Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

Dealing with Fear and Demagoguery

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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.

Toowoomba City Hall

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.

Consensus, Power, and the Art of Getting Things Done

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If you’re the kind of person who likes intellectual exploration, abstract concepts and learning for the sheer joy of it, I have a suggestion: Spend a few weeks learning about systems thinking.

OK, I didn’t really think you’d go for it. Civic leaders are practical people who have little patience with theories. But a little theory can sometimes be helpful, and in this case might offer some guidance and encouragement for your work. So let me offer you a thumbnail guide to systems thinking (or at least, to my layperson’s understanding of it).

To begin, it’s a way of seeing major problems as . . . well, systems, rather than isolated issues. Systems thinkers usually begin with a thorough analysis that tries to untangle the system’s elements, interconnections and functions (they tend to make elaborate charts). They look at how the system changes over time (what systems thinkers call “flow” and “stocks”). Finally, they examine the causes or drivers of change, which they represent as “feedback loops” that work either to bring the system into balance or reinforce its direction. There’s much, much more to systems thinking, but trust me, a little goes a long way. This stuff gets complicated quickly and a bit mystical . . . like taking a seminar on quantum physics.

Here’s the point, though: The best urban leaders I’ve known were, consciously or not, systems thinkers. No, they don’t use the language or draw the charts, but as they looked at problems they too searched for context, change and causes. And they knew there were no simple, one-shot answers for complex problems.

And more: They discovered in many cases that the ultimate answer did not lie in addressing the problem they began with (say, crime in an urban neighborhood, the unkempt yards of foreclosed houses in the suburbs, or pedestrian fatalities along a busy highway), but in changing the system itself in some way—the elements and interactions that were causing crime, unsightliness or dangerous conditions.

Some of these changes might be obvious (closing a neighborhood crack house), some might not (setting up after-school programs to keep children away from temptation). But these leaders learned two things through experience: First, you can’t change complex systems by doing one big thing. You change them by doing a number of smaller things in a coordinated way. Second, you can’t make these changes alone; it usually takes a team of outsiders plus the active participation of those in the system.

Let’s take a relatively simple case, the unkempt yards issue. Most suburban communities have ordinances requiring that lawns be mowed even if houses are unoccupied. But the foreclosure process creates a legal gray area as ownership moves from one party to another. During that time, it’s often impossible to tell who owns the house. Yes, the city can send out its own mowing crews and attach liens to cover the cost, but the paperwork is daunting, the process inefficient and reimbursement a long way off.  And, in truth, city governments have better things to do. It’s much, much better if the house doesn’t remain unoccupied for long, and that means speeding up the foreclosure process, making it easier to rent houses, or both. But what city controls foreclosure laws? (They’re the province of state governments.) And suburban homeowners are rarely happy about having renters next door.

To change the system so that houses don’t fall into disrepair, then, requires a lot of small solutions working together: Swifter legal processes, banks that are convinced to maintain their properties, incentives for placing renters in foreclosed houses, a neighborhood that accepts rental properties as preferable to abandoned ones, and neighborhood associations that are quick to report those who aren’t playing by the rules.

Looking over the list, you realize that no single individual or institution “owns” all these solutions. They are spread among several levels of government and independent agencies (judges, for example, have a big say in what gets priority in their courts), through the private sector (the banks must be willing to cooperate) and civil society (someone has to speak for the neighbors).

Another thought may come to you: This isn’t an exceptional problem; this is a standard-issue problem. In American communities, our problems are often complex and power is dispersed by design.

So how do you deal with systemic problems when no one’s in charge? This is the heart of modern civic leadership: It is about being the one who can create consensus among independent interests for solutions that benefit all—and then seeing that the solutions are carried out. It’s not glamorous work. It’s painstaking, “small-p” political work that involves chipping away at obstacles and bringing interests together. (Elsewhere, I’ve referred to it as “removing the boulders” and “building the wall”.)

There are rewards for this kind of work. First, it can result in actual solutions—or, at least, better bad situations—because you’ve dealt with root causes. Second, you manufacture a form of power along the way. The ability to solve problems is the most important power a civic leader can have. It’s not the province of elected officials alone; it can be done by philanthropists, business leaders, nonprofit executives, neighborhood leaders—or by institutions and organizations, like universities, foundations or chambers of commerce.

The keys are to see problems systemically, practice the art of consensus-building and focus on results. And if you like to draw charts, well, that’s a bonus.

