Our study examines a nontraditional engagement process employed by the City of Seattle during neighborhood plan updates. Adapting the trusted advocates model from the public health field, the city hired planning outreach liaisons (POLs) from 13 diverse community groups to solicit input from traditionally underrepresented residents. To explore the efficacy of this approach, we collected data through interviews with residents, neighborhood leaders, community development firm employees, university researchers, and municipal staff; a review of planning documents; observation at planning meetings. We found that the POLs effectively engaged underrepresented groups—including more than 1,200 stakeholders—particularly those characterized as self-organized, centralized or having strong social networks and were important in the advancement of democratic principles. Greater transparency by the city about process goals and constraints, along with strategies to address power issues, may have facilitated better communication and relationship building among the city, newly enfranchised residents, and the “usual suspects.”
Neighborhood planning is a process whereby members of a community participate in a visioning process to guide future development in their neighborhood. Interest in community-based neighborhood planning has grown significantly in the past 50 years [
Earlier critiques of public planning in Seattle, Washington, focused on a lack of participant diversity during the original neighborhood plans. Though the city has a strong history of public engagement in the planning process, many community members and city staff expressed concern that a small group of citizens exerted disproportionate influence over development of the plans. Some cited socioeconomic and linguistic barriers to more comprehensive participation; others identified resident apathy toward long-term planning [
Our study examines the use of an innovative model for outreach and engagement recently piloted during neighborhood plan updates in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle. The goal was to reach and involve a greater number of historically underrepresented citizens in the neighborhood planning process and, ultimately, produce more representative plans through which the community might retain its rich cultural diversity during anticipated development. In an effort to improve outreach to, and participation of, traditionally underrepresented cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups, the City of Seattle employed the trusted advocates model, adapted from the public health field, and developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. City administrators contracted 13 “trusted advocates” in the form of planning outreach liaisons (POLs) to act as a bridge between the city and “communities of color, immigrants and refugees, the disabled, seniors and youth” [
This paper first details the organizational structure of the outreach process coordinated by the POLs as described by participants, city staff, and observers; we collected data on these perspectives through a series of interviews conducted in the fall of 2009. Additional information comes from a review of city planning documents and direct observation at two open house meetings. We explore perceptions and awareness of the POL model within the broader community of neighborhood stakeholders, as well as its relative success compared to traditional outreach vehicles used during the process. Next, we examine the importance of outreach to underrepresented communities in the context of plan implementation and democratic development, and we ground our findings in theory related to participatory processes and the trusted advocate model found in the literature. Finally, we consider implications for use of this model in other public participation processes and suggest recommendation for maximizing its effectiveness in neighborhood planning. The study’s limitations are presented and potential areas of future research suggested.
Citizen participation has received increased attention since the 1950s, “with the underlying assumption that if citizens become actively involved as participants in their democracy, the governance that emerges from this process will be more democratic and more effective” [
Engaging a diverse citizenry in long-term planning is frequently problematic as disadvantaged communities often experience barriers to participation, including language barriers, time restraints, lack of adequate knowledge of political systems, and lack of politically favorable relationships with those in power, among others [
Despite the challenges associated with engaging diverse stakeholders in planning, studies suggest that inclusive processes may contribute to the creation of more robust plans with a greater likelihood of long-term success in both implementation and sustainability [
However, if public plans are designed using an inclusive process but are inequitable or inept in their execution, community members may be nominally engaged in the short term but fail to be engaged meaningfully in the long term [
Among the tools and mechanisms available for ensuring participation and negotiating cooperative action is the use of trusted and respected community leaders, advocates, or mediators. Models of engagement that emphasize empowerment of local leaders who remain embedded in diverse social networks have been associated with feminist theory [
In the healthcare field, the use of “indigenous, trusted and respected” community health workers, who serve as bridges between their communities and health providers, has proven effective in expanding heath care services to the underserved [
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation [
Our study focuses on neighborhood plan updates in three neighborhoods of the Rainier Valley in Seattle, Washington (see Figure
Map of Seattle Districts and Rainier Valley Neighborhood. Source: City of Seattle.
