Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

Why Patience Is a Virtue in Civic Work

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The Grand Coulee Dam in eastern Washington State is a marvel of engineering and one of the world’s most successful public projects. It is the single largest producer of electricity in the country and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. It was begun in the depths of the Great Depression as a New Deal project and began producing hydroelectric power—and lots of it—just months before Pearl Harbor. Because it produced so much power so cheaply (it cranks out enough today to electrify the Seattle area twice over), many give it some credit for winning World War II since Seattle needed a huge power source during the war years for airplane production. And get this: It was actually designed and built under budget. In 1933, when the project started, the estimated cost of the dam was $168 million. It was completed for $163 million.

So, if you are looking for a well-conceived, well-designed, well-managed government project, you need go no further than the Grand Coulee Dam. It’s a little surprising, then, to learn that the idea of the Grand Coulee Dam took shape in . . . 1918. It was then that a group of leaders in eastern Washington found the exact spot for a major hydroelectric dam and conceived its purpose and benefits (cheap power and irrigation for the parched countryside) 15 years before construction started and 22 years before it began producing power.

Why? For the reasons any experienced civic leader knows: Great ideas don’t sell themselves; the barriers to change—any change—are high; and sometimes it takes a crisis to motivate decision makers. And, yet, when the right moment comes along, bold ideas seem almost to leap off the shelf. Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in March 1933. Immediately, he and his advisers scoured the country for big public-works projects that could be started in a hurry. One of the first they found—and by far the largest—was the Grand Coulee Dam.

This time lag between concept and acceptance (often followed by frenetic action) is so common that economist Milton Friedman once offered some advice to those who despaired about change, especially his fellow conservatives:

There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

And it’s not just at the federal level that this lag occurs. Many people know that New York revolutionized police work in the mid-1990s by adopting the “broken windows” theory of social disorder. (Briefly, the theory holds that by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes such as littering, graffiti, turnstile jumping, public urination, and so on, you will head off major crimes. The name comes from the idea that, if a building has one window that’s not repaired, vandals will soon break all the windows.) Here’s the surprise: The theory was published in 1982 and thoroughly discussed at the time. It took 15 years for “broken windows” to get its high-profile test.

In Washington, D.C., there’s a mixed-use development going up on the site of the old Washington Convention Center at New York Avenue and 14th Street. It’s a big project: condos, apartments, offices, shops, and restaurants, packed into 10 acres. Sounds great until you learn that the city has been working on getting something at that site for almost two decades. Most of that time, officials knew they wanted a mixed-use facility—they even chose the developer in 2003—but one delay after another postponed it.

Given this sometimes long and frustrating delay between idea and execution, what should civic leaders do? Five things:

  • Don’t get frustrated. Ideas are often formed in a burst of energy and creativity and then . . . nothing. But simply knowing that the road ahead is likely to be long may help you keep spirits up. If an idea is a great one—if the benefits to the community are obvious—then it will find its moment. Be patient.
  • Keep talking about the idea and refining it. Use this fallow period to prepare your idea and prepare others for your idea by coming up with new ways of illustrating its benefits. If it’s a new museum or a streetcar, how many ways can you help people see the museum and its collection or experience the sensation of moving on rail?
  • Build a committed group of advocates. This is the other thing you can do during the fallow period. The social media allow nearly unlimited ways of keeping the converted in conversation—and converting new people. Use them.
  • Watch for changing circumstances that may allow the “politically impossible” to become the “politically inevitable,” to use Milton Friedman’s words. It could be a crisis, a change of leadership in a key agency or government—or both. And when it happens, bring your new idea and your growing list of supporters to the new leaders’ attention immediately. If FDR had learned about the Grand Coulee Dam idea in 1934 instead of 1933, chances are it would never have been built.
  • Search for a work-around.

The last point bears a little explanation. Sometimes bold new ideas can be presented as, well, not so bold. In fact, even the biggest changes in cities can be offered up as small and safe—if they are presented as experiments. This is how Mayor Michael Bloomberg has remade huge parts of New York, building bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, allowing “pop-up” restaurants on city sidewalks, and so on. If he had presented any of these as bold new city policies (which they eventually became), opponents would have killed them.

So how did he do it? He offered them as “pilot projects,” experiments in a small area for the purpose of observation. In part he did this because it allowed the city to do things without going through the cumbersome and delay-prone public review process. But Bloomberg is also an astute observer of human (and political) nature. Had he proposed narrowing hundreds of New York streets for bike lanes, the howls of protest would have drowned out the idea, all of them predicting economic and physical gridlock. But by doing just a few blocks at first, then a few more, then a few more, then a lot more, the mayor and his staff proved that even the busiest New York streets could accommodate cyclists, motorists, and truck drivers—and be more humane for it.

Bloomberg has done this repeatedly over his three terms in office, quietly making small changes that paved the way for big ones. Often, by the time the larger ones are made, controversial changes aren’t controversial any longer. One of his critics, looking at the mayor’s use of pilots to pave the way for change, told the New York Times, “It’s masterful.”

