limit-login-attempts-reloaded domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home1/enabling/public_html/blog/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121Just took a long coffee break to read Cities: Who Decides?,<\/em><\/span> an<\/span> illuminating study by Jane-Frances Kelly from the independent Australian think-tank The Grattan Institute<\/a>. She asked: “What kind of decision-making arrangements are associated with sustained success in cities?”<\/span><\/p>\n Then she looked at eight cities with comparable characteristics to Australian cities – Vancouver (2.1m), Toronto (5.1), Seattle (3.3m), Portland (2.1m), Chicago (9.4m), Austin (1.5m), Dublin (1.8m) and Copenhagen (1.8m).<\/span><\/p>\n The report is readable, including eight succinct pen-portraits of what works in each of the cities.<\/span><\/p>\n Her top-line findings –<\/span><\/p>\n “First, high and sustained levels of public engagement in decision-making were found in many of the cities, particularly where improvement required tough choices.<\/span><\/p>\n “Second, cities that achieved meaningful, long-term success typically demonstrated a consistent strategic direction across political cycles. Similarly, many successful cities benefited from cross-sector collaboration between government, the business community, and civic organisations. In many cases, a level of regional co-operation was in place, with efforts integrated both within and across levels of government.<\/span><\/p>\n “Finally, there was usually a trigger [by which she means a crisis]<\/span> for improvement, which catalysed the political will required for real, sustained improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n “Of equal significance was what we failed to find. In particular, the research suggested that success did not depend on any particular type of government structure. Nor was there an ideal ‘model of development’.”<\/span><\/p>\n The two implications for Australian cities are:<\/span><\/p>\n “1) Residents must be involved in decisions. Those cities that made tough choices and saw them through had early, genuine, sophisticated, and deep public engagement. This level of engagement is an order of magnitude different from what happens in Australia today.<\/span><\/p>\n “2) Changing structures does not in itself result in success. No one particular type of governance structure was associated with broad-based improvement. Changing structures has the danger of being a distraction.”<\/span><\/p>\n It’s interesting that the current success of most of these cities arose out of deep crises of economic decline and questions about the future of the city: would it have a derelict core dominated by freeways or would people stand up for the values of city life? In most cases, decisive civic leadership combined with deep community engagement shifted the historic direction of the city, putting in place human-centred city visions that have been consistent to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n It’s hard to imagine that Copenhagen in the 1990s, following the withdrawal of the Danish Navy, was in economic crisis with a population who had “become like beaten animals with no self confidence…” Now cities around the world are scrambling for the magic formula of “Copenhagenization”. Mostly secret seemed to be the way cities involved their people in decision-making.<\/span><\/p>\n In Portland, for instance, a unique alliance between a visionary Democratic Mayor and a Republican Governor in the 1970s led a community revolt against plans for inner-city freeways, galvanizing a high level of community involvement in planning and commencing Portland on it’s path to becoming America’s most livable city. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “Portland is well known for its high quality public engagement including “all kinds of citizens’ involvement: public hearings, workshops, open houses and citizen events”<\/em><\/span>. The public is “very involved in policy making, which means that they are not going to let it go very far off course”<\/em><\/span>. One interviewee emphasised that Portland had benefited from “taking planning back a step and asking people what they want” <\/em><\/span>rather than “telling people what the planners have decided”<\/em><\/span>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Interestingly, in most cases, a dense layer of intermediary community and business groups was pivotal in driving government to be more responsive and inclusive. In Seattle, for instance, the “culture of advocacy groups, and the way they interact with, support, and motivate elected officials has been ‘more important than anything’.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n It’s telling that no common development model was responsible in these success stories. The transformations were variously human-capital-led, culture-led, government-led and private-sector led. Success wasn’t about development fads, it was mostly about the patient, hard work of involving people in decision-making. The two cities that did this the least, Austin and Dublin, appear to have ridden an economic wave and now face some tough postponed choices.<\/span><\/p>\n
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