Citizens – Page 5

Dealing with Fear and Demagoguery

June 16, 2011 By Otis White

Bear with me as I tell you the story of a place far away, but one whose story will sound familiar. Maybe all too familiar. It’s Toowoomba, a city of 120,000 in Australia’s interior. The funniest thing about Toowoomba is its name (it’s an Aboriginal word that means, more or less, swamp). Toowoomba isn’t actually in a swamp; it sits atop a range of low mountains and is known as a pretty place where people take pride in their gardens, their local university and their schools.

But as Charles Fishman describes in his new book, “The Big Thirst,” Toowoomba has a terrible problem, which it shares with the rest of Australia. It is running out of water. Australia is 10 years into a drought that has become such a part of Australian life that it is called simply “the Big Dry.” Toowoomba’s particular problem is that, because of its location, it suffers a little more than other places, as water runs quickly off its slopes.

By 2005, with the drought in its fifth year, Toowoomba had done the usual things, forbidding outdoor watering, hiring officers to look for scofflaws, and holding community religious services for residents to pray for rain. No luck. The city’s reservoirs were down to 34 percent of capacity, and political leaders were desperately looking for solutions, any solutions.

You can imagine, then, the excitement that Mayor Dianne Thorley felt when, in May 2005, she addressed a local women’s club with news of a breakthrough: For six months, she told the members, she and city water engineers had been studying water systems around the world and had a plan to recycle waste water as crystal-clear drinking water—extending the city reservoirs’ capacity and, possibly, saving the city.

The reaction? “Dumbfounded,” one who was at the meeting, Rosemary Morley, said. The city wanted to run water from the toilet to the tap? “I came home from that meeting,” she told Fishman, “and my reaction was, “˜How can you go forward with a project like that without running it by people?’ I thought, “˜This is such a sneaky thing. There must be something about it that’s funny.’ “

Even so, it took a while for opposition to build. In the meantime, the city council approved the plan unanimously. The governor of Queensland, where Toowoomba is located, endorsed it. So did the member of parliament from the city. And the national government offered to pay two-thirds of the cost of the advanced treatment facility needed for recycling water.

By then, though, a citizens’ rebellion had begun in earnest. A former mayor weighed in, calling it the work of “sewer sippers.” If it came to pass, he thundered, Toowoomba would be known as “Poowoomba.” A group called CADS, Citizens Against Drinking Sewage, organized. And the federal government, seeing the furor, changed its mind, saying it would participate only if the voters of Toowoomba agreed to it in a referendum.

You can imagine how this unfolded. On the one side, the mayor and water officials offered reason, science, detailed technical information and the experiences of far-off places (in the U.S., Fairfax County, Virginia, and Orange County, California recycle water) to assure voters that it was safe to drink thoroughly treated waste water. On the other side, opponents used slogans, scare tactics and pseudo-science. (Opponents brought in an out-of-town plumber who said he had been studying recycled water and learned it contained tiny amounts of hormones from drugs flushed down toilets. Drinking the water, he said, would cause men to grow breasts and lose their testicles. Keep in mind, this was scientific analysis . . . from a plumber.)

Proponents produced a 40-page book, Fishman writes, “with graphics of molecules and filter barriers, pages of text explaining the technology, photos of water in every possible mood, and many pictures of children.” Opponents issued an eight-page newspaper whose front page had a photo of brown sewage. Underneath, it asked, “Is this our city’s future?”

Well. You won’t be surprised that on July 29, 2006, the voters of Toowoomba said no to the water recycling idea by a thumping 62 percent majority. The only surprise is that it wasn’t unanimous.

As discouraging as Toowoomba’s experience was, it raises a good question: How can you deal with fear and demagoguery? This isn’t something that happens only in the Australian Outback or with proposals for recycling water. It happens every day in America, where complicated issues are put before voters promising an important benefit, but only if voters will pay a little more in taxes, change a familiar habit (such as commuting to work by train rather than car), or overcome their squeamishness. These ideas are sitting ducks for opponents whose only chore to come up with a slogan clever enough to play on citizens’ fears and doubts. When they do, the game is over.

