To Improve Public Engagement, Cities Need to Educate the Public

The Poppy Festival in Georgetown, TX. (Source: Flickr/Do512.)

Last month, I had the chance to help out at a public engagement booth in Georgetown, Texas, during their annual Poppy Festival. Over the span of several hours, we invited participants to consider various improvement ideas for the city’s downtown. There were at least a dozen ideas to consider including bike lane connectivity, a food truck plaza, and more historic preservation. Folks were invited to express their preference or disinterest in each idea using a variety of color-coded stickers.  

While it was exciting to see people excited about their downtown and eager to participate in these imaginative processes, it became clear to me after a few hours of observation and dialogue with participants that this process wasn’t positioning either residents or the city to truly understand and identify the best and most sustainable ideas for cultivating downtown. 

Residents weren’t being given the information they needed in order to properly understand the costs associated with each idea, weigh trade-offs, or explain the context behind their preferences. City councils were being handed reports about consumer desires that presented a vague idea of what residents “like,” but little to no context about why they prefer certain ideas and no insight about their values, appetite for certain risks, costs, or trade-offs. This is not a winning situation. 

Public Engagement Is Incomplete Without Public Education

Public engagement has been quite in vogue lately and rightly so: citizens should have a say in the design of their city and the way the city invests public money. These decisions shouldn’t be left up to industry experts (many of whom don’t live in the city they’re advising), electeds, or staffers who are constantly juggling various interests and incentives. It’s essential to ensure that folks who live at the “street level” have an opportunity to share their perspective. 

But just because a perspective or opinion exists doesn't make it an informed one. One moment that stood out to me from the event was a brief chat with a woman who was just convinced that the city needed a new parking deck. I understood her perspective: no one likes to have to hunt for parking, but the conversation stalled when I mentioned that such parking projects often put cities enormously in debt. I’m sure if this woman had had a chance to really digest the financial implications of her preferences, perhaps she would have come to a different conclusion. 

And this is the problem: many of the current models of public engagement don’t empower citizens with the information they need to truly understand the implication of their preferences, weigh the tradeoffs associated with each one, or rank preferences against each other. We should think seriously about the wisdom of spending thousands of public dollars on public engagement processes that don’t provide thorough educational opportunities. 

Three Reasons Public Education Matters

Let’s start with the obvious: public education matters because cities are complex and what might seem like a simple idea on the surface (i.e., “we should add a grocery store to downtown”) is not really that simple. Citizens need opportunities to supplant their desires and preferences with information that allows them to comprehend the political and economic factors shaping what’s feasible at a given time. Retrofitting sprawl, repurposing old buildings, and reconfiguring streets are all complex undertakings that require the consideration of various constraints and the coordination of various players and interests.

It’s simply unfair to expect ordinary residents to understand the complex economic and political factors at play behind various ideas like repurposing a parking lot, modifying a road, or building more affordable housing. Residents need to understand these factors in order to rightly gauge their appetite for various proposals. 

Second, public education is valuable because it gives people a chance to reconcile their preferences with their values. I’m sure most people believe in the values of sustainability, minimal waste, human-oriented design, and financial sustainability, but often our preferences run contrary to our values without us even knowing. This is why education is so important: it gives people a chance to reconcile their preferences with their values and allows more integrated preferences to emerge. 

Finally, public education matters, not just for the development of actually good and feasible ideas, but also because it creates a context for citizens to identify the extent to which they are invested in the status quo and makes it easier for them to perhaps change their minds. Both of these are serious and possibly uncomfortable processes because they require untangling the extent to which our sense of self, place, and identity are tied to the status quo.  

Case in point: Most people have been raised with the expectation of free parking. Many people would probably oppose the idea of charging for parking spots downtown. But the people opposing such ideas aren’t actually opposed to the idea of financial sustainability, more efficient land use, or less congestion. They are defending the part of them that feels tied into this cultural norm of free parking for everyone everywhere. 

Untying our sense of self, place, and belonging from policies and practices that are no longer serving our cities is extremely uncomfortable, but it’s necessary: making cities more beautiful and resilient requires changing hearts, not just policies. Public education allows this process to unfold, it creates an opportunity for people to gently untangle their own beliefs and choose better ones that actually align with their values. 

What Would Effective Public Education Look Like?

Of course, the straightforward purpose of public engagement is to give people the information they need to weigh various decisions about their city. But I think we can dream bigger and see public education as a chance to pursue the following five goals:  

1. Facilitate a transparent and honest conversation about costs and trade-offs.

Imagine giving patrons at a restaurant a menu with no prices… Some places do this and it’s very stressful. How am I supposed to decide what to order if I can’t weigh each option against my available resources? The same applies here. Residents should have a chance to consider new ideas, but they should also be put into a position to clearly understand the costs associated with those ideas: both the financial costs as well as opportunity costs and trade-offs associated with each option. If adding more green space downtown is an idea, explain this, but also explain that it will mean less parking. Being honest about opportunity costs and trade-offs not only allows people to rightly assess their preferences, but also minimizes surprises down the line.

2. Foster conversations about patterns of life.

So often, it’s easy to talk about amenities or features we’d like in our cities without thinking about the way those design decisions will shape our patterns of life…for good and bad. This means many cities become collections of amenities and “nice places” or things, but still fail to facilitate the kind of life rhythm that people are actually looking for. Public education is a chance to help people make the connections between the tangible “goods” they want and the pattern of life they seek to lead. For example, we might think it’s a good idea to add a new parking deck downtown because it will make it easier to park, but let’s think about the pattern of drive-park-drive that this requires of us, not to mention the precious minutes spent in traffic. Let’s think about having to constantly be in cars. Is that really how we want to spend our time? 

3. Invite people to step back and weigh their preferences against the “big picture goals” of long-term resilience and sustainability.

Residents need a “bigger picture” against which to evaluate their desires. For cities, these bigger-picture goals could include long-term resilience, well-preserved local character, sustainable use of limited resources, and equitable access to participation in the life of the city for all residents. Most people, when presented with such “big picture” goals, appreciate the chance to modify their preferences and desires to be in line with the ends they agree with. Without that kind of context, it’s easy to just insist on your preferences. 

4. Give individuals, and the community at large, a chance to clarify their values.

What do we really stand for as a community and how do our growth, design, or development priorities align with those values? This can be uncomfortable because sometimes it becomes clear that our values and desires actually don’t line up and we have to make adjustments, but in the long run it can provide a much-needed foundation against which to weigh future decisions. Few things replace the kind of confidence that comes from knowing our choices match our values. 

5. Present an opportunity for residents to share their stories and why they support or do not support certain ideas.

Hearing stories from ordinary folks provides the kind of context that is absolutely essential for helping public leaders rightly interpret the preferences they might hear at a given time. During the Georgetown event, for instance, I saw many people opposing incremental housing developments. We thought it was because they opposed increased density but when I started asking why they opposed those kinds of developments, the answer was surprising: “They’re ugly!” You never know what experiences are driving people’s preferences… Make time to ask. 

Conclusion 

Sure, this idea of educating the public might cause some city councils to recoil, as such experiences could lead to an uncomfortable level of accountability. But let’s assume most city councils really want to know what the public wants. If this is the case, then the first step is not to rush and hire the first consultant that comes along with a poster board and a bunch of stickers. The first step must to be bridge the knowledge gap and ensure the public really has the information they need to weigh various options and ideas. 

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