As traditional highway expansions are put on pause around the country, professionals and policymakers have an opportunity to move forward with a better approach. This book shows them how.
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So, you want to attend a city council meeting? Good luck getting past all the jargon! Check out these “translations” of a real-life council agenda, and why it’s important to be more transparent with citizens.
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In town after town, city after city, all across America, people are making their communities better for the next generation.
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If we’re serious about reorienting our local government towards the urgent needs of people, it’s not enough to invite them to a “table” they neither own nor control.
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Will digital technology usher in the next evolution of public hearings? Two years into an experiment in Colorado, the technology’s potential impact is coming into focus.
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Being a small business owner, especially in a smaller town, can give you an up front look at how local government works… and at what’s not working as well as it should. Here’s an interview with one strong citizen who’s hoping to take what he’s learned to City Hall.
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Here are a few ideas to make you a more effective—and interesting—public hearing participant.
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If you had five minutes to plant a seed in the mind of an influential leader in your community, what would you tell them? Or give them to read? What article do you wish Strong Towns would publish that would help you make a concrete, needed change in your own community?
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New research out of Boston University confirms that those who speak at local public hearings are not representative of the public as a whole. Elected officials seeking to understand constituents’ views should treat these hearings as only one source among many.
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Nothing good comes of public engagement in which the public isn’t asked questions they can meaningfully contribute to answering. This is not how you build a trusting relationship: a strong foundation on which to work together. This is how you corrode trust.
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Here are a few ideas to make you a more effective—and interesting—public hearing participant.
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Communities that are serious about improving transparency and citizen engagement need to embrace technology. It’s proven to work.
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It's not rocket science, guys.
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It’s easy to caricature people you don’t know or understand, and it can be satisfying in a superficial way. It’s much more difficult to accept that people are multidimensional, and what you know of one dimension may not represent the entire human being.
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When we talk about parks in cities, it helps if we can classify them into two types. Grand Parks are destinations. Neighborhood Parks are the living room of the community.
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There
Walking the tightrope of Strong Citizenship came to the fore this week after I re-read a short research article from grad school. At the time, I had highlighted the key points in a very theoretical way, ready to work them into an exam paper on the challenges of community involvement. Reviewing the paper again, I realized this is my life now. This is my life.
Make no mistake, we are not Tinkerbells. Hard work, not pixie dust makes a place feel magical. And while at times we enjoy this work immensely and it can even define us, the challenge remains, how to get paid?
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Don’t be intimidated by haters. Keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
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