Keep It Simple, Cities!

One of my favorite “no-brainer” online activities (besides Wordle) is scrolling down the “Waco, History in Photos” Facebook page. The photos posted there provide a fun time-traveling experience and make it possible to imagine what the city must have been like in its earliest days. 

One thing that stands out to me the most are the number of ordinary citizens featured in Waco’s literal development. So much of Waco was built by locals, by the people who called the city home. For example, here’s a post about First Baptist Church Waco, one of the largest historic buildings in town: 

The construction of this first building was a community effort. Church member B. D. Arnold provided the brick from his own brick-laying company, and committees within the congregation ensured that the church’s basic needs such as lamps and pews were fulfilled. When completed, the church was one of the most impressive structures in Waco at that time.

The participation of ordinary citizens is a common thread in the histories of many American cities. Before the days of large-scale development, American cities emerged incrementally through the contributions of innumerable ordinary citizens who helped build downtowns, start businesses, and solve complex problems like public transit. Some went on to establish social institutions like schools and hospitals, while many others ran for public office. 

The lesson is clear: Building cities requires the participation of, and collaboration between, many different types of citizens. Everyone has to pitch in to make a strong town emerge, from elected officials and business leaders, to stay-at-home parents and volunteers at nonprofits. 

If you’re like me, you find this idea inspiring. Yes! Everyone, let's get involved—all hands on deck! Let’s build a strong town! But…if you’re like me, you also feel super confused and unsure about what exactly you should do and where you should begin. I am definitely in that boat. As a newer transplant to Waco, I’ve bounced around town looking for ways to be involved, mostly going between meetings about neighborhood associations to conversations about public transit. I’ve filled out a few surveys and attended a city council meeting. 

My experience has been mixed. On one hand, I’ve been encouraged to see that there are opportunities to be involved, whether it’s by serving on a committee or volunteering. But on the other hand, I’ve felt more confused than enlightened, more often exhausted than energized. The hardest part has been the lack of clear information about what is happening in the city, how all the different committees work together, and how exactly citizens can add value. Honestly, it’s made me pause and question the whole system. Is it supposed to be this hard to be an engaged citizen? Do cities really want citizens to be involved at all? Why is accessible, easy-to-understand information so difficult to find? 

(Source: Flickr.)

City Council Meetings

To illustrate my potentially overly dramatic exasperation, I’d like to draw your attention to an oft-advised starting point for citizen involvement: the city council meeting. I’ve always thought this was a natural way to launch a lifestyle of civic engagement. After all, what could be easier than showing up to the meeting where several important public leaders will be discussing projects and giving my feedback? 

Well, it turns out that attending council meetings are not as straightforward as you might think. I learned this recently when I sat down to read one of Waco’s council agendas in preparation for an upcoming meeting. Wading through the jargon-loaded, complicated text took hours. I was only able to understand it because of the past seven years I’ve been studying cities. 

My goal was to read it and then summarize it for friends in an effort to encourage them to attend the meeting, as well. What I thought would be a fairly straightforward exercise turned out to be an hours-long research project. For the ordinary person, comprehending such a text would be stressful at best and dispiriting at worst. The document, intended to function as an inspiration to public engagement actually functions as a deterrent. 

Let’s look at a few examples of agenda items under the “Public Hearing” (PH) section. That means the public are expected to understand these statements and give comments on them. 

First example:

Here’s my translation: They are basically expanding the city by 215.88 acres and it will be zoned for Office Industrial Flex. Here’s a definition of that zoning code: “A mixture of compatible office and industrial uses with limited, high-density residential and commercial ranging from large campus settings to the adaptive reuse of an existing structure and with access to arterial or collector roads, as well as transit routes.”

Here’s another example:

Here’s my rough translation: I’m not super clear on this but it sounds like they are making amendments to the City’s “Consolidated Annual Action Plan” in order to be in compliance with HUD regulations and the amendments would involve giving $145K to a non-profit called NeighborWorks Waco for the purpose of acquisition of real property.

