Let me play devil's advocate.
Gregory Luce wrote:
1. In an increasingly tight and incredibly competitive arena for public dollars, doesn't it make sense to promote a more 'regional' approach to citizen participation, or at least support for neighborhoods pooling their dollars more regionally for staff, office, and other infrastrucure issues?
No, not necessarily. How big is this "region" you're talking about? Minneapolis as a city, as a region much larger than any of its numerous neighborhoods, already plans and spends far more money "regionally" than any neighborhood spends. So at the city level, we already have a more regional approach.
If you are talking bigger than the city, then you are also talking about something bigger than NRP, and you are also talking about letting the suburbs decide how we "revitalize" our neighborhoods -- something they pretty much have demonstrated they don't give a whit about.
2. Given the well-documented paucity of participation by generally disenfranchised groups (tenants, people of color), doesn't it make sense to broaden citizen participation rules to provide citizen participation dollars to, say, a city-wide Latino/a cultural or business group or even a tenant organization?
The lack of participation by so-called disenfranchised groups (I happen to think German-Americans are disenfranchised for what it's worth) has absolutely nothing to do with the "rules" of citizen participation in NRP. To participate, all you have to do is be a resident of the neighborhood, show up and be willing to work. I don't know how the rules could be made any more "open" than that. To give extra access, influence or power to a city-wide special interest group just means discimination against people who are not members of the selected special interest groups. Does my metro-wide German-American group get a seat at the table?
3. Is the 'neighborhood' unit the absolute best citizen participation unit, or are there others (particularly non-geopraphic) in addition to neighborhoods that could work toward increasing citizen participation? Who/What do we lose if we define citizen participation solely by geographic concerns?
The "neighborhood" unit is the best citizen participation unit for neighborhood issues that we have available now. Clearly not all issues are specifically neighborhood issues. Even more obvious should be the fact that every kind and size of issue will have a different ideal or "absolute best" citizen participation unit. But it is not practical to create such a myriad of units to address all the problems.
The current NPR / neighborhood as a geographic unit is far from perfect. But it's a lot better than what most citizens have available to them in most cities.
Chris Johnson - Fulton
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