I am a citizen not a consumer
From:
Michael Allan
Date:
Aug 03 03:36 UTC
Short link
James Gilmour wrote:
>
> The park planning example illustrates some coherent policies. But
> what about when the city council (local government) decides to
> rezone a "redundant" school playing field for much needed local
> housing? Then there will less green space in the city, fewer places
> for organised sport, fewer places for local children to play, and
> with what overall consequences? An example of incoherent policies
> perhaps, but what about the priority need for more housing?
I guess this is a second type of problem. Let's say we've already
"lived through" the first problem. To recap, we promoted ourselves
from passive consumers of park services to active "park citizens". We
used the electoral medium to vote up our local plans, and to run our
communication and power lines into City Hall. Soon our neighbourhoods
were all healthily competing with each other, striving to develop the
best parks, and learning from each other's efforts. Then we ran into
this problem:
Conflict of Particular over General
We were blindly pursuing our own local plans, with no thought for a
coherent policy across the city. The bureaucracy was becoming
confused by our conflicting demands. To solve this problem, we
extended our decision-making responsibility to cover the whole Parks
Policy. We began voting up alternative policies until we attained a
rough consensus across the entire city. This left the central
planning bureaucracy with the purely technical task of reading plans
in the light of policy - the particular by the general - acting on
those plans that were in compliance, and striking down any others. By
that simple trick, as though by magic, our planning had become at once
competitive and cooperative, diverse and aiming at common goals.
Conflict of General over Particular
Now we have the opposite problem. In response to a general need for
affordable housing, consensus is forming on a large-scale development
project to alleviate the shortage. But there's a stickler. The
project depends on the rezoning of green space in several
neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods are going to lose a few parks.
Consequently, as the popularity of the project grows across the city,
resentment is mounting in the affected wards. The Councillors are
becoming alarmed. They meet with the Mayor to express their concern.
If the housing project hits the floor of Council, they'll all be
paying a high price at the polls. The Mayor agrees. She needs the
support of these Councillors, and she does not want to be caught in
any crossfire, herself.
A few days later, the Mayor brings up the subject in her regular news
conference. She highlights the positive contributions of both sides
in the looming dispute: the project planners have shown initiative in
working to resolve the housing shortage; the local residents have
shown dedication in caring for their park facilities. The City
planning departments are striving to keep up with these initiatives.
Sometimes they need guidance from the wider public, and an area of
particular concern at the moment is the approval of development
projects where green space is at stake. Planning coordinators
currently lack rules to follow in these situations. What balance of
parkland is desired in the city? How are rezoning conflicts to be
resolved when parks and recreation facilities are involved?
Then the Chief Planning Coordinator speaks. He explains that the
current set of zoning guidelines is out of date and needs to be
revised. The planning office will not attempt its own revision at
this time. Instead, the Mayor hopes to see new ideas from the public,
and preferably a rough consensus on a new set of guidelines. In the
meantime, the office is temporarilly suspending the approval process
for any development projects that affect green space.
The next morning, as always, the Mayor reviews the latest election
results. She looks first at her standing across the city, then at
each of the wards affected by the housing project. It's still too
early to judge, but it looks like she's gaining in the wards...
> At a much higher level of government, there are separate and
> overlapping segments of the UK electorate who want: more public
> money spent on transport infrastructure; more public money spent on
> public transport; more public money spent on health services;
> general levels of taxation of all kinds reduced. (The list is
> almost endless!) We expect government to bring forward and
> implement a coherent set of policies for everything that government
> can or should do. But when we campaign, locally for a new lamppost
> or nationally for better health services, we do not attempt to
> address the wider issues and resolve the inevitable conflicts, much
> less attempt to devise a coherent approach to the whole public
> sphere. It may be unfair ("It's not my job"), but we do expect it
> of government. Maybe the reason why there is no grassroots clamour
> for subsidiarity is that we do not want the difficult task and
> responsibility of resolving the conflicts and developing coherent
> policies, not even at the most local level on our little patch.
We showed in the parks scenario how to resolve the incoherence of
subsidiarity by reconciling particular plans in the light of general
policy. In the current housing scenario, I suggest how to resolve the
opposite problem, and prevent general interests from trampling over
the particular ones. In both cases, the solution is to increase the
level of decision making in the public sphere, and to reduce the level
of central planning by government.
Maybe these scenarios show why central planning fails to grapple with
the scale and complexity of the problems. Their solution appears to
require a seamless *combination* of both central and peripheral
coordination, a kind of ubiquitous communication network in support of
decision making. If that is true, it means that these problems are
essentially insoluble by government. Government cannot be everywhere
at once, like we can. No amount of IT is likely to overcome that
incapacity. A wired government is still nothing but a centralized
bureaucracy. But a wired public sphere is anything we choose.
(I must get back to coding the prototype. These discussions have been
especially helpful. I'm sorry to post so much. Although the
technology is just a simple voting cascade, it's been a challenge to
forsee how it'll be used. I now understand that voting on local
micro-plans, like parks, is essential to the overall "ecosystem".
More important, I've discovered that voting for offices, like Mayor,
is likely to align with the power structure, and to provide 2-way
communications with the electorate. It's hard to predict how that
combination will behave during shifts of power. It leads me to think
there's a role for mainstream political parties, after all. That
surprises me.)
--
Michael Allan
Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/