Thirty years ago, a new democratic experiment began in a handful of American cities. In Portland, Oregon, Atlanta, Georgia, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a number of other places, local governments created neighborhood council systems as a way of engaging citizens in public decision-making and problem-solving.
The lessons learned in these civic experiments, and the ideas they offer for strengthening democracy at the neighborhood level, will be the focus of a meeting in Orlando,Florida on November 11th, 2008. The event is being organized by Grassroots Grantmakers, NeighborWorks America, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. It will be hosted by the City of Orlando and the Democratic Governance Panel of the National League of Cities, and will be held in conjunction with the 2008 National League of Cities conference.
In the last fifteen years, the lessons offered by these democratic experiments have become more and more critical. The relationship between citizens and government has changed dramatically during that time; citizens are more educated, skeptical, capable, and diverse. Citizens may simply be better at governing, and worse at being governed, than ever before.
Local leaders are reacting to these trends, trying to address the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities apparent in the new citizen-government dynamic. Dozens of cities have created new systems for decision-making at the neighborhood or ward level. They have established official committees – with names like “neighborhood councils,” “priority boards,” or “neighborhood action committees” – that give citizens a say in decisions that affect their neighborhood or ward, and sometimes on city-wide policies as well. This ‘second wave’ of neighborhood governance structures is much larger and more diverse, including places like Basalt, Colorado, Roanoke, Virginia, and Santa Rosa, California, as well as large cities like Los Angeles and Houston.
Leaders in several of those cities are already taking stock of their accomplishments and planning for the future. In Portland, Oregon, the new Five-Year Plan to Increase Community Involvement is already being discussed by residents and local leaders. In all of these cities, the people involved learned a great deal about topics such as:
- Representation and recruitment – How have neighborhood councils succeeded, and how have they failed, to involve or represent their fellow residents in policymaking?
- Internal democracy – What lessons have been learned about how neighborhood meetings can best give people a chance to participate and be heard?
- Citizen action – How have these structures succeeded, and failed, in compelling residents to devote their own time and energy to shared projects?
- Staffing – What kind of staffing arrangement is required to make these structures viable?
- City Hall – Does neighborhood democracy require, or compel, corresponding changes in the way that city departments and city councils function?
- Funding – What lessons have been learned about the role of funding for neighborhood groups and neighborhood councils in promoting neighborhood democracy? What promising practices can be identified? Are there any unintended consequences of using funding as a tool to promote citizen engagement?
In the Orlando meeting, representatives from Portland and other ‘first wave’ cities will report on their progress and describe their plans for the future. Each city team will include at least one city employee, at least one neighborhood leader, and at least one representative from a community foundation or other local funder of neighborhood-level public engagement. Representatives from some of the newer neighborhood governance systems will describe the decisions and challenges they are facing. The meeting will also attract local officials, researchers, and practitioners who have experience with democratic governance.
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