The Secrets of Perspective

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There are five essential ingredients for civic leadership: interest, knowledge, resources, position and skills. To explain briefly: To be leaders, people need to be interested in civic work, otherwise . . . well, they won’t do it. They need to know the community’s challenges and opportunities and how the community deals with change. They need to bring resources (connections to money and votes are the traditional ones, but access to ideas is fast becoming the third). They need a position that confers a legitimate place among community leaders; it can be mayor, chamber of commerce leader, neighborhood association chair, non-profit leader or interest-group representative. And they need the skills of leadership, which increasingly are about building consensus. Put these ingredients together, stir vigorously and, voila, you have a leader.

But while these ingredients will earn you a place among leaders, they won’t make you a great or even good leader. For that, you need a sixth ingredient: perspective. There are two parts to perspective. The first is learning to see problems as part of a thinking process and not just as issues. In doing so, you’ll sometimes find that you and your fellow leaders are thinking about things the wrong way. The second part is to identify which events in communities are replays of long-standing problems and opportunities, and which are truly new.

Why is this important? Because the job of civic leaders is to deal with their community’s most pressing problems. If you can’t answer this question—is this a new problem or have we dealt with it before?—then almost surely you will not find good solutions. Don’t get me wrong. Answering this question won’t give you the solutions, but knowing the answer will guide how you’ll search for them.

You can see how this works by looking at a common problem: downtown revitalization. If your city has a downtown, leaders have probably been trying to “save” it since the 1920s, when the automobile became popular and personal mobility expanded dramatically. As people moved farther out, retail followed, and many downtown stores shut their doors or joined the exodus. What followed was one failed attempt after another to compete with the new shopping centers and enclosed malls: free-parking schemes, pedestrian malls, skywalks and urban shopping centers.

Downtowns began turning around in the 1980s when leaders changed their perspective. Rather than asking how they could make central business districts more like suburban retail areas, they asked how they could take advantage of the things that made downtowns unique: historic buildings, sidewalks, mixed uses, access to transit and so on. They added some new ideas, like business improvement districts that improved safety and maintained streetscapes, and at long last downtowns began turning around.

You can see how the two parts of perspective worked here. First, leaders recognized that they had a long history with downtown revitalization and that most of their efforts had been disappointing. Second, they looked at the decision-making process itself and realized their greatest problem was how they were thinking about the problem.

For familiar issues, then, studying the record and examining the decision-making process will often yield new perspectives and better results. But what about problems that are truly new? The good news is that there aren’t many new of them. Most of the issues facing cities have been seen in some form or other before. But every once in a while, something comes along that has no antecedent.

The automobile presented that kind of challenge in the 1920s. Nothing before it—not horse-drawn carriages, steam-engine railroads or electric trolleys and subways—prepared cities for cheap personal automobiles. Previous generations of leaders did many things wrong in dealing with the car (running major highways through the heart of cities, for one), but in many ways it is amazing they coped as well as they did, considering the swiftness and magnitude of the challenge.

Today, I can think of only two major issues that are similarly without precedent. The first is the internet and in particular its effect on politics and civic involvement. This may be more an opportunity than a challenge, but it will be an important force in the future. From reporting common problems (through innovations like New York’s 311 system) to organizing protesters and volunteers, the internet is changing how citizens and leaders interact—and maybe even who becomes leaders in the future.

The second is the problem of retrofitting suburbs for their more urban futures. Yes, we do have a record of successfully remaking some suburban-style areas around mixed use and transit, but the scale of change in the suburbs of the past 20 years has been so vast—unimaginable shifts in demographics, overwhelmed transportation infrastructure, aging households, and social and public safety problems that were once exclusive to inner cities—that it’s hard seeing how the rickety political and civic structures of the suburbs can cope.

What do you do when the problems or opportunities are truly unprecedented? How do you find the right perspective? Studying the past won’t help. Rather, you have to become a student of the present and keep up with what your peers in other cities are doing. (This is why access to ideas is becoming a key resource for leaders.)

But also be skeptical. In the breathless world of news and information today, first reports are often wrong. Breakthrough ideas are sometimes overstated or depend on factors that don’t apply to your situation. Think of unintended consequences and guard against the “confirmation bias” of seeing what you want to see. And above all, grant that complex problems rarely have simple solutions. If they did, then free parking really would have turned around downtowns.

The Blue-Ribbon Exception That Proves the Rule

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I was amazed to hear on Nov. 9 that the co-chairs of the bipartisan commission on reducing the national deficit had issued a detailed plan for doing just that. Former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, who was chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, offered a plan that was a mix of spending cuts (to domestic and military budgets), policy changes (gradually raising the age for Social Security benefits), tax reforms (goodbye mortgage interest deductions) and revenue increases (hiking the federal gas tax by 15 cents a gallon). While the plan wouldn’t eliminate the deficit, Simpson and Bowles said, it would bring it under control—assuming American citizens and their lawmakers were willing to take strong medicine.

