Written on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 11:02pm by Paul Wolf | 2 Comments

Government Leaders Need A New Approach That Will Allow People To Participate In Creating Solutions Together

CEOs for Cities is an organization made up Mayors from across the country seeking new and innovative ways of operating government. The group has released an interesting report titled Remixing Cities, Strategy For the City 2.0, which you can view at www.ceosforcities.org.

As city leaders grapple with delivering better schools, transportation, economic development and quality of life issues, the report suggests that cities need to develop new ways of collaborating with the public. A new approach that will allow people to participate in creating solutions together. The report suggests using the model of social web sites such as EBay, YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace; These organizations are built on a powerful dynamic of participation and collaboration. They encourage participation by giving users tools to make contributions, which allow people to share, collaborate, rate, rank, edit and network together.

Pages 14 and 15 of the report provide some specific examples of how government can use the methods of social web sites to mobilize commitment and contributions from the public. The ideas presented in the report are not another citizen engagement project or a receipe for more community consultation. The goal is to engage people directly in designing and creating services and solutions for community issues. The bottom line is that city leaders have many issues to address and they can use all the help they can get. Many private sector companies are using the web to tap into brain power outside of their corporate walls for ideas and solutions to their problems. Government leaders should be utilizing technology to do the same.

Check out the report and let me know what you think.

2 Comments

  1. Tom says:
    February 28, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    In a city where average income is between 23 and 28 thousound depending on statistics one references are without a computer creating myspace pages are only fractional remediations at best.
    Take a lesson from new england and Cleveland which has a strong new england construct to it where inner city suburbs and post war suburbs all have some sort of TOWN CENTER.
    Buffalo has a huge number of churches that are closing. A better thing to do for the city would be to use those closed churches as community centers where 2-5-10 various community and neighborhood associations could meet, plan, organize, lobby, etc. Closed churches could act as a TOWN CENTER.
    The second thing the city needs to do is continue to invest in the TOWN CENTER concept with inner city office/light industrial parks that are actually high density designed for the city grid so people have a place to work in inner city neighborhoods
    The the city and the suburbs really need to diverge into areas of specialization whereby major all encompassing functions such as water and sewar, courts, accounting, purchasing, auditing all get removed from towns and villages and cities.
    But let things like police, fire, schools devolve and remain local even to the point where the westside, northside, eastside and southside all have their own school districts. If we cant privatize the schools into choice/voucher/charter then we can break up the school system into smaller districts and dilute Williams and Rumore into the peons they deserve!
    PEOPLE NEED TO INTERACT, SOCIALIZE, KNOW NEIGHBORS AND LOCAL BUSINESSES ON A PERSONAL LEVEL. THE INTERNET IS A SUPPORT MECHANISM FOR A GROUP NOT A REPLACEMENT!
    THEREFORE THE TOWN CENTER CONCEPT IS THE INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED TO FACILITATE THE GROUP. REBUILD THE STREETS, SIDEWALKS, RESIDENCES, BUSINESSES AND INDUSTRIES AROUND A TOWN CENTER CONCEPT….USE CLOSED CHURCHES AS TOWN CENTER BUILDINGS….PUT A COMMUNITY POOL…AND JOB TRAINING CENTER IN THE ADJACENT CLOSED SCHOOLS, ETC.
    LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR THAT THE INTERNET IS NOT THE SOLUTION BUT A MINISCULE SUPPORT MECHANISM. IF YOU HAVE NO TOWN CENTER CONCEPT AND NO BUSINESS, NEIGHBORHOOD AND COMMUNITY ASSOCIATIONS THEN THE INTERNET SERVES NO PURPOSE.

  2. Buffalo Blood Donor says:
    February 29, 2008 at 7:29 pm

    I agree with Tom’s comments above but suggest a different approach that includes the Internet: Change the political mindset such that elected officials spend the *majority* of their time living and working among their elected community (great idea, Tom, about using closed churches as town centers) and a tiny fraction of their time in City Hall.
    In fact, none of their time in City Hall. Use the Internet to conduct official meetings and city business. With the use of broadband and web cameras the entire City Council could attend a virtual meeting, establish quorum, debate and vote on the various issues. We do it all the time in the business community using Webinars, and secure servers for document sharing.
    This has a second great advantage: It allows the presentation to be seen at each of the town centers rather than forcing people who might like to attend go to City Hall. The logistics to do this have been greatly simplified. People who do own computers could even watch from home.
    Take government out of the ivory tower and bring it back to the people.
    BBD

 

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