Simon Nielsen 1/16/23 Simon Nielsen 1/16/23

The future of villages lies in the hands of rural activators

“One of the critical objectives of current EU policy is to maintain lively rural areas. Rural activators are the only ones able to change these areas' fate. However, the desire to restore the rural areas should lay to all of us since we benefit from it. Rural activators face various socio‑economic pressures that make their work hard to maintain.” Justyna Turek, CEO of HOLIS, looks into a possible future for rural life.

By Justyna Turek, CEO of Holis

Around 30% of the EU's population lives in rural areas. Between 2020 and 2030, rural populations are projected to increase by only 1 per cent, compared with 8 percent in urban areas, which means that rural areas will continue facing their already existing challenges like demographic changes, poverty, and a lack of access to basic facilities. These regions risk their inhabitants abandoning the villages, and those who remain don't have adequate tools to regain their agency or rebuild interest in this place. In 2021, the European Commission adopted its communication "A long-term vision for the EU's rural areas – Towards stronger, connected, resilient and prosperous rural areas by 2040". This apparent need to support the rural activators so the rural region can flourish caused the beginning of the project Open School for Village Hosts (founded by Erasmus+).

“Rural areas are the fabric of our society and the heartbeat of our economy. They are a core part of our identity and our economic potential. We will cherish and preserve our rural areas and invest in their future”– Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

It's never the people's problems. It's a situation problem. Holis has marked all the projects we have been working on with this approach. It became incredibly relevant at the Open School for Village Host project since, to reverse the system (situation), we need to support the people first. The rural activists need the most attention, not yet another house to build or a highway to make. Through this project, we want to build agency within the people and the community by investing in them. Rural activators with the right tools can change the situation/system more than outsiders, who often do not know the context and community.

Holis, together with other partners, aims to support and train rural activators through an innovative training program that proposes creating a new core of competencies that benefits European villages. With this project, we also aim "do our part" (The Flight of the Hummingbird story) and reverse (or at least try!) global issue as rural depopulation step by step. Rural depopulation affects regions where the rural exodus outstrips natural growth, reducing the total number of inhabitants to a critical level and causing the ageing of demographic structures. The Shrinking Rural Regions policy brief shows that Europe's demography became a significant policy challenge. A shrinking population has become the typical course for numerous rural regions as agriculture is restructured and the population (especially employment) moves to urban areas.

We stumbled upon this topic with Holis' participants at Holis Summer School in 2019, where we worked on revitalising economic and social fabrics in the Odemira region, Portugal. Then we discovered the depth of this challenge and got close to the rural activators who were almost willing to fight for their villages to stay alive. Small villages around Europe and the world suffer from accompanying problems that often are inseparable from depopulation. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic amplified it even more. For example, in America, the effects of the pandemic on rural populations cause unemployment, downsized life satisfaction, and cause serious mental health problems, not to mention the economic outlook.

Nevertheless, several social and rural enterprises are already generating positive social impact in those areas, changing the rural regions' perspective and future. A common feature in all these positive experiences is a skilled person based in the community, who identifies opportunities, connects local actors, and continuously develops projects. Such superheroes are already existing and might recognise them (article about the rural activators). Although the description of a rural activator, called a 'Village Host' for this project is new, local and regional work is already being done by local pioneers, social innovators, and enterprising local officials.

We believe that the rural regions' future is not yet decided. We believe that the future lies in the hands of these rural activators. By supporting them, we give them the right tools to sustain the development of the villages and the regions. At the same time, we will be able to promote a new economic model to be potentially applied to all inner areas and small villages of Europe that will foster social innovation, inclusion and valorization of local heritage. The most relevant aspect is the sustainability and transferability of the identified cooperation model and training solutions. Open School for Village Hosts project seek to reach out to adjacent projects in Europe and beyond whose work and expertise overlap with ours.

"Village Hosts bring new social, economic and ecological life to small villages and their local economy. In terms of public policy, the Open School for Village Hosts creates 'public goods in the form of social cohesion, public health, territorial development, food sovereignty, farmer livelihoods, learning, innovation, and biodiversity" - John Thackara, the expert supporting the program.

What's next? Holis and Open School for Village Hosts partners have been busy for the last couple of months. We have been researching, collecting data, and conducting focus groups and interviews with experts o capacity building, the future of the skills and rural development. Now, we are creating a test training module out of these findings that will be used to teach rural activators new skills. At the end of 2023, we aim to deliver outcomes as a practical platform, handbook, manifesto, and additional materials to support Village Hosts' development. What is most important in this work is remembering the human element, which is crucial here to make this program succeed. To do it, we invite you - dear readers and Holis supporters - to provide us with your feedback, knowledge or/and opinion on this topic. Maybe you know an already existing rural activator? If yes, please put us in contact.

The Village Hosts website

The partners of the program: Casa Netural, Materahub, ELISAVA University School of Design and Engineering of Barcelona, CDOP, Radošā partnerība, KobieTy Łódź and We Are Holis. Special advisor John Thackara

Simon Nielsen 4/21/22 Simon Nielsen 4/21/22

Putting Soul Into Planning And Design

“Places need to be the armature of planning and design. And we can’t just concentrate on filling those places. We must put people first in planning and design instead of building cities that erase all that is meaningful about the places in which they exist and the people who call those places home.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, wonders why new development often treat humans as an inconvenience.

By Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader

When we move into a new home, what’s the first thing we do?

We make it our own.

Whether it’s furniture, paint, art, or lawn ornaments, humans are hardwired to personalize the places in which we live. To differentiate them from those of our neighbors. To create a place in which we feel good. To make them a home.

The question then is why does this so rarely translate to the design of our cities and neighborhoods? Why do we have to fight for ourselves as humans for the public places in which we can feel alive? Why is the city building process so normalized to scraping clean every artifact that makes us feel good and replacing it with big, boring, uniform rectangles?

We wouldn’t tolerate it in our homes. Why has it become the default for our cities?

Places first, boxes second

Humans are creatures and like every other creature they look for habitats in which they feel comfort and nourishment. In our cities, that often translates to public spaces in which they can feel good.

And studies have shown how, when we feel more attached to our neighborhoods, we’re more likely to invest our time and money there.

Too often, though, the creation of places seems to be approached from the wrong direction. Instead of prioritizing places that foster life and engage our senses, urban development proceeds relentlessly in favor of building nothing but boxes, maximized on every block, as if humans were an inconvenience that should make their way around them.

The process is more about filling space than creating place. You and I become the last priority.

Places need to be the armature of planning and design. And we can’t just concentrate on filling those places. We must put people first in planning and design instead of building cities that erase all that is meaningful about the places in which they exist and the people who call those places home.

Case in Point

You can see evidence of how not to do it all over our cities.

I was in Austin recently and was appalled at how streets that have been surrendered to soulless rectangles - domineering buildings that erase all comfort for the human being. The building of boxes had taken over all other considerations. Yet, nearby, on the University of Texas campus, you see people socializing and lounging in beautiful, comfortable spaces.

Why do we have to scramble our way through cities searching, often in vain, to find these vibrant places instead of using them as a central armature and planning around that armature?

Or look at Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, an “innovation district” that has been built up over the last 30 years, one of the world’s greatest concentrations of smart people. Approximately 100 acres of Cambridge, one of the most livable cities on earth, has been removed from human circulation and turned over to impersonal rectangles. I honestly don’t get it - can’t we do urban economic development and build places where people feel human all at the same time?

People move to attractive, vibrant places where people are welcoming and friendly. Put simply, high-performing habitats = high-performing cities.

So, how do we achieve those high-performing habitats as opposed to just talking about them?

Turn the development process around. Start by defining a framework of high quality places where people will spend their time in public – for recreation, shopping, dining, relaxing, socializing. Connect those places to each other through walkable environments, and then plan and design buildings that integrate into these community hubs. Put another way, start by creating a placemaking framework plan.

You’ve got to build a place that speaks to people - a place that builds the soul of a community as opposed to erasing it.

Simon Nielsen 4/20/22 Simon Nielsen 4/20/22

Profound Play - Why Play, Not Hard Work, Is The Key To Creating A Better World

“This essay attempts to debunk a common myth: creating a better world requires hard work. It argues that the most effective way to change our world is through play. Not just any kind of play – profound play. As you are about to discover, the great tragedy in our culture is that we have lost sight of the enormous, creative, transformative power of play. We have trivialized it as something we outgrow as we transition from childhood into adulthood.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International.

By David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International

The evolutionary drive to play

Brian La Doone watched in horror as a very hungry polar bear lumbered towards Hudson, his sled dog chained to a post. It was November and the polar bear had not eaten for months. Hudson was an instant dinner served on a platter.

But Hudson did not panic or try to escape. Instead he behaved as if he wanted to play by bowing and wagging his tail. The bear responded to the invite, and the pair had a playful romp in the snow. After fifteen minutes the bear lumbered off.

The next day the bear returned about the same time for another frolic with his new friend. On the third day, Brian La Doone’s workmates gathered to watch the play-date. The play dates continued for a week, by which time the ice had thickened enough for the bear to go hunting for a seal.

Stuart Brown, in his book Play (Scribe 2010), asks the question, why was play more important to this bear than a meal?

Scientists have become intrigued about play in the animal kingdom, and the role it plays in the evolutionary process. Adult ravens have been seen sliding down a snowy slope on their backs, hopping up, flying to the top, then sliding down again. Bison have been observed running onto a frozen lake, and skating along on all fours while trumpeting wildly. Octopuses play. It even appears that ants play. If play is just ‘for fun’ and serves no useful purpose why is it so widespread in nature? If it is a non-productive activity (a waste of energy), why has it not been eliminated by the evolutionary process that only rewards characteristics that give an organism a competitive advantage? Surely animals that are playing are an easier target for a predator than those giving serious attention to their environment? Wouldn’t polar bears that eat sled dogs have a better chance of survival than those that choose to play with them?

To find an answer to this question, Dr. Stuart Brown spent some time with Bob Fagen, an expert in animal play. For fifteen years Bob Fagen had been studying the behaviour of grizzly bears in Alaska. Dr. Brown found himself thirty feet up an old cypress tree with Fagen watching grizzly bears at play. Fagen explained that what he had documented after years of observation was that ‘the bears that played the most were the ones that survived best’. He explained why, ‘In a world continuously presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares these bears for an evolving planet.’ In other words, play is not just for fun. It builds resilience and increases the chances of survivability. So evolution rewards the animals that play the hardest.

In fact, play does more than merely improve the chances of surviving. It builds bigger brains. Scientists now understand that when we play, we create new networks in our brain. Rats in a play-rich environment grow bigger brains than rats deprived of opportunities to play. Play makes us smarter. Dr. Brown says that when kittens stage mock battles with each other they ‘are learning what Daniel Goleman calls emotional intelligence – the ability to perceive others’ emotional state and to adopt an appropriate response’. Play stimulates the development of the brain’s frontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for cognition – which entails sorting relevant information from irrelevant information, monitoring our thoughts and feelings and planning for the future.

Play allows us to experiment with the future, to test out potential scenarios in a non-threatening, non-critical environment. Which is why in nature the strongest players are the strongest survivors. In his book, Deep Survival (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), Laurence Gonzales, looks at why some people survive while others perish in a life and death situation. One of his surprising findings is that the adults who have forgotten how to play are the first to perish.

They have lost the flexibility to play with potential scenarios and solutions in their head. Their thinking has become rigid, and they die.

At the most fundamental level, without play we have no capacity to imagine and plan for a future that is different to today. It is literally how the child we once were built the adult that we are now. In play we created thousands of potential futures, then stepped into those that most appealed to us. Play, not hard work, is how our whole civilization was built. Without the ability to create potential futures in our brain, there would be nothing to build. Changing our destiny, or the destiny of our culture, requires that we relearn how to play again. Hard work will simply not do it.

The great demise of play

It is a biological fact that the brain of a child is different to the brain of an adult. In fact the human brain is still building itself up till our late teens. This period of ‘biological immaturity’ is universal. But the underlying story we tell about this period changes dramatically from one era to another, from one culture to another, and even between different classes in society.

However, the scientific and industrial revolutions dramatically changed the underlying story we tell about the meaning of childhood, because they altered the underlying story we tell about the meaning of adulthood. For thousands of years people had defined their identity by their relationships - the tribe to which they belonged, their family of origin, and the location where they lived. The first question you would ask a person in order to establish their identity was, ‘What tribe do you belong to?’ But the scientific and industrial revolution changed this. We began viewing the universe, including ourselves, in machine terms. People began to define their identity in terms of what they produced as a productive ‘machine’ in society. The first question to establish a person’s identity became, ‘What work do you do?’ Or decoded, ‘As a productive machine, what products roll off the end of your production line?’

This change in conception of identity for adults had significant impacts on how adults viewed the identity of children. When identity was tied to a person’s relationship to place and people, children were able to share this adult sense of identity. Children were ‘little adults growing into big adults’ sharing the same tribe and the same connection to locality as the big adults. But when adult identity became tied to what the adult produced as a productive machine, children were unable to share this new adult identity (well certainly not after child labour laws banned children from the workforce). A new way of conceiving of childhood needed to be found. There are many writers who argue that there was no concept of childhood prior to the scientific and industrial revolutions. Whether this is correct or not is immaterial. What is important is that after the industrial revolution, the concept of childhood carried within it the notion that this is a period which is very distinct and of an entirely different nature to adulthood. Childhood was now conceived as an apprenticeship for adulthood. To be grown up meant to shed our childhood as one sheds clothes that are outgrown. This journey to adulthood is a linear journey. Children work their way through grades at school, learning the skills needed to be a productive ‘machine’. Along the way adults tell the children to ‘grow up’ and ‘stop playing around’. And the adults ask the children over and over, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up (become a productive ‘machine’)?’

This viewing of our identity through the machine-model prism not only changed the way we view childhood, it created an artificial distinction between work and play. The high value we place on work – based in the good old Protestant work ethic – means that we view the real work in our society as being done by adults. Yet children are perhaps doing the most serious and creative work of anyone. They are in the process of inventing and creating a sophisticated, mature, rational adult – and they are doing this important work through dream, play and fantasy. The distinction between work and play is therefore totally arbitrary. In fact, (as I will explain later) what is play for one person is work for another and what is work for one person is play for another.