It wasn’t the details of the plan, though, that surprised me. It was Simpson and Bowles’ decision to release their plan before the 18-member commission had finished its work. The commission had been given until the first week of December to make its recommendations, and under the rules laid down by legislation, if 14 of the 18 members agreed to a plan, it would automatically go to the Senate and House for a vote. Why hadn’t the co-chairs waited for the other 16 members, I wondered.

Background: I’ve managed blue-ribbon committees over the years. And my advice to committee chairs has been consistent: Stay focused on managing the process and trust that the group will come to good decisions. Be positive. If members argue, give them room for debate and make sure it doesn’t get personal. If some members grow impatient or frustrated, talk to them privately and do your best to keep them on board. When you see the group moving to common ground, call it to everyone’s attention and push for consensus and agreement. Most important, keep your opinions to yourself.

The model I’ve suggested to chairs was George Washington in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and others fought over the big issues. Washington rarely offered his own solutions, focusing instead on process and looking for areas of agreement. That has been my idea of a chair’s role. So why had two respected, experienced political leaders like Simpson and Bowles done things so differently with this commission? What was their goal? And would it work?

It took several weeks for the answers to reveal themselves. Some came in an hour-long interview with Simpson and Bowles on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show on Nov. 16. Rose never asked the question I most wanted answered—“Why not wait for the commissioners to act?”—but the co-chairs’ thinking became clearer as they talked. (Important to know: 12 of the commission’s members were current senators or representatives.) Said Simpson, “When you have 12 of these 18 of us who are members of Congress, it is so tough for them” to act decisively. He added later, speaking for himself and Bowles, “We’re not going to put out some whitewash (plan) that’s just a bunch of principles.” Bowles agreed. “I think we had to lay a predicate out there that would force action by this Congress and future Congresses.”

Let me translate: The commission’s goal, as Simpson and Bowles interpreted it, was to lay out an honest plan for reducing the deficit. But honest plans, especially those prescribing the level of pain that deficit reduction would require, rarely get much support from risk-averse politicians. Most of the commission members were, ahem, risk-averse politicians. So rather than offering “whitewash that’s just a bunch of principles,” which is what Simpson and Bowles believed the commission would have done on its own, the co-chairs decided to lay out a “predicate” (a bold plan) that would at least get people talking.

It certainly did that—and more. When the Simpson-Bowles plan finally came to a vote on Dec. 1, many were surprised that a majority of commissioners (11 of the 18) voted for it, including six of the 12 elected officials. It was enough to win the commission’s formal recommendation, though not enough to require a vote in Congress.

But Simpson and Bowles weren’t aiming for a mostly symbolic vote in Congress. They wanted to shift public opinion and political discussion away from hand-wringing and empty resolutions and toward actions that would make a real difference. They knew that others on the committee would be reluctant to champion such things because of the political costs, and they were willing to take the heat themselves.

Did it work? Well, their plan was adopted with few changes and was probably more realistic than the commission would have drafted on its own. It made an important point: Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans could agree on deficit reductions, as long as they included some of each party’s ideas. 

And it shifted the political discussion, at least for a while. Within days of the commission’s vote, politicians were talking openly about ideas that were previously taboo, like reducing the mortgage interest deduction and raising the age for Social Security. President Obama got on board, announcing that he had asked his economic advisers for ways of simplifying the tax code along the lines that Simpson and Bowles had suggested.

So, is it always wrong for blue-ribbon committee chairs to advance their own ideas, to “pull” the committee rather than “push” it? No, not always. The deficit reduction commission shows an important exception to the George Washington model. And that is when:

  • The committee is charged with describing a course of action that will require serious sacrifices.
  • Public discussions of the issue have been sidetracked by unrealistic expectations.
  • For political reasons, members are reluctant to take the heat for recommending serious sacrifices.
  • The chair or co-chairs are willing to take the heat themselves.
  • The chair or co-chairs are reasonably sure that when the shock wears off, the committee will accept their core ideas.

In a way, what Simpson and Bowles did proves the larger point, that being chair is about putting the committee first. If you care more about a specific solution than you do about a successful process, you should be a member, not a chair. What Simpson and Bowles saw was a commission that wanted to do the right thing but feared the consequences. By stepping out front, they helped their blue-ribbon committee succeed, and that’s the highest calling of committee chairs.

Footnote: This is speculation, but my guess is that Simpson and Bowles told the other members what they were doing and, in the wink-and-nod environment of Washington, got their private blessings. The worst thing you can do in politics is surprise public officials. In reading the news articles after the plan was released, I saw no hint that other members were angry at the co-chairs’ actions. My bet: They weren’t because they knew it was coming.

