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Great post and great comment thread. Encouraging input through multiple channels is clearly part of the answer, as you talk about in your post, and no question that participants being informed is important as well (as Gavin and others pointed out), especially with more complicated policy issues (i.e., most of the policy issues of consequence). There's a third piece, though, that seems to be pretty important on those more complicated issues, and that is designing a civic engagement process with tools that help participants make sense of that information and to thoughtfully weigh options and trade-offs against each other. Just having information, even if it's thorough, doesn't necessarily make it usable. It's one thing to ask people how much they support funding for various programs, for instance, and to give them full access to the city's budget and financial data, but it's something else entirely to use a budget tool that requires folks to actually increase and decrease funding for various programs in order to fit within a budget, especially if those budget levels are tied to program outcomes. Similarly, it's one thing to ask people their views on how tall the buildings in their neighborhood should be, but 3-D visualization tools (e.g., CommunityViz) that help folks get a real sense of what various heights and setbacks and architectural requirements might actually feel like make that kind of conversation a lot more productive.

by Jacob on May 9, 2011 9:21 pm • link • report