Because our culture values ‘serious work’ over play and sees serious work as belonging to adulthood, we have totally undervalued ‘serious play’ and therefore downgraded the importance of childhood.

If a society values the work of adults over the play of children, and sees these as separate worlds, then this will manifest itself in the way space is arranged in our towns and cities. Segregated and specialized areas will be created for children’s play. Play and the activity of children will not be integrated into adult space and therefore child’s play will not intersect with the serious activities of the adult world. Traditionally, the space where children’s play and the adult world intersected was the street. But in our culture the street has become the exclusive province of ‘productive adults’ in machines that improve the adult’s efficiency. Instead of the street being the premier play space for children, we have created segregated and specialised play grounds. This segregation of the child’s world from the adult world in our urban form is no accident. It is a reflection of our deep-seated stories about childhood, and the trivialising of play.

What is work and what is play?

What is work for one person can be play for another. For a child, washing up may be a game while for an adult it is work. So whether an activity is play or work is determined by our mental attitude, not by the nature of the activity. At any moment each of us has the power to transform play into work… or work into play. Even the most serious work, like making a better world, can be turned into play. As we shall see, ultimately play is the only way to make a better world.

Play is transformed into work when we take a game, or our role in that game, too seriously. Work is play stripped of its playfulness. Play can also become work if we are forced into playing a game we do not want to play. (Technically this is slavery, not work.) But as we shall explore shortly, even slavery can be transformed into a game. Many a slave feigned acceptance of their humiliations, playing a role so the master could live under the illusion that it was he that was in charge. A favorite proverb of the Jamaican slaves was, ‘Play fool, to catch wise’.

It is the contention of this short book that creating a better world, in fact all of life, is meant to be a playful game. Activities only become work (or in many cases slavery) when we strip them of their playful element. A common element of both work and slavery is a feeling of entrapment and loss of freedom. In play you can be whatever you want to be, but in work or slavery you are locked into a single role and you feel forced to play out this role.

Most social activism is a revolt against ‘the system’ that demands the game be played according to certain rules – rules that we find unjust or unfair. Ironically, these social activists take on a stereo-typical role as people ‘working for change’. They often become just as trapped in their particular role of ‘social activist’ as those playing roles in the ‘establishment game’. These social activists allow themselves to become enslaved to the rules of the working-for-change game. They lose sight of the fact that the very essence of freedom is the ability to transcend the rules of the game simply by starting to play a different game. The entire universe would be enslaved to blind determinism if it were not for play.

Real change happens automatically when we change the rules of the game, our role in that game, or simply invent a new game.

Now many people will have great difficulty with this notion that all of life is really a game. But being a ‘rational adult’ is just a role we have invented, and that we inhabit from time to time (or for some, a majority of the time). It is a game that is governed by a different set of rules than when we play other roles, such as jester, or wise old elder, or lover, or playful child. Even though our role as ‘rational adult’ seems more serious than some of our other roles, at its core it is still just a role in a game.

Whether you are wrestling with difficulties in a relationship, or a problem in the workplace, or a thorny social issue, if it has become ‘hard work’, the most transformative thing you can do is change your relationship to the situation by ceasing to see it as ‘work’ and viewing it as a ‘game’.

We are now going to look at six types of play: ritual play, role play, recreational play, letting-off-steam play, freedom play, and escapist play. These categories overlap, blur and merge and are not an exhaustive list. But what we are going to look at is how each of these types of play can be tapped into by the adult who wants to develop their skills in ‘profound play’ – the ability to combine play with wisdom.

Ritual play

One of the earliest types of play that we humans engage in is ritual play, for example the game of peek-a-boo where the adults pretends to hide behind their hands then reveal their face and says ‘boo’. Part of the nature of this game is repetition. It won’t work if you only do it once. The game is an early form of ritual play.

Why does the child laugh the longer this game goes on? In the first few months of life, this child endured a recurring painful experience: the mother they depended on for their very life would periodically disappear. This terror would subside when their mother returned, only to be rekindled when the mother left yet again. But through the game of peek-a-boo the child learns a very valuable lesson: my mother is always there, even when I can’t see her. This brings a certain comfort to the child to know that the person they depend on for life will always return. The ‘disappearing’ and ‘returning’ is ritualized into a game, and through the game the child learns to control their fears. When the parent puts their face behind their hands, tension rises in the child, for this part of the ritual reminds them of the fear the feel each time the parent disappears in reality. The pulling away of the hands brings the parent back, and releases the tension. This release of tension is reinforced by the parent pretending to give the child a fright by going ‘boo’. This ritual raising and releasing of tension is pleasurable and results in laughter. Part of the pleasure is also the paradox in this game: in play, the parent is not there; in reality, they are. The other paradox is that the parent pretends to frighten the child even though the child knows full well what happens next.

The entire rise of human culture is built on ritual. Even before we humans had a language to express our emotions and fears, we had rituals. Rituals to celebrate the changing of seasons, rituals to deal with life and death. Haunted by our dreams and the seeming chaos of the world around us, we were driven to create meaning as a way of allaying our fears. Like the game of peek-a-boo, these rituals gave meaning to the universe and provided a sense of comfort. The meaning-making inherent in rituals eventually gave rise to religion, the arts, civilization, and the sciences.

One of the endearing features of children is their ability to invent rituals, then let go of them once they have outlived their purpose. There is a time we stop playing peek-a-boo and move onto some other form of ritualized play. When I talk of ‘rituals’ I am not just talking about religious or spiritual rituals. Almost all of life is ritualized play. Meeting your family for lunch every Sunday is a form of ritual play. So is watching the footy every Saturday night, or buying the latest tech gadget. These rituals, and the rules related to these rituals, form the ‘culture’ of a civilization, community, workplace or household. Often these culturally-specific rituals have evolved over a long time, and those who want to get ahead ‘play by the rules’ inherent in the ritual.

However, much of the ritual in our culture has outgrown its usefulness. Yet as a culture and society we find it much more difficult to give up rituals that have outgrown their usefulness than we did as children. One reason ‘rational’ adults find it much harder to let go of their rituals is because the adult builds a rational reason for why they play the game. (As an adult it is compulsory to have a reason for your rituals.) The adult legitimizes their rituals with intellectual constructs which continue supporting the ritual long after it has served its useful purpose. Kids are therefore much more ‘rational’ about their rituals than adults. Or to put it another way, adult ritual is marked by a high degree of irrationality.

In the past, social change agents have thought that the only way you get a society to change its outdated ritual games is to first dismantle the intellectual constructs that support the ritual.

What these change agents failed to recognize is that the rituals are first and foremost an act of ‘meaning making’. Rituals are invented to give meaning to a chaotic universe, to anchor the soul. The attachment to the ritual game (such as owning a gun in the USA) is not intellectual but emotional. It is therefore virtually impossible to convince people to change their rituals by attacking the intellectual constructs used to justify the ritual. If we do not offer them a more meaningful ritual to replace the old, we are simply cutting them loose on a dark and turbulent sea.

Deep social change can only take place if change agents understand the role of ritual in imparting a sense of meaning. The job of the social-change agent is to give people the confidence to let go of their outdated rituals and to invent more meaningful rituals. This is not an intellectual process. The child lets go of their outdated rituals because they have an implicit belief in their creative abilities to invent new games and rituals.

Profound play understands that one way to produce significant social and cultural change is to introduce new rituals that paradoxically both anchor the soul yet at the same time set it free on a new voyage of discovery. Profound play does not overtly attack the rationality of current rituals nor the intellectual constructs that supports them. It simply offers the child in all of us a ‘new toy’. (Being ‘rational’ adults, we will always find a post hoc rationalization as to why we decided to play the new game!)

Role play

When most people think of role play they think of a theatre technique often used in small group work and therapy. However, this is a formalized version of role-play. Role-play is common across much of the animal kingdom. Baby cubs stage mock battles, honing their hunting skills for when they become independent and need these skills in the ‘real’ world. For children, playing shop, fire chief or baker is a way of trying on potential future roles like play clothes and seeing which ones fit best. Through role-play, children invent the rational adult they are yet to become.

There is no reason why tapping the creative power of role-play should stop when we reach adulthood. Through role-play we can experiment with roles we would like to play in the tomorrow we are creating together. In fact, role-play is the only way we have of visiting the future.

Role play has incredible creative power, and is a major tool in what I call profound play. Role play delivers at least four major benefits.

Benefit 1: Return of Innocence

When we play a role, we forget for a moment who we are and we are ‘born anew’ as someone different. This is the state of innocence which is fundamental to the creative abilities of children. Their mind is not cluttered with ready-made answers. They don’t need to learn how to ‘think outside the box’.

There is no ‘box’ to think outside – not yet anyway.

In 1987 I attended a public meeting to discuss plans to ‘upgrade’ a major road through my neighbourhood in Brisbane, Australia. I left the meeting a committee member of Citizens Against Route Twenty (CART). A week later I found myself media spokesperson, with no previous experience in community activism; no formal education; totally ignorant about traffic and urban planning; and utterly politically naive.

Full of incredible optimism, I started my new job with a six-hour door-knock along the proposed route. Every door I knocked on I got the same message: ‘Once they (the Bjelke Peterson Government) have decided to do something, there is nothing you are going to do to change it.’ I was stunned by this sense of resignation and powerlessness. Even our committee didn’t believe we could win. ‘We will give them a good fight,’ I was told, ‘but we can’t win.’ I was probably the only one in our entire community naive enough to believe we could win.

The reason for this pessimism was that the Bjelke Peterson Government had been in power for over 20 years and ruled via a giant gerrymander. They could do what they liked in the big cities because they only relied on the country vote to stay in power.

I had no idea what to do. Out of sheer desperation I suggested to the committee that we spend a half-day pretending we had won. I suggested we make up stories about how we won. That day we invented a whole lot of stories. One seemed more pregnant with possibilities than the others, so we decided to build our campaign strategy on this story.

Three years later we won, and it happened largely according to the plot framework of the story that we had created three years earlier when we played ‘lets pretend’.

Prior to playing ‘lets pretend’, our minds were shackled by the perceived wisdom that our community was powerless to change any decision made by the Bjelke Peterson government. By pretending we were victors, and seriously playing the role, we cleared the dominant story from the slate of our minds.

Part of ‘profound play’ is a robust intellectual understanding of issues. Paradoxically, it is impossible to gain this robust intellectual understanding without first ‘forgetting’ everything you know and returning to a state of innocence. For example, my second book revolutionized thinking on transport by asking the kinds of questions a kid would ask: ‘But why do we build cities?’ ‘But why do we have a transport system?’ It is only by asking these child-like questions that we can step outside the bounds of current knowledge. By putting ourselves in our child persona, or by putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, we are able to recapture this sense of innocence, but innocence that is informed by reason and wisdom.

Benefit 2: Experiencing of multiple-worlds simultaneously

The most productive regions in nature, from an evolutionary perspective, is ‘marginal t territory’ – the space where eco-systems meet and overlap, for example, tidal mud flats which are neither land or sea, but both. It is here that new life-forms evolve.

I was once asked to chair a meeting in Calgary, Canada, in which a group of residents were in conflict with their city council. So I asked the residents to play the role of city engineer and for the city engineer to play the role of residents. Before starting this role play, I asked the residents to train the city engineer on how to be good residents and I asked the city engineer to train the residents on how to be a good city engineer (Council bureaucrat). We then launched into the role play and the city engineer (now playing the role of resident) got in the face of the residents (now playing the role of city engineer) wagged his finger and yelled, ‘I first approached the city 14 years ago about this problem, and what have you done? Nothing! A big fat nothing…” The whole room erupted in laughter. Within two hours we had an agreed solution to a problem that had festered for fourteen years.

The reason we found a solution so quickly is rather simple. Every resident in Calgary has the potential to become a bureaucrat working for a Council. In a sense they already have a bureaucrat living in their head. And every Council bureaucrat is already a resident. The problem between the residents and bureaucrats had arisen because both had taken their adopted role too seriously. But through the role-play I got them to play two roles simultaneously – in ‘real life’ they may be a resident, but in the role play they were a bureaucrat. This meant that they were experiencing two worlds simultaneously and where these two worlds met was marginal territory, rich in possibilities. The collision of two worlds in a person’s brain always causes a new synthesis – a creative way to handle the tension between the competing worlds. While the world’s are kept separate, there is no chance for this new synthesis.

I often wonder if international peace negotiators take their work too seriously. What would happen in the Israel/Palestine conflict if all those at the table had to role play their ‘enemy’? What about the conflict between Councilors in local government. Imagine this. Prior to a Council meeting beginning, all the little wooden plaques, that sit in front of each Councilor and bear their names, are put in a sack. At the start of the meeting each Councilor has a lucky dip. They place the name they draw out in front of them. Then for the rest of the meeting they must argue from that person’s perspective (including adopting their mannerisms). Imagine how much more productive this would be than each arguing from their entrenched position.

The only way to experience multiple worlds like this is through role play, whether enacted in physical space or in our imagination. Profound play allows multiple worlds to co-exist and overlap, even if this results in conflict.

Benefit 3: Self reflection

Playing roles is not just a method of getting inside other people’s skins. It is a method of getting inside your own skin (or more correctly ‘skins’). Some years ago I went to a counselor deeply perplexed about why, under certain circumstances, I acted ‘out of character’. It was if I could watch myself changing from being warm and charming to acting like a cold rock. The counselor took two empty chairs and told me to imagine that in one sat Charming Charlie (the nice guy) and in the other sat Stonewall (the not so nice guy that seemed to like sabotaging the nice guy). I had to sit on the chairs in turn and conduct a conversation between these two characters. It was only a game. But through this role play I was able to get inside the skin of these two characters who lived inside my head and find out what made each of them tick. I was able to negotiate a ‘peace deal’ that allowed them to coexist in my head without them constantly sabotaging each other.

In a similar way, the culture of any society is driven by deep ‘subterranean psycho dramas’. Just as individuals have a cast of hundreds in their heads, many with contradictory needs and desires, so society has a cast of hundreds in their collective psyche. You cannot understand something like the gun culture in the USA (or any other seemingly irrational behaviour by a whole group of people) without understanding this hidden drama. Often the only way of understanding this is to get inside the skin of the cast members. Until you do, you are dealing only with the surface issues. Through profound play, we can bring these characters out of the murky underworld and get them to play in broad daylight. Through play we can explore new ways for them to relate to each other.

