. Maybe it should be like, hey, what do y'all actually want? But I suspect that part of that is maybe there's some anxiety around the unpredictability of bringing community members together to talk about what they want, and I wonder if that's one of those counterweights that works against the idea of helping communities shape a vision for themselves. What do you think? Yeah,

  Eric Higbee 8:35

  absolutely. It's worth pointing out that community engagement kind of happens from two different directions, right? There's sort of top down. So like, maybe a local government, you know, is instituting some sort of design or planning policy, and they're like, We need to talk to the community. That can also happen from bottom up to our communities are organizing themselves to kind of do something within a neighborhood. Maybe there's an abandoned lot down the street they want to turn into a community garden. So each of those have different come from different directions, but ultimately it's humans are complicated. It's really challenging to get a lot of different people together in a room to do this sort of stuff. And so yeah, the risk of failure is high, but I think the it's worth the potential rewards

  Tiffany Owens Reed 9:19

  you mentioned when we talked before this recording that you see community engagement as part of a bigger vision of just widespread civic renewal. I would love for you to share more on that. And I guess, like, one way of putting in it would be, how do you see community engagement as connected to the bigger goal of helping build stronger political communities? And I'm not using political and the mainstream way of that word. I'm using it in the traditional meaning of that word. And I think you'll know what I mean. So you can, you can run with that. But how do you see the two? How do you see this? You know, conversations about a fountain connected to bigger conversations around like restoring, I guess, like a true political culture. Of just a participation and the conversations that shape the places where we live. That's what I mean by when I say political right?

  Eric Higbee 10:06

  Well, listen, I mean, you look around and like, we're like, there are big challenges right now, right? We have issues with loneliness, with polarization, social fragmentation, like things are like, things aren't great, a lot of different levels. And so there's a growing awareness of this problem of, sort of, this fraying of our social fabric, and there is a movement towards addressing that. And that's kind of what social renewal is, right? How do we how do we restitch the social fabric? And you see in a lot of different places, right? You see Vivek Murthy, Earl, Surgeon General, with his report on the epidemic loneliness. You see big philanthropic funders putting money into local, kind of community building, kind of efforts. I thought it was captured really well. There was a piece that came out a few weeks ago by Sam Pressler and Pete Davis. They're substack authors around this sort of moment in time, and this idea that we go through these 50 year cycles, roughly civic renewal, and we're kind of on the cusp of another resurgence, really triggered by technological change. So you can look at the 10s and 20s and see everything that happened there and then the 60s and 70s, right, where these moments were kind of there already. So in my view, like with community engagement every day, there's hundreds, if not 1000s of community engagement processes. No one knows how many happening, right, where people are being asked to, you know, to share about how to shape the place where they live. And this, this work is sort of, I call it the front line of democracy, right? It's kind of pre political from the conventional political term, right? It's, it's how people are coming together and shaping their future. I think this, this is also where we build that muscle memory for a pluralistic, inclusive society, right? It's where we, we meet people and exchange ideas with people are different from us. It's where we learn to form shared agenda, shared identities. Have a sense of agency over where we live. It's really about place and the scale of our neighborhoods. It's kind of where we're we're evolutionary, wired to build those deep connections that, you know, make us feel like we belong somewhere and be rootedness. And so I ultimately think that the way out of the wreckage of the challenge we have now, the only really way out is through the local levels, through bottom up change. I think that's just, that's where, that's the sea bed of democracy. So I practice in the field of the built environment. And one analogy I use all the time is that, you know, in the 1970s when the environmental crisis became clear, we we rose to the challenge, architects, planners, landscape architects. We cross pollinate with ecology and biology. We create this whole thing called sustainable design that shapes how we think about our cities and how we build things. I think the question is now is like, well, in this moment, this similar we have a similar moment, but with our civic crisis, you know, how do we rise to this challenge? Who do we cross pollinate with, and how do we revolutionize our practices focus not necessarily on ecological and environmental health, which is still important, but how do we focus on community health and well being and think about that as a specific outcome of our work? Such

