Citizens – Page 2

A Better Way of Judging Candidates

May 11, 2016 By Otis White

As I write this, America is in the middle of a fever dream over who should be the next president. Every four years, Americans endure an astonishing amount of foolishness from our politicians, and this election has already served up way more than its share. Sorry, I can’t fix America’s crazy electoral system. (Pray for us.) But I do have some experience in making thoughtful decisions about people running for mayor, city council, county commission, school board, and just about any other local elected position.

It involves pulling together a group that cares about local politics, thinking a bit about the offices up for election and what they demand, creating a fair process of evaluating the candidates for these offices, then creatively engaging voters in a conversation about what it takes to be a good officeholder. What the group creates, in effect, are job descriptions for elected officials. And that act alone is a big step forward—for the group and (depending on how effective it is at engaging the citizens) the voters as well. I know. I’ve seen this approach work in two different cities. It might work in your city, too.

I was launched into this sideline in 2001 when the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce asked my help with one of its affiliate organizations, the Committee for a Better Atlanta, whose sole purpose was to evaluate candidates for local elected office. Most of the time, the Committee slumbered. It awakened for a few months every election cycle, interviewed candidates, announced its findings, then went back to sleep. In that period, it worked like a newspaper editorial board or the endorsement committee of a political interest group: sitting down with the candidates, listening to their ideas, asking about things of interest to the group, then announcing who should get the job.

But two things were different in 2001. First, the Metro Atlanta Chamber did not want the Committee for a Better Atlanta to be seen any longer as just another interest group. After all, the chamber represented the region’s entire business community, not just one self-interested industry. And the Committee’s makeup was broader even than the chamber’s, pulling in a number of other business groups. The result was a diverse coalition of organizations concerned about Atlanta’s future, with a particular interest in its economic well-being.

The second difference was the election itself. In 2001, Atlanta was in a crisis. The mayor, Bill Campbell, had been indicted and would, in time, be convicted and sent to prison. The city faced huge financial and infrastructure challenges, much of which did not interest Campbell. The chamber and the Committee’s leaders felt the city could not afford another corrupt or indifferent mayor. They wanted this round of endorsements to make a difference.

So they asked me: Did I have any ideas that could help the Committee with its work? I’ll spare you the details, but the first thing I suggested was that the Committee meet and agree on its purpose and how it wanted to work. The results: It wanted to influence the election, it wanted to evaluate candidates in the fairest way possible, and its members were open to doing things differently.

This was helpful because I thought the three were connected. The best way to influence the election in a positive way, I felt, was to be transparently fair. And the best ways of being fair were to evaluate the candidates in a different way and present the results in a different way.

Wouldn’t it be better, I asked, if the Committee didn’t just announce to voters whom they should vote for but rather began a conversation about what makes good elected officials? One of the Committee’s co-chairs eventually came up with the right analogy: Maybe we could evaluate candidates the way Consumer Reports rates automobiles.

Consumer Reports doesn’t endorse cars. It defines the attributes of a good car (reliability, safety, performance, comfort, fuel economy, and so on), then tells you how each model performed in each category. If you valued reliability above all else, you could compare the models just for that. If performance and comfort were your things, you could look just at those scores. Want to put all the attributes together? Consumer Reports offers an overall score.

If we could bring this approach to judging candidates, we decided, the Committee could accomplish all we were seeking. It could engage voters in thinking about what makes good candidates for local office. It could point them toward the good ones by offering its assessments. But it could do so in a way that would seem fairer, because . . . well, it was fairer. This new approach began by judging everyone by a set of reasonable criteria. If two candidates were close in their qualifications and positions, that would be clear. If a third was woefully inadequate, that would be obvious as well.

This seemed like a breakthrough, but this was actually the easier part of our new approach. We had an innovative form, but what would be its contents? If Consumer Reports thought safety, reliability, comfort, and fuel economy were the elements of a good car, what were the elements of a good candidate? So we went back to the group with this question: What do you value in an office seeker? In other words, if you were writing a job description for mayor and city council members, what would you include?

The answer that emerged was that most members looked for two things: political positions and personal qualities. That is, they wanted elected officials who did the right things (and their positions would tell you what they wanted to do). But they also wanted officeholders who could accomplish what they set out to do and do so in the right ways, which has to do with ability and character.