You may be able to offer your change as bite-size pieces, or maybe not. It’s hard, for instance, to build just part of the Grand Coulee Dam and use it as a demonstration project. But whether you offer your great idea as a series of small steps or one long stride, the same advice applies: Be patient.

Photo by Jeff Hanway licensed under Creative Commons.

Smart Citizen Engagement . . . and Dumb, Dumb, Dumb

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I am a fan of governments reaching out to citizens for ideas and participation for two reasons. It’s good for government officials to work side by side with citizens, and it’s good for citizens to work side by side with governments. But there are smart ways of doing this, and there are dumb, dumb, dumb ways.

I’ll talk about the smart and the dumb in a moment, but first a few words about why citizen involvement is important. Start with the basics: Citizens know some things better than government officials, and government officials know some things better than citizens. Citizens know things that begin with the word “what”—what the problems are (particularly in their own neighborhoods), what they want their city or neighborhood to be, and what they are personally willing to contribute in time and taxes to make these things happen. In other words, citizens are good at vision and judgment. Government officials are good at the “how” parts—how to deliver the things the citizens want, how to pay for them, and how to be sure things work as planned when they’re in place.

When you put these competencies together, with the citizens taking the lead—but not having exclusive say—in the “what” parts, and government officials taking the lead—but not having exclusive say—in the “how” parts, you get a strong partnership . . . with a little creative tension. The tension comes from not totally ceding either part. On the contrary, it helps if the parties look over each other’s shoulder. Citizens sometimes have great ideas about getting things done. And public officials can often suggest things the citizens ought to be thinking about but, for some reason, aren’t. How do you let one side take the lead without ceding control? You act with respect for what the other party does best, the way you would toward any valued colleague or partner.

Here’s another principle of citizen engagement: The goal shouldn’t be a new set of ideas or goals but a long-term sharing of responsibilities. Alas, that’s not the political reflex. The reflex, upon hearing a complaint or an idea, is to take the problem away from the person who’s complaining. I understand why this happens—many elected officials believe the path to re-election is paved with credit for getting things done, and most appointed officials think it’s important to appear in control—but by taking problems away from people you diminish them and limit a government’s effectiveness. The best way to deal with community problems and opportunities is through partnerships, where everyone does his part: government, businesses, nonprofits, and citizens.

By taking the time to plan and act as partners, two wonderful things happen. First, resources multiply—not just financial resources but human labor and creativity. Second, solutions become virtuous cycles, where each partner’s contribution rewards the others’ efforts, increasing the rewards and making the effort easier with each turn of the cycle.

You see this most clearly in business improvement districts, where landowners tax themselves to make commercial areas safer and more attractive. The virtuous cycle for BIDs works in two ways. As they make improvements, property values rise and revenues to the BID increase, enabling it to do more, which makes property values rise even more . . . and on and on. But the real secret to BIDs isn’t the money they raise and spend on their own. It’s the partnerships they forge with governments. Over time, smart and focused BIDs learn how to ask intelligently for things, and governments like working with them. The money they raise, then, becomes not replacements for government services but enhancements, which helps everybody. The commercial district looks good, citizens are happy, businesses prosper, property owners see their investments rise in value, tax revenues grow for government and the BID, and the cycle goes round and round.

This, then, is the power of partnership, and it ought to be the aim of every government—not to coddle citizens or push them out of the way, but to plan and work with them as respected equals.

OK, then what’s a smart way of doing this? You start by asking citizens what they want, plan the “how” parts together—so citizens learn the cost of public goods and can decide if they truly want them—and then you ask those working alongside you to lend a hand in making them happen.

I have two examples of smart citizen engagement, both from older cities dealing with major crime problems. First is from Philadelphia where Mayor Michael Nutter has created a small agency called PhillyRising. It’s a handful of government workers who are good at talking with citizens and enlisting them as partners. Not long ago, a newspaper reporter sat in on a PhillyRising meeting in a Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood plagued by crime. The meeting began with a top city official saying something you don’t hear enough from government leaders. “The city doesn’t have all the answers,” he said. “We know you guys,” referring to neighborhood residents, “know the problems in the community better than anybody else.”

And that was pretty much the end of the speeches. For the rest of the meeting, the PhillyRising staff facilitated the 35 or so who came in talking about the neighborhood’s issues—not just the crime problems, but things like neighborhood schools and adult literacy problems—as others took notes on large flip charts. At the end, staffers invited the residents to come back in two weeks to work on plans for changing the things they had identified—with the city playing a supporting role. As the PhillyRising director told the reporter who was there, “The idea behind it is, instead of doing things for people, we’re trying to do things with them and teach them.” Precisely.

The second example is from Detroit, and it’s not about government doing smart things with citizens but citizens doing smart things with government. (Remember, it’s a partnership.) I don’t have to explain much about Detroit’s problems—they begin with a horrifying homicide rate and go from there. But not every part of Detroit suffers equally. There are a few neighborhoods that have kept crime at bay.