What, then, can leaders do to lessen the inevitable resistance to new ideas and, maybe, win over skeptical citizens? The first thing is to do what Mayor Thorley (known in Toowoomba as Mayor Di) and her city hall allies never did: Recognize how much resistance there would be to such an unexpected and unconventional solution. Here’s how Fishman frames the mayor’s blindness:

What Mayor Di didn’t appreciate that day in May 2005 was that she was introducing a whole new way of thinking about water. She wasn’t being “sneaky”—to use Morley’s word—in the least. But Mayor Di didn’t seem to grasp that people might have different attitudes about water, and about what kind of water is wholesome.

What Mayor Thorley lacked was one of the essential ingredients of leadership: empathy, the ability to see the world from the others’ perspectives. She had been quickly converted to the idea of recycling water. She saw no reason others should take their time. When opposition mounted, she dug in her heels, insisting that the decision had been made, and critics should just get over it. “No consultation, no debate,” Rosemary Morley said. “That’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

But realistically, had she been more empathetic, what could Mayor Thorley have done? She could have taken six months to let the public work through the conversion process that she had made in days. When she spoke to the women’s club, her announcement should have been that she was forming a large task force (made up of friends, critics and respected leaders) to look at solutions to the water crisis and involve the community in learning about the options. Recycling water could have been one of the options, but only one.

Knowing how squeamish this option would make people, she could have suggested video conferences between task force members and people in Orange County and Fairfax County. She could have suggested a partial solution: Build an advanced treatment facility but use the water only for non-drinking uses, such as for industrial processes or in city fountains. Then she could have put goldfish in the fountains and invited everyone to watch the fish. (One resident of Toowoomba actually suggested this idea. It would have been persuasive.) After people saw the fish thrive (with no harm to the males), she could have suggested finishing the project.

The secret to defeating fear is a lengthy, open but certain decision-making process, one that allows not just those involved in the decision but everyone an opportunity to learn about controversial ideas without being hurried, to explore alternatives, and discuss and reconcile their feelings. In the end, of course, you have to make a decision. But in most cases, you don’t have to do it at the snap of your fingers. And you don’t persuade others by telling them just to get over it.

So what happened to Toowoomba after the referendum? An advanced treatment plant was built in Toowoomba but only to supply water to a coal mine operator. (The facility doesn’t bring the water up to drinking standards.) Eventually, Toowoomba signed an agreement with another water system to pump drinking water up the mountain. The pipeline and pumping stations will cost about twice what the recycled water system would have and have much higher operating costs that will grow as the price of energy increases. Fear, it turns out, has a price. Toowoomba’s water users will be paying for their fears for many years to come.

And now, the final irony: The water system that’s supplying the water to Toowoomba is building . . . you guessed it, recycled water facilities. So while the citizens of Toowoomba won’t be drinking water that has passed through their own toilets, they’ll be drinking the water from others’.

Photo of Toowoomba City Hall by Tim Swinson licensed under Creative Commons.

Citizens Are Not the Same as Customers

April 8, 2011 By Otis White

Analogies are a basic way we think and communicate. They help us see things in new ways and explain our experiences to people who haven’t . . . well, experienced them. Analogies, of course, draw similarities between things that aren’t really all that similar. So you could see life as a marathon, an election as a football game, a debate as a tennis match, and so on. (Needless to say, sports analogies are popular.)

We often use analogies to understand cities, too. But in doing so, we should be aware of the limits of analogies and the harm that faulty analogies can do. The ones that I think do the greatest harm are those comparing cities to businesses and citizens to customers.