The positions weren’t that hard to figure out. Given the city’s problems and Campbell’s shortcomings, this group of business people was focused on better city management, infrastructure investments, public safety, and stronger government ethics.

But the personal qualities were more difficult to define. After much discussion, Committee members came up with three attributes:

Does the candidate have a vision for the city and a personal vision of what she can accomplish in a four-year term?
Does the candidate have a set of experiences and qualifications that could make her effective as an elected official?
Could she actually accomplish the things she wants to do? In other words, once in office does she have the ability to implement the vision?

Once we knew the issues and qualities, what remained were mostly logistical questions. Among them:

How could we phrase questions so candidates would answer them thoughtfully and candidly? And, specifically, which questions should we ask in person and which could be answered on questionnaires?
How should we organize the in-person interviews? Should candidates be rated after each interview, or should the panel wait until all candidates were interviewed and then rate them as a group?
What should we do about candidates who couldn’t or wouldn’t appear before the panel?
Once the ratings were complete, how should we present the findings to the voters and explain our rating system?

Finally, there was the rating scale, which touched off a lively debate. I thought it should be on a 1-to-10 scale or maybe 1-to-5, but Committee leaders felt strongly it should be a 1-to-100 scale, since that felt more like the grades people remembered from school. So that was that. And if a candidate didn’t show up? He got an N/A, which stands for “not available.”

Microsoft Word - 2001_05_31 Proposed candidate evaluation matrix

How did it look in practice? Before we started the evaluation process, I offered the Committee a mock-up, using my name and the names of three chamber employees. Here’s how it looked.

We held the interviews at a hotel in downtown Atlanta. We did a training session with Committee members before the candidates arrived, including a mock evaluation in which one volunteer answered questions evasively and another completely so members could see the difference. Everyone who was a Committee member (and my recollection is that it was a big group, perhaps 40 or more) sat in on the interviews for mayor and city council president. Then we divided them into panels for the city council races. They filled in their evaluations after all the candidates in a race had been interviewed. For such an unfamiliar approach, it went surprisingly smoothly.

One reason was that we had spent a lot of time thinking about the division of questions between the questionnaires, which candidates filled out in advance, and the interviews. Our criteria was this: If the question might reveal the candidate’s ability to reason logically, we asked it in person. Everything else was asked on the questionnaires.

You could see the difference in two questions we asked about infrastructure. The first was asked on the questionnaire:

In your opinion, what are the three greatest infrastructure problems facing Atlanta over the next four years? Please rank them in terms of expense and urgency. (There was space for three—but not more than three—answers.)

In the interviews, we asked a second infrastructure question:

In the questionnaire, you identified the three greatest infrastructure problems facing Atlanta in the next four years. Taking a look at the one you ranked as most important, please tell us how you would address this infrastructure need—and how you would pay for it.

We knew the Committee for a Better Atlanta was made up of business people who had long experience in looking at resumes and then drilling down in interviews for a job seeker’s problem-solving abilities. So that became our guide: Let background and big ideas be spelled out on the questionnaires and let the “how” parts be explored in person. (Actually, I think this approach would work for almost any group.)

When we were finished with the interviews, which took place over two days, we had the candidate scores and a good story to tell about our process. Then we had to figure out how to present these things to the voters.

Today, this wouldn’t be much of a mystery. You’d create a cool-looking website, with the ability to compare the candidates and explore the issues. You would have a page about the process and how it worked. You might include videos of the interviews, along with the questionnaires and candidates’ answers. You’d have short bios and links to the candidates’ websites. You might have interactive features (build your ideal candidate!) and places for comments and questions. And, of course, you’d have a marketing campaign to catch the voters’ attention.

But this was 2001. The iPhone hadn’t been invented. Netflix wouldn’t start streaming movies for another six years. Many people had access to a slow version of the internet but not everyone. We decided, then, that a booklet was the best way to present the information, something that could be inserted into a newspaper a week before the election. Then we called a press conference on the steps of Atlanta city hall to announce our new approach to rating candidates. (Hey, this was the way things were done in simpler times.)