You Can’t Build a Community by Doing One Thing at a Time

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There are two things that separate most of us from great athletes. The first is a God-given talent for throwing a baseball at 90 miles an hour, running 40 yards in under 4.5 seconds or sinking putt after putt from 10 feet away. The second is the ability to block out all distractions and concentrate. Tennis great Serena Williams once explained it this way: “If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that’s concentration.”

And it’s not just athletes who benefit from the ability to focus. Scientists, novelists, musicians, jewelers, mathematicians and pastry chefs all need to concentrate on one thing at a time if they want to be successful. But here’s one group that doesn’t: community leaders.

In fact, I would argue just the opposite: It is when mayors, chamber executives, non-profit leaders and philanthropists focus too much on a single problem (or, worse, a single answer) that things go wrong. They trade one of a community leader’s most critical skills—the ability to see things in the periphery—for tunnel vision. And it often ends in wasted energy—or outright disaster.

When I think of the single-minded leader—the one who’s convinced that all our problems would be solved if only our city had a major-league baseball team, a downtown shopping mall, a bigger airport or lower property taxes—I think of Sea Scouts. It comes from a wise little book written in 1993 by Jack McCall, who spent years as a community development official in the Midwest. In “The Small Town Survival Guide,” McCall writes about a man who grew up in coastal California, where he had joined a branch of the Boy Scouts called the Sea Scouts and found the discipline he lacked. McCall continues:

As an adult he moved to Kansas, a state with few lakes and little opportunity for people to experience boating. Nevertheless, he brought his love for Sea Scouting with him. Since joining the troop had been the solution to his problems, he was quick to suggest that any problem in landlocked Kansas could be solved by a good troop of Sea Scouts. Whatever the problem, whether it was juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy or reckless driving, the answer was: Sea Scouts.

Funny story, but McCall goes on to make a point that’s critical for community leaders:

There are very few simple problems in this world. Most of them are clusters of problems that have difficult-to-understand relationships, and consequently do not lend themselves to easy, single answers. Instead, they require a number of small answers, sometimes over a long period of time. Fifty 2 percent solutions are better than a single 100 percent solution.

I’ve found this to be true. Turning around a community requires making progress on a number of issues, not just one or two at a time. If leaders are too focused, they neglect things that will undermine their efforts at some point. It’s like a company that concentrates so intently on cutting costs and boosting profits that it loses its best customers, runs off employees and overlooks new markets. Profits might rise for a while, but they won’t last because you can’t have a sustainable company without the other elements.

So how can you develop your peripheral vision, the ability to see all the areas that cities must make progress in? The best way to start, I think, is by making a list of the things communities must do right in order to thrive. Ask this question: If a family had many choices in where to live, why would it choose one place over another?

When you make the list, you may find you have 20 or more items —they may range from very general, like the sense that the community has a promising future, to very specific, like a good parks and recreation program. But we have a hard time remembering 20 things, so you need to group these attributes. So think deeply: Why does someone want a to live in a community with a promising future or a lively downtown? The answer: Because it satisfies some basic human need.

If you think about it enough, you may come up with four to six basic needs that communities must meet in order to be successful —and remembering six things is a lot easier than 20. (Don’t worry. You haven’t thrown away the 20 things, you’ve just grouped them in ways that will help you see the connections among them.)

This should be your work, but I’ll offer a starting list: four basic needs I think successful communities satisfy. You may disagree with my groups or how I name them, and you will probably think of many more attributes than the ones I’ve listed. That’s great. This is a thinking exercise, and the more you think about it, the greater its benefit.

One important note: These are not things that should be done solely by government. As I’ve written elsewhere, governments don’t “own” community problems today, they “share” them. So feel free to think of things others should do, from nonprofits and businesses to schools, churches and neighborhood associations.

The value of the exercise is that it deepens your ability to see issues in context and sharpens your peripheral vision. You won’t be as likely to neglect one thing while doing another. And you won’t forget, as Jack McCall says, that far more progress is made by 50 small solutions than a single big one.

The need for security

  • Safe neighborhoods and the freedom to explore (“I can go anywhere in this city”)
  • Faith that crime will be punished and justice done
  • A safe and nurturing environment for children
  • Consideration for the elderly and their needs

The need for opportunity

  • Economic development and community progress
  • Schools that help children become their best
  • Opportunities for personal expression and growth (arts programs, adult education, etc.)
  • A sense of local control and responsibility (“We control our destiny as a community”)

The need for connection

  • A welcoming community
  • Community events that appeal to almost everyone
  • Pride of place (an attractive community)
  • Many opportunities for community involvement
  • Fun!

The need for fairness

  • Fair decision making and social justice (“Even the quiet citizens are heard here”)
  • Faith in our government, leaders and institutions
  • Belief that others (government, nonprofits, businesses, citizens, etc.) are doing their part for the community

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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