How did they do it? By organizing, watching things carefully, and working seamlessly with the police. These aren’t vigilantes. In one of the neighborhoods, North Rosedale, neighborhood volunteers don’t chase criminals; they photograph things that look suspicious and call the cops. They are so close to the police that, as neighborhood watch volunteers start their evening rounds, they check in with a nearby precinct to find out who’s on duty and what to keep an eye on.

As the Detroit Free Press reported, police and other city officials love these smart, organized, involved volunteers. “The cooperative effort that you have shown with the police department has just been super,” a police commander told one of the neighborhood groups at its regular monthly planning meeting with police and city officials last year. “The arrests that are being made are all with interaction with the community. A lot of other communities don’t offer that. It is a big tribute to you, and it’s very much appreciated.” The appreciation is mutual. One of the volunteers told the newspaper: “We believe it is important to work very closely with the police department.”

Let’s pause for a moment and review what’s right about these efforts. They create partnerships, not dependence. In each case, government knows its limitations. It appreciates what the citizens can do and stands ready to help but not direct. In one case, the government is reaching out to the citizens, in the other the citizens are reaching out to the government. The results of both will be smarter government (specifically, more effective policing) and smarter, more involved citizens.

So if these are examples of smart citizen engagement, what does dumb engagement look like?  I have two examples of this, as well. The first involves the Pittsburgh police department, but instead of being partners of the citizens, the police have cast themselves as adversaries. The problem in Pittsburgh is a familiar one for urban police departments. Ethnically the police force doesn’t look much like the city today; it’s overwhelmingly white in a diverse city. The suspicion among African-American leaders is that the hiring process is rigged against black candidates, so they lobbied the mayor to open up the hiring process by allowing some community members to sit in on interviews.

Reluctantly, the police agreed. An organization called the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network offered the names of some volunteer interviewers to the police department, which forwarded them to other city departments for screening and training. In time, the interview panels including civilians were assembled . . . until someone noticed that one woman who was asking questions was wearing an electronic monitoring device on her ankle. Turns out, one of the police interviewers was a convicted felon who had pleaded guilty a year before to felony firearms charges.

The panels were abruptly cancelled. The police chief blamed city bureaucrats for fouling things up by not running background checks. Everyone was embarrassed and angry. But take away the embarrassing revelation—the woman with the ankle monitor—and you see this for what it was: a shallow and ineffective substitute for citizen engagement. It was shallow because it substituted a handful of people on city hall interview panels for genuine partnerships with citizens in their neighborhoods. And it was ineffective because it asked this handful of citizens to do something they weren’t equipped to do—judge what makes a good police officer. Actually, the citizen member who might know something about effective policing was the woman with the ankle monitor. At least she could claim experience with the criminal justice system.

What would have been better? It would have been much, much better if the department had taken the time to engage citizens in discussions about what they wanted from officers in their neighborhoods. If they had listened carefully and worked collaboratively to find better ways of recruiting, training, and retaining officers who fit the new profile. Afterwards, if some involved in the planning process wanted to serve on the interview teams, they should have been welcomed and would have come to the panels in a completely different way—with knowledge of what police officers do and an understanding of how the hiring process was changing. In short, they would have been seen as partners in making a better police department—and not as intruders or nuisances.

But it isn’t only local governments that make a mess of citizen engagement. Sometimes citizens do, too. This brings me to the worst citizen engagement process I’ve ever heard of, designed by a group in Pinellas County, Florida called FAST, which stands for Faith and Action for Standing Together. As the name suggests, it’s an interfaith group, and its heart seems to be in the right place. Founded in 2004, FAST wants to improve low-income parts of the county, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and has taken on important issues from crime and drugs to transportation and education.

But if its intentions are good, its methods are atrocious. After FAST members (who number in the low thousands) settle on an issue and decide—on their own, with no government officials involved—what the correct solutions are, they haul public officials before them, force them stand on a stage and say only “yes” or “no” to FAST’s agenda. As a final indignity, elected officials are not allowed to touch the microphone, for fear they might . . . you know, try to explain something. A FAST member stands with the microphone in hand, ready to snatch it away.

By this point, most responsible elected or appointed officials will not participate what amounts to one of FAST’s public shaming sessions. Not long ago, though, several Pinellas County school board members came to one of the meetings, where they were told that the best way to instruct children was by using something called “direct instruction.” Would the school board members, on the spot, commit to changing the school system’s entire instructional approach? Yes or no? The answer, thankfully, was no. “I will not yield to pressure,” one board member told the group . . . presumably just before the microphone was snatched away.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be hectoring or patronizing. It doesn’t even have to be adversarial. In my experience, most government officials are perfectly willing to work alongside citizens; they just don’t know how to get started. And most citizens are far more interested in practical solutions than in venting their spleens and would welcome the opportunity to learn more about how government works.

There’s a marriage to be made here between governments and citizens, but like all good marriages it must come with some values. The two most important: respect for each other’s contributions and a belief in the power of partnerships.

Photo by Bytemarks licensed under Creative Commons.

On Her Majesty’s Town Council: How Local Government Works in the U.K.

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I met Martin Rickerd six years ago. I remember the exact day. It was July 4. It’s easy to remember because we met at an Independence Day party in a large meadow near the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta, and, it turned out, Martin was the consul general for Great Britain. Yes, you read that right: a representative of Her Majesty’s Government was at a celebration of our separation from Her Majesty’s Government.