In the end, did it work? Did the Committee for a Better Atlanta really influence Atlanta’s 2001 elections in a positive way? Oddly enough, the chamber wasn’t as interested in this question as I was. And, in truth, there are limitations to knowing how much impact a single group’s efforts can have on an election.

I tried my hand at answering the question in two ways: First, anecdotally; then by doing a little math. I started by looking at whether there were any surprises in the endorsements. That is, whether the new approach had caused Committee members to look at the candidates in a different way. And I thought it had, at least for the two most high-profile positions, mayor and city council president.

In both cases, the Committee rankings had surprised me. The two who scored highest for mayor and city council president were Shirley Franklin and Cathy Woolard. Both were less familiar to business leaders than their rivals and generally viewed as less business friendly. So something in the process had caused this group to consider the candidates in a more open-minded way. That, I thought, was significant.

Then I looked at who won the election and how the Committee had ranked them. The candidates with the highest rankings for mayor and council president (Franklin and Woolard) had won their races. But what about the council members? As I told the Committee in a post-election analysis: “Congratulations. You now have the city council you wanted.” Of the 15 council districts, nine had contested races. Of those, seven went to the candidates rated highest by the Committee. And the other two districts were won by candidates ranked exceptional (90 on a 1-100 scale) or acceptable (73).

Together with the incumbents who did not have opposition (and, interestingly, they wanted to be rated as well; all of them showed up for interviews), the average score of the city council incumbents who took office in January 2002 was 89 out of 100. So, yes, this was the council the Committee had hoped to elect.

None of this proves causation, of course. I couldn’t say the Committee’s ratings caused a candidate to win her race or her opponent to lose. But it was possible. (Among other things, we knew that the Committee judgments influenced how business groups contributed to candidates.) At the very least, I thought, it reassured one influential group that it would have a much, much better city government than it had endured under Bill Campbell.

So, what has happened to the Committee for a Better Atlanta since 2001? There’s good news and bad. The good: It retained the Consumer Reports-style approach of grading candidates along issues and qualities. So if two rivals are close in their issue positions and abilities, that’s obvious from the ratings. If they’re miles apart, that’s apparent as well.

The bad: It no longer gives much detail about the ratings so you can’t tell where the candidates succeeded and where they came up short. That’s a shame because the ability to drill down on issues and qualities was, I thought, the key to engaging the voters about what makes a good officeholder.

And this conversation, conducted over time, can be more important than any single election. The aim should be to help citizens make consistently good choices in the voting booth. And the way to do that is to apply something we’ve learned in the business world: that it helps if you focus on the job before you consider the candidates. The critical first step in doing that, of course, is to write out a job description. Everything that follows should be about how the candidates measured up to that description. If we leave out the detail, I fear, then we’ve lost the job description.

Footnote: I got a second opportunity to run this experiment in judging candidates a few years later, when a civic group in Memphis (again, made up mostly of business people) contacted me. A critical county commission election was ahead, and the group’s leaders wanted to know if a process similar to the one we used in Atlanta might work in a city even more divided by race, class, and geography.

We went through the same process with the Memphis group (define the issues and qualities, judge the candidates by those standards, then engage the voters). The leaders there even chose a similar name (the Coalition for a Better Memphis). The issues were different, of course, but most of the qualities carried over.

One difference: This was a startup group, so Coalition members began a bit more skeptically than the Atlanta group, which had long practice in working together. But when they saw how deliberate and fair the evaluation process was, they were won over. So were the candidates as they learned about it.

And the results? The scores of the winning candidates in Memphis were even higher than the city council scores had been in Atlanta. So I told the group, in my post-election analysis, repeating what I had told the Committee in Atlanta: Congratulations. You now have the county commission you had hoped for.

And what has happened to the Coalition? I’m happy to report it’s still around and still rating candidates using the system we pioneered. I can’t say how effective it has been in maintaining its conversation with the voters.

Photo by WFIU Public Radio licensed under Creative Commons.

How to Build an Army of Supporters

March 10, 2016 By Otis White

My favorite quote about change comes from that notorious 16th-century cynic Niccolo Machiavelli. “There is nothing more difficult and dangerous or more doubtful of success,” he wrote, “than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things while those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders.”

