Crossing Cultural & Language Divides
Citizen participation is enough of a challenge in any city — but how do you deal with engaging citizens when 42% of your population is foreign-born, with people speaking many different languages?
Let's Talk about Civic Engagement
Della Rucker focuses on strategies for civic engagement, including a look at how new technologies are being used.
Most Recent Articles
What’s the Matter With Using Social Media?
As your commission, your department, or your local government start using social media tools more and more, it’s essential to look at these with a clear, un-awed eye … and realize that the tools we need to do our work well require much more than just a Facebook page.
What Does a Discussion Look Like?
Our national public discourse hasn’t been very good at real discussion lately. Even on TV news shows that claim to be “discussing” issues, what you too often hear is people talking over and shouting past each other. But planning commissions can set a positive example in public hearings and meetings.
When Communication Goes One-Way
We claim in local government to want to have the community involved — we call it “public engagement” or “public feedback” or “stakeholder involvement” — but the fact is, most of the time we’re paying lip service to the idea, at best if we want to find solutions to the complex, tangled issues we face — we need dialogue, we need collaborators.
Don’t (just) Ask; Don’t (just) Tell
Collaboration should be the ultimate goal of our planning efforts. If we design our public engagement strategies to build Collaboration, we can do more than what our planning commissions can do alone. We can strengthen the full set of muscles we need to make the entire community better.
Do You Give More than Lip Service to Public Participation?
When we give a presentation, post documents to a web page, or announce the preferred plan, we are Telling. It’s one-way communication from us to the public. When we ask members of the public questions, and then simply write down their answers, we are Asking. It’s one-way as well, but from them to us. Here’s the problem: while both Telling and Asking are needed, they are nowhere near enough.
One-Way Lecturing vs. Two-Way Dialogue
If we want to find solutions to the complex, tangled issues we face — whether it’s the impact of a new development or revisions to a sign code — we need dialogue. We need collaborators. And that means engaging in dialogue, instead of lecturing.
Introducing “Let’s Talk” — A new column on public engagement
Instead of doing “public participation” that actually makes our plans and projects better, we have an unfortunate history of relegating people to a couple of predetermined alternatives. A look at better ways of public engagement.