I learned then that Martin had a good sense of humor and a fair amount of curiosity, which is a wonderful trait in a member of the Diplomatic Service. I, too, have a lot of curiosity, so we had several lunches to fill in the gaps in each other’s learning. And then Martin was gone, transferred back to U.K. and, in time, he retired. 

Not long ago, Martin got back in touch through email. He is now a writer, a professional proofreader (yes, there are such people), and a civic volunteer in a small town not far from London with the delightful name of Leighton Buzzard. (You can learn more about him and his work as a diplomat by reading his memoir.)

And once again, I fell back into my habit of peppering him with questions—this time about local government in the U.K. His answers were so good that I suggested we share them on my blog, and Martin has graciously allowed me to do so.  I’ve included my questions to give his answers context and have lightly edited his answers so they’ll make sense to American readers. In a couple of instances, he used a word like “tenders” that might confuse Americans, so I’ve inserted its U.S. equivalent in parentheses and italics. But I left his British spellings intact. After all, who’s to say which are the proper spellings, neighbor or neighbour, center or centre? Final note: Her Majesty’s Government refers to the central government in London. It is sometimes abbreviated as HMG.

Otis: If you get a chance, please tell me about Leighton Buzzard. Is it a suburb? A town? A village? As you may remember, I am curious about communities and how they work.

Martin: Leighton Buzzard is a town of about 38,000 located on the Bedfordshire/Buckinghamshire border, about 35 miles northwest of London. That means it’s in the heart of rail commuter territory—several thousand inhabitants travel by train to London every day (as I used to in my pre-Atlanta days). Hardly anybody would consider driving to London daily for work—there’s nowhere to park, the fuel costs the equivalent of $8.00 a gallon, the traffic is terrible on the motorway and there’s the “Congestion Charge” to pay in central London. By contrast, an annual season ticket on the train to London costs about £3,770 (about $5,970).

I actually live in Linslade which, although not recognised by the Post Office as a separate entity from Leighton Buzzard, has a distinct history (it was part of Buckinghamshire until the 1970s) as the Grand Union canal—a major trading waterway in the 19th and early 20th centuries—separated the two communities. When the railway from London to Birmingham was built in the mid-1800s, the people of Leighton Buzzard insisted that the station be built on the Linslade side of the canal as they didn’t want the “wrong sort of people” visiting Leighton Buzzard!

The whole of Leighton Buzzard (i.e. including Linslade) has grown quite fast over the past 10-15 years as it’s in a popular part of the “greenbelt” around London—we are surrounded by the gentle Chiltern Hills—and the town struggles to find a balance between growth and preserving its character. Leighton-Linslade Town Council deals with very low-level issues such as trading permits for retailers and organising local events; but for all important matters including planning (zoning) it plays second fiddle to Central Bedfordshire Council, which covers a much bigger area (of course, “bigger” is a relative term—the whole of Central Bedfordshire’s area is only 275 square miles, about the same size as Atlanta’s suburb of DeKalb County. There’s a big difference in population, though—about 255,000 in Central Bedfordshire, compared to over 660,000 in DeKalb).

Central Beds is responsible for things like police and fire services, roads, education, and environmental services including rubbish collection. Homeowners pay their annual “Council Tax”—equivalent of property tax—to Central Beds, not to the Town Council. Like all county councils, Central Bedfordshire’s funding is topped up (subsidized) by the UK national government.

The mayor of Leighton-Linslade is essentially a ceremonial position, which goes with being leader of the largest political group on the Town Council. To give you an idea of the relative local importance of all this, a by-election held last week to replace a councillor who had failed to attend a single meeting in more than a year attracted a turnout of only 17 percent (which included me and my wife, as we feel quite strongly about these things—if our troops are dying to protect democratic rights in unsafe parts of the world, the least we can do is exercise our own democratic rights).

Bedfordshire is divided up differently when it comes to representation in the UK Parliament—the county as a whole has six MPs, while Central Beds the local government area has three.

I hope all this isn’t too bewildering as a “101” to the local government scene here. If you are a glutton for punishment, you could have a look at the Central Bedfordshire website and the Leighton-Linslade website.

Otis: This is wonderfully helpful.  I’ve tried for several years to get my arms around how local governments work in the U.K. I know that, under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, there was a greater emphasis on local government, but I could never get the 101 explanation of who did what, who paid for what, and who decided what. My interpretation from what you’ve written is that local governments function (as they do in the U.S.) by dividing responsibilities, with the “sub-counties” like Central Bedfordshire doing the heavy lifting of basic services like police, fire, sanitation. By the way, what is the common name for these jurisdictions (i.e., Central Bedfordshire)? I see why they’re used—you can get economies of scale by having a larger tax base and managing services over a wider area than a town could—but why not use the counties (Bedfordshire, for example) for that? Are they simply too big—sort of like asking the state of Georgia to manage trash pickup?