There are two parts to this quote. The first is that change is hard. The second is why change is hard. Those asked to give up something will fight it tooth and nail, while those who might benefit will be “lukewarm.” After all, how can they value something they don’t already have? But I take a third lesson from Machiavelli’s quote, which I think he would have agreed with: If you want to change something important, you’d better come with an overwhelming case and an army of supporters.

So how do you make a case for change and build an army out of “lukewarm defenders?” Over the years I’ve talked with scores of civic leaders who’ve created successful civic projects, many of which involved significant changes by their cities. They all did two things you can easily imagine: They found ideas or solutions that worked (these were the projects they championed) and built a set of relationships that created political and public support.

Many did a third thing that propelled their projects forward: They spotted a breakthrough, a change of circumstance that, for a moment at least, opened the door for change. (In an earlier posting, I called these things “the opportunity.”)

But there’s a fourth element, I’ve learned, that can also be critical to success, and that is articulating the “why” of change. This is the element that transforms lukewarm defenders into an army of supporters, and it does so by answering this question: Why do we need this change?

What, then, do we need to know about articulating the “why?” Here are three good starting points:

“Why” is not the same as “what.” That is to say, the project is not the motivation; the “why” is always more basic. The best way of illustrating this is with an example. Mayor Nancy Harris of Duluth, Georgia has been a longtime champion of the arts and urban design in her suburban Atlanta city. For most elected officials, the projects she has supported—from downtown renewal to performing-arts facilities—would need no further explanation. But Mayor Harris always ties the arts and urban design to a bigger goal: attracting talented young people, especially couples with small children, to live in her city.

“Why” builds trust by making connections. Anytime we take on something new we are, by definition, journeying into the unknown. The way to give heart to our fellow pilgrims is to connect it with something familiar. Again, Mayor Harris offers a good example. There are many people who don’t understand or appreciate the arts, she says, but nearly everyone in Duluth understands the need for young people . . . and the connection between young workers and economic development.

“Why” must be both critique and vision. It can’t be just about what could be; it also has to tell us why we can’t stand still. Mayor Harris often reminds citizens that, without more young people, Duluth will age rapidly—and, therefore, will be less appealing to businesses.

Will having a well-considered “why” ensure success for your project? Not by itself. You still need good solutions, strong relationships, and perhaps a breakthrough opportunity. But it can motivate your “lukewarm defenders.” And this, as Machiavelli might say, can make change less difficult and dangerous . . . and more likely to succeed.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Bart Everson licensed under Creative Commons.

Lesson One: It’s All About Land Use

May 28, 2014 By Otis White

OK, that’s an exaggeration. Some things about local government aren’t about land use—public education, for example, and some local services, such as sanitation and public health. But it’s astonishing how many things in local governments do touch on land use.

Some of these things are obvious, like zoning and building permits, downtown renewal efforts and neighborhood development. But others are not so obvious, such as transportation, parks, sports arenas, and festivals.

Transportation is a good example. During my years as a city hall reporter, I never heard city officials talk about the connection between transportation and land use, except in a broad, economic development context. Oh, sure, they talked at length about highways, sidewalks, roads, and transit on the one hand, and the need to turn around parts of the city on the other—but not once (in my presence, at least) did a mayor, city council member, or even a planning director connect the two. It wasn’t until the 1990s that I heard local officials talk about using transportation to shape the places they passed through.

Today you can hardly avoid the subject if you’re a reasonably perceptive reporter talking with reasonably cognizant local officials. The growing awareness of how transportation shapes land use is why there’s such interest these days in bike lanes, walking, and transit. These forms of transportation concentrate land uses, as opposed to cars, which spread them out. Denser land uses create livelier urban environments. And livelier urban environments change how people interact with place—my description of the central issue for local governments.

And transportation is just one of those things whose connection to land use is more appreciated today. Take parks. Until the 1990s, most local officials saw them as urban amenities. And if you go further back in urban history to the 1800s, they were seen as beneficial to public health. (That’s one reason Central Park has long been described as “the lungs of New York City.”) But shapers of land use? That’s a more recent understanding, dating to the building of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996 and Millennium Park in Chicago in 2004, both of which dramatically raised property values and the density of land uses around them. (And, not to put too fine a point on it, created new interactions between people and places.)