Anecdotal evidence and previous studies suggest that neighborhood characteristics, such as availability of affordable housing, commercial space, and service-industry jobs, have made Rainier Valley an attractive place for recent immigrants and lower-income communities of color [
The opening of Seattle’s LINK Light Rail line in July 2009 raised concerns among many citizens and city planners that the neighborhood’s character may be threatened: the neighborhood’s proximity to downtown, cultural diversity, and relatively low cost of land acquisition were anticipated to be powerful motivators for rising real estate prices as similar trends have occurred elsewhere [
Despite its characteristic diversity, neighborhood advocacy in the Rainier Valley has traditionally been dominated by a few dedicated and well-organized neighborhood associations [
Motivated mainly by these reasons, the City of Seattle implemented a process in 2009 to formally update three neighborhood plans in Southeast Seattle—specifically the neighborhoods of North Beacon Hill, North Rainier Valley, and MLK Jr. at Holly Street. The city selected these neighborhoods for updates due to a variety of reasons, but principally because of anticipated changes to community shape and character following the opening of LINK light rail in July of 2009. At the outset of the process, city officials expressed particular interest in soliciting community members’ vision for development and involving diverse voices in the process [
Our study was driven by a central research question: How did the trusted advocates model of outreach affect the process and outcome of planning efforts in Seattle’s Rainier Valley neighborhood? Supporting questions included (1) How was the planning process conducted? (2) Who was (or was not) involved? Specifically, did the process involve a larger number and a greater diversity of people than previous iterations? (3) What were the proposed methods of implementation? (4) How were the new outreach model and the traditional public planning process used in parallel or collaboratively?
We collected data through interviews and direct observation of the planning process during September and October of 2009. Forty semistructured interviews with representatives of a range of organizations and perspectives were conducted. Interviewees included 17 city employees; 5 faculty members from the University of Washington’s (UW), Department of Urban Planning and Design; 8 representatives from community development organizations; 7 residents and local business owners; 3 private land developers involved in southeast Seattle.
We selected interview subjects based on their relevant experience with and involvement in the neighborhood planning process as well as their familiarity with the community. An effort was made to coordinate interviews with representatives from all effected neighborhood associations, collaborating city agencies, key participants in the original neighborhood plans, and residents who felt personally effected by the POL engagement process. A request to the city to facilitate access to the liaisons was declined. Those POLs who were contacted based on introductions through and recommendations from other interviewees were not responsive to interview requests.
Following a semistructured, interview-guide approach [
We then posed questions specific to the interviewees’ position or area of expertise, historic involvement in Seattle planning, and recent involvement in the POL/traditional participation process. For example, discussions with city staff focused primarily on the motivations for implementing the new trusted advocates process and the historical background related to updating the Neighborhood Plans. UW faculty members were asked to reflect on the process in Seattle from an academic perspective, including the costs and benefits of deliberate inclusion; the perceived value of community participation; the ethical responsibility of government to maintain diversity in communities undergoing rapid development as a result of public investment. Finally, interviews with residents and local business owners focused on the interviewees’ visions for the neighborhood and neighborhood planning process, including their perceptions of the value of ethnic diversity in the community and the efficacy of the POL process in involving a diversity of community members. In asking these questions, we sought to understand in part the degree to which a network had begun to form between the usual suspects and those recently empowered. We also inquired about residents’ perception of local government’s intentions in conducting the neighborhood plan updates.
Additional data were collected through observation at two open house meetings hosted by the City of Seattle at the Asian Counseling and Referral Services in Mount Baker in late September. As a participant-observer, the lead author collected data on the format and structure of the event, as well as the demographics and demeanor of its attendees. Informal discussions with citizens and city staff augmented data collected through observation of participant commentary.
We analyzed the aforementioned data using a thematic analysis process [
In this section, we present the data collected through interviews, observation, and documentary review via a narrative interweaving multiple perspectives from the range of data sources. We begin by describing the historical background of the neighborhood planning process as well as implementation of the 2009 process. We then discuss Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative, which impacted the planning process and inspired the engagement of POLs. Lastly, through the use of a theoretical lens, we examine the outcomes of the process, perceived problems, and potential solutions for “bridging the gaps” and improving the process of the trusted advocate model.