And then we have the towns like Leighton-Linslade. In reading your description and visiting the website, it sounds sort of like a U.S.-style “business improvement district” rather than a full-fledged government. That is, it is in charge of making sure a place looks good and develops appropriately, along with providing some fun and games from time to time. Which makes me wonder what the Town Council does when it meets. Event planning and low-level business regulation don’t make for great public policy-setting. Is this why some members go AWOL? (If I counted correctly, there are 20 members on the Leighton-Linslade Town Council. That’s a big governing body, especially if it doesn’t have much to decide.) Of course, Leighton-Linslade has one thing that Atlanta suburbs like Roswell and Decatur don’t: a town crier. Still, managing the town crier, even if you have to sometimes press the robes and tune the bell, can’t take that much time.

Here’s an important question: Who sets land-use policy and decides how specific parcels of land are developed? It looks like it might be the Central Bedfordshire Council . . . it has information on its website about planning and applying for permits . . . but it wasn’t absolutely clear. I don’t know what this is called there, but in the U.S., it’s called zoning, and it is one of the central powers that’s reserved to local governments. If someone wants to build a hotel or a small shopping area in Leighton-Linslade, who decides where it will go? Who draws up 20-year urban plans (where sewers will go, which areas will eventually be commercial, etc.)?

And speaking of large governing bodies, the Central Bedfordshire Council has 59 members. That’s bigger than the New York City Council. Most cities or counties in the U.S. have between five and 15 elected members. Do you have any theories about why there are such big local councils?

Martin’s first response was a laugh that could be heard across the ocean. 

Martin: Two points you make would go down really well in the pub here (and have the regulars paying for your drinks), with a variety of colourful answers:

  • “Makes me wonder what the Town Council does when it meets.”
  • “Central Bedfordshire Council has 59 members. That’s bigger than the New York City Council.”

I’ll let you have a considered response to your email in a day or two, but those two observations are priceless from a British perspective!

A few days later, he wrote back with detailed answers.

Martin: You asked what is the common name for local government jurisdictions. The answer is simple “local government.” This term is widely understood and accepted to mean everything that isn’t “central government,” i.e. Her Majesty’s Government (David Cameron, et al.) with UK-wide responsibilities. (It doesn’t include the “Devolved Administrations” for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are different again; don’t get me started on them!)

“Local government” covers a wide range of bodies covering a broad range of services. The two extremes of local government could be illustrated by, for example, Liverpool City Council, in the northwest of England, which covers a dense urban area of 445,000 people (see the Liverpool government website for an idea of the services they provide) and our own Leighton-Linslade Town Council, as previously described.

Most English counties have a single council covering non-urban areas, while the towns often have their own bodies. The County of Bedfordshire comprises several discrete areas, with very different characteristics (urban/rural, industrial/residential, etc.), so it makes sense for it to be administered to reflect the diversity of each area. Thus Bedfordshire is divided for local administrative purposes into:

  • Borough of Bedford: the county town of Bedford, pop. 80,000, plus one or two smaller immediately adjacent towns, with a fairly high industrial/commercial base.
  • Luton Borough Council. Luton is in the east of the county, fairly industrial (the British General Motors subsidiary, Vauxhall, was based there, and the town was an important hat-making centre in earlier times) and home to London’s fourth airport. Population, including abutting towns, around 250,000.
  • Central Bedfordshire Council, for all the rest (it’s actually far more than “central,”covering the middle, south and west of the county, but they wanted one word.)

Bedford and Luton boroughs are “unitary authorities,” signifying that that they cover several towns, bound up as one, due to proximity.

A characteristic common to many English councils, large and small, is that many services are contracted out to private service providers—such as highway maintenance and environmental services such as rubbish collection, drain clearance, school buses, etc. This started under Margaret Thatcher as a money-saving thing (and as a way to reduce the power of the public sector unions) and has become standard practice—and a major source of income for the lucky businesses that win the tenders (contracts)!

Area zoning (planning) issues are dealt with by the Bedford/Luton/Central Beds councils as appropriate, as planning regulation is delegated by national government—although in rare, controversial cases HMG can overturn a local council’s decision. The bigger towns such as Bedford and Luton have their own planning priorities but would coordinate with Central Beds on the basis of friendly neighbourliness (we hope!). There is a major consultation on at the moment by Central Beds to decide the shape of development (residential vs. commercial, etc.) over the next 20 years or so—that’s a Central Beds issue because it covers multiple smaller (town) council areas. It’s a public consultation (period of public comment), and anyone living in the Central Bedfordshire Council area can comment online, by mail or at a public meeting. (HMG is currently proposing a major overhaul of planning regulations, reducing 1,000 pages of guidance to 50. It’s very controversial since “presumption of approval” becomes, for the first time, the starting point for all applications.)

So while permission for an individual supermarket in Leighton Buzzard to expand can be decided by Leighton-Linslade Town Council alone, the question of how many supermarkets would properly serve the population of the county as a whole rests with Central Beds.