I could go on. Even schools and sanitation have a land-use aspect. Ask any residential real estate agent what effect a good neighborhood school has on nearby property values. And sewer line extensions are, along with transportation improvements, the greatest predictors of future land uses.

So how are land-use stories played out in local government, and how could you cover them in new and interesting ways? Well, you know the traditional stories: “NIMBYs” vs. “greedy developers.” You have the neighbors in bright T-shirts at zoning board or city council meetings, waving signs, and complaining loudly about being overrun with traffic. And on the other side, lawyers in blue suits with architectural renderings, property tax projections, and the promise of lawsuits if things don’t go their way.

Who is right here? The side that promises the best possible interactions for people and place—which could be the neighbors or the developer . . . but is likely neither. That’s because neighborhood associations too often stand for the status quo. They don’t want to improve their neighborhoods; they want to preserve them in amber. And while developers favor change, their changes are often the wrong ones, ones that will diminish the interactions of people and place by creating parking lots, inward-looking buildings, and streets with no sidewalks.

So if NIMBYs and build-and-run developers are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of change in your city—almost equally wrongheaded—who then is rightheaded?

Ah, there are your stories: Who in your city is talking about and working toward a more interesting and attractive urban environment? What are the elements of their vision? What have cities or suburbs similar to yours done to create these environments? What were the obstacles they faced? Who in local government shares the vision? Who opposes it and why? What is the government doing today to create livelier places? What is it doing that hinders such places from developing? (Hint: Check city parking requirements for new retail, office, and residential properties.)

Other story ideas: What is the state of transit in your city? Do transit officials work alongside city officials in planning denser environments? If so, how? If not, why not? Are there developers who want to create walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented developments? (Hint: There almost surely are.) What do they see as the barriers to livelier streets and neighborhoods? What do local architects say?

Are there business improvement districts in your city? (If you don’t know what they are, Google the term.) If so, which have been successful, which have not had much impact, and why? If there aren’t BIDs, why haven’t they come to your city? What about Main Street programs? (Again, Google the term.)

Is gentrification happening in your city? Why did the gentrifiers move to some inner-city neighborhoods but not others? (Take an evening and knock on doors.) Given what you’ve learned, what is the most likely next neighborhood for gentrification and why? (Interview some real estate agents under age 40.) What has been the reaction of longtime neighbors to the newcomers? Is there a backlash?

Who bikes to work? What have they experienced? Who walks to work? What have they seen and learned? Who could afford to drive but chooses instead to take the bus? (These are called “choice riders.” Again, Google the term.) Why do they take transit, and what have they seen? (Hey, ride along with some.) What is the transit system doing to attract these riders?

Find the most successful public park in your city, in terms of usage. (If the parks department doesn’t have statistics, go out after work with a handheld counter and notepad and count the people.) What makes this park so successful? If it’s a large park, find a small one that’s equally successful on a per-acre basis. Again, what are its secrets? Call the nearest university with a landscape architecture program and interview some professors about what makes some urban parks successful and others desolate.

In which neighborhoods do people walk for exercise, entertainment, or to shop? (You may have to use the counter and a notebook.) Why do they walk there but not in the next neighborhood? What is the local government doing to encourage walkability? (Check sidewalk requirements.) If sidewalks are broken, who is responsible for the repairs—and does anyone actually enforce these requirements? What besides the sidewalks are the obstacles to walkable neighborhoods? (As a sidebar, interview public health officials about the connection between obesity and the lack of regular exercise—of which walking is considered the best.)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. What is your city doing to improve the way people interact with places? Where is it making these improvements, and why is it investing in these locations? What resources is the city bringing to bear on creating more interesting and attractive places? What have been the results, and what have been the responses by supporters and opponents, developers and residents new and old?

Now, stop a moment and think. Wouldn’t writing these stories be a lot more fun than covering the “NIMBYs” vs. “greedy developers” showdowns at the zoning board? Wouldn’t these stories teach readers more about their community and how their government works? Covering NIMBYs-vs.-developers stories is like writing about a baseball game that was played last year. Focus on land use and the forces that are changing it, and you’ll be writing about the game . . . before the players ever take the field.