Following adoption of a 20-year comprehensive plan entitled
From 1995 to 1999, the steering committees sought input from their neighbors via traditional means of engagement—workshops and large public meetings [
Participants in the original planning process expressed concerns that the Neighborhood Plan Steering Committees did not have representative diversity. A report from the Department of Urban Design and Planning Studio at UW also criticized the lack of socioeconomic and ethnic diversity in the original neighborhood planning process [
Even those members of minority communities with the inclination to participate in the planning process experienced significant barriers. Meetings were inaccessible to most foreign language speakers; planning jargon was frequently employed; discourse was sometimes biased towards community members with preexisting relationships to city staff. Prior studies have reported similar barriers to participatory processes [
Interviewees perceived that limited participation in the planning process led to inequitable allocation of resources during the implementation stage: those who had been economically disadvantaged or politically uninvolved remained underserved. A UW professor with a history of involvement in neighborhood plans commented, “If I’m a recent immigrant from fill-in-the-blank country where confronting government in any way, shape or form may actually endanger my health, I am less inclined to take part in neighborhood matching grants.” For people who have lived under governments that “deny or repress citizen participation” power can be perceived as a “monolithic” and unchanging force, a view that can “paralyze effective analysis and action” [
The plan implementation faced significant challenges. Between 1999 and 2002, the city maintained six neighborhood development managers (called “sector managers”) charged with oversight of Neighborhood Plan implementation and internal advocacy for the plans within city hall. In 2002, the sector manager roles were eliminated, causing concern among neighborhood advocates about the loss of a direct link to the city. One affordable housing developer said, “Firing the sector managers was a real loss for neighborhoods in terms of having someone at the city that they felt like they could really rely on and trust to implement part of their plan.” A former neighborhood development manager commented that, “[The city] lost the continuity, the consistency, the accountability and the transparency [of the planning process].”
Without a direct link to the city, support for execution of the neighborhood plans began to lose momentum. Following the elimination of the sector managers, the responsibility for neighborhood plan advocacy was assigned to the Neighborhood Stewardship Councils, a reincarnation of the original steering committees. Some participants in the process contend that the shifting of responsibility from the neighborhood development managers to the Neighborhood Stewardship Councils alienated many of the municipal allies of the process and also disrupted a critical avenue of communication between neighborhood advocates and the city government. In addition, the new structure of the relationships made it more challenging for city officials to understand on-the-ground needs of the communities. A Department of Transportation employee noted that, “These neighborhood plan recommendations were, to a certain extent, seen as kind of externally directed. So the departments knew that they had to do this, but to a certain extent, the whole realm of Neighborhood Plan implementation was kind of on the margins.”
A UW faculty member, who conducted a survey of Seattle’s Neighborhood Stewardship Councils in 2001 posited that the extended, iterative nature of plan development limited enthusiasm for ongoing involvement in implementation. “A number of [the planning efforts] were doing okay, but people had worn themselves out. And I think the people who put so much time and energy into the neighborhood planning process hoped or expected that some new blood would come forward and do the implementation. And in most cases, that just did not happen.”
