Report Finds Public Participation Improves Policy

A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded public participation processes can improve the quality of policies and help them become implemented. The 270-page report is the product of a research panel of a dozen experts. The report’s primary recommendation urges “Public participation should be fully incorporated into environmental assessment and decision-making processes, and it should be recognized by government agencies and other organizers of the processes as a requisite of effective action, not merely a formal procedural requirement.”

While I have not read the full study yet, I am not surprised by the findings. After all, in the words of panel head Thomas Dietz, since “a lot of science has to be applied to a very local context, local knowledge is essential.” Although a dearth of good research on the topic exists in the field of urban planning, I found several studies drawing similar conclusions. One interesting examination of 60 planning processes in Florida and Washington concluded that “with greater stakeholder involvement, comprehensive plans are stronger, and proposals made in plans are more likely to be implemented.” The study author went on to write (with two others) a subsequent article analyzing how states should mandate participation. I adopted that group’s general framework, derived as it was from the previous study of effectiveness, for my final paper describing how the Internet could be used as a participation tool.

I think the lesson from the National Academies panel must be driven home to the urban development community. Since we are so intimate with participation, we lose perspective on its broader importance and role. Given the legal requirements for transparency and professional approaches to participation, the key is to look beyond an obsession with the intellectually vague “NIMBYism” and design processes that foster consensus and prevent Morriss Fiorina’s “Extreme Voices” from having a monopoly. In particular, I think it means designing processes that are less time-intensive and allow involvement on a wider scale of commitment levels.

> [Read it Online] National Academies: Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making
> NYTimes: “Report Says Public Outreach, Done Right, Aids Policymaking”
> Previous posts: NIMBYism, Urban Development, and the Public Involvement Solution, Public Participation in Urban Planning Series

Subprime Mortgages and Race

The map to the right shows the overwhelming majority of subprime loans and foreclosures in New York City have been in minority neighborhoods. (Created by NEDAP via NY Times) The map tells an often-overlooked fact: the subprime crisis has hit minority neighborhoods harder than white ones.

The banking industry sometimes claims the differences in lending between whites and blacks and Hispanics are due to differences in credit and income. Although income plays a role, last year the New York Times reported that after controlling for the size of the loan and income of the borrower, blacks were 2.3 times more likely and Hispanics two times more likely than whites to have a high-cost loan. They cite the example of two neighborhoods in Detroit, both with median incomes around $50,000 — 70% of loans in the black neighborhood had high interest rates, while only 17% did in the white neighborhood.

Another study found that homeowners in upper income black neighborhoods (income above 120% AMI) were twice as likely to have subprime loans as homeowners in low-income (income below 80% AMI) white neighborhoods. Almost 40% of the loans in the affluent black neighborhood were subprime, versus 18% in the low income white neighborhood.

One article (PDF) thinks it is precisely that statistic that suggests something more - whether discrimination or a simple lack of prime lenders — is to blame:

The finding that upper income African-American borrowers rely more heavily on the subprime market than low-income White borrowers suggests that a portion of subprime lending is occurring with borrowers whose credit would qualify them for lower cost conventional prime loans. There is also evidence that the higher interest rates charged by subprime lenders cannot be fully explained solely as a function of the additional risks they bear. Thus, a greater presence by mainstream lenders could possibly reduce the high up-front fees and interest rates currently being paid by residents of low-income and minority neighborhoods.

The Times speculates in addition to a lack of prime lenders, other reasons could include aggressive sales in minority neighborhoods, less financial saavy, and lower net worth of minority lenders. Regardless, the stark numbers show that while the worst redlining may be behind us, the problem of equitable housing finance for urban neighborhoods still eludes us.

> NYTimes: What’s Behind the Race Gap?
> W. Post: Subprime Mortgages and Race
> HUD: Subprime Market Growth and Predatory Lending (PDF)

The Internet as a Participation Tool

This post is Part 4 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning

While the Internet makes possible new types of interactions between citizens and government, the purpose and structure of these interactions are not new. The section creates a road map for the use of the Internet as a civic participation tool by describing the technical implications of participation history and theory.

Despite scholarly interest of the web’s potential to improve e-democracy, most have viewed it as simply digitizing existing processes. Instead of corresponding with government officials through mail, citizens can use email. Instead of requesting pamphlets or reports they can download digital copies online. A 2004 study of the websites of 582 U.S. cities with a population of 50,000 or more in the 2000 Census found 35% provided an email address for citizens to contact the office, 74% offered the zoning ordinance and 55% had plans, and 37% had minutes of planning meetings.(1)

Most planning agencies have placed large amounts of information online, viewing it as something analogous to newspaper notices or the creation of an official record for public review in person. This means planning board agendas, meeting minutes, and a wide range of planning documents are posted online, often in PDF format. Furthermore, many have adopted web GIS systems allowing visitors to view GIS data and create their own maps.

The discussion above demonstrates a gap between the current theory regarding public participation and the state of government planning websites. While we have a historical basis for widespread outreach and education about planning processes, information is scarce and often missing. This section seeks to apply the historical and theoretical lessons to suggest a path for use of the Internet for participation. As a framework, it adopts the five choice areas advocated by Brody, Godschalk, and Burby for participation in general.
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Public Participation Theory

This post is Part 3 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning.

The urban planning profession has developed increasingly sophisticated techniques and theories regarding how and why to involve citizens in planning processes, especially since the 1960s. Critics pilloried the effectiveness of citizen participation during the War on Poverty, suggesting a new theoretical approach to participation itself was needed. Despite theoretical disagreement about the proper definition of and practice of participation, professional literature reflects a consensus a variety of additional techniques can enhance the process and result in more effective and democratic plans. These debates suggest ways planners can craft strategies that take into account social divisions and inequality, and effectively incorporate Internet technology into existing processes.