Through profound play, we can bring these characters out of the murky underworld and get them to play in broad daylight.

Benefit 4: Ability to reinvent ourselves

Children can reinvent themselves a hundred times in a single day. One moment they are a stuntman flying a biplane, the next a doctor, the next a cowgirl riding a bucking bull, the next a kangaroo. Yet there comes a point where we feel compelled as emerging adults to choose a very well defined ‘role’. (We are allowed more than one role, but we must project a consistent, singular role to each of the social grouping that we are a part of.) We begin to live under the illusion that these ‘roles’ are ‘the real us’. Worse still, we begin to judge others by the external roles they have chosen. But we are not our roles. We are still the infinitely creative child we once were, now playing a protracted role invented by that child.

Given half a chance, that child would still like to experiment with some new roles.

Recreational play

Recreational play is what most people think of when I talk of adults playing. The concept of recreational play is built on a notion of a clear divide between ‘work’ and ‘play’. Work wears you out, and recreational play ‘recharges the batteries’. Only those who have worked really hard deserve recreational play. Recreational play is where you ‘enjoy the fruits of your labor’.

However, also embedded in this concept of recreational play is the notion that there is an underlying purpose for being refreshed and re-created. It is so you can get back to the serious business of life with renewed vigor. Play is really a maintenance break for the work machine.

This view of play is deeply ingrained in much of Western culture as a result of the Protestant Work Ethic (or Puritan Work Ethic). Luther and the other reformers (particularly Calvin) argued that hard work and frugality were the fruits of godliness – how God judged whether you were a white sheep or a black sheep. Max Weber argued in 1904 that this doctrine laid the foundations for the entire capitalist system. People’s sense of self-worth is tied up in the work they do, and how hard they work.

The split between work and play – and the privileging of work over play – results in a trivializing of play. We have been indoctrinated with the belief that creating a better world is ‘work’ and play is something we are allowed to do when we have earned a rest. ‘Work’, by its very nature, is rational and structured. Yet as we saw when looking at ritual play, the things we must change to create a better world are not rational or based in intellectual constructs. You cannot change something like gun culture in the USA through hard work.

Profound play views work as ‘creative play’. It rejects the notion, implicit in recreational play, that play and work should be separate identities. However, profound play keeps a balance.

Creative play does wear the player out, which means we do need to ‘recreate’ so we can regain our strength to go back to playing hard.

Adventure play

Our first experiences of adventure play were as babies – exploring our bodies and discovering our toes. Then we tried walking. We then graduated to bigger adventures when we walked home from school for the first time. Our childhood play adventures probably included trying to fly by jumping off the roof. Failing at the attempt and ending up in hospital with a broken ankle increased the size of the adventure. We couldn’t wait to tell our friends about the nurses in starched uniforms or the mushy food we were forced to eat. Later in life we climbed mountains, flew in biplanes, fought in wars, or drove fast cars.

There are four elements that distinguish adventure play from other forms of play: experimentation, risk, surprise and outcomes that etch themselves into our memory. An adventure is not an adventure unless it contains some experimentation and risk. Risk is dancing with danger and even death. It is a way of confronting our deepest fears and our eventual mortality and feeling mastery over them. It is paradoxical that those who play with death in their adventures probably take life more seriously that those who think life is too serious for play.

Adventure play can therefore be deadly serious. Ironically, this ‘dancing with death’ in play fills the player with a greater passion for life. It clarifies their vision. What seemed so necessary and essential in the serious work-a-day world suddenly appears as a trivial game. Confronting death and danger in the game moves the player from minor league to playing in the biggest game of all, the game of life.

In adventure play we are not necessarily looking for a successful outcome. The child who tries to fly by jumping off the roof and ends up in hospital is not disappointed because they failed to fly. In fact the pain and suffering they endure becomes an essential part of what constitutes the adventure. The outcome of the attempt to fly is a total surprise, and the nature of the surprise is what becomes etched into their memory as an adventure. In adulthood, this failed experiment will become a story which will be told at dinner parties and passed on to children and grandchildren. It will become a source of enjoyment and pleasure.

Serious world-changers are risk-takers who flirt with ‘failure’.

Profound play sees all of life as an adventure in which one must dance with death. Robert Neale suggests that it is possible for our entire life to become a ‘mature adventure which encompasses our entire existence’. This is the essence of profound play. It is a life-stance which defies ‘reality’. It is totally spontaneous in the way it responds to what unfolds during the journey. Failure or success are not the issue. Playing the game with flair and pizzazz is what matters. And by dancing with death there is an elevated feeling of walking with the divine.

Letting-off-steam play

This is closely related, but not the same as recreational play. In many cultures, festivals and carnivals were used as a way of giving expression to the ‘underbelly’ of the culture. For example, the Venice Carnival ran for over 2 months each year and was a city institution from the 13th century right through to the end of the 18th century. By wearing masks, participants were able to step outside social conventions and express different parts of themselves. At this time homosexuality was punishable by death. Yet during the festival a man wearing a Gnaga mask (a female face) was free to engage in flirting and sexual relations with men because he was only ‘playacting’. Kings, queens and important people from all over the world came to Venice to become anonymous and play out a range of repressed roles, from prostitute to fool.

In modern, Western culture this playing out of repressed roles has been largely limited to us passively and vicariously living out the roles through theatre, film and literature. Letting-off-steam play is essential to the overall well being of both individuals and a society, because it gives expression to those characters living in our head which we have suppressed.

In our culture we have a greater tendency to lock up parts of ourselves than in some other cultures. People who hold contradictory desires are considered to be mentally unwell. They are counseled to make up their mind about what they really want. However, the reality is that all of us have a whole lot of different ‘people’ living in our head, and many of these have conflicting needs and desires, and this is perfectly normal. Some days our introvert is in control and we don’t want to talk to anyone, while other days our extravert is in control and we want to talk to everyone. If we accept the notion that we must have a ‘single, unified identity’ then we are forced to lock-up the parts of ourselves that hold contradictory desires. Now something interesting happens when we do this. The part of ourselves that we lock up becomes increasingly frustrated and angry. It is inevitable that they will eventually erupt – often in an unhealthy way. This can lead to a Jackal and Hyde situation where we flip-flop between unhealthy extremes.

Choosing particular roles to play in ‘real life’ automatically means that other legitimate parts of ourselves can become neglected. In letting-off-steam play, we give expression to these suppressed parts of ourselves. By giving these parts of ourselves and our culture a space in which to express themselves, we stop them from festering in the basement and becoming destructive rogue elements. By making them our friends we draw their sting. And in celebrating them we suddenly find that we have freed ourselves of their negative power.

Profound play uses letting-off-steam play to make friends with the dark underbelly of culture and in making friends, draw the sting of these hidden elements. It also recognizes that our hidden demons come bearing wonderful gifts. In play, all demons are less scary than they are in ‘real’ life.

Freedom play

This kind of play is epitomized by the Black American slaves in the cotton fields singing to ease the burden of their oppression. But this kind of play was more than just ‘pain relief’. It was an expression of inner freedom. They were saying, ‘You can chain my body but not my mind’. All meaningful play contains a deep paradox. The deeper the paradox, the greater the creative potential of that play. In freedom play we see this principle at work. In the real world they were slaves. In their play they were free. This bought to their play something deeply spiritual and creative. In fact their play was a reflection of ‘divine play’; the act of turning chaos into meaning, death into life, garbage into gold. This divine transformation could only happen in play.

In place making I often say to clients or communities, ‘your greatest deficit is potentially your greatest asset’. The worse something is, the more I rejoice, because it has the greatest potential for transformation. An example of this was the Maiki Hill toilets in Paihia. They were so bad some tourist had scrawled on the wall, “Worst toilets I have seen in NZ”. The community could only imagine bulldozing them and starting again. But for just $15,000 we transformed them into a tourist attraction. This approach to ‘deficits’ comes from an inner stance in my mind, rooted in freedom play. It is why I count my lack of education and the beatings I endured as a child as my greatest assets.

This kind of freedom play can liberate us from anything that oppresses us. If our past oppresses us, we can transform our past from something that oppresses us into something that enriches us. If our fear of death and non-being oppresses us, we can transform it something that gives our life color, vibrancy and depth. Profound play is the Jester in the universe who laughs in the face of death because she knows something death does not know. In an ironic twist she will conjure from the darkness something of substance. The joke is on death itself. Death cannot be reasoned with. So the Jester does not try. She simply plays, and laughs. And by laughing in the face of oppression she becomes master of the oppression. Freedom play enlists the ‘enemy’ as the agent of change.

Escapist play

When I talk about play most people think I am talking about either recreational play or what we may call ‘escapist play’ – play that is used to escape responsibilities or as a way of putting-off dealing with some issue or situation. Escapist play can sometimes have a self-destructive element, particularly when it is used as a pain analgesic – a means of escaping one’s internal demons. This kind of escapist play sometimes involves the use of drugs to further dull the pain.

However, not all escapist play is bad. We adults have a tendency to take ourselves, and the roles we play, far too seriously. When seriousness becomes our master, escapist play can restore the balance, and help us realize that even if the game we are playing has serious consequences, at the end of the day, it is still a game.

For the profound player, escapist play can be a time when the mind becomes a blank slate, much like when we go to sleep, and the dreaming part of our brain wanders where it wills. In these moments we may stumble on new cracks in reality which turn out to be doorways into worlds not yet dreamed of. Escapist play can suggest new games that can be taken back into the profound play state. Escapist play can unwittingly unmask inner demons we don’t even know exist.

There is also a great temptation for those involved in profound play (‘serious play’) to start taking themselves as seriously as those involved in ‘serious work’. In all of life there is a temptation to fundamentalism. For some people, ‘profound play’ will become the new religion, replete with new rituals that must be kept unadulterated. To the shallow profound player, escapist play will be condemned as a form of sacrilege. To the deep, profound player, it will be a sacrament. The issue here is balance.

When change become ‘Child’s Play’

The thing about children’s play is that for the most part it does not have a predetermined objective. We said that the miracle of life is that the child we once were invented the rational adult we now are. But when kid’s play shopkeeper or fireman they are not saying to each other: ‘Lets play shopkeepers so I can see if that is what I want to be when I grow up’. In fact the exact opposite is true. In play the child is usually captivated by the eternal now. Past and future are no consideration. This allows their play to unfold in a totally spontaneous fashion.

The play is not constrained by past failures or dictated by fears of the future. And yet out of this seemingly directionless activity they create whole new worlds.

This raises an interesting question: ‘Should play ever have an objective?’ There are some that argue that play that has an objective ceases to be play and becomes work. I disagree. All play has an objective, even if this is simply to have fun or embark on an adventure. However, the objective remains fluid and not static as it is in ‘work’. It responds instantly to the game itself, and can morph into directions that were not dreamed of.

Profound play can also have an objective, such as improving a relationship, or addressing a social issue. However, the objective remains eternally fluid. This requires an incredible faith in our own creative abilities. It is to look the universe in the eye and say: ‘Throw at me what you will, and I will weave it into my story. Throw at me disaster and I will not only weave it into my story, but I will use it to make the story even richer.’ What we adults call work is often an attempt to second-guess the future and to build defences against all possibilities. But this ‘rational’ approach to the future is highly ‘irrational’. We can no more second-guess the future than King Canute could hold back the tide. It is far more rational to reclaim the blind faith we had as children that we could ‘make up the game as we go’. As kids we did not sit in a corner, paralyzed by fear, because we didn’t know if we were capable of playing. We had an implicit trust that as events unfolded, we would be able to fold them into the game as it emerged.

However, reclaiming this child-like quality to play is not a case of just role-playing yourself as a child. It must not be viewed as some mental trick we use when we need to be more creative. ‘Oh, I need to be creative so I’ll slip down into the basement and drag my kid out.’ The child in our head must be integrated seamlessly into the very essence of our adult persona. You and the child must become one. That is profound play.

Some years ago, while I was travelling in Europe, I watched an old lady sitting on the side of her street shelling peas while her grandchild rode a trike in the street. Every now and then the child would come over and shell a few peas. I watched the child playing, and wondered what kind of adult they were in the process of creating through their play. I looked at the old lady. I imagined that being in the presence of the child helped her recall her own childhood, and the road she had travelled. By remembering, she was distilling wisdom from her life’s journey – wisdom she could pass to the child who was just starting their journey. The street is where these two worlds met and merged.

Profound play is where wisdom and play are allowed to share the same neural pathways in our mind. It is the child we once were in the presence of the wise elder we are becoming. This can be a partnership of immense and profound creative power.

Simon Nielsen 3/22/22 Simon Nielsen 3/22/22

How One Piece Of Code Empowered Hundreds Of Thousands Voters In The South African Local Government Elections 2021

Open Cities Lab is using code to create social capital and civic engagement. “My one concern was that it was too simple to be useful,” said founder Richard Gevers. “Clearly it wasn’t and clearly this is something people wanted. If you create an enabling environment, people can and will participate.” This is how hundreds of thousands of voters were empowered in the South African 2021 local government elections.

By Open Cities Lab

The founder of Open Cities Lab (OCL), Richard Gevers, was all over the South African press recently talking about mycandidate.opencitieslab.org — the tool that tells you who you can vote for in the Local Government Elections (LGE). It was only possible because the open data community made it happen. The portal is a collaboration between Richard Gevers (Open Cities Lab leader), Matthew Adendorff (head of Data Science at Open Cities Lab), Adi Eyal and JD Bothma (from OpenUp), Paul Berkowitz (who wrangled data from the IEC), Wasim Moosa (Open Cities Lab Lead developer) and Jodi Allemeier.

At the time of publishing, 118 000 people had used the tool, and we can assume that most of them were registered voters. And possibly more exciting than the site analytics are the stories about people who used the tool and as a result started engaging in conversations with their friends and peers about who their ward candidates were.

How it works: Type in your address and it will identify your ward as well as all the candidates contesting in your ward, as listed by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). Each candidate’s name, age and political party appear in the search results including all the other wards in which the candidate is contesting. When you click the name of the candidate, you will be redirected to the google search results for that name. You can also view more information about your ward by clicking the link to Wazimap.