This is one of a series of postings about better ways of understanding local government and writing about local politics. To read the introduction, please click here.

Photo by Dylan Passmore licensed under Creative Commons.

Cultivating the Visionistas

July 18, 2013 By Otis White

I recently spent time with a man who had changed the course of a river—and not a small river, a big one. He’s John Turner, a businessman and environmentalist, and the river he changed was the Chattahoochee, which flows from well north of Atlanta to the Gulf of Mexico, passing through Turner’s city of Columbus, Georgia.

Fifteen years ago, Turner took charge of an effort to turn the lazy, muddy Chattahoochee into whitewater in downtown Columbus. Or rather, back into whitewater, because, as it turns out, before factories in Columbus dammed the river in the 1830s, Columbus had extraordinary rapids.

I won’t go into detail about what Turner and his fellow citizens did to pull off this feat (year after year of making presentations, commissioning studies, sitting in permitting hearings, lobbying legislators and congressmen, raising money, and finally knocking down some century-old dams). But the results are spectacular. In May, Turner dedicated Whitewater Columbus, the largest urban rafting experience in America. It is two and a half miles of churning, stomach-dropping rapids that are already attracting world-class kayakers and families looking for adventure. It will, Turner is sure, create a boom in riverfront development in Columbus.

If you’re thinking that your city needs someone like John Turner, you’re right. And here’s the good news: Your city may already have one, and maybe dozens of them. What you probably don’t have, though, is a process for cultivating them.

Some call these extraordinary citizens “civic entrepreneurs,” but I don’t think the name does them justice. Starting a company is easy by comparison to what they do. The term I’ve used for a while is “visionistas,” because their motivation is their ideas—the clear visions they have of things that others cannot see, at least in the beginning.

The first visionista I came to know was Billy Paine, the lawyer who in the late 1980s dreamed up the Atlanta Olympics, then patiently brought the games to life. But there have been many others: Fred Lebow, the man who reinvented the marathon in 1976 by running one through the five boroughs of New York; Joshua David and Robert Hammond, who in the late 1990s saw a long linear park in the sky when they looked at New York’s abandoned High Line train trestles; or, more recently, Elisa Beck, who is determined to create a center for sustainability inside an old grocery store on Pittsburgh’s South Side. As Beck illustrates, visionistas don’t always have ambitions as big as a city. Sometimes the vision can be for something in a single neighborhood.

The visionistas’ greatest strength is their drive. As a city council member said of Beck, these people can be tenacious. They are also persistent. Fifteen years is a long time to work on a single project. Most council members wouldn’t do it, and most mayors can’t. Visionistas also tend to be transparently authentic, which draws others toward them and their causes. Lebow was so obsessed with the New York Marathon that he sometimes rubbed people the wrong way, but no one ever doubted his sincerity.

What should city officials do with such determined people? And how can you tell the difference between a crazy idea that’s a great leap forward and a crazy idea that’s just . . . a crazy idea? My suggestion: Encourage but don’t embrace visionistas, at least until they’ve make their ideas viable. And viability means two things: a significant group of supporters (including financial supporters) and a plan. And the plan has to answer three questions: How will this project be paid for? How will we get the necessary public and private approvals? And how will we explain it to the citizens?

Your job, then, is to explain the things that make projects viable, encourage the visionistas to give these things a try, and send them on their way. If they come back a year later with a group of supporters and a somewhat realistic plan, then you have not just a dreamer but a doer. And it’s time to consider investing your time and perhaps some public money in their project.

But even then, be careful not to take the project from them. The projects that succeed most spectacularly do so by living just outside government. If New York’s High Line, which is run by a nonprofit, had been handed over to the parks department in the early days of the Bloomberg administration, we wouldn’t be talking about it today as the creative, inspiring project it is. That’s because, alas, vision, creativity and bureaucracy rarely cohabitate.

If you value neatness and clear lines of authority, this will be uncomfortable. But if you can tolerate ambiguity and a certain amount of creative tension, working with visionistas can be exciting. Not as exciting as hurdling down a two-and-a-half-mile whitewater course. But thrilling in its own way. And along with the thrills, you might do your city some real good.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo courtesy of Whitewater Columbus.