Each county (and most large conurbations) has its own police and fire services, and are partially funded by the local “Council Tax” (property tax) paid by every property owner, but the majority funding comes from HMG. Each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales is watched over by a police authority comprising a mix of people appointed by the local council, independent members and magistrates. (HMG wants to introduce elected police commissioners for each force in England and Wales; the scheme is highly controversial, but the first elections are due in November this year.)

As for the size of the councils, it’s important to note that a council like Central Beds represents dozens of small towns and villages, each of which (or perhaps two neighbouring ones) have their own representative/s. Our town council is broken down into eight wards, each with two or three councillors. Councillors are unpaid, voluntary part-timers with full-time day jobs. That also partly explains why some of them don’t turn up all the time! (They can claim expenses and some allowances, but it’s not a way to get rich or famous.) Finally, you asked what do they do at their meetings. I haven’t been to one yet, although I intend to at some point. I attach a sample agenda—this probably won’t be the one I go to, but it will give you an idea! Not a mention of the Town Crier.

Want to know more about local government in the U.K.? You can download an agenda and find other information about the Leighton-Linslade Town Council by clicking here.

Photo by DH Wright licensed under Creative Commons.

Quality of Life as Community Glue

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Here are two easy questions. What attracts people to a place? And what keeps them there?

Actually, these aren’t easy questions at all. There are many reasons a person might pack up and move to a new city: a job, an education, a change of lifestyle or climate, family connections, restlessness, curiosity, and so on. And what keeps a person in a place once she has arrived? Again, not a single reason. The job, family ties, inertia—and maybe a dozen other things.

Block party in Los Angeles Flickr photo by waltarrrrr licensed under Creative Commons

So let’s ask these questions in a different way: What can local governments and others who care about cities do to make their communities more attractive to outsiders and binding to those already there? To use an economics term, where can you invest at the margins to increase a community’s attraction and appeal, to make it more of a magnet and give it more glue?

If you don’t like my analogies—magnet and glue—don’t blame me. I borrowed them from a book written in 1997 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at the Harvard Business School. The book is “World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy,” and these were the things Kanter said every city needed to be successful: a “magnet” to pull people in, and enough “glue” to keep them there.

What can cities do to be better magnets? They can’t do much about their climates or family connections, but they can have a big influence on their economies. The best ways are by building and maintaining good physical infrastructure, offering a skilled and educated work force, and constantly and creatively selling the community’s assets through economic development activities. So spend money on roads, sewers, and transit, invest in schools, and support your local chamber of commerce.

And glue? What can cities do to bind their citizens so tightly that even if their economic circumstances change (say, their employer closes shop), personal lives change (they retire, their kids move away), or neighborhood demographics change, they can’t bring themselves to leave—even with good options elsewhere? Answer: They can invest in quality of life.

But what is quality of life? Of all the phrases used in cities, this may be the slipperiest. For many, quality of life is what they personally like about their community, from a favorite senior center and concerts on the town square to low taxes and good public services. But actually, quality of life is important and specific—and, best of all, it’s something only cities can deliver. States can’t provide quality of life, neither can counties. Only organized, developed places can—which is to say, cities and towns.

To understand quality of life—and why only cities can provide it—you have to start by knowing its purposes. In my view, there are three: to offer connectedness with other people, to create a sense of place and identity, and to provide opportunities for personal growth. Let’s look at each.

Connectedness: One of the most basic human needs is for connection with others. We do this all our lives—in school, at work, at parties, in churches and synagogues, and, yes, at civic meetings—and many of us do it so unconsciously that we forget how hard it can be for others, especially newcomers. The good news is that cities, with their sidewalks and town squares, libraries, restaurants, shops and work places, are tailor made for bumping into people and exchanging greetings from a tip of the hat to a long conversation.

But just because they are natural meeting places doesn’t mean every city does it equally well. The best—the ones we think of as having the highest quality of life—are intentional about bringing together strangers safely and harmoniously. The primary ways are through events and public spaces. Events are anything that draws a crowd and provides opportunities for conversation—parades, festivals, block parties, civic meetings, and the like. Public spaces do pretty much the same thing. If you’ve ever had lunch in at a sidewalk cafe or on a park bench and struck up a conversation with the person next to you, you know how it works. And even if you’re not the sort who talks with strangers, sitting in a place where you can see your fellow citizens is reassuring. It gives you a sense of connection even without interaction. And that’s the point: People don’t easily leave places they feel connected with.

Identity: This is another basic human need, the sense of belonging, but the connection here is not to other people but to a place. If you’ve lived in different parts of the country you know the feeling: Sooner or later, you decide this is your kind of town or it’s not. It could be the architecture, the accents, the things people eat for breakfast, the way they drive their cars, or the pace of life. Some of it is cultural, and cities can’t change much of that, but there are things at the margins they can change—things that build a sense of distinctiveness and civic pride.

Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa Flickr photo by ferret111 licensed under Creative Common

Here are three: Trademark institutions, trademark spaces, and trademark events. The easiest example of a trademark institution is a sports team, which by its nature builds loyalty to a place. But there are other examples, from museums and zoos to quirky traditions like the Peabody Hotel duck march in Memphis. (Here in Atlanta, I think of Chastain Park, home to outdoor concerts and picnics, as one of the city’s trademark institutions.) The keys are distinctiveness and authenticity. The reasons the Red Sox and Fenway Park are so beloved in Boston are because its fans can’t imagine the team in any other city and can’t imagine the team playing in any other ball park.