Before beginning, let me say that I like business. I’ve owned several businesses in the last 20 years, and before that I was a business journalist. So mark me down as a fan and beneficiary of capitalism. Further, I think cities can learn a lot from the ways businesses approach things. In many cases, cities and their leaders suffer from a lack of focus. If there’s anything successful businesses do well, it’s retaining focus. Finally, there’s a great deal written about business that’s relevant to cities. So if you’re looking for new approaches to common civic leadership issues—like finding good ideas, developing young leaders, managing crises or dealing with difficult people—you’ll find much of what you’re looking for on the business shelves of bookstores or in the pages of Harvard Business Review.

And, in truth, there are times when citizens can be seen as similar to customers. In the early 1990s a popular book, “Reinventing Government,” urged government leaders to do just that—regard citizens not as constituents but as valued customers and use what corporations know about customer satisfaction to make it more pleasant dealing with government agencies. (If you’ve found it easier in the last 20 years to renew a driver’s license or apply for a permit, you can thank this book.)

So if it helps deliver services that are cheaper, better and faster, then I’ll all for using business analogies. But here’s where I grow wary: the relationship I have with where I live should be far deeper than my relationship with Apple Computer, Ford Motor Co. or Coca-Cola.

Let’s start with the basic analogy that citizens are like customers. Yes, in receiving city services like garbage collection, water and sewer, and even police and fire protection, we’re like business customers in the sense that we want the greatest value for the lowest price. And don’t underestimate the importance of these services in making citizens happy. If you’ve ever spent a long day at city hall trying to get a business license, or waited an hour for the police to show up for a traffic accident, then you know how poor service makes you feel about a place. And keep in mind that the majority of city governments’ payroll and budget is in the delivery of direct services to citizens, so money saved and satisfaction gained by doing these things right can have a huge impact.

But beyond this point, the business analogy breaks down. If we’re sometimes consumers of city services, then we’re also part-owners of the city, especially if we own a home or rental property. Does that make us like shareholders in a corporation? Well, in the sense that we want asset growth (that is, the value of our property to rise), yes. But, in truth, we really don’t own homes like we do stocks. Homes aren’t just financial investments; they’re comfort zones, objects of pride and self-expression, and centers of family and social life. Stocks are impersonal financial instruments; homes are full of meaning, much of it connected to the community around it. I’ve bought and sold plenty of shares, but I’ve never found a way to use a share of Ford Motor for hosting a family dinner or organizing a block party.

There are other roles that citizens play. If you want to use another business analogy, here’s one: the citizen as employee. In companies, employees create the goods or services that the company sells. In cities, much of the community’s value—what it “sells” to visitors, prospective businesses and future residents—is created by its citizens. Think about it: If you’ve been impressed by a city’s lovely neighborhoods, creative festivals and parades, or thriving economy, you’re looking at things the citizens themselves brought about. Yes, government often plays a supporting role, but it’s usually a portion of what the citizens are doing for themselves.

So even if you’re partial to business analogies, you quickly realize that the citizen-as-customer works only in some instances, and there are other times when you could see citizens as owners or employees. And there are yet other ways that citizens relate to cities that no business analogy can cover. Take identity. Yes, there are some companies that inspire great loyalty among customers and employees (think Apple Computer or the sporting-goods retailer REI), but these are rarities. Identifying with the place you live is the rule.

Doubt it? Remember the old “Seinfeld” episode, where Elaine is assigned a new telephone area code, 646? She tries desperately to convince people that she still lives in Manhattan, home of the 212 area code, but can’t. Finally, she finagles her way back to a 212 area code because living in Manhattan is so important to her she can’t bear for people to think she lives anywhere else.

Why does all this matter? Because one of the greatest problems civic leaders have is understanding the potential and power of citizenship. When we compare citizens to customers, we are selling them way, way short. It’s like comparing life to a marathon. Only in the most superficial way is life like a marathon. And thank goodness for that. Otherwise, we’d be out of breath all the time.

Photo by Victoria Pickering licensed under Creative Commons.