It’s a really simple tool. “I really wasn’t sure if it would be successful,” said Richard Gevers. However the positive reception and media attention mycandidate.opencitieslab.org received proved that at least some people do want to have an active role in society. He said, “If you remove barriers, they can get involved. My one concern was that it was too simple to be useful. Clearly it wasn’t and clearly this is something people wanted. If you create an enabling environment, people can and will participate.” This is how hundreds of thousands of voters were empowered in the 2021 LGE.

How it all started: Just over 2 weeks before the LGE on 1 November 2021, Richard and a few colleagues were having dinner together, when one of OCL’s data scientists, expressed frustration with not knowing who to vote for. Th information about candidates was not easily accessible, even for our tech savvy team.

Amidst the end of the year rush to meet deadlines, Richard had asked Matthew Adendorff (Open Cities Lab lead data scientist), what it would take to get the MyCandidate tool up and running. Knowing that the data on each candidate was published by the IEC in pdf format, Matt was not sure if it was possible within such a short time frame to scrape all the candidate information into a spreadsheet and cross check it for accuracy. The data needed to be available in an open format.

It just so happened that Paul Berkowitz had just done this. With much effort, he had taken all the candidate information in the pdf and made it openly available on this google spreadsheet. So that night, Matt plugged in the now open data and resurrected the mycandidate.opencitieslab.org

It was far from perfect. There was no styling or even any branding but it worked. A few days later at 18:58 on 19 October 2021, Richard tweeted a message asking the twitter community for some user testing feedback. The responses were invaluable, and the retweets and media attention catapulted this simple tool into stardom.

The first version of the MyCandidate tool had been conceived and published just days before the 2016 LGE. The use case then was the same: Who are the candidates running in my ward? Some of us know about the parties contesting in our ward, but who are the candidates, and who are the independent candidates. Five years later, the tool went live in just enough time to reach a wider audience and have a significant impact.

All the hallmarks of Open Data:

The success and impact that the MyCandidate tool has had and will have in the future are testament to the Open Data Mission and the mission of Open Cities Lab: We work to build inclusion and participatory democracy in cities and urban spaces through empowering citizens, building trust and accountability in civic space, and capacitating government. When we can use technology and open data to do this, we do.

The MyCandidate tool is licensed under the Attribution 4.0 International. Leading up to the elections, we encouraged media organisations and even the IEC to embed the tool on their site. The embed code is available on the tool itself. We invite you to find, use, test, improve and share the code, which can be found on Github here.

Change Log:
Since the MyCandidate tool went live on 19 October 2021, some changes and improvements were made. Wasim Moosa (Open Cities Lab Lead developer), worked late on Friday night before the Monday election day, to solve the geocoding “problem” we had. It’s a wonderful problem to have so many users that the search functionality needs upgrading. When the number of users exceeded a certain threshold, Wasim needed to switch the geocoding query to google places API.

Thanks to the community of user testing that shaped the tool into what it became, we made the following changes after launch:

1. Added an embed link for others to embed the tool on their sites and in their news articles
2. Added a Favicon for the app
3. Added missing candidate data that was not found in the original dataset
4. Switched the Geocoding query to google places API
5. Updated the ward boundaries using the Open Up Mapit tool

6. Added privacy note on the application stating “The My Candidate tool does not store any user information, including your address.”

7. Added a link to Jodi Allemier’s informative blog piece about how local elections work and what each ballot you receive at the voting stations means.

8. Added the ward number to the search results, making it easier for users to see which ward their street address belongs too.

Future plans for the MyCandidate tool

Open Cities Lab is open to all opportunities to develop the MyCandidate tool further and replicate it in other countries. We are particularly interested in the potential for use in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and other countries in the continent. Whatsapp integration is also on the cards. This would make it possible for users to initiate a request via Whatsapp. And there is also an opportunity More work to potentially create a MyCounsellor type intervention, where we can build a track record for local representatives. We look forward to exploring these ideas and encourage others to contact us about the MyCandidate tool for more information.

Simon Nielsen 3/21/22 Simon Nielsen 3/21/22

Realizing The Promise Of Knowledge Communities

“College campuses are the original “innovation district,” offering a rich density of minds that are concentrated for maximum intake and output of thought. The assumption is always that these minds will meet in serendipitous encounters and campus meeting places. But the reality often falls far short and campuses need to be much more intentional about creating the collision spaces where these interactions can happen.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, lists the many benefits of campus placemaking.

By Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader

I visited the University of Texas, Austin recently, and was elated to see how alive and abundant campus life was, centered on a fairly new campus space, the Speedway Mall. It’s a great example of campus placemaking, and captures the spirit of campus life that so many other campuses aspire to.

Campuses are built around the notion of a knowledge community – putting people together to induce the exchange of ideas, not only between student and teacher, but across an intricate network that touches all members. Hopefully.

And yet, it doesn’t always work out that way. Many campuses lack a sense of place and most campuses underrate the importance of the “life between buildings,” treating their public spaces as an afterthought, or as grassy backdrops.

There’s no excuse for this. The reasons for college administrators to make the most of their campus public realm are many and compelling:

Campus Sense of Place and Meaning

Colleges and universities should strive to create vibrant and memorable places that give deeper meaning to campus residents and bring them back years later for reunions, for visits with children in tow, for future giving. Harvard University realized this when they incorporated Placemaking in the master planning of the new Allston Campus. They were aware of the danger that the new campus, although walking distance from the fabled Harvard Yard, would feel like another world with none of the soul and beauty that the older campus is so known for. Harvard continues its work with placemaking on both the Cambridge campus as well as the Allston campus.

Campuses as Innovation Districts

College campuses are the original “innovation district,” offering a rich density of minds that are concentrated for maximum intake and output of thought. The assumption is always that these minds will meet in serendipitous encounters and campus meeting places. But the reality often falls far short and campuses need to be much more intentional about creating the collision spaces where these interactions can happen. Such encounters and casual meetings are much more likely when they are planned for, and the programming that goes along with placemaking is a powerful tool for campuses to use.

Creating Places of Diversity

Planning for interactions must also account for people of different races and cultural backgrounds on campus. In fact, one of the best ways to diversify the groups that gather -- and to make campus places more inclusive – is to target specific audiences who might otherwise not feel welcome. To quote the Brookings Institution: “If public spaces are designed and managed for a monolithic “public” or “average user,” they will likely be exclusionary and fail to achieve their goals of engendering social cohesion.”

Activating Campus Places

There are so many campus spaces that are literally just hardware with limited purpose. To breathe life into a campus, a significant budget should be saved for programming to attract people, enliven campus, improve bodies and minds, and actually put facilities to their best use.

Campus Placemaking

This notion of a knowledge community is an old one – it goes all the way back to the establishment of cities as the most efficient way to capture talent, foster innovation, and grow economies. It applies to university and college campuses, but also research campuses, medical campuses, innovation districts, and other urban districts.

There are layers of social and civic infrastructure that are invisible to most professionals in planning, design, and development. When these layers are overlooked, we miss an opportunity to enrich lives and build community – or in the case of universities, the chance to create a knowledge community that fosters exchange and innovation and builds rich student life. This is where placemaking comes in, and why it’s a valuable addition to campus planning and design.

Simon Nielsen 3/11/22 Simon Nielsen 3/11/22

Welcoming Locals With The Civic Park Groundbreaking

“The mantra during this entire period has been, roughly, ‘build downtown for locals, not tourists. We’ve been pushed out by the tourists for too long.’ The return of locals only seems right, for what is one of America’s very oldest cities with a totally unique and authentic culture.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, has been a driving force in the transformation of downtown San Antonio into a more welcoming place.

By Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader

At long last San Antonio’s new Civic Park broke ground on January 26, 2022. This public-private project will create downtown’s most significant park space and has been called “perhaps the most ambitious development in San Antonio history when you consider the cost, scale and location.” I was thrilled to be able to work with Hemisfair and GGN to help develop the vision for this park.

The initial master plan for this former World’s Fair site, dubbed Hemisfair, was done as far back as 2012, led by Johnson Fain with Olin, HR&A, and Arup. In the following years three public spaces were envisioned and designed, by firms such as MIG, GGN and the Project for Public Spaces:

· Yanaguana Garden, a six-acre mixed use destination playground, was opened to the public for the first time in October 2015 and has come to become the second most visited park per acre in Texas with more than 80 percent of the visitors being locals.

· Civic Park, at 12 acres, is the largest of the three spaces, and will feature civic events like concerts, with tree-lined promenades, fountains and pools, and a perimeter of shopping, dining, hotel and residential.

· Tower Park will mix public space with more than a dozen historic structures, in the last phase of Hemisfair’s development.

Phil Myrick was the placemaking lead on all three projects, helping to establish the overall vision and program.

Tourism and suburbanism

Yanaguana Garden, Civic Park, and Tower Park all have a common thread – and that is to serve and attract local people above all others. For San Antonio, this is a deep-rooted obligation due to the fact that for fifty years the city’s downtown has been mainly the haunt of tourism. The River Walk, a flood project begun under WPA and constructed over a span of decades, eventually became one of the world’s most iconic public spaces. But over time it succeeded especially as a tourist destination, and most locals visit once or twice a year.

Meanwhile, San Antonio’s downtown never recovered from the urban malaise that affected all U.S. cities in the late 20th century, and the city has remained adamantly suburban. For decades, while the River Walk was teeming with visitors, up at the street level the city was a ghost town, characterized by overly-engineered streets that made walking a chore, and an almost complete dearth of retail or residents.

The Decade of Downtown

But, over the last 15 years or so, a devoted and passionate group of city leaders, developers, civic boosters, historians, and most recently the University of Texas, have helped create a surge of investment in making downtown a better place to live. This momentum was given a significant boost in 2010 when Mayor Julián Castro announced his “Decade of Downtown,” an initiative that left an indelible legacy.

Although in 2022 it is still behind the curve (other major cities enjoyed their comeback of downtown many years ago), San Antonio’s downtown momentum has now passed a tipping point. I predict this sleeper of a downtown will soon emerge as America’s latest downtown darling, a success story long in the making.

Build downtown for locals

The mantra during this entire period has been, roughly, “build downtown for locals, not tourists. We’ve been pushed out by the tourists for too long.” The return of locals only seems right, for what is one of America’s very oldest cities with a totally unique and authentic culture. Steeped in a brew of Mexican, Native American, and Texian roots, the city is deeply comfortable with its multiculturalism, and the city has long been majority Hispanic (over 60% Hispanic in the 2020 census).

With this amiable diversity and renewed commitment to downtown, San Antonio represents America’s past, present and future in the best possible way. A toast to the Civic Park, the city’s latest undertaking in a decade of authentic placemaking.

Simon Nielsen 3/11/22 Simon Nielsen 3/11/22

PLACED Academy

PLACED are excited to announce their 2022-23 PLACED Academy. Launched in 2019, PLACED Academy increases participants’ self-esteem, breaks down barriers to professional careers and develops skills. To date, 126 young graduates have benefited from the programme, which has had a positive impact on their lives and shaped their decisions about their future

PLACED are excited to announce their 2022-23 PLACED Academy, their flagship free to access, creative education programme about the built environment for 14-18 year olds from across the northwest, empowering young people to shape the places they live, work and spend time.

Launched in 2019, PLACED Academy increases participants’ self-esteem, breaks down barriers to professional careers and develops skills. To date, 126 young graduates have benefited from the programme, which has had a positive impact on their lives and shaped their decisions about their future

By PLACED

PLACED specialise in place education and engagement. Since 2011, we have brought collaboration and diversity to discussion around the built environment, creating opportunities for quality conversations and genuine engagement. We believe that everyone is an expert when it comes to the places where they live, work or spend time. These principles have been at the core of our built environment Education Programmes for the last years.

Building on our experience, we established the PLACED Academy in 2019 as a free to access creative programme about the built environment for 14–18 year olds. The Academy is designed to increase participants’ self-esteem, break down barriers to professional careers, expose participants to a variety of conventional and non-conventional career routes and develop a broad range of skills. The Academy is made possible thanks to the generous support from our network of Sponsors and Partners.

To date, we’ve delivered four programmes and have 126 graduates. Feedback from previous programmes has been extremely positive; 96% of graduates developed skills that will support them in school, college or university, 92% tell us they now know how the design of places impacts on people, 85% have a better idea of career and education pathways and 80% are more confident they can work in the sector. Reflecting on their experience, one participant told us:

“PLACED Academy is a safe and exciting environment for young people to learn and expand their skills, connections and knowledge, and not only that, but it also provides opportunities which would otherwise be impossible, and many more incredible benefits. The PLACED Academy is one of the best things that has happened to me in terms of my potential future career, and I hope it will continue to aid many other people to gain the necessary understanding of how to get to where they want to be in the architectural, landscaping, interior design or engineering fields.”

We are now in the early stages of developing the 2022-23 programme, where will recruit up to 40 young people from diverse backgrounds from across the Northwest. Academy participants will take part in creative design workshops which respond to live projects, supporting youth voice and citizenship, whilst enabling designers and decision makers to engage with a group typically under-represented in discussion about places. Students will be mentored by industry professionals and participate in a tailored package of workshops, events and learning opportunities, working towards their graduation.

The programme will include the following:

· Holiday programme: an intensive four-day programme, during which participants will work on creative design projects. Students will be introduced to planning, regeneration and architecture, with activities including site analysis, brief development, model making and presentation skills

· Design workshops: monthly design sessions that develop participants’ skills and knowledge of the built environment through creative activities to prepare them for the next step on their journey

· Professional development skills sessions: support with writing CVs and personal statements, applying for further education, training and interview preparation

· Work experience: support with identifying work placements by connecting students and professionals.

For more details about the PLACED Academy, and to find out how you could get involved visit www.placed-academy.com

Simon Nielsen 3/10/22 Simon Nielsen 3/10/22

Treasure Hunting On Campus

Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, invites us to turn our campuses inside out and go find the hidden treasures.

“Students and professors are no different from the rest of us. They want to live or work in a place that is stimulating, comfortable, safe and social. But this has too often been ignored in the way campuses have been planned or adapted in recent decades. Billions of dollars go into building facilities that are hidden behind blank walls. That can make for a cutting-edge education, but a lackluster student experience with few chances for exchange.” Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader, invites us to turn our campuses inside out and go find the hidden treasures.

By Phil Myrick, global placemaking leader

Ask anyone embarking on a development or building project about their goals, and not many will list mediocrity among them.