Trademark spaces work in a similar way: Central Park in New York, Bayshore Boulevard in Tampa, the National Mall in Washington, D.C. As with institutions, it’s important that trademark spaces reflect the character of the place. And then there are trademark events, which do double duty by building connectedness and pride in place. Yet again, distinctiveness is important. Boston doesn’t just have a marathon, it has the marathon—the first annual marathon staged anywhere in the world, as any Bostonian will tell you. Can’t be historic? Then be quirky. Chicago set off an urban craze a few years back by putting painted cow statues all over its downtown, which told residents that theirs was a city with a sense of humor. Over time, events can become so central to a city’s identity that it’s hard to separate the two. Quick, what do you think of when you think of New Orleans? In all likelihood . . . Mardi Gras.

Point is, all of these quality of life assets build a sense of pride and belonging among citizens. (And, sometimes, a little tourism as well.) The aim is to give citizens a reason for staying, a tangible place or experience they would miss if they were to leave.

Personal growth: The third thing quality of life does is provide opportunities for personal growth and development. These could be anything from community theaters that allow people to try their hand at acting and directing to evening schools that teach art, floral design, foreign languages, cooking, great literature, and so on. These things may not be your cup of tea, but they are the passions—or, at least, the passing interests—of millions, and the communities that satisfy these needs are likeliest to hold on to their people.

Community theater in Paris, Texas Flickr photo by In Paris Texas licensed under Creative Commons

Of these personal-growth institutions, I find community theaters the most interesting. According to a trade association, there are 7,000 non-professional theaters in America, staffed by 1.5 million volunteers, offering 46,000 performances a year to audiences totaling 86 million people. That’s a lot of culture and entertainment, but the real value isn’t delivered to the audience; it’s delivered to the people on stage. They’re the ones who are changed by the experience, and once changed, they’re the ones who will most likely be anchored to the community.

When you look at quality of life this way—as a way of binding people to communities through connections, identity, and personal growth—it becomes not something that’s nice to have during good times, but necessary to have at all times, even the hard ones. This is something suburban communities need to learn in a hurry. Everywhere, the suburbs are changing rapidly. Among other things, they are becoming much more ethnically diverse. Diversity is a good thing, but the reaction to diversity, particularly if it’s sudden, can be bad. As newcomers move in, some old-timers leave out of fear. We won’t miss some of these people, but wholesale flight—where families move out of fear that property values will plunge —isn’t good for communities.

We can’t stop people from leaving, but we can make them think twice about what they’re giving up, the connections with neighbors, the city’s institutions and experiences, the opportunities for learning and growth. Quality of life gives people these second thoughts. It slows them from making rash and fearful decisions. It acts like glue. And, in the end, every successful community is a sticky one.

Why You Should Learn to Think like a Politician

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In his engrossing new biography of John F. Kennedy, Chris Matthews tells us that, in 1958, after he won re-election to the U.S. Senate and was preparing to run for president, Kennedy dropped by Congressman Tip O’Neill’s office. He wasn’t there to talk about public policy; he wanted to know from the congressman’s political aide, Tommy Mullen, precisely how neighborhoods in O’Neill’s Boston district had voted.

Together, Kennedy and Mullen went over the vote totals from Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhoods, precinct by precinct. Years later, O’Neill was still amazed by the sight of the future president and his own aide combing through the numbers. “I’d never seen anybody study the voting patterns of ethnic and religious groups in a systematic way before,” O’Neill told Matthews, “and I don’t think that most people realized then, or appreciate now, that Jack Kennedy was a very sophisticated student of politics.”

The key word is “student,” because Kennedy wasn’t a natural politician the way that, say, Bill Clinton was. Before running for office in 1946, Kennedy’s social world was pretty much confined to Harvard, Palm Beach, Hyannis Port, and London. He knew little of working class Boston and, surprisingly, not much about Irish Americans. He also knew next to nothing about how people got elected to office. So he set about learning by visiting local politicians and asking their advice.

Along the way, Kennedy wrote what he heard in a notebook. Here are some of the things he jotted down:

  • “In politics, you don’t have friends, you have confederates.”
  • “You can buy brains but you can’t buy loyalty.”
  • “One day they feed you honey, the next (you) will find fish caught in your throat.”
  • “The best politician is the man who does not think too much of the political consequences of his every act.”

Of all of the things that made John Kennedy a compelling figure, perhaps the least appreciated was his devotion to the craft of politics, something that became, in Matthews’ words, “an essential part of him.”

What does this have to do with cities and leadership? Just this: As we’ve grown in recent decades in our knowledge of urban economies, street-level planning, city design, the value of diversity, government finance and management, we’ve lost an essential leadership skill—the craft of city politics. Put another way, we now have a great storehouse of what ought to be done, but less and less knowledge of how to do it.

