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New Era for Public Engagement

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New Era for Public Engagement
by LORNE DANIEL on February 13, 2011

A sustainable city must be an engaged city. That was the consensus of speakers and participants at Sustainable Communities Conference 2011 recently in Victoria, British Columbia. Public engagement for city governments has evolved, in the web 2.0 era, to involve much more than a few newspaper ads and some token open house events. There are now opportunities and challenges galore for citizens, activists, municipal staff and elected officials. Significantly, a number of sessions at the sustainability conference focused on how to effectively engage people in community decision-making. Keynote speaker Amelia Shaw, Manager of Public Consultation and Government Programs for metro Vancouver’s Translink, opened by noting that “anyone can challenge us on public outreach principles – we need to be transparent and accessible.” Effective consultatation must consider not only stakeholders and the readily engaged, Shaw said, but the disengaged. Cities must find ways to get out and interact with those who are typically not engaged, and / or find ways to survey and research their points of view. “You also need to manage expectations,” Shaw told municipal officials from across Canada. Don’t promise people a greater level of involvement and influence than you can make good on. Shaw cited the participation spectrum of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) as a good tool in planning the level of engagement that is appropriate. “Social media is driving public participation” in new ways and to new levels, Shaw noted. The immediacy of social media is such that the often preferred pattern of receiving input and then retreating to study it at length is no longer applicable. As Shaw spoke, a number of audience members

were Tweeting her comments out to the world and others were responding to those tweets. Interaction is spontaneous and instant. Many of those present in the Victoria Conference Centre murmured when Shaw, in response to a question, noted that a recent Translink consultation project cost $1 million. For some municipalities, that would be a significant piece of their entire transportation budget. Yet Shaw noted that in projects such as those in metro Vancouver that potentially involve millions or even a billion dollars in capital expenditure, the engagement investment is necessary to get it right. At other sessions during the conference, panelists offered a number of practical tips for effective public engagement. The city of Madison, WI, USA has given school children cameras to photograph their walking routes, as a creative way of doing walkability audits. A builder of a net-zero home in Montreal expressed frustrations with neighbours who complained about his unorthodox structure, pointing to the need for engagement and buy-in when change is underway. Mayor Ken Melamed of the BC resort community of Whistler, praised The Natural Step as a tool for involving citizens in sustainability discussions. Others praised the role of public libraries in bringing less advantaged people into public policy discussions.

Summary
A sustainable city must be an engaged city. That was the consensus of speakers and participants at Sustainable Communities Conference 2011 recently in Victoria, British Columbia.

Description
Significantly, a number of sessions at the sustainability conference focused on how to effectively engage people in community decision-making.

Keynote speaker Amelia Shaw, Manager of Public Consultation and Government Programs for metro Vancouver’s Translink, opened by noting that “anyone can challenge us on public outreach principles – we need to be transparent and accessible.”

At other sessions during the conference, panelists offered a number of practical tips for effective public engagement.

Tags: cities, citizen engagement, Crowdsourcing, public engagement, sustainability, sustainability conference, Sustainable Communities Conference 2011

Posted by Benjamin Fossel

Aug 16, 2011 02:29 pm GMT Viewed 2287 times

Author: LORNE DANIEL Source

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