Citizen Participation USP 550

1. Citizen Participation USP 550

3. www.BowlingAlone.com

5. Photo courtesy of Portland Oregon Visitors Association

6. Civic Innovation: Symbiotic Relation Between Citizens and Leaders

7. Portland Honors • Best Bicycling city (Bicycling magazine) • Best Walking City (Prevention magazine) • Most Sustainable Policies (SustainLane) • Most Vegetarian Friendly (Vegetarian magazine) • 8th most artists per capita in USA • Most woman-owned businesses (SBA) • One of the most attractive for young creative class (Rise of Creative Class) • But also, one of the five best cities for elders (AARP)

8. Creative Class in Portland • Last year there were twice as many people in the 25-39 age group moving into the city as leaving • In all, 23,454 young adults moved in while 12,125 moved out. The fourth highest net migration in America

9. What lures the young creatives to Portland • key attractors are Portland's livability, local recreation opportunities, the music and art scenes and other "consumption opportunities," for instance, well-brewed beer.   • A primary draw of college-educated 25- to 34-year-olds is other college educated 25- to 34-years-olds. • Also mentioned are the city's neighborhoods, mass transit system, bike-friendliness and growth management policies.   • But the deciding factor is often a more intangible sense of political and social tolerance, intellectual diversity and entrepreneurial opportunity.

10. Portland’s Civic Story • Over 30 year period Portland created a civic story, in part myth, in part reality • It dictates civic behavior • Citizens expect to be involved • Bureaucrats and elected officials expect citizens to be involved.

11. Summary: Community Stories Community stories are created based on the interaction between the place and its people • But community stories are also co-opted by dominate cultural narratives • A good community story is socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable • Citizens need to feel they are a part of creating the story so that the cost of governance is lowered.

12. Working Together • DeToqueville accurately predicted that America would face a crises. If people did not work together to solve problems then the government would need to create more and more rules, more and more bureaucracy. • The most expensive governance involves governing individuals who only look out for themselves • Many social and environmental problems can’t be solved without civic engagement

13. Community Problem Solving: hardware and software solutions

14. Opportunity Effective actions Deliberative Democratic dialogue Civic Space Global & Local Civic Schools Facilitative leadership Sustainable civic story These Audiences Young Elder New comers Disadvantaged Challenging groups Diverse population Elements of a Healthy Civic Infrastructure

15. Learning Goals • Understand History and theory of collective action and civic engagement • Understand symbiotic relationship between citizens and government • Appreciate the value of involving citizens in most all aspects of planning • Understand the Current conditions of Civic life in America • How to plan for involving citizens in public policy • Develop skills in facilitating group process • Learn and reflect from field experiences and practitioners

16. What is citizen participation? • Formal process government uses to involve citizens in public policy • But also involves inter-agency and inter-group relationships • There are levels and types of citizen participation • Civic Engagement refers to broader spectrum of people’s involvement in civic life or civil society

17. Bureaucratic view of Citizen Participation • Improved Quality of decisions • Minimizing Cost and delay • Long Term Consensus Building • Increased ease of implementation • Avoiding “worst-case” confrontations • Maintaining credibility and legitimacy • Anticipating Public Concerns and Attitudes • Because its required

18. Citizen Participation(Sherry Arnstein) • It is the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future. It is the strategy by which the have-nots join in determining how information is shared, goals and policies are set, tax resources are allocated, programs are operated, and benefits like contracts and patronage are parceled out. In short, it is the means by which they can induce significant social reform which enables them to share in the benefits of the affluent society.

19. Summary Theoretical Writings • Sidney Tarrow: Social movements • DeTocqueville: Roots of American democracy • Daniel Kemmis: Direct and Representative forms of democracy • Jeffrey Berry: Growth of citizen interest groups • Robert Putnam: Civic engagement and social capital • Siranni and Friedland: Civic innovations • Morris Fiorina: excesses of democracy • Fischer: intractable problems and role of science • Day: How to evaluate citizen participation • Tauxe: Limits of rational planning process • Beatley: Representation • Innes: communicative planning theory

20. First Premise • Knowing Home

21. The Story of Portland • Why is Portland where it is? • What is Portland’s civic story? • Where did the story come from? • Is the story created by insiders or outsiders? • Is the story sustainable? (socially, economically, environmentally)

22. Knowing your home • In group answer as many of questions as you can in ten minutes • Do musical chairs/groups, in new group come up with 10 characteristics of Portland culture

23. Uncrowded feeling Omnipresent trees Open/green spaces Latte Drinkers Book readers Video watchers Looks like Pittsburgh (more than Seattle) Urban Outpost in largely agrarian state Jag City I scrounge, therefore I am Stridently informal Keep it old, not make it new No sales tax Self service gas Beat up and decorated cars/car art Not as exquisitely manicured as Seattle Light bulb joke: one to screw it in, and two to file an environmental impact statement The Beirut of America (George Bush) Anarchist Activism Monk Magazine critique of Portland

24. Grizzly, gritty and loose around the edges Lack of anal retentiveness Happy Face and Bill Nye (Seattle) Vs. Drugstore cowboy and Tanya Harding troll like creatures and web-footed homeless lonely end of the road desperados Seattle is wacky weird, Portland just plain weird Church of Elvis and John Callahan Down Home Not too jaded Not too crowded Not too frenetic Not too homogenized big city attractions without big city headaches cheap jazz Safe mass transit Monk Magazine critique of Portland (cont..)

