I’d like to pull in this excellent piece from strong towns: Best of 2020: Stop Asking the Public What They Want
And luckily, this being the survey topic, it’s relevant:
As a rule, your average Joe Citizen is an expert in the ways they use and experience the public realm. Residents can easily and meaningfully answer questions like these:
- Where is it scary to walk or dangerous to cross the street?
- Where is there insufficient lighting at night?
- What recreational opportunities do you wish you didn’t have to leave your neighborhood for?
- What is the thing you would be most excited to show an out-of-town visitor about your neighborhood?
- What is the thing you would be most ashamed to show them?
As a rule, your average Joe Citizen is not an expert in the design or economics of the built environment. Residents who aren’t built-environment professionals are not well suited to answering questions like these:
- Does this street require an additional travel lane?
- Should the travel lanes be 10 or 12 feet wide?
- Has a sufficient amount of affordable housing been built in our community in the past few years?
- Would a grocery store likely succeed if it opened at this intersection?
- Does the proposed apartment complex have enough parking?
I don’t think gathering consensus is necessary or even ideal. What matters is the city doing things that positively impact people in their community. 50k people voted for mayor in 2019. That’s 12% of the city’s population, and many of those likely only do a little research just before the election and then wait till the next one. There is no “mass public outrage”, because the majority of the public simply doesn’t care at all and just waits to see what will happen. And I don’t think that’s wrong. Caring about politics and urbanism to the extent that many of us do is a privilege, not a requirement.
I understand that there is a difference of philosophy here, and that some of it can sound elitist. But I think having experts is a good thing. Educating people with resources like Strong Towns, NotJustBikes, etc. is great if they’re interested, and showing people what “could be” is important. But most people are either happy with letting others vote for them, and trusting democracy to yield a good result, or a small minority vote, trust the officials they voted to make the best decisions for the city, and move on with their lives, ignoring essentially everything else. And as much as I operate differently, I don’t think that’s wrong for them.