Ask them if they want to build a great place, and of course their answer will be yes.

Too often, though, the architectural design process overlooks the quotidian pleasures we all unconsciously seek in favor of the big, shiny and impressive. How can we reclaim the soul of the places that make us who we are if this is the process that continues?

And, if this process continues, what kind of people will we become as we live, work, and study in these “soulless” spaces?

Inclusion or compartmentalization?

Let’s look at an example of “What’s Possible” as opposed to “How it’s Always Been Done.”

Think of a university. So much opportunity. So much capacity for achieving great places. Too often, though they don’t even seem to realize what they’ve got, let alone what’s possible.

If asked, most universities would likely agree on the importance of promoting student life in multiple dimensions. Too many times, though, this philosophy doesn’t survive the planning and design process.

Too often, the result is that faculty and students are relegated to their shiny rectangle, put back into their disciplines, hidden from each other. Natural interaction is next to impossible.

We could all benefit from cross-fertilization and collaboration more than ever, yet campuses often miss their opportunity to do this better than anyplace else.

Students and professors are no different from the rest of us. They want to live or work in a place that is stimulating, comfortable, safe and social. But this has too often been ignored in the way campuses have been planned or adapted in recent decades. Billions of dollars go into building facilities that are hidden behind blank walls. That can make for a cutting-edge education, but a lackluster student experience with few chances for exchange.

If even a fraction of these investments were used to express the building’s program to the exterior, it would make a vast difference to the day-to-day experience of campus.

Sharing the wealth through campus placemaking

The key to making campuses more than the sum of their parts is in clustering outdoor activities with expressive buildings that contribute their content to the outside. The goal should be to create busy, dynamic destinations for many different types of people throughout the day and week.

For example, at the University of Texas San Antonio they’ve made a good start at creating an outdoor space outside the food court, with seating under the oak trees, Wi-Fi access, a small stage and screen capabilities (see photo). They only need to push it a little further, perhaps with an outdoor bar and food truck, and more options for seating. Then add some live music, care of the Department of Music, and you get an amazing and memorable campus hotspot, with only modest effort.

UTSA and I will work together over the coming months to create more of these hotspots for campus life.

This is a way to bring people together instead of confining them in the prisons of their chosen discipline. It encourages dialogues instead of monologues.

And, when we talk to each other, the resulting ideas and innovations benefit us all.

Breaching the ivory tower

But inclusion doesn’t stop at the educational castle walls.

A campus that sits all by itself, cut off from the commerce and life of the local community also falls short of its potential impact.

Some of America's most beloved campuses feature adjoining business districts that teem with activity. Think of Harvard Square, State Street in Madison, and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

Savannah College of the Arts and the College of Charleston, like many European colleges, have woven their buildings into the fabric of downtown neighborhoods rather than standing apart on their own “hallowed” ground.

For the good of the students as well as for the community in general, we need to see cross-fertilization between universities and the broader community.

There must be places where audiences mix.

Case in point

While working at Project for Public Spaces many years ago we led a process to add a layer to the master plan for Harvard’s expansion into Allston. Engagement included workshops with students, faculty, and staff, as well as Allston residents.

The intent was to create a series of shared spaces that would encourage interaction between the university’s students, faculty, and staff as well as the residents of Harvard and Allston.

Community gathering places were planned around key campus buildings, such as a library, an arts center, a dining hall, and Harvard Stadium.

The goal was to develop new destinations that would intentionally integrate all kinds of people as the campus was built out. Cluster the right uses, and you can plan for who will show up and how well they will mingle. Build for the future of the university, but also build in ways that brings life to the surrounding community.

Capturing value

What’s my point?

Go on a treasure hunt.

Millions of dollars go into building facilities that hide their assets behind blank walls. If a tiny part of that investment was directed toward creating a place on the building’s exterior, it would make a vast difference to people's experiences both on and off campus.

Universities have vast capacity for doing more with their treasures – their music programs, their lectures, their many collections that are stored in basements.

A “treasure hunt” involving staff and faculty to better express these opportunities will benefit everyone in the community, and the experience of the campus at large.

A treasure is only a treasure when someone digs it up.

Simon Nielsen 3/3/22 Simon Nielsen 3/3/22

Placemaking.Education

Town Team Movement and PlacemakingX are inviting you to become a placemaker with the launch of Placemaking.Education, a new online learning platform bringing placemaking to all corners of the world.

Placemaking is an inclusive and collaborative process, a mindset, an attitude that brings people, disciplines and organisations together to create positive changes to an area (small, medium or large). It aims to create places that people want to be in and where humans thrive. It is a process that can strengthen the fabric of a neighbourhood or community. Placemaking empowers people to act, not only as an ethical principle, but also because it is a real way to improve the way a person relates to themselves, their neighbours and their world.

Town Team Movement and PlacemakingX are inviting you to become a placemaker with the launch of Placemaking.Education, a new online learning platform bringing placemaking to all corners of the world.

By Town Team Movement & PlacemakingX

What is placemaking?

It sounds like a buzz word, but it is actually a vital and practical way to create successful, resilient places, empowered citizens and more connected communities.

Town Team Movement and the global leader of the placemaking movement, PlacemakingX, have partnered to create the world’s first online education platform with structured training courses to help you learn more about placemaking.

We have collected and curated the most important placemaking concepts, tips and lessons learned into one place to make it easier and faster for you to learn.

Learn at your own pace, when you want, where you want!

“Placemaking is like turning a house into a home.”

— David Engwicht, Placemaking Leader

Placemaking is a philosophy and an iterative, collaborative process for creating public spaces that people love and feel connected to.

Placemaking is about creating feelings in people. It's about making a public space, street or even a whole suburb "feel like home" - a place to feel good in, to belong to and be proud of.

Placemaking empowers people to act, not only as an ethical principle, but also because it is a real way to improve the way a person relates to themselves, their neighbours and their world.

Online placemaking training courses

Placemaking.Education has various online courses that you can take anywhere, anytime! Learn at your own pace. The course content includes topics such as:

What is placemaking?
Why is placemaking important?
What are the principles of placemaking?
What are some examples of placemaking?
Who can be a placemaker?
Where can placemaking be done?
How can you make it happen?

Visit Placemaking.Education

Simon Nielsen 12/6/21 Simon Nielsen 12/6/21

An Urban Planner’s Guide To Civil Aviation

This article is an attempt to bring out some functional similarities between the two (un)-related fields, Urban Planning & Civil Aviation. The writing is based on the understanding and experience of an urban planner turned commercial pilot trying to connect the dots to bring out the best of both industries. You might think that the two fields have nothing in common with one being an insignificant part of other, however both fields have a lot of linkages and practices to learn and adopt.

By Shubham Aggarwal, founder of Planning Tank and commercial pilot

Overview and the comparisons being drawn

Urban Planning, or more specifically spatial planning deals with the two-dimensional spaces and activities on ground whereas aviation with an added dimension involves utilising the air space above the ground. While urban planners work to maximise the use of land resource by formulating plans and regulating the "development", aviation is all about utilising the airspace in most efficient manner. In simplest terms both the sectors deal with efficient utilisation of spaces. The utilisation in one sector is about all the activities and the future in mind while the aviation is about the transport aspect and its own future needs. The need for efficient use of available resources for sustainable growth can be considered as the need for both sectors. The way both industries function remains very different however there are few fundamental aspects which are very well worked out in aviation. The difference can be attributed to the limited focus area however things get complicated once we look into details. Urban planning being a multi-disciplinary field has its unique set of problem however aviation not being equally multi-disciplinary has its own unique requirements while makes it dependent on a lot of other aspects. Thus, one being multi-disciplinary and the other being dependent has a lot of teach and learn.

Scarcity of (usable) space even with an added dimension!

Optimal utilisation of space remains the focus area in both fields. Both the fields are always struggling with the space crunch which might be a bit confusing as you must have come across vast parcel of land which are undeveloped, this sight is often common while commuting through trains or aircraft. You will see endless portion of earth which is undeveloped however the real estate prices keep on hitting a new high. At the same time, you notice the endless sky which gives the impression that the airspace is endless, however this is not true. The "usable" airspace still remains very restricted and while the human eye is looking at the endless open sky, we are often limited with the height at which passenger aircrafts operate (usually below 50,000 ft above mean sea level). While the land and sky are limitless, it's the "usable" part which is scarce. Serviced land requires heavy investment, similarly, to make airspaces usable and accessible has its own set of challenges.

What you see below is not an ideal condition for commercial transport. No matter how adventurous you are, you will still prefer your aircraft to be far away from other aircrafts to ensure safety. Commercial aircrafts do not fly anywhere near to each other, they are separated both horizontally and vertically as safety is of utmost importance.

The functional challenges & similarities

Administration, Bureaucracy & Umbrella Body

Bureaucracy and administration:

Depending on the scope (geographical) of work, there are new challenges as multiple governmental agencies, cultural differences, rules and regulations come into play. Each aspect needs to be carefully reviewed and complied with. For Urban Planning this is true when dealing with different regions while for aviation this is more important when operating internationally.

National & International governing bodies:

For all the industries and professions to function there is a need to have an umbrella body which is entitled with authority and power. They act as the representatives, form rules and work for the welfare of its members. No true international umbrella body exist for urban planning. The standards adopted and functions performed varies from country to country and even within a country. A person wanting to work in a new place is required to get familiar with the system being followed by actually working and learning the practice being followed. No international body exist to unify the practices however in some countries there are governing bodies which work at different level, but their success varies largely. Some of the founding and old bodies include American Planning Association (APA), Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), Indian Institute of Town Planners (ITPI), Nigerian Institute of Town Planners (NITP) etc. All of these governing bodies enjoy different rights where they work. ISOCARP, Commonwealth Association of Planners can be considered as a pseudo international organisation but on looking at the work and influence it fails to fulfil the criteria required to qualify itself as a true international umbrella body.

International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is the apex umbrella body for civil aviation. It is a UN specialized agency, established by States in 1944 to manage the administration and governance of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention). The rules framed by ICAO are binding for all members although there exists the provision to adopt rules complete or partially but in case of partial adoption, the change from international practice needs to be informed so that all the countries have complete inform about the standards and procedures being followed in other countries. Apart from a single governing body, all countries have their own organisations and concerned authorities dealing with civil aviation. Unlike planning, its mandatory to have a competent authority which will represent the country in conventions of ICAO and pass on the required information from time to time. These include Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, Director General of Civil Aviation etc. These further have their subdivisions and coordinate among Number of other bodies to make sure the all the civil aviation operations go smoothly.

The need to work in time bound manner & actions taken and rules in place

Problem identification & solving:

Urban planning often suffers from the lack of standards and reference makes it unrealistic to call the outcome as undesired. Unless a proper assessment is possible, it makes no sense to identify the person or agency responsible for it. The acceptable level of errors and overall margin are absent in most of the cases. This further gets complicated as the outcome is visible only after few years and planning itself is prone to drastic changes due to external factors. So, it remains a major setback for problem identification & solving.

In Aviation, there are well defined rules about what is to be reported to whom. Reporting to competent authority in time bound manner is compulsory. A well-defined classification of reportable incidents exist which ensures clarity on what needs to be reported and the whole process for the same. The concerned agency on receiving the information carries out its work and takes appropriate action. There is a marginal scope of own judgement as the rules are well defined which enables timely outcome of any reported incident.

Rules & framework:

Urban planning is dominated by "Guidelines" instead of "Acts" and rules. Number of overlapping functions, conflicts in administrative work and boundaries, lack of penalties. No well-defined standards or complete lack of standards makes assessment next to impossible. Further, because of the involvement of dozens of authorities it is difficult to find out the actual person/department who is responsible for the loss. Even if the concerned person is found out than the overlapping functions or the lack of clear procedure of what to do next will be at disposal of the competent authority as per their own judgement of the situation. Due to such open-endedness of the process and absence of clear rules, people become victims of wrong or ill-defined process and part of experimentation.

Feedback mechanism & mitigation strategies:

Both the sectors have provision of corrections or adjustments as per their own feedback mechanism. This allow to cater for unforeseen circumstances and in cases when it is evident that the desired result is not achievable or continuing the ongoing work will have negative or catastrophic results. Theoretically speaking, in planning feedback and monitoring was added to the planning process under rational planning model. This provided some flexibility to the otherwise rigid planning process whose outcomes were visible only after things went wrong at end. These outcomes were at times disastrous as millions of people by this time would have suffered because of faulty planning. With the advancement and adoption of technology this improved and timely correction were possible and emphasised.

Like any industry, aviation too is prone to errors and mistakes. This can be because of both human error and technical glitches. Both the types are quite unpredictable but having a mechanism in place to minimize the damage remains to be of utmost importance. Safety in aviation is given utmost priority at every stage unlike planning. It starts from the stringent manufacturing standards of aircrafts to multiple operational aspects. Still in case when things go wrong all the concerned people and agencies swiftly takes action as per predefined process.

Having a clear and well-defined structure is essential for any task which requires input from multiple sources. Avoiding overlapping functions and identification of gaps is of utmost importance in efficient working. Accountability for delays and wrong information needs to be taken seriously to ensure quality work. Having standards and fix procedures helps in ensuring that minimalist deviations occur from the set rules. This is what makes Aviation a rapidly growing sector.

Way forward

Though you might find that some of the points being highlighted remains common to every industry, but the underlying ideas is to provide a basic start for the budding planners & professionals to connect & relate. Various aviation and urban planning terminologies have been avoided for ease of understanding. To cover details, industry needs to be divided into parts/ focus areas so that required comparisons can be drawn. These include information about carbon emissions since aviation is one of the biggest contributors of GHGs, goals being set by the aircraft manufacturers to reduce their carbon footprints, making more air space available as the available airspace for commercial aviation is restricted by the air force due to various safety and security reasons which results in longer routes, fuel being used and the possibility of turning to hydrogen or organic fuel. Additional aspects are the navigational aspects which make use of GPS, GIS aided maps and location augmentation, terrain model as per WGS 84. Brief information about the various agencies involved in aviation which are the reliable and authentic place to gather data for research.

Feel free to reach out if you have any queries or suggestions, until next flight – Your planner & pilot, Shubham!

Disclaimer: This article was published originally on Planning Times & adapted from the article published at Planning Tank by the author.