  Tiffany Owens Reed 12:50

  a big challenge my brain is thinking about all the layers of both the built environment, but also the political and social environment that you have to think about in order to make that happen. And I think this is where it can become very interesting to talk about something like, yeah, so how does the built environment affect this process? Right? Because I think part of what we're seeing with social fragmentation, you can trace part of it back to how our places have been designed for almost 100 years, right? But that's not the whole story. There's also, you know, social change, technological change, cultural change, and in a way, I almost feel like this is kind of the brilliance of small projects, because they kind of sneak in under all that and be like, So, guys, do you want a garden? And next thing you know, you've like, kind of busted through all of those layers. Because it's like, we're just going to talk about a garden, and it's like, for everyone can actually come together on some so I feel like it's kind of like, you know, when the family an equivalent of, like, when the family is going crazy, it's too hot, and everyone's stressed, and, you know, someone's mad at someone, and you're like, Who wants pizza? Let's all have a conversation, you know. And all of a sudden it creates this opportunity to come together on something. And maybe that can be leveraged to talk to, like, deal with all the other issues, like, around that. Yeah, that's

  Eric Higbee 14:04

  very I think it's really important that you come at it sideways. Like, no one's gonna show up to your depolarization meeting or even your community building meeting, right? But if you're like, Hey, we got half a million bucks to improve this park down the street, come help us figure out how to spend that money. Like, all of a sudden you have people showing up together to share their vision for where they live. And then you can, you, if you do your work right, you can use that as a tool for people to, you know, to strengthen the connections and stuff. And this is really clear. I don't know if you saw like, more in common their group that came up with a big report called the connection opportunity a couple of months ago, and they made it very clear. Like, when you look, there's a survey of 1000s of Americans about, like, are they interested in bridging their differences? What are the conditions for that? And it was very clear that they were really interested and working together to make the community a better place. And they had a lot of anxiety around intergroup interaction. And so, like, at that intersection, again, this is where I think the work of community based placemaking really is something special, because we kind of reside at that intersection of both. What people want to do and the conditions to make it to make it

  Tiffany Owens Reed 15:03

  work. So you've been writing about these ideas on your blog, which is called community is the answer on your sub stack. Sorry, I don't know if sub stackers don't like being called blogs. Please forgive me if I'm being offensive. Now, on your sub stack, called community is the answer. Can you share with us a little bit about your project there, where maybe you can tell us where the name came from. You know what you're writing about and what you're hoping to communicate through your writing, what you're hoping to achieve?

  Eric Higbee 15:27

  Yeah, so the title, the answer is, community, comes from a quote by Dorothy Day, who, if you don't know who Dorothy Day is, she's pretty incredible. She's this Catholic activist in the 1950s who essentially jump started the Catholic Church's focus on social justice. She founded the Catholic workers movement, and she has this quote from one of her books that goes something like, we have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community. And I titled my sub stack off of this just because I was a blog. Now it's a sub stack. I think this quote really captures that, you know, this deeply human drive for social connection that underpins anyone who's working with community, and also underpins one of our core challenges, is that if we're social fragmented, we can't address other issues. You know, community is one thing, but you start to step up into things like climate change and social justice and these other things. And we just, you know, we're all fragmented, it doesn't really work. So with my writing, you know, I'm just trying to really elevate the conversation around these issues. It started really as a way just to get all this stuff spinning around my head like out and some intuition that maybe people might find it interesting. But it's, it's kind of developed, and it's had gotten some more rigor to it, and it's really moved on to really trying to sound the alarm bells around these issues and strategically push the practice of people who are working with communities to kind of become a vehicle for social cohesion. So I'm focused a lot on the built environment professions, but it's really anyone who works with communities to shape where they live, so bottom up organizing anything. And so like five years ago, when I started it, there wasn't really much talking about this stuff, and this conversation is picking up, which is great, but it's still quite remarkable. How nascent, you know, it is, given all the glaring warning lights around, you know, Pacific decline, sometimes I feel like I'm shouting to the wind, but every once in a while, I hear from folks it sounds like I'm making a difference. So I keep writing.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 17:15