We’ve tried to fill in for that missing knowledge with citizen engagement, by asking citizens what they want, and how they’d like it delivered. (I know. I’ve been part of a number of citizen-engagement projects.) But while engaging citizens is helpful, it’s not enough. That’s because, at the end of the day, we still need someone—elected officials, mostly—to put together specific initiatives, explain these proposals to the public, sell the initiatives to other decision makers, work through the details with bureaucrats, make compromises, get the initiatives enacted, and oversee their implementation. You can use any term you want, but I’m pretty sure that JFK would have called this “politics.”

I’ll offer some ideas about dealing with our political knowledge deficit, but let me begin with two caveats. First, city government is not the same as a city. Cities are complex human environments made up of many dynamic parts, from economics and demographics to technology and culture. And cities are themselves nodes in much larger environments—regional, national, and global.

But if local government isn’t the sum of a city, it is surely the most influential part. That’s because only government has the mandate, platform, and most easily mobilized resources for addressing the issues facing a community. Think of government, then, as the rudder of the ship and some of the sails. And politics? That’s how we decide who gets to be helmsman . . . along with a good portion of the crew.

My second caveat is that politics is about two things. First, it’s about electoral politics, which is what brought Jack Kennedy to Tip O’Neill’s office in 1958. In other words, how people get elected. But second, politics is about legislation, which is how groups of elected officials, government regulators, and other decision makers come to consensus (or don’t) about what to do.

Everyone who wants to be a serious civic leader at the neighborhood, city, or regional levels needs to know both kinds of politics: How people get elected, and how government decisions are made. And not in a textbook way. You need to know how your current mayor ran for office, how she put together a winning coalition, and who was part of the coalition. And you need to know how your city’s most important ordinances were crafted, who was part of the discussions, and how the proposals changed as they moved through the process.

Why is this knowledge important? Because you need to be involved in picking the right helmsman to steer your city. And if you’re going to serve on the crew—along with people from government—you better know how they work so you can do your part.

But how can you learn about the two kinds of politics in your city? First, you can learn it as JFK did, by visiting politicians and asking them. (You’ll be surprised by how candid they’ll be if they trust you.) Second, you can hope for more media attention to the craft of politics. This probably won’t come from the traditional media but it might from new media, such as civic websites, podcasts, or even some alternative weekly newspapers.

Finally, you can create your own discussions. I have some experience with this. For a number of years, I moderated a panel of mayors for the annual International Downtown Association conference called “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Politics But Were Afraid to Ask Your Mayor.” We got together three or four mayors from around the country and let downtown executives ask them difficult questions.

My favorite came from a woman in Iowa who said, “Our new mayor ran on a platform of putting our organization out of business. How should we deal with that?” I was amazed by how candid the mayors were, offering advice for dealing with politicians, advancing ideas, talking with the public, and a hundred other practical tips on politics. They were so candid that I worried a little about how it might affect their careers. (I’m happy to report that, of the 20 or so mayors who appeared on my panels over the years, two are now governors, one is a U.S. senator, and several are still mayors. To my knowledge, no one suffered from participating.)

Every civic organization could do something like this—put together panels that teach politics to people who don’t want to run for office but want to be effective in their communities. And let me make a distinction here. This is not the same as candidate forums at election time or issue forums at other times. These forums are more like seminars in practical politics, where three or four elected officials talk about how politics really works—and civic leaders learn how they can work better with their elected officials. (If your current political leaders are too cautious, invite some former politicians.)

And it’s not just civic leaders who need to know how politics work. So do people who work in city halls, many of whom are surprisingly uninformed about their mayor and city council. Every college planning department and government management school ought to have seminars with politicians who explain how they got elected and how they put together legislation. And every government professional organization (yes, I’m talking about you, American Planning Association) needs to offer refresher courses at its annual conferences.

Finally, it would be a good idea if politicians talked more about politics among themselves. The thing I noticed about the mayors on my panels was how attentive they were to each other’s stories and advice; it was as if they were taking notes. This kind of peer learning is important because, if we had better politicians, we’d have better cities. And it’s particularly needed on the legislative side of politics because it’s hard to get big things done in communities. Many well-intended politicians aim too high and fail—or too low and accomplish little. Get the politicians together, let them talk about what worked and what didn’t, and they’ll improve each other’s winning percentages—and that of their cities.

John Kennedy would have understood the value of peer learning. For all his eloquence and glamour, JFK was a cautious politician who left little to chance. If someone said he’d vote with Kennedy on a major bill, JFK wanted to be absolutely sure he could depend on it. Apparently, this was something he had learned early in his career from talking with Boston politicians. Something about being fed honey but winding up with a fish in your throat.

About Otis White

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc., a collaborative and strategic planning firm for local governments and civic organizations. He has written about cities and their leaders for more than 30 years. For more information about Otis and his work, please visit www.civic-strategies.com.

The Great Project

Otis White's multimedia book, "The Great Project," is available on Apple iTunes for reading on an iPad. The book is about how a single civic project changed a city and offers important lessons for civic leaders considering their own "great projects" . . . and for students in college planning and political science programs.

For more information about the book, please visit the iTunes Great Project page.

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