The experience of limited participation during urban renewal and the debate surrounding “maximum feasible participation” in the 1950s and 1960s sparked an intense professional interest in the topic of public participation in planning. The political and social turmoil in American cities and the contested nature of urban politics raised serious questions about how participation should be structured, and how power should be distributed more broadly in the city.

A ‘Ladder’ of Participation
In this climate, Sherry R. Arnstein, a former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official, published one of the most influential articles on the topic of public participation. Titled “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” her article described an eight-rung metaphorical ladder of participation.(1) The rungs are organized into three levels: nonparticipation (manipulation and therapy), tokenism (informing, consultation, placation), and citizen power (partnership, delegated power, citizen control). Interlaced with her description are anecdotal stories describing both flawed participation and successful examples where power was delegated to community representatives.
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Urban Planning and E-Government

This post is Part 1 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning, which received the University of Maryland Urban Studies and Planning Larry Reich Award for Best Final Paper.

Since the advent of information technology, there has been intense interest in its potential use to enhance and improve government functions. Despite innovations in many areas of governance, the use of the information technology in general and the Internet specifically to facilitate citizen involvement in urban planning has been limited. Two fundamental reasons explain this: the unique character of public participation has made it difficult to replicate online, and professionals have hesitated to work on the Internet due to the unequal distribution of Internet access. These reasons also serve to describe the obstacles that must be overcome before effective online participation can be realized. New tools and expanding Internet access address these concerns.

Limited Online Work by Planners
The Center for Technology in Government defines e-government as “the use of information technology to support government operations, engage citizens, and provide government services.” The four broad government functions reflected in this definition are: the electronic delivery of services (e-services), use of information technology to improvement management (e-management), use of the Internet to facilitate citizen participation (e-democracy), and the exchange of money for goods and services over the Internet (e-commerce).(1) Although e-services and e-commerce have spread rapidly, the development of e-democracy tools has lagged behind. To the extent there has been innovation in the area of participation, it has been to facilitate individual communication (e.g. email) to government officials.

Although enhanced participation in government decision-making has long been a theoretical goal of e-government advocates, its actual implementation has been limited. By 2008, the vast majority of planning departments and commissions had at least posted plans and other information online, many posted contact information to government officials, agendas and minutes from government meetings, and many have also begun to experiment with putting geographic databases online.(2) Consultants have emerged specializing in workflow management, online document production, and even receipt of public comments for proposed plans in electronic formats.(3) Despite broad adoption of some level of Internet use by public sector planners, few have elevated it to an important place in their work. A 2003 study of 60 urban planning processes in Florida and Washington states found just 5 percent used web sites as a “central role in providing information.”(4)
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Government as Data Source

A provocative new article in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology titled “Government Data and the Invisible Hand” (PDF) makes the proposal that the federal government should abandon their attempt to create public websites, and focus almost entirely on providing data in standard formats for use by private websites. The article points out greater access to data is supported by all three leading presidential candidates, perhaps most strongly by Barack Obama who says on his website he’ll seek to make “government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities.” (Via TechPresident and Read Write Web)

This argument can be extended to the local government level. At Rethink College Park, the single most important ingredient to our success was government information. However, local government planners generally view their jobs as analyzing proposals for the benefit of elected officials, and providing data to the public is relegated to a secondary role. The City of College Park’s website rarely presented timely development information (almost never the valuable renderings, plans, and maps presented to the city council that we were interested in) and the Prince George’s County Planning Board website deletes their online data after six months. Let me repeat: in a world where Amazon.com is charging $.15 per gigabyte per month for data storage, Prince George’s County (population 828,770) does not archive planning board documents older than six months.

DC government has been a leader in this area, offering dozens of data feeds through their CapStat program, and the neighborhood website JDLand has probably been the most successful at scraping them for neighborhood-specific data. However, as Jon Udell pointed out two years ago, the hoped-for flowering of DC mashups has been slow to materialize, the only notable ones being JDLand and CrimeinDC. While I agree with the article authors’ emphasis on data availability and found data access to be an obstacle to advocating for smart growth and improved citizen participation, I’m not willing to write off government work on the web. One of the things I’ll describe in upcoming posts is extensive history of government planners going to the public to both conduct education and solicit input, two things the web is ideally suited to do. Despite their slow pace of change, I think there’s plenty of space for governments that want to try more innovative websites. After all, as one commenter points out, citizens still turn to government websites first to find the data they need.

19th Century Scots and Your Regional Sewer Authority

At the recent Society of American City and Regional Planning History conference I attended in Portland, Maine, outgoing president historian Greg Hise gave a lecture on the declining interest among academics in regions and regional planning.

In a post for Planetizen’s Interchange blog, I suggested that contrary to the views expressed at the conference there actually is a good deal of regional study and planning taking place in the U.S. I argue the reasons regions are not well studied by the academy include the exploding scale of “metropolitan” areas, the organization of records, intellectual preoccupation with the city, and and yes, the waning influence of regionalist thinkers like Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes.

A somewhat eccentric figure, Patrick Geddes’ theories about the relationship between cities and their regions was highly influential among early planners. His “valley section,” a version of which appears below, conveys the geographic and economic scope of his theories.

However, his work is generally abstruse. Project Gutenberg’s copy of his 1904 text “Civics: as Applied Sociology” and his illustration below offer a taste to the curious.

Needless to say the profession has gained a much richer perspective by moving beyond such early thinkers, however the insistence on a regional scope has been diluted.

Read more or offer your own thoughts on my Planetizen post: “Whither the Region? Good Question.”