  So when you say community, I've actually been thinking about this for a couple days, because I've been working on a separate project and wrestling with the definition. Wrestling with the definition of community, and what do people mean by that. And I won't get into all the multiple layers of what I've been thinking about, because that's not the point of the show, but I will ask you about one thing. I think when people hear the word community, they all might think of something different. And what you're talking about, I think what you're talking about has to do with building loose ties between people, at least in this context, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it has to do with building loose ties and a sense of shared mission between people who share proximity. So like, if you're thinking about a shared neighborhood, a shared street, a shared block, there's a lot layered in there the phrase loose ties proximity a sense of shared mission. But that's not how everyone thinks about it. So some people might listen to this be like, I have great community. Well, it's like, Well, is it with people you share proximity with? Do you have, you know, and the loose ties part of this is, like, intentionally coming together with people who you might not be friends with, right? This is kind of an open ended question. But just like, how have you wrestled with the definition of community and when you're talking about it in this specific context, what do you want people to understand? To understand about the importance of talking about community in the context of neighborhoods where we're not talking about friend groups, we're not talking about your church group, we're not talking about your reading group, your running group, your Frisbee group, people that you like and you have something in common and you love to hang out, we're talking about a really unique context of social connection, which is strangers that you share proximity with that you might not naturally, naturally gravitate towards, but you're trying to find ways to help these people come together and create a shared mission around the thing they have in common, which is the health and flourishing of their neighborhood. Yeah.

  Eric Higbee 18:56

  No, thank you, Tiffany for bringing this up, because it's usually try to clarify this earlier on, because the word community is just awful, right? Like, it's been so many different Yeah, it's really remarkable. Like, be into death, yeah, yeah, we're such we are. The thing that defines us as humans is how social we are, you know, and maybe it's just the English language, but we have, like, one, like, one word for it, it's, it's really silly. So, yeah, I talk about, I use, often use the words, it's a little cumbersome, but I often say place based community, because I'm really thinking about communities of place, right? Shared geography, kind of steward the same patch of earth. And, you know, then it comes down to scale. What are you talking about? And there's some, you know, neighborhood scale, usually there's, there's some, you can define that in different ways, but there's some really interesting science around like how we're evolutionary wired for groups of certain sizes and certain scales to build our relationships with. So I think the neighborhood scales generally what I'm talking about when I talk about community, and I think the real opportunity here is that in our place based communities, is that they're usually not. Always, segregation is a major issue, but there's usually a lot of different people living really close to each other with a shared interest and like, a sense of belonging, like this is my place, and that's that kind of thing that you grab onto and leverage in a community engagement process that allows people that's that shared interest, that allows people to come together and bridge their differences and have a conver and, you know, and have a conversation about their future. So I think that's really where the opportunity is. And maybe you don't live in, like, a mixed red and blue, politically divided neighborhood, or even ethnically but like, just even these days, like even interacting someone who's outside of your normal bubble is, like, it's success, because we have, you mentioned some, like, technology and stuff. We've become so isolated. The other way I like to think about it. And you it's funny, Tiffany, I think about the first time I kind of came across your writings. You were writing about Mark Dunkelman and the three rings of community, yeah. And I find that really helpful. You know, thinking about the inner ring, that's our closest friends and family, the outer ring being the most we may share single interests, like maybe we play frisbee together or whatever, like at the same band or a sports team, and then middle ring, which is people who are friendly with, but not intimate. And that middle ring basically overlaps, usually, not necessarily, but with place based communities, people that we share, that we meet, you know, regularly, members of our church or people bump into the coffee shop. So I find that really helpful, because Mark talks about how that disintegration the middle ring kind of defer many, many reasons kind of defines what's happened to our society over the past 50 years or so.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 21:26