Author Bio: Shubham Aggarwal is an Urban Planner turned Commercial Pilot and a tech enthusiast. Interests include blogging, urban planning, entrepreneurship, and renewable energy. Views personal.

Simon Nielsen 11/11/21 Simon Nielsen 11/11/21

Seven Reasons Local Government is F***ed - And Seven Simple Nudges To Make Them More Functional

“When it comes to local government, there are some really big elephants in the room which no one is willing to name or discuss. We tip-toe around them, and pretend they don’t exist because we really want to believe that local government is “democracy at work at the community level” and we turn a blind eye to any evidence to the contrary.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, has a first-hand experience with the flaws of local government. In this article, he suggests seven nudges to make communities work better.

“When it comes to local government, there are some really big elephants in the room which no one is willing to name or discuss. We tip-toe around them, and pretend they don’t exist because we really want to believe that local government is “democracy at work at the community level” and we turn a blind eye to any evidence to the contrary.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, has a first-hand experience with the flaws of local government. In this essay, he suggests seven nudges to make communities work better.

By David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International

Fourteen years ago I took a job working inside Local Government in a small rural city. I was mystified by how the entire system worked - or to be more accurate, didn’t work.

This experience gave me a first-hand insight into why local government, as a system, is f***ed.

When it comes to local government, there are some really big elephants in the room which no one is willing to name or discuss. We tip-toe around them, and pretend they don’t exist because we really want to believe that local government is “democracy at work at the community level” and we turn a blind eye to any evidence to the contrary.

So lets start with seven of those deep flaws and then discuss some simple, transformative “nudges” (like putting kids’ hats in all the meeting rooms). These initiatives can be implemented within the current structures of local government. (I’m a realist, and there is no way we can scrap the existing structure and start from scratch.)

1. Two arms - a marriage made in hell

Local government has two independent but connected arms: political and administration. The administration gives fearless advice to the elected officials who then make a decision. The administration then action that decision, even if they disagree with it.

Well that’s the dream.

In reality, this relationship between elected officials and the administration is more like a deeply dysfunctional marriage in which both parties engage in manipulation, coercion, and even outright bullying.

On any given day, the admin staff are looking at the elected officials saying to themselves, “How the hell did he/she get elected? They are a complete novice who knows nothing about the area in which I’m an expert. How can I convince them to adopt the policy I know is best for the community?”

At the same time, the elected officials are looking at the staff and saying to themselves, “I need to get X done in my community if I’m to get reelected. Why is the bureaucracy standing in my way? How do I convince them to make X happen for me?”

There is often a high level of disdain in the relationship. The admin staff believe they have superior knowledge, and are not driven by ego. The elected officials often see the bureaucrats as stick-in-the-mud, risk-adverse, pencil pushers.

The problem is that both parties in this marriage never sit down and discuss the dysfunctional nature of the relationship. They put on a show to the world that they are a rock-solid united team. But behind closed doors, the toxic nature of the relationship is tearing the family apart.

2. How the “board of directors” is selected

Let’s unpack some of the reasons this relationship is so dysfunctional.

The elected officials are, in effect, the “board of directors” guiding the corporate ship. But how are they selected? Well certainly not on the basis of expertise in running a city, or understanding of community development, or how to build social capital. We do it by popular vote.

The result is that we often end up with a board of directors composed of:

• Famous nay-sayers who gained a public profile fighting something. Their underlying predisposition is to say no to everything. Any change frightens them.

• Single issue people who know a lot about their issue, but little outside this area.

• Axe-grinders who have a pet project they have been pushing for the past twenty years.

• People who have gained a public profile in a completely unrelated field - e.g. sports star or media personality.

• Utopian dreamers.

• Political hacks (where party politics has become part of the equation).

• People who need reassurance that they are loved.

I am in no way implying that ALL elected officials fall into these categories. There are some who have earned their profile through genuine service to the community. But the danger of the existing structure is that we too often end up with an unqualified board of directors, some of whom are driven by deep psychological needs.

This further inflames the toxic state of the marriage.

3. Risk-adverse nature of admin

So it’s no secret that bureaucracies attract people with a certain psychological profile. They love certainty, and hate risk. And there is nothing more risky than making a decision that potentially impacts the lives of hundreds or thousands of residents. So their are some standard tactics for looking competent, without taking the risk of making a decision or actually doing anything.

• Commission another study

• Better still, have a plan to make a plan

• Organise another meeting

• Organise some community consultation.

Again, not all people working for LGAs fall into this category. But I have observed that the people who actually make things happen inside LGAs, are the staff who do not see themselves working for the organisation in two or three years time. This frees them from the fear of making the wrong decision. They’ll be gone in the near future, so if it happens a little sooner, so what? However, these people are the minority, and the culture of local government avoids risk which means looking productive without producing anything. And that drives the elected officials bananas.

“I have observed that the people who actually make things happen inside LGAs, are the staff who do not see themselves working for the organisation in two or three years time.”

4. Master planning addiction

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, cities and things were made in a much more agile and iterative way. Post the Industrial Revolution, master-planing took over the more agile approach. To design a car that could be mass produced you had to design everything in advance, right down to the last screw. This master-planning mentality crept into every aspect of our lives, including how we designed our towns and cities. This required plans with every minute detail fleshed out. We had to be able to foresee every opportunity and potential problem that lay just beyond the horizon.

So we needed lots of consultants (who had this X ray vision) and lots of community consultation. The more information we could gather, the more likely we would get the plan right.

But there’s never enough information (particularly for those addicted to certainty). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with Council staff that goes something like this: “Well we can’t finalise the street makeover plan until the cycling strategy has been completed.” You ask when that will be done and they will tell you that it can’t be finished until the engineering department decides how to solve the storm-water problem. Ask when the engineering department will have this done, and they will say the engineers are waiting for the cycling strategy and the street design to be finalised.

Master-planning only works in a relatively stable environment. In an ever-changing world (such as a city or town) it is impossible to master-plan most things because the ground is constantly changing under your feet.

*We treat the city like a giant machine that can be master planned.*

Yes, somethings have to be master-planned, like the location of a rail line. But when this mentality seeps into the way we try, for example, to revitalise a town centre it becomes a recipe for paralysis.

Master-planning feeds wonderfully into the psychological need of the admin staff (and some of the elected officials). It is a very convenient way to look like you’re taking action when you are really procrastinating making a decision or acting on that decision.

“Yes, somethings have to be master-planned, like the location of a rail line. But when this mentality seeps into the way we try, for example, to revitalise a town centre it becomes a recipe for paralysis.”

5. Shallow thinking about risk

LGAs are in the grip of some kind of group-think about risk: “Risk leads to accidents and accidents lead to law suits. Therefore it is our job to remove risk.” But this is faulty logic on two fronts.

Firstly, all risks contain a reward. Remove risk and you remove the reward - read, impoverish some section of the community. You deal with risk, not by removing it, but by asking, “how can we increase the benefits while minimising the risk?”

*Many of the things we do in the name of safety make environments less safe. We treat risk too simplistically.*

Secondly, the perception of risk causes people to act with more caution (technically called “Risk Compensation Theory”). In other words, if I’m driving my car down the street and there is a high fence between me and the pedestrians on the footpath, I will drive faster because I perceive that the city engineers have reduced the risk of a pedestrian running out in front of me. However, if a drunk 18 year old jumps the fence, I’m not in the right head space to deal with this unexpected event. Because the engineer has seduced me into driving faster by reducing perceived risk, I seriously maim or kill this person rather than cause minor injuries.

Taken to its extreme, this group-think about risk will result in removing all the branches from all the trees. It is extremely dangerous to climb out on the twigs at the top of the tree.

6. The customer model

Most LGAs have officially moved to a customer model. Residents of the town or city are treated as “customers” and the job of both arms of the LGA is to deliver a product to the customers – the best quality of life possible for the rates and taxes paid by the customer.

However, this model is sending our LGAs broke and results in social-capital bankruptcy.

In the past, towns and cities were based on a “citizen model” – each citizen makes their contribution to civic and economic life and as a result, everyone is richer than if they acted alone. It’s a kind of magic pudding where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Civic richness is not something that can be manufactured as a product that can be sold to consumers.

The customer model encourages residents to outsource their civic responsibility to the LGA. I once worked with a group of residents in Auckland, designing a traffic calming scheme for their street. Council had allocated $250K for the works. However, when I asked the residents in the street why they had spent years lobbing Council for traffic calming, they told me it was to stop the youth from doing donuts in the street at 2am. When I asked how many of these youth there were, an elderly man said, “Five, and I can tell you where every single one of them lives.” Now under the citizen model, these residents would have knocked on those five doors and negotiated a peace deal with the youth (at zero cost to the LGA). But under the customer model, they outsourced this to the LGA at a cost of $250K – which ultimately came out of their pocket. By the way, this equated to $50k per young person.

When you analyse what a LGA is spending its energy and time on, most of it is accepting responsibility for fixing problems that citizens should be fixing themselves. However, this outsourcing of civic responsibility is a two way street. By adopting a customer model, the LGA puts systems in place which dis-empower citizens and turns them into passive consumers. These passive consumers demand more and more from the magic pudding which is gradually shrinking. And if they choke on a mouthful, they do what any consumer would do – sue.

“The customer model encourages residents to outsource their civic responsibility to the LGA.”

7. Solutions-focused group think

As the magic pudding shrinks and the quality of civic life declines, residents and LGA officials start searching for silver bullets, which results in a solutions-focused group think.

Early in my career, I visited Traverse City in the USA. They had just been involved in a three year battle over a multi-story car park downtown. A group of residents had opposed the development and gained enough signatures to force a citizen referendum in which the original decision to proceed was overturned. For the three years that this all-consuming battle raged, decision-making in Traverse City was paralysed.

What went wrong? Well, downtown Traverse City was in decline. One retailer thought the solution to this was more car parking. They shared this thought with others. Soon the entire group of retailers believed this was the solution to boosting their businesses, and they began lobbying the LGA for more parking. The city officials bought into this group-think, and commissioned a study, which showed, that according to the computer modeling, there was indeed a shortage of parking. (Come on, what else was it going to say? The consultants who programmed it knew exactly what answer the city wanted.)

At no point did anyone in the city say to the businesses, “But why do you need more car parking?” If they had drilled down by asking “But Why?” enough times, they would have discovered that the real problem that the retailers were trying to solve was how to get more money in the till, not how to get more cars downtown. Somehow the businesses had made an unconscious conceptual leap that having more parking would magically increase their turnover.

Not asking this one simple question resulted in the city wasting three years of creative energy. And if they had built the multi-story car park, they would have wasted millions of dollars on a silver bullet that would not have improved the bottom line for a single business.

So much of the energy burned by LGAs is on group-think solutions to problems that have never been properly defined. In some cases I would say it is as high as 99%.

Seven simple nudges

I’m a realist. The LGA structures we have today are not likely to change. In any case, regardless of how we restructured them, they would soon fall into the same traps as I’ve outlined above. The defects are not caused by the system but rather by human psychology and cultural norms. I am a great believer that change happens through “triggers” and “nudges”, not revolutions. Nudges are achievable. Revolutions are pipe-dreams. However, nudges can trigger revolutions.

Nudge 1: Rules for the Fight Club

Hold a workshop with the elected officials and senior management where the dysfunctional nature of the marriage is discussed openly. In particular discuss the power relationship and in what ways both parties try to manipulate, cajole or bully the other. Put it all on the table. Discuss how this is impacting the kids (the residents). Discuss how the relationship could become more productive, and the rules for fighting fairer. I’d suggest using a very skilled marriage counselor to facilitate this.

Nudge 2: Reversed roles

At the start of each meeting of elected officials, the name plaques that sit in front of each official are put in a bag and shaken up. Each person then draws a name plaque and puts it in front of them. For the rest of the meeting they must step into the shoes of that person and argue as if they were that person.

Too often elected officials find themselves in an alliance of like-minded people and these alliances then get caught up in adversarial politics, which often results in lowest-common-denominator solutions. Swapping identities forces everyone to consider a multi-faceted world full of complexity and nuances. I’ve used it in conflict resolutions sessions and instead of the parties trying to grind each other down, they end up working together to find a solution that is a win-win-win for everyone.

Nudge 3: The kids hat test

Before any proposed “solution” goes past the suggestion stage, it must pass the kids hat test. This involves a minimum of six people sitting down to discuss the proposed solution. (Every action a LGA considers is a perceived solution to something – whether that’s speed bumps in a street or a stop sign.) Three people are the “solution proposers” and the other three are “inquisitive kids” (wearing a kid’s hat to get them in the role). The solution proposers explain their solution (like building a multi-story car park, or doing a makeover of the main street) and the job of the kids is to ask, “But why?” a minimum of five times. Their job is to drill down to the “base need” - what is the real problem you’re trying to solve here?

The entire group then brainstorm other ways of potentially meeting this base need. Are there other ways that may be more cost effective?

No money can be spent investigating a proposed solution until this exercise has been done and a Kid’s Hat Report attached. Budget line items that do not have this report attached are automatically removed from the decision making process.

‘So, retailers, but why do you need a parking structure?’

‘Because there is a parking shortage.’

‘But why do you see a shortage of parking as a problem?’

‘Well, the plaza on the edge of town has unlimited free parking, and we need more free parking to compete with the mall.’

‘But why do you want to compete with the mall?’

‘Well, our customer base has dwindled since the plaza opened. We need more customers.’

‘But why do you want more customers?’

‘We are going broke! We can’t feed our families.’

‘Ah! So you don’t need more parking. You need more money in your till!’

Nudge 4: No money for studies unless implementation budget attached

No money can be spent on design processes (internal or by a consultant) unless there is a transparent implementation budget attached. I’d also suggest some guidelines for this, for example, a minimum design-to-build-ratio.

Nudge 5: Ban community consultation/engagement

Community consultation is a key corner-stone of the customer model and the master-planning mentality. It should be replaced by an “informed community doing” model. (For more details see my article, “Five reasons community consultation should be banned”.)

Nudge 6: Ban risk assessments

The underlying assumption in risk assessments is that any risk identified needs to be eliminated or ring-fenced with expensive insurances. All risk assessments should be banned and replaced with risk/benefit analysis.