Finally, several planners and “usual suspects” expressed concern over the “piecemeal” approach to neighborhood planning in the last ten years. Even as the majority of neighborhood plan projects were executed (70% according to a City of Seattle employee), many felt the sum of those elements often did not effectively embody the community’s collective vision for the neighborhood. Arnstein [
In 2007, the City of Seattle recognized the need to update the original neighborhood plans in a more effective, inclusive way [
In 2009, the City of Seattle undertook a process to update the 1995 neighborhood plans of three Rainier Valley communities: North Beacon Hill, North Rainier Valley, and Martin Luther King Jr. at Holly Street (Othello). In accordance with the goals of the city’s comprehensive plan, Seattle opened a north-south light rail line in July of 2009, running through the Rainier Valley. Given the region’s proximity to the downtown area and relatively low cost of land acquisition, citizens, city planners, and community activists, among others, voiced considerable concern that continued rising costs of living may lead to displacement of many of the neighborhood’s lower-income as well as racially and ethnically diverse residents and business owners. Indeed, a migration of people of color from downtown Seattle to the southern suburbs of Kent and Tacoma has already been noted in demographic shifts [
Following the launch of Mayor Greg Nickels’ Race and Social Justice Initiative in 2008, wherein the city committed itself to ending institutionalized racism, the city elected to pilot an adapted version of the trusted advocates model for outreach during neighborhood plan updates [
In the Rainier Valley, 13 communities were identified as “traditionally underrepresented” groups and targeted for increased involvement during neighborhood plan updates: African American; native American; seniors and people with disabilities, youth; Latino; Oromiffa-speaking (Ethiopian); Amharic-speaking (Ethiopian); Cambodian; Chinese; Tigrinya-speaking (Ethiopian and Eritrean); Filipino; Vietnamese; Somali [
Rather than publicly announcing the POL position, city staff relied on cultural centers and community groups as venues for recruitment of qualified candidates. According to city staff, the desired qualifications included (1) experience in outreach and community organizing, (2) experience with facilitation, and (3) knowledge of where their community meets and gathers. Given the city’s objective to engage as many additional stakeholders as possible, it was critical that POLs be capable and comfortable reaching out to all facets of their community. This proved to be challenging in certain communities—for example, three different languages are spoken within the Ethiopian community alone. Previous knowledge of urban planning was not required, as basic training would be included for all hired POLs.
In addition to cultural sensitivity, facilitation and leadership skills were highly valued throughout the hiring process. Those with prior facilitation experience—schoolteachers, political leaders, and community advocates—were among those selected. According to the neighborhood planning outreach specialist interviewed, the role of each POL was “to explain why it was important for these underrepresented communities to be involved in the planning process. As someone who has not traditionally been engaged in the civic process, why did it matter now? The answer to that question was different for each community, which explains both the challenges and benefits of the trusted advocate model.”
POLs, as indigenous leaders, are uniquely positioned to understand the relevance of neighborhood planning in their community. They are equipped with the language skills, cultural literacy, and environmental familiarity needed to act as liaisons to their constituents [
There are also caveats in the recruitment of “community leaders” as POLs. Heath notes [
Although the POLs received some training to learn details of the planning process and skills for outreach, the POL model relies on the notion that community leaders are best suited to design a strategy to solicit input from their own community. However, in recruiting individuals from communities that do not typically participate in, or understand planning processes, nor have knowledge of community resources, city planners ran the risk of choosing representative with similar challenges, as suggested in the public health care literature [
The update process occurred in four phases. During Phase I, which began in fall 2008, POLs hosted over 1, 200 participants at 41 workshops in a variety of mostly small-group environments [
In June 2009, POLs launched Phase II, a series of weekend workshops designed to expand on themes discussed in Phase I [
In September, based on their outreach and research, city staff unveiled three options for each of the three neighborhoods in Southeast Seattle [
According to city employees whom we interviewed, community response to the POLs’ outreach efforts was overwhelmingly positive. Many first-time participants were first-generation American citizens or residents who hailed from countries with oppressive dictatorships; others were from cultures where the opinions of uneducated or illiterate community members were not valued. Thus, the city’s mandate to solicit public involvement of underrepresented groups resulted in enhanced citizen participation and a redistribution of power consistent with findings in the literature [
“These principles include basic concepts of fairness; the rights of individuals to be informed and consulted and to express their views on governmental decisions; the need to better represent the interests of disadvantaged and powerless groups in governmental decisionmaking; and the contributions of participation to citizenship.” [
While the model was effective in increasing participation of underrepresented groups and may have helped achieve some democratic principles, there were limitations. Some communities were more easily accessed via the POL model than others. According to city planners, groups with inclusive cultural community centers, strong religious affiliations, and other forms of social networks demonstrated the greatest success with POL outreach. Self-organized communities, such as the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the handicapped, and seniors, coordinated their participation with relative ease and notable enthusiasm. One group, the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind, successfully lobbied for significant modifications to the light rail station in order to support usage by the blind community.