  Yeah, I find his three rings. I've read them and reread them and reread them so many times, sometimes I feel like they need to be updated. Because, yeah, I think they need an update. I'm not sure they completely map onto how people are building social ties now. I also really like, I think it's Malcolm Gladwell as loose ties concept that I think is really helpful. And I think if you layer Robert Putnam, Mark Dunkelman, Malcolm Gladwell, this is just gonna, this is gonna go off the script. Guys, this is happening again. I think if you layer them all together, you can get a pretty good idea of what's going on. Because I think Robert Putnam brings in the associative culture, which is really interesting. Feels like we've I don't know if you would agree that we've lost that, but I think from what I remember reading about when I remember I read Mark Duncan's book, and I've gone through this multiple times because I've been thinking and writing about this and yeah, those three rings, I think they are helpful, but I think the way they don't map onto how people think about their communities. If that makes sense, I think we understand people who are close to us physically, but we're not close to them. So the neighbor who is your stranger, right? And I think you have dispersed ties, like people you're really close to, but they're all dispersed either throughout the world, the country, the city, but we stay connected to them through technology. So there's like, this perception of closeness that doesn't map onto the built environment. And then you have the people you see often. And this is where Malcolm Gladwell is really helpful, because he talks about the loose tie, right? Like the people you interact with often. And I think, I think the mistake that I kept, the frustration I kept running into, is, I think the category for neighbor, and that second ring kept getting mixed up, and I think they're actually pretty different. So it's my non scholarly. I'm not, I don't have a PhD critique of not my uncle Me neither. But it's like, Tiffany, you don't know what you're talking about,

  Eric Higbee 23:15

  yeah, but it's this is, I think it's a good starting point for our conversation, just because, like, we started the community so vague and open and just helpful to have some framework to start with, to even talk about this stuff, because it's sometimes it's hard to even ground yourself in a position amongst all the ways that we relate to each

  Tiffany Owens Reed 23:31

  other. Yeah, it's hard to, because you layer, I mean, you look at how transient people are now, so they don't even, I think that idea of a neighborhood being something you hold in common and even have an interest in and care for, I think that is even an idea you can't really assume people have anymore, right? Um, because maybe they just move there because it's all they could afford, and they're just there for a job for two years, or they're a grad student, right? So even that whole concept of shared interest shared like we have something in common or belonging or whatever, I think that's even like an uphill battle. It's like, well, what, how do we describe our relationship to our neighborhood or our city? And, yeah, it's something to wrestle with, because it's, I think it's a starting point that a lot of people assume might be there, but it's not always the case.

  Eric Higbee 24:15

  Yeah, and I fall back. I mean, I agree with you. I mean, we live in really interesting times, of course, and maybe I'm being too prescriptive, or I don't know what the right word would be, but I keep coming back. I think that inside, ultimately, we all want to be connected like it's real. I mean, it's very clear that's part of our social health. And I do think our in real life, physical relationships that are rooted in place are the most powerful ones to where we build those deep, lasting connections and feel belonging and rootedness. And so, yeah, sure, we can exist in other ways. Our society is thin on that, a lot of right now, but I don't think that gets in the way of trying to aim, aspire for that, and aim back. And ultimately, I think that's the route out of it. I think that's, you know, it's. Only when we reinvigorate those things will we have success. It's part of the people want. They'll find community somehow, right? They'll find it in conspiracy theories. They'll find it in politics. They'll find it somewhere, if we don't fill that emotional void with the places where we live.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 25:16

  So it almost sounds like to me that this is reiterating the value of the phrase place based community, because, like, what you said about, you know, people will find a sense of community with a bunch of various interests, but that's very different from finding from building a sense of community with the people you share proximity to. And I think there's a case to be made for, like, why we really need to focus in on that definition and think about it, because of the way the word community gets used in so many different ways to describe so many different types of social connections. Okay, all right, let's get back on script. Let's talk about community engagement, another wonderful term we love to use. Community engagement can be a double edged sword. It can be both. You know, this positive force of shaping a vision for the community. But people have also talked, talked in volumes about how community engagement can be. You know, this weapon used to shut down good ideas that could help our communities move in a more resilient, beautiful, safe, connected direction. How do you think about this tension, and what do you think is helpful for people who might observe this tension and not really know how to how to process it,