The goal of a risk/benefit analysis is to document both the risks and the benefits of a particular action. For example, there are risks of letting kids climb trees. But there are also huge benefits, including an increasing capacity to know their own capabilities and the skill to judge the level of risk. The key question then becomes, “How do we reduce the risks, without diminishing the benefits or killing them altogether?”

Nudge 7: Set up a Red Tape Reduction Group and move to a permissions framework

If you want to cut through some of the bureaucratic BS, then set up a Red Tape Reduction Group (a cross-department working group) and give community leaders and business leaders the name and contact details of the leader or members of that group. Tell them that the mission of this group is to reduce red tape where it is strangling social and economic life. The LGA wants to say “yes” more often and not use “no” as a default position.

Often the biggest roadblock to volunteers participating in something like a 7 Day Makeover is all the regulations around volunteers working on Council land. The LGA wants endless training, forms filled out, risk assessments, insurance, etc. But at the same time, the LGA requires almost every resident to act as a volunteer and maintain the grass verge in front of their house, using a very dangerous piece of equipment, right next to traffic. The LGA does not require these people to have any training in using mower equipment, nor do they require a traffic management plan. They have no public liability insurance, and are not compelled to wear PPE. (They can mow with no protective footwear and can mow in the blazing sun in a singlet with no sunscreen.) The moral of this story is that there is always a precedent that an LGA can use to say yes and always a precedent that allows them to say no. It all depends on the stance and culture of the organisation, and a Red Tape Reduction Group shifts that basic starting point.

Conclusion

No system of local government is perfect, because there are humans involved, with all their fears, insecurities and foibles.

In 1987 I was elected to a committee established to fight a road widening through our neighbourhood. I had never been involved in anything like this and was shocked by the amount of infighting, political maneuvering, and back-stabbing that went on among this group of volunteers. If this happens at a micro-level where people with a common cause come together, imagine how much it is magnified at all levels of government.

I have pointed out some of the inherent weaknesses in the current model of local government, weaknesses that currently bring down the entire house of cards. Attempts to reform this system, like doing a restructure, is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. What is needed is tiny nudges that are like small pebbles thrown into the pond. Some of those pebbles (like kid’s hats in all the meeting rooms, or swapping identities at the Council meetings) may seem trivial and even ridiculous - beneath our dignity.

But that’s exactly why they are so powerful. They unconsciously subvert entrenched thinking patterns. As Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Nudges can re-balance power relationships that have got out of whack. We are conditioned to look for silver bullets, like an organisation restructure, or a whole new system.

But instead I dare you to throw a tiny pebble in the pond.

Simon Nielsen 10/14/21 Simon Nielsen 10/14/21

Five Reasons Community Consultations Should Be Banned: And What’s The Alternative?

“There are five myths underpinning the concept of Community Consultation. Each one is a fatal flaw. The words “community consultation” or even “community engagement” have come to embody the five myths so strongly, in my opinion, they are irredeemable.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, suggest a new term and a completely different approach.

There are five myths underpinning the concept of Community Consultation. Each one is a fatal flaw. The words “community consultation” or even “community engagement” have come to embody the five myths so strongly, in my opinion, they are irredeemable. David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, suggests a new term and a completely different aproach.

By David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International

In this paper I will suggest a new term and a completely different approach.

The five myths (fatal flaws) are:

1. Community consultation is “democracy at work”.

2. The community knows best what it needs.

3. More talk delivers better outcomes.

4. The community should be treated as “customers”.

5. You can consult the community without having first secured an implementation budget.

Myth 1. Community consultation is “democracy at work”

After my involvement in the community fight against a road widening through our neighbourhood (1987), I was invited to be a part of numerous consultation exercises in my home town of Brisbane. I was surprised to see the same faces at every meeting. Some of these people were your classical “axe-grinders” – banging on endless about a pet project that would save the world. Others were your classical “nay-sayers” – any change to their world was bad. I was fascinated by what drove these people to spend great chunks of their life going to meetings where they walked out angrier than when they walked in. Let’s face it. The only people who attend community consultation meetings are these two groups of people, and some “newbies” who haven’t been disillusioned by the process yet. So imagine this. You live in a town of 50,000 people. You put an advertisement in the paper for a community consultation meeting. Twenty people turn up: two axe-grinders, twelve nay-sayers, and six newbies. The newbies don’t get a word in edgewise. Now explain to me how this can be even remotely construed as “democracy at work”. One rationalisation is, “We put an advertisement in the paper so everyone had the opportunity to have their say”. But the reality is that current practice is anti-democratic. It gives a few people, who have deep-seated psychological issues, a megaphone with which to shout down the rest of the population. Even if community consultation was not dominated by axe-grinders and naysayers, twenty people, not elected by their peers, cannot speak on behalf of 50,000 people.

Myth 2. The community knows best what it needs

Early in my career, I was asked by a rural city to run a community consultation meeting about the redesign of the town centre. I asked the people who attended what they’d like to see in their town centre. They all said something to the effect: “I would like to see X which I saw in Y”. I responded, “So you can only imagine your town being a pale imitation of some place else.” I then created a mental challenge for them. I asked them to imagine that their town had become so famous that 3,000 Mayors a year were coming from Europe to do a study tour of their town. What was the point-of-difference that had made them so famous? They had no idea.

But asking this series of questions was based on a series of assumptions that I soon discovered were false:

• Communities know what’s causing their “dis-ease”.

• They know how to fix this and promote vibrant health.

• And a point-of-difference can be planned in advance.

If I’m sick, I go to the doctor for a “consultation”. However, the doctor doesn’t turn to me and say, “so what’s your diagnosis?” “Consultation” means he or she asks me a lots of questions in order to help them make an accurate diagnosis. I sometimes refer to myself as a “place doctor”. It has taken thirty years experience for me to be able to look at a public space and diagnose the underlying issues that are sapping the vitality of that space. No resident can be expected to have that insight.

The second assumption, that communities know how to fix these underlying issues is also false. Asking them what they think they need only solicits a “group-think-solution” – a mythical silver bullet. In small rural towns it is probably one of the following: more car parks, a new toilet block, repave/landscape the main street, a hall-of-fame, or a giant mural. Large sections of the community will believe with religious fervour that one of these is going to breathe new life into their town. They are pinning all their hopes and dreams on this silver bullet.

The third assumption is that a point-of-difference is something that can be planned in advance. In software development, researchers discovered that clients only know about 20% of what they want from the software before development starts. They discover the other 80% during the actual development process. If the client is asked at the start of the process, “What do you want this software to deliver?” and you build what the client requests, you’ve created a piece of software that delivers only 20% of its potential. The same goes for reinventing a neighbourhood, a town, a city or a nation. Ask what people want from the process and even if you could deliver 100% of what they ask for, you will only deliver 20% of what’s possible.

As a designer, artist and sculptor I can categorically say that a point-of-difference is more likely to emerge than be planned in advance. Over-planning (over-thinking) kills all the possibilities you can’t see beyond the current horizon. Community consultation kills off a whole lot of possibilities every time it asks the community what they think they need. Especially if the conversation is dominated by axe-grinders and nay-sayers. One may even go so far as to say that talk can be dangerous as it can very easily result in group-think gaining a foothold and spreading like a virus through the community.

“A point-of-difference is far more likely to emerge, than be planned.”

Myth 3: More talk delivers better outcomes

Decision-making, at all levels of government, is dominated by a master-planning mentality. Every “i“ must be dotted and every “t” crossed before doing anything concrete. One must try and foresee all potential problems and unearth every future opportunity. Community consultation is seen as an integral part of this information gathering – a way of minimizing the risk of making a decision based on too-little information.

This information gathering requires lots of talk. Every hour talking improves the chances that you will get the final decision right – or so we are told.

To appreciate how this myth became so ingrained in public decision making we need to understand how the masterplanning approach replaced a more agile approach, and how the world is now swinging back to agile.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, a crafts-person would make an object. The final product may be disappointing (not turn out as expected) or surprise and delight. Either way, the crafts-person would learn valuable lessons, and treat this object as a prototype of the next object they made. This time they would incorporate all the lessons from the last making, and perhaps try a few variations. This process was repeated over and over again until after forty years, they were called a “master-craftsman”. Even then, everything they made was a prototype of the next object.

But all this changed with the Industrial Revolution. Toasters or cars had to be designed down to the last screw before manufacture could begin. There was no time to create 40 years of prototype after prototype before objects rolled off the end of the production line. An integral part of this master-planning approach was trying to guess what consumers wanted, now and in the future.

The way we build cities changed as well. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, cities evolved in a spontaneous, chaotic, agile fashion. People could put buildings wherever they liked, but they had a social and civic responsibility to do it in a way that contributed to the emerging magic of the public realm. Post the Industrial Revolution, we treated our towns and cities as machines that needed to be master designed. And that required a lot of talk to figure out what the inhabitants needed now, and in the future.

However, the penny has dropped in many fields (software development, product development, business) that the master-planning approach has a lot of drawbacks, particularly in a fast moving world. One the chief realisations is that if you spend three years master-planning a product, the product will probably be out of date by the time it’s delivered. There is a return to the pre-Industrial Revolution approach of treating everything as a trial, and everything as a learning experience for the next experiment.

“There is a return to the pre-Industrial Revolution approach of treating everything as a trial, and everything as a learning experience for the next experiment.”

More talk does not deliver better products. It too often results in decision-making paralysis because we never have enough information to make a decision. It’s often used as a smoke screen to make people believe something is happening when in fact nothing is happening. And as noted in the last section, it leads to group-think about solutions or why proposals won’t work.

In the work we do on public spaces we often find this group-think at work. For example, if we suggest putting loose furniture in a space, the community will respond, “Oh you can’t do that here. It wouldn’t last more than a weekend!”

I respond, “How do you know? Have you ever tried?” We encourage them to run a two-month trial to see if this community group-think has any basis in reality. The point is that too much talk is extremely dangerous. It creates its own momentum for stories that have unfortunate outcomes: high investment in a silver bullet that doesn’t work; endless talk with no action; or unwillingness to try something that may lead to a surprising outcome.

Myth 4: The community should be treated as “customers”

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, towns and cities were perceived as a “cooperative enterprise” where every citizen had a civic responsibility to help build a magical place where everyone got back more than they put in.

Post the Industrial Revolution, towns and cities were viewed as a machine delivering a higher quality of life for consumers who lived there. This machine could be optimised through forward thinking, clever design, good administration and master-planning.

In every decade since the Industrial Revolution we have moved further away from the “Citizen Model” towards a “Customer Model” where the citizens have outsourced their civic responsibility to the state or NGOs. In other words, people pay their taxes and the product they require in exchange is the best quality of life money can buy, including a strong sense of place and neighbourhood. Proof of this deep-seated change is that all levels of government have moved to the customer model as official policy.

It is this customer model that drives community consultation. “What colour would you like the toaster we are making for you? Here are the three colours you can choose from.” The problem with treating citizens as customers is that it’s impossible for a bureaucracy to create a civil society as if it were some product that can be manufactured. Towns and cities are a “cooperative enterprise” where every citizen contributes to an emerging culture and civil society. It is impossible to create this by having a central authority collect money and attempt to produce goods called: mobility, access, sense of place, wellbeing, culture, neighbourliness, and community.

Community consultation reinforces a subtle message that good citizens, “pay their taxes, vote and go to consultation meetings or better still, sit on a steering committee for a study.” It paves the way for these people to outsource their civic responsibility, and still feel like they’re a valuable member of society.

“The problem with treating citizens as customers is that it’s impossible for a bureaucracy to create a civil society as if it were some product that can be manufactured.”

Myth 5: You can consult the community without having first secured an implementation

budget

Imagine this. You hire an architect to design you a house. He asks, “What’s your budget?” You reply, “Won’t know till you design the house.” Believe it or not, but this is exactly what LGAs do over and over again when they commission studies. The consultant is never given an implementation budget. Somewhere along the line, the consultant organises some community input and asks the community what they would like.

The community does what the architect would do. Create an unaffordable wish list. The unaffordable wishes are embellished by the consultant and recorded in a glossy report.

There’s zero dollars in the current budget to implement even one of these wishes. By the time of the next budget there are more pressing needs on the budget (like commissioning three more studies and replacing the stormwater drains in the CBD). So the unaffordable wishes are literally shelved till next budget.

And the community feels cheated and used. “You asked what we wanted then ignored what we told you.” So they check out, disengage. This practice has severely eroded confidence in all levels of government, but particularly at the local level. It’s yet one more reason community consultation should be banned.

SO, WHAT’S THE ALTERNATIVE?

I hate to put a term on the “new” approach, because it will get bastardised in no time and then I will have to disown it and invent a new term. (It’s not actually a “new” approach because it is a return to the citizen model that existed pre the Industrial Revolution.) However, because language is how we freight meaning, I will call the new practice “Informed Community Doing”.

“I will call the new practice “Informed Community Doing””

I have been refining this model for over 30 years, so this is not a theoretical approach. The clearest example of this approach being used in the real world is the 7 Day Makeover, where we transform entire town centres in just seven days, and that includes all the talking. I will explain the important elements of our approach, and why.

Pillar 1: Informed doing

I see so much Misinformed Community Doing because authorities have bought into the myth that communities know what they need. The result is a lot of wasted effort on things that the community hopes will breathe new life into their town centre or neighbourhood, but which are totally ineffective.

The first step in a 7 Day Makeover is for me to do an audit on the spaces to be made over. As a place doctor, I use my stethoscope to detect what the community cannot be expected to detect. I spend some time talking to locals informally to gather further information. The goal is to get as accurate a diagnosis as possible.

On the first morning of a 7 Day Makeover, we share some of the key secrets to creating vibrant places, in laymen terms, and those most relevant to the “diagnosis”. We then take participants for a walk through the spaces to be made over and explain what is not working and why and give them some potential ways these deficits could be addressed. We are giving them the best possible information on which to decide what actions they are going to take.

Pillar 2: Permissions framework

Our very first attempt at Informed Community Doing in NZ turned into a ten year process, involving hundreds of committee meetings and negotiations with Council. In subsequent years we tried many ways to speed this up, including a 12 week process. But even this faster version would get bogged down in LGA rules and regulations and projects would blow out or never happen. Which is why we created the 7 Day Makeover.