POLs to other, less centralized communities, such as the African-American community, the Latino community, and youth, struggled to yield a representative sample of the population. In some cases, city staff felt the POL fell short of expectations. One in particular struggled to network within a dominant religious community in which she did not take part. Her detachment from the social fabric of the community limited her capacity for soliciting thoughtful dialogue. In other communities, there were inherent challenges to widespread engagement. According to city staff, African American participation suffers from poor historic relationships with government, and youth are notoriously challenging to engage. Thus, POLs were able to successfully engage some stakeholders from traditionally underrepresented communities in the neighborhood planning process, However, their capacity to build relationships across competing groups and facilitate new links to community resources appears to depend largely on the nature of the community and the degree to which the community members identify with the POL.
POLs were hired to facilitate community participation in all three neighborhoods; no distinction was made between Beacon Hill, North Rainier, and MLK at Holly Street (Othello). This lack of attention to diversity on microscales led to some ambiguity in the goals of engaging underrepresented groups within specific neighborhoods. As one community activist put it: “One of the issues is who gets to be a stakeholder? And does interest make you a stakeholder?”
Participation by nonresidents in some of the meetings was another issue according to the same community activist. “At the second neighborhood plan workshop, I was at a table with
The POLs secured unprecedented involvement from many previously underrepresented communities [
The greatest cause of complaint from long-term neighborhood advocates derived from the shift in approach adopted by the city during Neighborhood Plan Updates relative to the traditional process used for creating the original plans in 1999. The chair of a prominent community organization commented, “The city didn’t explain why [the planning process] was different, but the demographics are different, the political situation is different, the finances are different. It’s ten years later, why would it be the same?” The principal neighborhood planning manager at the city noted, “To my surprise, the discussion and the friction [with usual suspects] was about control and power and not about the specifics of the actual planning work. There was certainly some disagreement, a variety of opinions in terms of priorities of the plans, but by a huge margin, what people really focused on is who speaks for the neighborhood.” One community leader indicated that he was more interested in the processes’ outcome than the city’s motivations: “If they’re good ideas, I don’t care where they come from.” Based on these comments, it appears the city did not incorporate an understanding and analysis of power relationships and interests into the new neighborhood planning process, which “can lead to missed opportunities and poor strategic choices” [
According to a number of the participants involved in the parallel process, public knowledge of the “actual planning work” from the POL process was limited. In early 2009, city representatives gave brief presentations on the intended structure of the POL model to most local neighborhood associations. However, beyond those meetings, very little information on the POL process was released until July 2009. Several citizen groups, including the Neighborhood Planning Advisory Council (NPAC), requested reports from planners and POLs in the spring of 2009 but received no response until July, when a brief report of themes from the POL meetings was released. Several members of NPAC, an organization created in accordance with a City of Seattle resolution in September 22, 2008, with a mandate to “make recommendations and provide on-going guidance to the Executive and Council on the development of the Neighborhood Plan Status Reports and the Neighborhood Plan Update Process” [
City staff argued that a clear division between the two processes was intentional. One explanation given was as follows. “When you’re trying to get new people into a process and you have somebody who is very confident and knows the system and is using lots of lingo, it can be very intimidating. That’s why having as many venues as possible is important.” Through this approach, citizen power was essentially redistributed, enabling traditionally disempowered and excluded citizens to be included and be heard [
The city “brought a willingness to let go of the traditional meeting-style approach, which meant that not everybody got to hear the same discussion.” Unfortunately, as one NPAC member noted, poor communication can breed distrust. For example, at one point, a rumor spread that one outreach liaison was not from Seattle. A long-time neighborhood activist remarked, “I think a lot of times when they do stuff like that, people like me are suspicious because they got to specific places and specific groups…Why is it more important to develop that [ethnic or social] group than any other group? Why do we have to be groups?”