  Eric Higbee 26:22

  right? So there's a couple of ways to answer this, and I've been thinking about this a lot. I think partly, I just read Ezra Klein's new book abundance. I don't know if you've read that, right. And he's talking about how all these bureaucratic barriers have impeded our ability to deliver on progressive agendas, or any agendas, really. And I think I worry a little bit when reading that, about how community engagement, or at least one form of it, right, sort of an accomplice to this problem, and the possibility that the better versions of engagement are getting kind of thrown out with the bathwater on this. So because community engagement can be really a problem and it can shut down good ideas like, ultimately high level, there's just always this balance between inclusiveness and decisiveness, right road to walk right?

  Tiffany Owens Reed 27:04

  Now, even in the family, when you're trying to pick the pizza, it's like, Sorry, no black olives.

  Eric Higbee 27:09

  Yeah, exactly. And so if a community process ends up sort of, it's shutting down good ideas. It's usually happening for a couple of reasons. First is often because it wasn't set up well in the first place, right? There's a lot of just what kind of checkbox engagement, right? So things like public comment periods and town halls where, like, the outcomes are seem predetermined or aren't clear the inputs token and people really aren't encouraged to consider trade offs or that maximize the social good, right? So people get frustrated. The system is set up for people, just like, advocate as much as possible for one single idea and as loudly as possible, and keep showing showing up, and use the process itself as obstruction, right? So that's that's a structural failure and engagement. It's usually at the result of a lack of real leadership or vision. The second reason, if a process is shutting down good ideas, because it's just it takes a lot of work and skills and time to do it right, right? And only takes one or two people to derail an entire process, right? So you kind of got to be a prepper. You always got to be ready for something to go wrong. And there's a lot of steps that go in there. It takes a lot of skills. And this work usually isn't funded or supported. I talked to a lot of community engagement practitioners. They did a whole survey, national survey about a year ago, and it's really clear that there isn't, like, budget and time or training around how to do these things well. And so that's why we see that people are that's why people are retreating into these other easier processes, like online surveys, just because they've kind of become a little little beat up and bitter, bitter around it. So that's all said. I don't think we should give up, because there's incredible opportunity there. We just see more leadership, more political will, more resources and more training and just elevation and awareness about the work of convening and facilitating and how critical it is to our path towards a better world, a specific renewal

  Tiffany Owens Reed 28:57

  so kind of connected to that question, can you share what You've seen or what you try to do, or just like your vision of what successful or more, more effective, more productive community engagement would look like. Yeah.

  Eric Higbee 29:09

  I mean, from a definition standpoint, like at its most basic, like a basic communication process, is, you know, are you, you ensuring representation of a community voices into design and planning and policy, and it's easy, you know, is there representation? And there's a lot of subtleties into like ways people can contribute or not. But I think part of what I'm trying to do is really shift that definition, right? I think we should be asking, you know, how much did this process build relationships among community members? How much did it build a sense of shared identity of this place, right? Did we drip dry its potential for social cohesion and reweave our social fabric, or at its highest level, I think the best process is really, are they supporting community based organizations that can carry forward and be a vehicle for community capacity and power, right? So I think that's really the success that's to me. That's what I define as a successful process.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 29:56

  To what extent do you think community education is part of. The solution, because I think this can really explain some of the breakdown as well. You know, when you're trying to explain to someone like, hey, we want to get rid of, you know, this amount of parking downtown, and everyone loses their minds because they don't understand the trade offs, like you said, or the implications of using land for parking, or the way it could be more productive. Or we can go down a very long list here, but, like, I just wonder sometimes if we need to be investing more and, like, community education so that engagement can be more effective. What do you think