The Seedbed of Civic Involvement

February 26, 2013 By Otis White

Everything works better in cities with high levels of citizen involvement. Social scientists tell us that politics are kinder when more people pay attention to government and vote, and social problems are diminished when people are close to their neighbors. Quality of life improves when people support festivals and attend local concerts and shows. Cities look better if people turn out for neighborhood cleanups and park conservancy projects. And when trouble comes—a big local industry closes or a natural disaster strikes—people are far more likely to see things through when they’re involved and invested in the place they live.

If civic involvement can do all these things, then there’s really only one big question: Where do you begin? Assuming yours is not a place where people vote in high numbers, check up on their neighbors, and turn out in large numbers for cleanup projects, what can governments and civic organizations do to get it started?

Answer: They can help people find one another and get organized for any legitimate purpose: recreation, self-improvement, religious, family betterment, education. And then be patient.

This won’t satisfy impatient leaders who want people involved in high-level civic work . . . now! How about calling some town-hall meetings or starting a citizens commission? You can do that, and if you do it well, you might see some improvement in community involvement. But if you want deeper, long-term change—big shifts in how citizens relate to one another and to the community—you need to work on the seedbed of civic involvement, which is self-interest plus connection plus organization. Then trust that these seeds will grow into a more involved citizenry.

Why begin with the seedbed? Because most people who are leaders in their communities didn’t start out as involved citizens; they grew into the role. A few had jobs that took them into local politics or civic causes, but the vast majority came up through volunteer work. And their first experiences with volunteering were usually about things in their immediate areas of interest (family, home, recreation, etc.). Go through the biographies of your city’s elected officials and you’ll find many started out volunteering for the PTA and got drawn into school district issues, or were on a neighborhood association board and got interested in local politics, or were active in a bicycling club and got caught up in a campaign for bike lanes. Once they figured out how things worked in their community, they were hooked.

This, then, is one reason you start with the seedbed: Multiply the number of opportunities for volunteer leadership, and in time you’ll multiply the number of deeply involved civic leaders. It won’t happen quickly. And not all the seedlings will grow into city leaders; many will be happy to serve in the PTA for years, or organize neighborhood cookouts, or teach safety classes to generations of young cyclists.

And that brings us to the second reason for tending the seedbed: Just as healthy forests don’t need all trees to be tall, we don’t need only highly involved civic leaders. We need moderately involved citizens, too: People who vote, serve on PTA committees, volunteer as Scout leaders and soccer coaches, turn out for neighborhood projects, and make small donations to good causes. Just as leaders do, these people strengthen their communities.

I can see this in my own life. My mother belonged to a business women’s club that, as far as I could tell, functioned as a social organization that, on the side, gave out college scholarships. Mostly, though, it just met, listened to speakers, and socialized. The scholarships were a good thing for the community, helping a few deserving students along the way. But an even better thing may have been the connections that these women forged as they helped one another in their careers. Who knows how many of them stayed in my hometown because of this network, enriching the community’s human capital?

We’ve known about this link between social networks and healthy communities for more than a decade, since Harvard Professor Robert Putnam wrote his book “Bowling Alone.” It was a convincing look at the decline of what Putnam called “social capital,” the connections that people have with one another. Where Americans once played bridge in foursomes, bowled in leagues, and joined Kiwanis Clubs to meet other business people, we now spend time in cars commuting long distances or in front of TVs or home computers. Putnam learned that people still do bowl; they just don’t do so in leagues. Rather, most bowl alone or as couples. Without the leagues, the bridge parties, the Kiwanis Clubs, and all the other group activities, modern Americans don’t form relationships and work for common purposes as easily as they once did. And this, he warned, threatens healthy communities and democracy itself.

Putnam’s book was a brilliant but depressing analysis of the problem that didn’t give us many starting points for changing things. But a new book and a think-tank report from the U.K. do. They point us to simple ways for connecting people around shared interests, by using a few incentives and a little help.