Part of the concern stemmed from the city’s decision to delay discussion of residential density, according to representatives from NPAC and other neighborhood advocates. A number of citizens criticized the city’s transparency around plans to upzone during Phase I and Phase II. One citizen who was interviewed made the following comments with regard to the process: “I was amazed. There had been no discussion of density or height until the last meeting. Suddenly, they’ve got these three scenarios of different height and no explanation, no detail of what it would really mean. That came out of nowhere. That made me think, ‘Oh my God, all the critics are on to something here. They’re just going to upzone these areas and say, “Look at all the people we involved.” ’ ” In contrast, the city believes they were clear about their intention to upzone. A representative from the mayor’s office commented, “We were clear we wanted more density…we were clear that we were leveraging the investments made by the housing authority and the light rail.”
Several residents of Rainier Valley expressed their dismay at the equally weighted inclusion of non-residents in neighborhood planning outreach. As noted above, there is evidence that a few POLs invited commentary from citizens who neither live nor work in the relevant communities, but occasionally shop or recreate in the area. This issue raises questions about the fundamental purpose of neighborhood planning: is it to directly benefit the residents of the neighborhood or to better integrate the neighborhood’s design and purpose into the broader mosaic of the surrounding urban environs? The inclusion of nonresidential participants also suggests that, while there may be limitless stakeholders, a finite number of participants actually become engaged in the process, and, thus, those people may have disproportionate impact on the outcomes of the process. Greater oversight by the city in defining or limiting the communities targeted for POL outreach may have avoided this issue.
The City of Seattle employed the trusted advocates model throughout the outreach process that accompanied the 2009 neighborhood plan updates. The goal of this new model was to encourage participation in the planning process by previously underrepresented groups. City records indicate a certain level of success. Approximately 1200 Seattle residents who had not previously attended planning meetings contributed to plan updates through the POL process. However, it appears that participation of those diverse audiences is unlikely to be sustained without adequate followup. As has been noted in other planning efforts (e.g., [
The usual suspects are also keenly aware of the challenges associated with plan implementation. A member of the Othello Neighborhood Association (ONA) lamented, “One of the difficulties, I think, with the neighborhood plan is it doesn’t in and of itself have any teeth. So you get to wave it at city council meetings or at zoning board meetings, but it has no teeth.” Seattle offers a number of small grant opportunities to support neighborhood action towards the implementation of these plans; however, as they cannot provide logistical support for obtaining grants or implementing projects, they must rely on the active support of a well-organized and well-educated citizenry.
At the time of this study, relationships between POL-communities and the usual suspects remained cursory, at best. Another ONA representative was dismissive of the process, “I don’t think ONA paid any attention to what was going on with the other groups. The city just did whatever they did. And I guess there were a whole bunch of folks who went out and did that. We don’t really know anything about that.” As previously discussed, POL outreach was intentionally sheltered from the city’s traditional outreach process, undermining an opportunity to build relationships between and amongst local community networks, viewed as a key element in the successful implementation of plans [
This study provides valuable insight into use of the trusted advocates model in Seattle’s city planning process, though several important limitations indicate the need for further study to supplement our findings. First, we spent only six weeks on site in Seattle conducting interviews and attending planning meetings. Additional depth of understanding could be gained by lengthier firsthand observation of the process.
Second, our work occurred in September and October of 2009, during Phase III of the process. This seemed to be a prescient time to be on site and conduct interviews while the process was still very fresh in the minds of our interviewees, and the city had only recently unveiled three distinct visions for the neighborhood plans. Discussion of plans for implementation, however, had only just begun. This timing presents a challenge of little time elapsing to see how implementation of the process would proceed. Conducting the interviews at a later date would also have allowed for more critical reflection over a lengthier period.
Third, although we attempted to include a diversity of perspectives, we recognize that 40 people out of the thousands who participated do not make a representative sample. Rather, our hope was to elicit thoughtful reflections on the opportunities, challenges, benefits, and drawbacks of this process so as to consider how the conduct and outcome of this process compared with those from more traditional planning exercises. Soliciting the feedback of POLs, in particular, might have shed greater light on the benefits and challenges of the POL model, as well as barriers to citizen participation in their individual communities and how these were overcome. Moreover, evaluating how community members perceived POLs and the qualities or techniques that enabled the POLs to initiate direct and sustain engagement of their communities in the planning process may help to inform recruitment of trusted advocates and improve the model’s efficacy.