Now it is impossible to run a 7 Day Makeover under an existing LGA regulatory framework. So we created a concept called a “permissions framework” that replaces the “regulatory framework”. (We first created this concept with the Greater Taree Council in NSW as a way of revitalising their main street.) About four weeks before a 7 Day Makeover, we give the LGA a draft What is Allowed document, and then hold a meeting with them where they can modify the I will call the new practice “Informed Community Doing” wording. Please note that this document should be no longer than one page, otherwise it becomes another bit of regulation that acts as a dead weight. This document creates a “field of play” for the community. Some typical statements in this document are: “You must leave a continuous walkway on the footpath of at least 1.8 meters”; or, “If it’s movable then it’s allowable”.

This permissions framework is a return to the Citizen Model. As stated earlier, prior to the Industrial Revolution people were allowed to put building wherever they liked but they had a civic responsibility to do this in a way that contributed to the emerging magic of the public realm. A permissions framework allows people to act as “informed citizens” rather than “passive customers”.

*The very first permissions statement developed 10 years ago for Taree, NSW, and still in operation*

“A permissions framework allows people to act as “informed citizens” rather than “passive customers”.”

Pillar 3: Resources Bank - Work with what you’ve got not what you wish you had

We refuse to work with communities where there is not a known implementation budget. It is a fraud to ask communities what they want when there is no money allocated to implement what they ask for. In fact we go one step further. We create a “Resources Bank”. Into this goes whatever money the LGA is contributing. We also run a crowd-funding campaign. We visit the Council depot to see what “junk” we can potentially up-cycle and if we are allowed to have it, we take a photo to go in the Resources Bank. We ask the community what materials, or services, they are willing to donate to the bank.

On the first day of the workshop, all these resources are listed on a wall.

We then put participants into small groups and ask them to develop a plan that makes the best use of the available resources. Note, we do not do this brainstorming in a large group because of the danger of group-think developing. Our goal is to generate the widest range of potential interventions that are possible within the available resources.

We are not interested in generating unaffordable wish-lists that will be delivered by the community-consultation fairy godmother.

“We are not interested in generating unaffordable wish-lists that will be delivered by the community consultation fairy godmother.”

Pillar 4: No drivers, no project

Each of the small groups present to the larger group the ideas they have generated on how to use the available resources most effectively. The larger group is asked what they like about the ideas in the presentation, ways these ideas could be improved, or ideas that the presentation triggered.

Then comes a critical moment. I ask, “If you only had ten minutes to give to your town centre, which of the ideas you heard today would you invest that ten minutes in?”

Then I ask, “If you are so passionate about this idea you are willing to be one of the drivers to make this idea happen, please come out the front and write the title of the idea on a sheet of paper.” We then get everyone else in the room to go and stand with the drivers of the idea they would like to be part of.

These groups are our “potential projects”. They are formed on the basis of where the energy and passion is in the room, not on what the guru (or a steering committee) thinks is the best combination of projects. No matter how promising a project, if there is no drivers, it does not happen. (Sometimes the group will decide a project needs to be done, but they lack the expertise to deliver it. So they will ask if my team is able to manage this project as a marquee project.) The underlying principle here is that this entire process is to facilitate informed community doing.

This process of going from a whole smorgasbord of ideas to having potential project teams takes around ten minutes. It avoids arguments about which projects should proceed and which shouldn’t. There’s not even any discussion about this. If there are no drivers for an idea, then the project is off the agenda, for now anyway. The entire focus is on what is possible to be done, right now with the resources available – and one of those important resources is people willing to make the idea happen. If that resource is missing, then there is no need for discussion. Note: we do not give people ten red dots to vote for their favourite projects as a way of deciding which ideas should be implemented. This shifts responsibility for implementation to some disembodied other.

Some people immediately worry that this approach leads to a piece-meal and disjointed outcome. There are three main reasons this doesn’t happen.

1. I act as “artistic director” working with all teams during the week to make sure everything works together. It is entirely possible that someone else, with the right mix of skills, could play this role.

2. We get the most artistic participants to work together in choosing a colour pallet.

3. We encourage teams to be flexible during the week and coordinate their efforts with what other teams are doing.

We usually get to this point of forming potential project teams by the end of day one, about six hours. Compare that to a traditional planning approach.

Pillar 5: Test the viability of potential projects

The second day of a 7 Day Makeover is all about testing the viability of each of the potential projects and having the potential Project Teams work out the logistics of how they will deliver their project over the next five days. Each Project Team is given a project whiteboard that helps them develop a budget and work-plan. Throughout the day there are a couple of reviews in which everyone is involved in deciding if each of the projects should continue to be developed or parked for a future time. Projects may need to be parked for a range of reasons, including budget constraints. However, this is a decision we ask the entire room to make. This step is essential to maximise the chances that projects can be delivered successfully.

Pillar 6: Don’t allow over-planning. Remain flexible

The first two days of planning is just to give us a doable starting point. We stress on the Project Teams that they should remain flexible during the remaining five days. What always amazes us is that the magic emerges from the actual doing. Ideas morph as more and more people get involved and contribute their creativity. (We usually end up with about 6-15 times more volunteers than are involved in the two days of planning.) We often face hurdles and set-backs, and each of these is treated as an opportunity to do something even more fantastic. As stated earlier, a point-ofdifference is more likely to emerge in the process of doing, than in any process of talking. The talking part is only to give you an agreed starting point, not to design the final destination.

“The magic emerges from the actual doing.”

Pillar 7: Celebrate the achievements

The Project Teams are given a great deal of autonomy in managing their own budget, volunteers and work hours. At the end of the 7 Day Makeover we have a celebration of what has been achieved. A big part of this is visiting each project and having everyone who has worked on that project come forward and get a certificate of appreciation.

The Project Team is thanked for their contribution. This reinforces to everyone what can be achieved through informed community doing.

Pillar 8: Nurture further doing

With our 7 Day Makeovers we leave behind an entire Less Talk, More Action system that helps the community keep doing mini-makeovers. We also make grants available for follow-up projects and offer two years of mentoring.

Adapting this process for different situations

The above process is how we involve the community in making over their town centre.

We have designed an entirely different process for helping retailers breathe new life into their town. We are currently making over the outdoor spaces of an aged care facility. Here the process will be different again. If we were engaged to select the route for a new rail line (god forbid), we would use a different process again.

The key questions that will determine the methodology are:

• What information does the community have which we need to make an informed decision? In the example of the rail line, while the community may not have relevant information about gradients or soil stability, they may have important information on potential social or cultural impacts if the line was put in a particular location. In this case the decision-makers need to be very clear that uncovering this information is part of the initial research and is neither community consultation or informed community doing.

• What is the capacity of the community to deliver elements of this project? Take the rail line for example. The community can’t decide the best route for the rail line, or build the rail line (engineering and logistical challenges). But what they may have the capacity to do is help rebuild a sense of community or neighbourhood where the rail line fractures these. The capacity of the aged care residents to makeover the outdoor spaces is not the same as the residents of a rural town. So what is the capacity of the aged care residents to be involved in the doing?

• How do we maximise “agile-doing” in delivering this project? Different projects require different mixes of master-planning and agile doing. For example, in a 7 Day Makeover we do some pre-planning. (In one town recently this pre-planning was quite extensive.) The first two days of the makeover is community-based planning (but not in the traditional master-planning sense). Then the next five days are heavy-duty agile doing, where the final product is allowed to emerge rather than be planned in advance. But you can’t build a rail line using this agile model – let’s put one sleeper down and see where it leads us. It requires much higher levels of master-planning. Different projects require a different mix of agile doing and “master-planning”. The makeover of the aged care facility will require more planning than we would do for a town centre. However, even when building a rail line or planning the makeover of an aged care facility, your goal is to maximise the amount of informed community doing. That may require a great deal of creativity.

“Different projects require a different mix of “master-planning” and “agile doing”.”

In conclusion...

Informed Community Doing re-engages people as citizens taking civic responsibility for creating their own social good. Different projects require a different mix of “master-planning” and “agile doing”.

The customer model treats “social good” as a commodity that authorities can deliver in exchange for cash. This requires “community consultation” to determine the shape and colour of this consumer good.

The citizen model treats “social good” as something that can only be delivered by people who work together in a “cooperative enterprise”. The quality of this social good will be determined by how well informed the community is in deciding what cooperative enterprises they should engage in.

Unfortunately, community consultation unwittingly supports the customer model, which diminishes social good rather than building it.

Informed Community Doing re-engages people as citizens taking civic responsibility for creating their own social good. It’s mantra is: “Less Talk, More Action”.

“Informed Community Doing re-engages people as citizens taking civic responsibility for creating their own social good.”

Simon Nielsen 6/17/21 Simon Nielsen 6/17/21

Tightness Of Feedbacks

Tightness of feedbacks refers to how quickly and strongly the consequences of a change in one part of the system are felt and responded to in other parts. The closer to home we experience the consequences of our choices, the more mindful we will become in our actions.

By The Empty Square

An important task today lies in seeing and understanding that which connects the splintered fragments of our world.

Can we discover the beauty – or the lack of beauty – in the connectedness of things by consciously training our awareness?

Can we find the energy to consider the invisible, but logical connections between the divided things, situations, statements, and events?

We know that there is no effect without a cause and that the part and the whole are, by necessity, inseparable. But the world has turned sufficiently chaotic as to letting us believe that what we do - for example: what we buy and consume - doesn’t matter. While the world is on fire, the market keeps reassuring us that everything is perfectly okay. Keep shopping and life will be good.

The counteraction seems to be relocalization: Local production, local economies, local solutions.

This is where tightness of feedbacks enters. It refers to how quickly and strongly the consequences of a change in one part of the system are felt and responded to in other parts. The closer to home we experience the consequences of our choices, the more mindful we will become in our actions.

Can we start mending what is broken by training our awareness and tightening the feedbacks?

Inspiration to this note comes from Morten Skriver: Skønhedens befrielse (“Liberating Beauty”) (2008) and Rob Hopkins: The Transition Handbook (2008)

Simon Nielsen 6/16/21 Simon Nielsen 6/16/21

A Holistic Place Education

”For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places” – as written by professor of sociology, E. V. Walter, in 1988. Is it still true?

”For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places” – as written by professor of sociology, E. V. Walter, in 1988. Is it still true?

By The Empty Square

“For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places”

— E. V. Walter, professor of sociology, 1988

Is Walter’s argument still true today?

Walter argues that we are so preoccupied with the technical and rational logic of space that we tend to suppress the feeling of space. The soft dimensions get lost in systems of design and management. Places tend to lose an old kind of meaning that comes from “making sense through a whole experience of perceptions, ideas, images, dramatic encounters, and stories”. It is “knowledge with its center in the life of feeling” that we are losing.

The imbalance comes from the dualistic separation of head and heart, the logical and the emotional, and it is problematic that our technical languages cannot express the holistic experience. The whole is split into geography, history, architecture, urban planning, sociology etc. and the fragmented approach leads to fragmented buildings and places.

The result is a massive loss of meaning.

Only if we learn how to work holistically with the identity of places, will we be able to build meaningful cities again.

Does a holistic place education exist? One, that teaches students how to make meaningful places based on the whole experience of perceptions, ideas, images, dramatic encounters, and stories?

* See: E. V. Walter: Placeways. A Theory of the Human Environment (University of North Carolina Press, 1988)

Simon Nielsen 6/16/21 Simon Nielsen 6/16/21

A Personal Challenge

This is an invitation to a personal challenge. The first question is: What do you most deeply, most profoundly, love in this world?

This is an invitation to a personal challenge. The first question is: What do you most deeply, most profoundly, love in this world?

By The Empty Square

This is an invitation to a personal challenge that Tim Macartney, the international speaker, inspirator, and founder of Embercombe, presents in a TEDx talk on leadership.

The challenge consists of three questions and lies in answering these as truthfully and honestly and as direct from the heart as possible. You are not intended to be able to answer right away, but to take the questions with you, giving them a thought whenever you can. And then, step by step, taking the consequences of them and aligning your actions with them.

The first question is: What do you most deeply, most profoundly, love in this world?

The second question is: What is your deepest, most profound gift? Not what you are qualified in – it’s not about your competences or CV. Gift, here, refers to an idea that today is foreign to the Western culture, but still alive among native people. It’s the idea that within every one of us, a little piece of unique genius has been placed, and it’s up to us to find it, unfold it and give it away.

The third question is: What are your deepest, most profound, responsibilities?

And then the final challenge: How can we align our answers with the way we design our communities and cities and the economic, educational, productive, social etc. systems that lie behind?

Simon Nielsen 6/15/21 Simon Nielsen 6/15/21

Building And Telling

What if we started building without drawings? What if the construction of big projects was built on the imagination and storytelling of the building owner and the interpretation and capacity of the craftsmen?

By The Empty Square

Quite an abstract thought today.

But that’s how it used to be even in the case of major public projects. The rebuilding of Piazza del Popolo in Rome by the end of the 15th century was based, not on precise drawings, but on the conversations between craftsmen, engineers, and pope Sixtus the 5th.

The pope described the buildings and the space as he imagined them; that was all, the builders had to work on. The oral instructions gave them freedom and flexibility, enabling a certain kind of relational understanding that today’s hands-off design doesn’t.

In The Craftsman, Richard Sennett claims that the separation of hand and head came along with the modern idea that buildings can be completely planned ahead. Today, 3D manipulations and simulations determine the design process, leading to buildings that in many cases lack the tactile, relational, and incomplete elements that add to the flexibility and uniqueness of a place.

Can we somehow reintegrate the wisdom of the hand and the quality of the imperfect into our buildings? Can we let building, telling, and dwelling come together again?

See Richard Sennett: The Craftsman (orig. 1997)

Simon Nielsen 6/10/21 Simon Nielsen 6/10/21

Everyday Beauty: An Interview With Katherine Ines

If we were aware of the true cost, value, and (possible) beauty of the stuff we buy, would our towns, cities, and world look any different?

If we were aware of the true cost, value, and (possible) beauty of the stuff we buy, would our towns, cities, and world look any different?

By The Empty Square

*Katherine Ines. Photo: The Empty Square*

If we were aware of the true cost, value, and (possible) beauty of the stuff we buy, would our towns, cities, and world look any different?

Meet one of the few remaining tailors in Copenhagen, Katherine Ines. She examines the potential in relearning what things are really worth.

Essential questions pop up: Does beauty hold a place in our everyday life? Why is it important to have workshops in our cities? What happens when the production of things disappears from street level?