The Five Elements of Successful Visioning

February 1, 2011 By Otis White

I have been involved in large-scale community visioning projects for years and worked on them in all sorts of places, from metro areas to individual cities. I recommend visioning as a way of pointing communities forward. I’ve seen how it can engage citizens, give heart to political, business and civic leaders, and help set bold new directions for communities. But . . .

There are limits to what visioning can do by itself, and it can be done poorly, which is worse than not doing it at all. So, over the years, I’ve created a list of the five elements of successful visioning. Here it is.

Make it as representative as possible. The hardest part of visioning isn’t the meetings or analyzing what the citizens say. The hardest part is getting a cross-section of the community to the meetings. Believe it or not, there are people who think there are better things to do with their evenings than spend them in a public meeting.

But it’s worth the effort to be sure all parts of the community are heard. First, visioning’s power comes from its legitimacy; these are, after all, large-scale efforts to listen to and report accurately what the citizens want. If parts of the community aren’t heard, visioning loses its legitimacy. Second, it improves the visioning process to hear from a wide variety of citizens. That’s because people who are different sometimes think differently about community issues, and you need that diversity of thought, both in the meetings and in the final report. I’ve seen people change their minds during visioning meetings because another point of view caused them to think more deeply about an issue. We don’t have nearly enough opportunities for people with different ideas to talk with one another in communities; we should make sure it happens in visioning projects.

Ask appropriate questions. Once you have a cross-section of citizens in the room, make sure you involve them the right way. The best way is to ask them to talk about things that they—and only they—are experts in. My favorite is to ask participants to imagine that, in 20 years’ time, the community has become the place they want it to be. What does the community look like and work like? What is the same as today and what is different? What obstacles did the citizens and their government overcome to make it happen?

This asks citizens to define broadly what they want their community to be. You don’t spend a lot of time asking them how to make it happen—these are questions best asked of technical experts. The citizens are experts in what, the way they want things to turn out.

Listen to the citizens first. Many times, visioning is combined with a planning project, such as developing a comprehensive plan. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as two conditions are met:

It needs to be an authentic form of visioning with a sustained outreach effort to get a cross-section of people involved, hundreds of citizen participants, appropriate questions asked, and an honest report summarizing what they said and containing every single idea that was offered. To repeat: Bad visioning is worse than no visioning at all, so don’t cut corners.
It needs to end before the planners begin their work. I regularly get phone calls from planning firms that are looking for someone to help with “citizen outreach” or “citizen engagement” at a mid-point in their work. My answer is always no. If the citizens are worth hearing from, then hear from them first. Reaching out to the citizens after plans have been drafted isn’t visioning; it’s salesmanship.

Create accountability. Nothing breeds cynicism like being asked to speak your mind, being thanked for doing so—and then being forgotten. If you ask citizens to share their dreams with you, you should report back to them on what’s happening with their dreams. They don’t expect immediate success in all areas, but they want to know if there’s any success—or even backsliding.

If the visioning precedes planning, there are immediate opportunities for accountability. You could ask some of the citizens to serve on a steering committee to make sure the plans are true to the citizens’ desires. You could have a large community meeting and invite all who participated in visioning see the plans and comment on them. Better yet, you could do both.

However you do it, make sure that once citizens are “in the loop” of community progress, they stay in the loop.

Understand visioning’s limitations. Visioning is probably the best way ever devised of listening in an organized way to what citizens want. It helps build a sense of ownership and citizenship in communities. It can be an important way of moving a community forward. But it’s not sufficient by itself to create progress.

As I’ll write about in the future, breakthrough ideas for communities come from places where three judgments overlap: What the citizens want, what is politically possible, and what is best for the community at this point. Visioning can deliver the first judgment, and political leaders the second. The third can come from individual leaders and blue-ribbon committees or it can bubble up from the bureaucracy or from community groups like a chamber of commerce or civic league.