We recommend that future studies continue to explore questions such as what aspects of the trusted advocates model are most effective in increasing diversity among participants and in crafting plans that matter and have the greatest chance of being executed? How might the trusted advocates model address the challenges of engaging decentralized versus centralized, self-organized communities? Which techniques are most effective for sustaining involvement and advocacy as the plans are implemented? How does power distribution affect participation and the efficacy of the trusted advocates model? To what extent do underrepresented groups view the resulting plans as representative of their visions?
We believe it would also be beneficial to continue to track the implementation of the resulting updated neighborhood plans over time. Further research into the resulting plans, including their similarities to and differences from those developed using a traditional planning process, would offer insight into how inclusive processes may affect the content and execution of such planning efforts.
We set out to document the process by which Seattle updated its neighborhood plans in 2009, examining the trusted advocates model implemented in Southeast Seattle and contrasting it with more traditional planning processes.
Ultimately, our findings corroborate other published accounts of the process [
Although the citizens’ commentary and voiced preferences were not radically different from what may have been anticipated by city planners, citizens reported feeling empowered, engaged, and interested in neighborhood planning, believing that having a seat at the table was a valuable and worthwhile opportunity. Nonetheless, several issues did arise, and questions remain about the sustainability of the plans and the deeper enfranchisement of these communities. As one city representative noted, “…I think that jumping to the conclusion that the city was successful is not correct. For us to be successful, the city would have developed that relationship with all of the individuals who participated and I don’t think that has happened.”
The POL process helped to overcome some of barriers to participation (though not all) experienced by traditionally underrepresented groups in Seattle including language, lack of resources (e.g., childcare needs), fear of government response to criticism, and lack of familiarity with local planning processes. Initial reflections on the POL model suggest that the process may have helped foster a greater number of educated and active stakeholders—starting with the POLs themselves and extending to some of the newly involved citizens. The city’s continued use of POLs for culturally appropriate engagement of newly enfranchised members might encourage their ongoing participation in implementation of the neighborhood plans [
Where the POL process did not meet expectations was in soliciting input of decentralized communities, that is, latinos, African Americans, and youth, indicating that the nature of the community affects participation and the efficacy of the POL model. Similarly, the POLs succeeded in bringing many constituents of their individual communities to the table and facilitating their input into neighborhood plans in Southeast Seattle, but they were not successful in establishing critical connections with the other stakeholders in the process. From conversations with city staff, it did not appear that strong communication networks had even been established amongst POLs. Greater transparency by city officials about the POL process, and more facilitated communication among the participating groups (POLs, the newly enfranchised and the usual suspects) may have helped establish relationships among these diverse stakeholders, and thereby improve the quality of decision making, both critical ingredients of consensus building [
Language remains a principal barrier in facilitating communication between experienced advocates and minority groups. The North Beacon Hill Neighborhood Council has applied for a city grant that would cover the cost of one interpreter at all council meetings. Ideally, the interpreter would be trilingual (speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, and English). However, this would still leave another 57 language groups without means to convey their interests to the community, let alone fully participate in the democratic process of neighborhood planning.
Establishing effective neighborhood networks will require that the city commit to nurturing and facilitating these relationships, through openness and frequent communication about the implementation process, continued culturally appropriate engagement, and adequate resources to ensure that all citizens have access to participation avenues and are able to sustain their involvement. “One would hope that in the future, everyone would be engaged and the whole dialogue would be more fluid. We would hold a meeting and everyone would come. But we are still building that,” said a representative from the mayor’s office.
The true test will occur over the next five years when it becomes clearer whether participation has made a difference in plan outcomes and whether a diverse citizenry remains engaged in plan implementation. To achieve this goal, the city will need to work to unite all residents more effectively: “I would like to see unity and diversity in a sense where each [community group] is organized in their own way, in their cultural way, but networking with each other so that there is power with unity and networking,” said one city employee. To this end, the trusted advocates model may serve as a tool for overcoming barriers to participation, uniting and empowering diverse cultures and interests, and achieving collective action.