  Eric Higbee 30:30

  that's a good question. We gotta be careful, because there's a difference between recruitment and engagement, right? So recruiting is when you have an idea, you're trying to convince people. And there's a place for that, right? There's certainly a world around that. I think when it comes to actual engagement process, like you're getting community to kind of turn out and show up, maybe a community meeting or something, there is a really important part of that process where you lay out that field of you do some of that education. You're like, here's what's at play, here's what's at stake, here's what you need to know. Here are the things are trade off or trading off. And you also set the stage for like, Hey, we're asking a positive question here about what you want to see. And think about what, what benefits the most number of people into the into the future, even thinking about future generations. And it doesn't take a whole it's quick people. My experience is people are usually quick. If you set if you put all your chess pieces right, you set your stage right, people are will step into that space where they'll listen and they'll, they'll give feedback in that context. But you know, folks will always just say what they already know. You know, that's what it is. And so there's, there's a role to that. So any good process is like, here's where we're at, here's what we need, here's what you need to know to make this decision. But it's hard. Like, I the parking thing is a huge one of the project that I just opened up last week is like, it gets more than education. They're, like, deeply embedded cultural values. There's around things like cars and vehicles and urban spaces and things, and so ultimately, you bridge those gaps, like education is maybe part of it, but it's really about listening and conversation. I think is the better route than just saying this. There is one way, and you need to know about it. So,

  Tiffany Owens Reed 32:06

  yeah, okay, so in your conversation with other professionals in the built environment world, are there specific ways you're hoping to inspire change in terms of how community engagement processes get rolled out or facilitate it. I feel like part of your work is trying to actually help steer some some shifts and how these processes happen in different communities. Yeah,

  Eric Higbee 32:29

  so let's talk about practice a little bit. And it's a big question. I teach a whole class on this. I could talk talk for hours. So one of the key things is, I think what I've been doing is really looking into social psychology. And these are folks who have been spending decades studying how you create the conditions for people like bridge their group or identity groups and form shared identities. And I think we need to infuse that into into our work. And so at a high level, what this means is really focusing on getting people from different identities within a place to repeatedly interact with each other under conditions that minimize anxiety and maximize the opportunity for empathy or perspective taking, right? And so those are the two, like emotional mechanisms at the core of what it takes to like build and bridge within a community, right? So lowering anxiety and opportunities for perspective perspective taking. And so there's a number of ways we can do this and practice. When we start to look at like, how do we refine and retool our community engagement practices? I'll just share a few of them, because I could go on for really long time. The first, first piece of advice, one of the most important things, is really forming a steering group or convening group that really is trying to answer this question. How do we best have this conversation as a community? They're not necessarily decide they're not deciding anything, because you get in a lot of trouble when all of a sudden they have, like, decision making power. It's really about like, oh, like, how do we where do we host our where do we host our event? When do we have it? What's what's at stake here? What dynamics are there in the community? We need to consider in this process, they'll go individually and personally invite people to participate and help you, like, practice runs of your meeting and all that kind of stuff. And so having that, that that steward of the process, is really a critical middle ground for getting to the larger community. And it's really important that that group represents the diversity the community want involved. So even people who might hate your project or have really different viewpoints like having them as long as they're willing to abide by the rules, like, hey, my role here is to really, like, help have the best conversation possible, whatever the outcome, then that group is really important. Two other things I'll mention is really just focusing on including social connection and social activities as part of whatever you're doing, right? So allowing people to meet and share and build relationships, incorporating food time for social time, name tags. I'm a big fan of name tags, just to help, like, grease the wheels of connection. It's amazing how often you see community engagement events, people show up. They sit in their chairs. No one talks like missed opportunity, like big time. And then when you're asking those questions and you're and you're facilitating a conversation, really sitting, sitting people so they can see each other and then asking so people can share and see each other in the faces while they're contributing and see their. In context of others. That's really important. That's kind of what empathy is, is about, right there. And then, okay, one more thing, I'm not talking for a while. The last thing is just really try to wire a project for for action. In the beginning. It's it's so often we have these conversations and then they go and sit on a shelf somewhere, and that can be really hard, especially the way we fund things like construction and building and planning. But if you don't, if something doesn't happen with it, you just breed cynicism, right? Like people don't show up again. So whether that could be an early success, it could be a kind of a tactical urbanism, you know, you go prototype some small part of whatever you're thinking, right? But it starts to create this sort of virtuous cycle where people see they contribute. They see something happened with what they do, with what they've contributed, and that really helps people stay engaged and build this momentum of like, Hey, I have some agency. I have some save, or how what's happening in the place where I live.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 35:50