25. Weak Political parties Nonpartisan city and county elections Low church attendance A low generosity index Ethnic groups have limited political salience or cultural power labor unions are weak Elections won more on issues than personalities Causes for everyone: tree huggers, salmon savers, peace workers and homeless advocates, etc. Citizen advisory committees important source of ideas for public action Government regarded as open, honest, accessible Public life takes place around a big table Anyone accepted as long as they accept rules (are polite) Oregon a place where strong individualism tempers and challenges strong communities Abbott on PDX civic character

26. Abbott Cont.. • The civic movement is fragile. It is continually under challenge--not from machine politics as in Boston or Chicago, but from the values of privatism. • With all its virtues, the Portland style tends to muffle radically dissenting voices who are unwilling to work on the “team.” There is an inability to hear new ideas until they fit the mold.

27. Portland Neighborhoods • Neighborhood map

28. Land Water Elevation Housing stock Transportation Jobs Income Martial/family status Ethnicity Business & business district Schools Churches History What forges the character of a neighborhood?

29. January 14, 2009

30. Housekeeping • Reserve library material • Negotiating requirements of class

31. What is citizen participation? • Formal process government uses to involve citizens in public policy • But also involves inter-agency and inter-group relationships • There are levels and types of citizen participation • Civic Engagement refers to broader spectrum of people’s involvement in civic life or civil society

32. Bureaucratic view of Citizen Participation • Improved Quality of decisions • Minimizing Cost and delay • Long Term Consensus Building • Increased ease of implementation • Avoiding “worst-case” confrontations • Maintaining credibility and legitimacy • Anticipating Public Concerns and Attitudes • Because its required

33. Citizen Participation(Sherry Arnstein) • It is the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included in the future. It is the strategy by which the have-nots join in determining how information is shared, goals and policies are set, tax resources are allocated, programs are operated, and benefits like contracts and patronage are parceled out. In short, it is the means by which they can induce significant social reform which enables them to share in the benefits of the affluent society.

35. Tarrow: Power in Movement

36. What is a Social Movement? • movements are collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities

37. Tarrow: Changes that Constitutes Modern Forms of Collective Action • Modular character of the protest/collective actions • Possibility of sustaining collective action • Appearance of deliberate organizations for organizing • Increased capacity of movements to spread • State or elite incorporate or legitimize actions: such as right to public assembly

38. Development of Modular Actions • Older forms singular/isolated • Barricades, Petitions, Strike • Petition: Manchester Anti-slavery, 20% of city population • American tea party: The boycott • Barricades of the French revolution, Tocqueville’s description (p. 44)

39. Resource Theory of Social Movements • social movements form when ordinary citizens, encouraged by leaders, respond to changes in opportunities that lower the costs of collective action, reveal potential allies and show where elites and authorities are vulnerable

40. Case Study: Gay march on DC

41. DeTocqueville’s America • Viewing birth of democracy, wondering: • As people can no longer be self sufficient where will they turn? • If people turn to government then society will be more regulated and restrictive • Importance of civic associations to keep a democracy innovative and not over-procedural

42. January 21

43. Summary Theoretical Writings • Sidney Tarrow: Social movements • DeTocqueville: Roots of American democracy • Daniel Kemmis: Direct and Representative forms of democracy • Jeffrey Berry: Growth of citizen interest groups • Robert Putnam: Civic engagement and social capital • Siranni and Friedland: Civic innovations • Morris Fiorina: excesses of democracy • Fischer: intractable problems and role of science • Day: How to evaluate citizen participation • Tauxe: Limits of rational planning process • Beatley: Representation • Innes: communicative planning theory

44. Kemmis: Character of American Democracy • Tension between Federalist and Republican perspective on democracy • In America the individual rights are held higher than creating the common good • Concerned more to promote individual liberty than to secure public justice • To advance interests rather than to secure public good

45. Interest Groups • Special-interest groups--also called pressure groups or lobbies --are collections of individuals who join together to pursue common interests and to influence public policy.

46. Institutional changes that Furthered Citizen Interest Groups • Growth of government itself until Reagan days • Closer relation between government and nonprofit sector including advocacy groups • “supply side” to interest group formation; not only do groups demand new programs but new programs demand new groups. • New government agencies and laws that gave citizen groups tools (EPA and EIS/Clean air and Water Acts) • Changes in court system that allowed public interest litigants to sue without direct economic causes. 30 • Decentralization of congress in terms of increase in committees gave such groups wider access.

47. Post-materialist Values • Those with postmaterialist values often ask that business be restricted in its pursuit of greater wealth • in Silent Revolution, Inglehart contends that growing up under conditions of affluence has led to an increased sense of economic security in western democracies. So Europeans place a higher value on quality of life issues. Less concern about jobs, more about policy objectives.

48. Citizen Group Perspective on Role of Government • for corporations, trade associations, and professional associations, government’s primary duty is to nurture individual industries and maintain a growing economy • For labor, government’s job is to improve workers’ standard of living • for citizen groups, government should be doing more than helping people and corporations to make more money.

49. History of Citizen Participation • Maximum feasible participation (60s) • Environmental Impact Reviews (69) • Citizen Interest Groups • Public Meeting & Public Information laws • Rise of nonprofit sector • Rise of professional CP practitioners

50. Diane Day Issues • Pluralist-elitist debate (Jefferson-Madison) • Bureaucracy and democracy tension • Science and technology • Limits of rational system of planning • Difficulty of evaluating outcomes