A Polarizing Statement…
Trains, Planes & Automobiles
City planners must consider [insert core competency here]. How transportation systems work together, how traffic light systems work together or whatever it be, take your pick.
“City planners must…” polarizes; it pits the speaker against city planners. It implies that city planners don’t consider a core part of city planning. By choosing a position and stating a conclusion without stating the reasoning, does the speaker leave room for a positive interpretation for why something isn’t happening?
Polarizing statements are great - for some things. They’re effective to create controversy and to reinforce an us vs. them mindset. The us vs. them mindset is valuable for reinforcing group bonds at the expense of a them or other.
However, is this the best way? What if you look into the face of your enemy and you see yourself? Might that lead to a crisis of mission and perhaps even identity, as constructed on the (perhaps false) premise of an “other”?
Team Cohesion via Collaboration
What would be a better way to create team cohesion? Perhaps aligning your team around common goals and an understood mission. Fundamentally, the speaker above didn’t want city planners to consider how various transportation modalities worked together - she wanted to optimize transportation access for all community members.
Could collaboration help? YES! By stating a desired outcome and identifying action items necessary to achieve an outcome, the opportunity becomes about value creation, not finger pointing. The process is collaborative, not polarizing.
I’m sure city planners, as a group, want transportation systems to all work well together. I think the question should be: What challenges do planners face in creating a coherent transportation system in any given city?
What do you think the question should be?
image courtesy of Flickr user Atwater Village Newbie used under Creative Commons
March 4th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
What an important point. We’re working on a campus master plan update now. This will make me listen carefully to how the planners ask questions, and will make me examine what we do with our supporting web communications to invite people into a collaborative dialogue.
@BarbChamberlain
March 4th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Barb, Thanks for the comment. I like your thoughts about moving forward - can you think of extensions beyond that which you’ve stated?
March 4th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Extending in a couple of different directions:
Your question is worded as a challenge to planners. They’re not the ones with all of the answers and can’t deliver the solutions–those require changes from citizens.
Both linguistically and physically, when “we” the citizens sit in the audience facing towards “they”, the experts up front at the podium, we aren’t on the same side facing the challenge together.
I’d phrase the question this way:
What challenges do we face as a community in creating a coherent transportation system that works for us and provides us with a complete set of choices?
This specific example is close to my heart, as I’m active in active transportation advocacy (chair biketoworkspokane.org, serve on city Bicycle Advisory Board, part of leadership team for smartroutes.org which is our region’s participation in RTC 2010 Campaign for Active Transportation, heading to DC next week for a conference on this question).
The challenge for the planners (I’m not one), I know, is that there are certain givens on the ground. Describing the constraints and context is part of what citizens need to engage in a meaningful, constructive way.
My challenge with our campus web information for our master plan update was crystallized by this post because I know it’s easy to fall into language that suggests that we, the institution, tell you, the citizen, what we’re doing and ask you to respond to that.
That’s polarizing in its own way; we’re inside, you’re outside. Just saying “We are updating our campus master plan” is true–but aren’t we trying to do it with the community?
I’m overanalyzing (majored in linguistics & English) and recognize there’s no way to avoid the use of “we” to mean the university. We’re a public institution and our work is on behalf of the entire community and state, so our “we” is inclusive in that sense. The same would be true for city planning staff.
Framing “we” to mean “let’s all” seems like the mindset to bring into this in order to break down the expert/citizen polarization.
The page I have in front of me for our campus planning is http://twurl.cc/jwf. The information there right now (3/4/09) will be updated with information on upcoming master planning workshops, then documents later for review & feedback. I can already see edits I’ll be making to existing language. I’d love to hear what people think of it.
@BarbChamberlain
March 4th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
One thing to consider though, is how planners are often educated and the dominant personality types gravitating to the profession. Many planners do feel that they are separate from communities and much of their coursework teaches them to spend most of their intelligence on basically “gaming the system” to get their projects through.
Little emphasis is placed on the deep, fundamental understanding of how class, race, gender, and other factors intersect with environments. More is directed toward emotionally distant statistics and agency politics.
Because of that, I think it can often be even MORE difficult to make planners (as opposed to other professions) feel as they’re part of the “we” through conversation.
March 4th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Hoby, great point - any thoughts as to how we can disrupt the current paradigm so the “game” becomes better living spaces, access to transportation and public services, and success becomes the achievement of those goals?
March 4th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Over the course of my career, I have been an urban planner, a growth management planner, a technology planner, built on-line communities, created software, and helped corporations re-vamp their internal corporate cultures.
This post is my world.
Government is a difficult space. People in government are idealistic and want to do good. The public wants them to have done everything yesterday, and be immediately responsive to their needs today. In addition, they want government to foresee all difficulties and make sure they don’t happen.
Not a job description most people are anxious to take on.
Public meetings as a planner are incredible and varied. In Portland, Oregon, my public meetings were collaborative and the people educated. Disagreements were civilized and well argued.
In other places (Seattle, Phoenix, etc.) public meetings were nightmares of accusations, rhetoric, and finger pointing.
Why the difference? Culture.
We can disrupt the paradigm by doing a few things.
1. Show up at public meetings, even if you agree with with project.
2. Come educated and with printed materials.
3. Come expecting to work.
4. If you have a neighborhood program, participate.
5. Become the change you wish to see.
6. Accept that compromise is good
7. Expect other people to not be as enlightened as you
In Portland, we had a collaborative process that worked very well. In Seattle, we have a consensus process and nothing gets done.
Nothing gets done.
Nothing gets done.
I want to make it clear that consensus is a lousy way to govern.
And I like collaboration.
Discuss.
April 13th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
[...] early March, I had written a post about City Planners and core competencies. The gist of the statement that inspired that post was City planners must consider the whole of a [...]