  Thank you for sharing those that's really helpful. Three, three takeaways to focus on. So we're coming to the end of our conversation here, Eric and closing, love it. If you could tell us a little bit about the city where you are based, or maybe if you want to share about one or two projects you've done in your city. And then I always ask this at the end of every conversation, but what are some local spots you like to recommend people check out when they come to visit to get a slice of local life?

  Eric Higbee 36:13

  Yeah, so I live in Seattle. Seattle is a city of neighborhoods and of beautiful green open spaces, so I would encourage people to check out. Like our neighbor, like, downtown's got some cool stuff. I like, you really got to get in the neighborhoods. We have good coffee and good food and everything. And particularly, like, if you check out some of the farmers markets, like, some of the big classic ones have been around for decades. They're just these amazing streets closed down, families, music, it's really fun. People come out for it. So I find that really amazing. Also our community garden program, so get out. We call them p patches here. P stands for Picardo, the first P patch. It's a city sponsored program. We have over 100 community gardens across the city, and they are just these, like engines for community building. And you go into these spaces, and they're just so cool. So great to see people. There's something about growing food together in community that's so powerful. So I love some of my favorites are Bradner gardens, Danny Wu Gardens, which are in the International District. It's all like Asian immigrant farmers. And then a project of mine that I helped, that I designed and helped build, was the up garden, which is on the roof of a parking garage. It's like we took this roof and turned like 14,000 square feet turn in this big garden with a roof of the view of the Space Needle. It's just as Oasis up there. And so, like, those kind of spaces are just really where I see community coming together, and you can get a taste of what life is like here. Do

  Speaker 1 37:32

  you have a favorite, like pub or coffee shop or place to grab a quick bite?

  Eric Higbee 37:38

  Yeah, so I live in Southeast Seattle. Everything is so, you know, your life starts to revolve around the place, you know, these neighborhoods. So there's a couple shops I really love here. There's our bookstore up the street. Third place books is really great. It's got a wonderful name too. It's got a coffee shop built in. So I spent a lot of time meeting with folks and hanging out there, as well as the coffee shop across the street, cafe Vita in Seward Park. So and then I love our business district in Columbia City, which is down in Southeast Seattle. We live in a really culturally, racially diverse part of town, so it's just peppered with really interesting, cool, ethnic businesses. I could rattle off a whole bunch of them, but and check it out.

  Tiffany Owens Reed 38:17

  Awesome. Well, Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show with me. I really appreciate your time. And yeah, you sharing your insights. I will definitely link to your substack. And you also have a book coming out. Is that correct? I'm working on

  Eric Higbee 38:29

  a book. I don't I don't have any deal. I don't have a deal yet, but I'm trying to take all the things that I'm writing on and turn them into a book format. So stay tuned. It'll be a little publishing is a funny thing, but someday soon. Well, we'll have to, we'll

  Tiffany Owens Reed 38:43

  have to have a part two when the book comes out and we can get into all the complicated definitions that we want to um, if you're listening to this, thank you for joining us for another episode. I'll be back soon with another conversation. If you know someone in your community who you think would make a great fit for this show, please let us know using the suggested guest form. Please check out Eric's writing. And if you're coming to the national gathering, please stop by my panel and say hello. It's the digital creators panel. I believe it's on Tuesday afternoon. So with that, I will wrap us up here. Yeah, thanks again. And keep doing what you can to build a strong town.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• Read more from Eric in his Substack, The Answer is Community

• Convene (site)

• Local Recommendations:

  • Third Place Books

  • Café Vitta

  • UpGarden

  • Columbia City Business District

• Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram)

• Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean or via RSS.

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