The book is “Unanticipated Gains” by Mario Luis Small, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago. As the title suggests, it was about something surprising: the rich networks of support that some families in New York developed when their children were young.

His study focused on mothers from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds who had children in day care centers. Parents turn to centers, of course, for economic or professional reasons: They have to work or want to work, and they need a safe, nurturing place for their children for a portion of the day. You’d think that the interactions of mothers and fathers dropping off and picking up small children would be hurried and, therefore, not great for creating connections. But some centers, Small found, had very effective ways of bringing parents together and connecting them with the city around them.

The keys were that some centers required parents to do something in addition to leaving and picking up their children: organize a field trip, serve on a parents’ advisory committee, raise money, and so on. And some were good at connecting parents with needs with resources elsewhere in the community. As a result, through these centers, some parents got a lot more than child care; they gained lifelong friends, new resources, and much closer connections with the community.

What was important, Small said, were the activities the parents were asked to do. If the work was organized by the parents themselves, which required understanding, and the interactions were repeated, which built trust, friendships grew even among parents who were not much alike. This is particularly important in multi-cultural communities where people often don’t recognize themselves in their neighbors.

And some of the centers were more than good facilitators, Small found. They were good brokers of information. That is, they could help parents find information and get help outside their neighborhoods, by showing them how to navigate the public school system, get help in domestic abuse cases, find doctors and hospitals, even get family tickets to museums and circuses.

What does this have to do with civic work? As my mother’s business women’s network did in my hometown, it made it far more likely these families would stay in New York and be successful there. It meant their children would also be more likely to succeed. And simply having a network of friends—and a stake in the city—meant for many that they would take greater ownership in and care of the community. People with friends are less likely to litter, deface property with graffiti, or ignore criminal activity. And they are more likely to vote, volunteer for good causes, and care about their neighbors.

And something else. This kind of self-interested volunteering teaches people the basics of leadership: organizing meetings, managing projects, finding resources, handling disputes, negotiating with other interests. Some will take these skills to larger venues.

With the New York day care centers, government had a hand in getting the parents connected. Centers that served low-income families and received state aid were required to have parent advisory committees. That incentive alone got some centers started in involving parents, although the smart ones went well beyond that.

Governments can’t require other forms of volunteerism, of course. All they can do is encourage and facilitate it. But that can be a powerful tool, as a report from a British think tank argues. The report is called “Clubbing Together: The Hidden Wealth of Communities,” and it argues that “casual connections” among citizens can be generated with little effort and cities can play a big role in doing so by making it easier for people to meet.

What are “casual connections?” They could be anything from people playing bingo to weekend sports leagues (think of softball leagues here, soccer there). These connections introduce people to one another, promote ethnic understanding, create “sentiments of trust, reciprocity, and purpose,” and in time “spur members into social actions, such as voluntary work or charitable giving,” the report says. In other words, they act as seedbeds.

This brings me to the great opportunity for communities. They have lots of places for people to meet, from playgrounds and softball fields to libraries and community centers. And with a little imagination, they could multiply the number of meeting places tenfold: school cafeterias, museum lobbies, concert halls, city hall meeting rooms, college classrooms, YMCAs. There are private spaces too, such as coffee shops, apartment clubhouses, and (yes!) bowling alleys that could be induced to open their doors to citizens—and potential customers—if there were property tax breaks involved. We could also make it easy for groups to find these spaces, with online reservations. (Attention, community hackathons!)

But what about security and cleanup? Organizers could sign forms assuming responsibility for hauling out trash and locking the doors. Would it work? I’ve been involved in scores of public meetings in schools, churches, and recreation centers over the years. I’ve never seen a volunteer group—even an informal one—refuse to take these responsibilities seriously.

But there’s a lesson here too. Much like mulch in a real seedbed, trust is the ingredient that enriches civic seedbeds. Yes, once in a while, you will be disappointed when a group doesn’t clean up the school cafeteria as it promised. But as you’re obsessing about the few, be sure to look about you and see all the healthy trees that are growing up.

Photo by Pictoscribe licensed under Creative Commons.

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A Better Way of Judging Candidates

How to Build an Army of Supporters

Lesson One: It’s All About Land Use

Cultivating the Visionistas

About Otis White

The Great Project

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