Here are some more fun examples from the non-PH sections: 

Translation: Consider requiring the City Manager to attend any hearings regarding Code Hearings related to “Sanitary Sewer Use Regulations” and “Utilities” and reporting back to the City Council. Sounds fun!

Translation: Consider renewing a contract with CDM Smith for another year with a cap of $360K. I believe CDM provides “program management services” for a division of the city’s utility capital program. Made my head spin, too…

Translation: Consider changing the land-use permissions on a 4.5-acre lot of land that I think belongs to Central United Methodist Church. Right now, if they wanted to build on the land, they could only do medium density, which would be, like, 25 units per acre.

Writing this guide was fun but also exasperating. It was some of the densest copy I’ve ever read in my life. The shocking thing is that it’s assumed ordinary working folks will actually understand this. 

After a few hours, I sent the “translation” around to a few friends, including my boyfriend who attended the meeting, gave comments on a few of the public hearing items, and was invited to grab coffee with the mayor. My boyfriend is also a philosopher and natural orator, so I will not suggest that such an outcome would be ordinary, but it is interesting to consider what kinds of productive conversations could happen if more citizens understood what the heck was going on. 

Civic Engagement Matters

Making council meetings easier to understand is just one example of how cities could make civic participation easier for their citizens. Here are two others. First, cities that want to encourage more civic engagement could also embrace greater transparency about the various ways the city is changing. So often, citizens feel out of the loop and caught off guard by new real estate developments, long-term construction projects, and the use of public funds. 

Cities that want to foster dynamic civic cultures should find creative ways to be more upfront about these kinds of things and they should do it in a way that citizens can understand. What’s to keep cities from writing a layman’s guide to council meetings, passing out clearly written updates on the budget at the Farmer’s Market, hosting a Q&A at a local pub, or posting “explainer” content on social media?

Second, cities could be more intentional about creating opportunities for direct civic engagement. My friend Matt Harder who runs Civic Trust helps facilitate such opportunities using the process known as Participatory Budgeting. He provides the software that helps cities allocate a portion of their budget to an improvement project nominated and chosen entirely by citizens. 

For instance, in Candler Park, Georgia, citizens nominated 43 ideas through the software and then voted on them. Renovated park bathrooms was the idea that won. The city pitched in $45,000 and local nonprofits matched that, bringing the total to $115,000. It took seven months to run the entire process and the city is currently working on implementation. When the same program ran in Atlanta, 115 ideas were submitted and a pedestrian-only street emerged as the winning idea, backed by $1 million from the city. 

“When city leaders show interest in their population's ideas on how to improve their cities, the residents feel trusted and engaged,” Matt told me. “This engagement can be the first step in citizens creating new civic identities based around problem-solving, collaboration and community improvement.”

Moving Toward a Different Understanding of Success

Making these kinds of changes is not impossible, it just requires a mindset shift. So often, our city leaders focus so much energy on qualifying for state or federal grants, courting developers, attracting potential employers, and following the advice of “experts.” Citizens, especially those on the margins, often get lost in the shuffle. Embracing more transparent, accessible engagement requires rethinking the purpose of the city and who it is really for. Is the city just the playground of elites and “experts”? How does citizen participation shape our understanding of success?

Historic cities weren’t perfect. Plenty of people leveraged their power for their own interests. Plenty of citizens were excluded from participation, but they did seem to understand that the heart of being a citizen is participation and stewardship, not just passive observation and consumption. They understood that participation is what gave citizens a sense of pride and belonging and that is what made their city strong, because a city with those kinds of citizens is a city that’s truly resilient. 

It’s in our best interest to recapture this humble attitude towards the everyday citizen and find ways to cultivate meaningful participatory experiences. Such efforts should start by figuring out how to meet people where they are and, for the love of God, communicating in plain English.

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