But even then, an idea is only an idea. What turns an idea into reality is someone committed to building support and removing obstacles. And we have a term for such people: We call them “leaders.”

How a City Creates Citizens

January 14, 2011 By Otis White

A while back, I tried my hand at defining a purpose for cities: Cities exist, I suggested, to create citizens. And who are citizens? They are people who take responsibility for their communities. If a city can do this, it’s as close to a silver bullet as you can find because:

Cities get much better as they create more citizens. Just about every problem in a city is easier to manage if citizens will step forward to help, from social ills and unresponsive government to a struggling local economy. So, just as businesses must focus first on creating customers in order to achieve their other goals, cities should focus first on creating citizens if they want to make progress in any other area.

But how do cities do this? How can they help passive residents become connected, committed citizens—people eager to run for office, volunteer for citizen boards, vote in elections, serve as neighborhood watch captains, tutor schoolchildren and report problems? To answer that, let’s look at a place that does a good job of creating just such citizens and try to figure out how it does it.

The city is Decatur, a close-in suburb of Atlanta. I’ve known Decatur for years and even had an office there once. But I really got to know it last year when I helped with a visioning project that was part of a larger strategic planning process called Where to Next? There are a number of ways of doing visioning, which involves convening groups of citizens to think about their community’s future. The one we used in Decatur asked citizens to attend three separate sessions lasting two hours each, with each session focused on a different set of topics.

A good rule of thumb for visioning projects is to aim for getting at least 1 percent of residents to participate, depending on population. (It’s easier to get a higher percentage in a small town than in a big city. In New York, for instance, 1 percent would be 90,000 people.) Decatur has fewer than 20,000 residents, so the goal should have been to get 200 participants. In fact, organizers got 740, three-quarters of whom attended all three sessions.

But it wasn’t the numbers that convinced me that Decatur had cracked the code on citizenship. It was what participants said in those sessions. One theme I heard repeatedly was the feeling of connectedness and community ownership people felt there. As one person put it, Decatur was the kind of place where residents expected “a hello on the street, pride in the community, (the) ability to be involved and contribute.” Another added, “There are 66 homes in my neighborhood; I know 55 of those families.”

Even more striking, these citizens wanted more opportunities for involvement. There were lots of ideas about how the city government could help with this, from “volunteer expo” fairs to booths at festivals and neighborhood block parties where people could sign up for community activities. One group suggested a “sister streets” program, somewhat like “sister cities,” so neighborhood leaders in one part of the city could get to know leaders in another part—and trade ideas and assistance.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m accustomed to hearing participants in visioning projects say they want greater connectedness with their community. But I’m not used to them saying they already feel fully connected—and want even more involvement. So how did Decatur get to this enviable place?

Well, it has some advantages. Decatur is a small, densely developed city. It’s only 4.2 square miles in size and was built mostly before World War II, when houses were closer to one another. It’s easier to be neighborly when you are physically close to your neighbors. Decatur is also a well-educated place, a city where 62 percent of adults have four-year college degrees or higher (nationally, only 28 percent have bachelor’s degrees). As a rule, the higher the education, the greater the level of civic involvement.

But these things simply mean Decatur started with some advantages; they don’t explain how the city capitalized on them. And for that, the local government deserves a good deal of credit. Here are five things Decatur’s government has done to create citizens:

It has a great citizen-education program called Decatur 101. Classes are free, held in morning and evening sessions, and there’s usually a waiting list of people who’d like to participate. Offered since 2000, Decatur 101 has seeded the community with people who know how city government works, what the city’s history and most important goals are, and who holds elected and appointed office. Not surprisingly, graduates of this program are among those most likely to serve on citizen boards and run for office.
It has a surprising number of community events, two of which are its acclaimed annual book festival and beer festival. (Thankfully, these are separate events.) But they’re just the beginning. By my count, there are more than 40 festivals, concerts, events and parties sponsored by the city or non-profits, many of which are supported by businesses. There’s a serious side to this fun: Public events connect citizens to their community and each other—and open up numerous volunteer opportunities. These are keys to building citizenship.
It has a town square, where most of these events are held. I don’t think having a town square, main street, courthouse, central park or clearly defined downtown is essential to creating citizens, but it helps. That’s because community citizenship requires a larger sense of loyalty—to the city as well as a neighborhood, ethnic group, religious faith, political faction or workplace. And having a place where everyone in a city comes to celebrate—“neutral ground” that belongs to the entire community, not a neighborhood or private interest —helps build that larger loyalty.
Decatur has a full-time volunteer coordinator in city hall whose job is to match community volunteers with volunteer opportunities. Many of these jobs are helping with the city’s festivals and events, but others are ongoing responsibilities such as crisis-line volunteers, pre-school tutors and nursing home visitors. In the last 10 years, the city’s volunteer coordinator has built a database of 2,000 volunteers—10 percent of Decatur’s population—and helped move a generation of residents from wanting to serve to actually doing so.
It does a good job of communicating with citizens. Decatur doesn’t have its own daily or weekly newspaper. Its main news vehicle is a newsy, smartly designed newsletter published by the city and supported by local businesses. Called Decatur Focus, the newsletter is mailed 10 times a year to local households and keeps citizens aware of community events and what the government and their fellow citizens are doing.

Interestingly, though, communications was an area citizens thought could be improved. They wanted more frequent communications, delivered in new ways, mostly electronically. But they also wanted new types of information: about how to get involved, which problems to keep an eye on, what neighborhoods were doing to improve themselves, what could be recycled, how to take advantage of recreation opportunities and farmers’ markets to be more fit and healthy—and on and on. This is important because it shows that Decatur’s citizens viewed city government as more than a service provider; they saw it as a potential information resource —with innovative communications pushing out that information to citizens every day.

This may, in fact, be the highest level of citizenship a city can aspire to: where citizens tell the government, give us the information we need to make this a better place, help out where you can, and we’ll take it the rest of the way. Decatur is on the verge of reaching that level. Other cities should join it.

How the Internet Can Help Create Citizens

December 15, 2010 By Otis White

A few months ago, I tried my hand at defining a purpose for cities, an overarching goal that leaders could use to tell if their city was on the right path. Here was my five-word purpose statement: “Cities exist to create citizens.”

Not to generate economic gains (they do, but as a byproduct), or provide a home to the arts, entertainment or learning (again, byproducts), and certainly not to support a government (it’s a means to an end). I would argue that the real purpose of cities is to create a group of people who will take responsibility for their community. And it’s this willingness to accept responsibility that is the difference between a resident and a citizen.

I’m convinced if we could continuously widen the circle of people willing to take responsibility, we’d have happier, stronger communities and solve our most important civic problems. But before you sign on to my idea, consider the other side of that proposition: Why would busy adults willingly take on more responsibilities? Do they have time to spare for civic work? And if they had the time, how could we marshal their talents?

The answers I’ll offer come from my own experiences and from the frontiers of social research. I’ve been involved professionally in community decision-making and leadership development for nearly 20 years. Over those years, I’ve facilitated hundreds of meetings, from small groups of five or six to public sessions with hundreds of people in an auditorium. I’ve managed meetings with poor people who came because they feared losing a bus route, and weekend retreats where corporate CEOs worked on economic development issues.

Again and again, I’ve been impressed by how much time people are willing to devote to these meetings, from CEOs to worried bus riders.

I’ve also been struck by how seriously they take the work, which involves difficult issues of hope, scarcity and fairness. This isn’t fun stuff; it requires listening, understanding, searching for common ground and some degree of optimism and persistence.

So why are people willing to do this? Because, I think, community work exercises intellectual muscles that are rarely used otherwise. It allows us to use our talents and life experiences in thinking about important issues as we learn about the experiences of others.

And something else: It expands our connectedness. It is the most basic human instinct to seek connections with others. We’ve done this since we were children, in school yards, college dorms, workplaces, associations, religious institutions and clubs. Because of where we live and work, most of our connections end up being with people like ourselves. Community work—particularly when it stretches across an entire city—introduces us to those who are decidedly unlike us, and for many people it’s a profound experience. For the first time, they have a glimpse of what it’s like in other families, other neighborhoods, other lifestyles and other ethnic groups. And they never view things in quite the same way again.

When they try it, then, people recognize that community work is good for them—it makes them more complete and empathetic human beings—and they like it, for all its difficulties and frustrations. But it’s also time consuming, so how do people find the time for community work?

Here’s where the social research comes in. In his new book, “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age,” Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, says we only perceive ourselves as busier than ever. In fact, he says, free time is growing, particularly among the most educated people. In the United States today, Shirky writes, the cumulative free time of our 233 million adults adds up to billions of hours each year. What we’ve done with that time, alas, is spend it watching television. “. . . (I)n the space of a generation,” he writes, “watching television became a part-time job for every citizens in the developed world.” The average American now spends 20 hours a week in front of a TV.

But there’s encouraging news here, Shriky writes. TV is losing its grip. “. . . (F)or the first time in the history of television, cohorts of young people are watching less television than their elders,” he says. And it’s not just young people. According to a survey by Forrester Research, adults of all ages now spend as much time on the internet as they do in front of TVs. And while this doesn’t sound like good news—YouTube can be as much of a time waster as sitcoms—there’s a difference between the passive world of television and the potentially active world of the internet, Shriky writes.

On the internet, you don’t have to be a consumer, you can also be a producer. That’s how Wikipedia came to be. The most successful and comprehensive encyclopedia ever made (the English language sections alone have more than 3 million entries) was built entirely by volunteer contributors. Shirky estimates that, in its first seven years, 100 million hours of volunteer labor went into Wikipedia—writing, editing and correcting articles, supplying links and illustrations and so on.

At the same time, Shirky goes on, the internet is lowering the cost of organizing people. (For more on this, see Shirky’s earlier book, “Here Comes Everybody”.) Again, Wikipedia is an example; in no other age could thousands of people all over the world be marshaled to give their time and talents to such an undertaking.

Ultimately, though, we may find that the greatest potential for internet-assisted involvement is in communities, where people can learn about issues on the internet, get organized, raise money and volunteer their time online, and then meet face to face to do the work. It’s the perfect marriage of internet efficiency and low cost with the connectedness and concreteness of community work.

The potential for internet-assisted community organizing is almost limitless. I’m convinced it will be a major part of how cities will widen the circle of responsibility in the future, and in doing so create the citizens we’ll need for our communities to be successful.

Postscript from 2022: We’ve learned a great deal about the internet’s influence since 2010. The social media in particular have become fountains of propaganda and helpmates to radicals. So, it seems some of Shirky’s optimism of the early 2000s has crashed headlong into the January 6 insurrection, which was abetted by the innovations he praised.

But let’s take a breath here. All changes in media have unintended consequences. One of the first uses of movable type, after Gutenberg’s beautifully illustrated Bibles in the 1450s, was the printing of pornographic engraved images, which flooded Europe in the years after.

As we think about the internet today, then, let’s keep in mind that innovations’ good uses exceed their bad over time. And let’s preserve civic work’s greatest asset, its face-to-face meetings and conversations. Radicals, it seems, have a hard time with conversations; they do much better with speeches and manifestos.

The key to making the internet a blessing for communities is let the internet be a tool of invitation and communications—and not, at the local level at least, a tool of participation.

Photo by Felip1 licensed under Creative Commons

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Dealing with Fear and Demagoguery

Citizens Are Not the Same as Customers

The Five Elements of Successful Visioning

How a City Creates Citizens

How the Internet Can Help Create Citizens

About Otis White

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