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Taking on the Public Component
By
Zachary R. Heineman
Designing Public Consensus: The Civic Theater of Community Participation for Architects, Landscape Architects, Planners, and Urban Designers
By Barbara Faga, FASLA
John Wiley & Sons, 2006
288 pages, $65
Anyone working in a place like San Francisco knows the impact an "engaged citizenry" can have on a project. Certain places are notoriously difficult, given the public review process and predictable hostility of certain residents. But projects anywhere, and at any scale, have the potential to be drawn out, if not stopped completely, unless the public is involved as a partner in the process. And, as is often demonstrated, public involvement can be an important element in both the short- and long-term success of a project.
Barbara Faga, the chair of EDAW's board of directors and a veteran of "civic theater," has written a guidebook for design professionals looking to navigate the public process. Using case studies, both her own and others, Faga extracts general advice from specific experiences, ranging from the Ground Zero redevelopment to an intermodal facility in Austell, Georgia. The motivation for the book stemmed from frustration at the lack of practical resources available when she and EDAW were working on the Wharf District Park as part of Boston's Central Artery Redevelopment (one of the case studies in the book).
For design professionals who have worked extensively in the public realm, this book will strike a number of familiar chords. Although the specifics of the process vary case by case, there are various themes and strategies that recur, both in the book and in the real world, regarding open meetings, politicians, government agencies, negotiation tactics, presentation styles, and a broad range of other questions. Much of what is discussed in the book has become intuitive for these design professionals, but for them Faga does a great job of systematically laying out the various components of the process, as well as the range of strategies that can be employed.
For those who are doing a highly public project for the first time, or perhaps extending beyond their past experience, the book provides a strong starting point and an invaluable reference. Tips like engaging the media as a collaborator and contributor, rather than allowing them to be just critics, are straightforward, but essential. The appendices at the end provide summaries of what the book conveys chapter by chapter, giving readers checklists and charts that will ensure that important angles into the process are not missed.
Each chapter has a standard format that provides overall unity: first, the basic data of a specific case, including a list of key players; next, background information, including perspective on the past circumstances; and finally, analysis of the case as well as conclusions pulled from it (all of which is interspersed with indented quotations from relevant critics, which keep the book from reading too much like a standard text). Each chapter also concludes with a timeline indicating the major project milestones, giving a sense of how the length of the process can vary significantly depending on the tactics used.
Faga leads off the book with chapters on Ground Zero and Boston's Central Artery, two surprisingly unique projects for a book that is trying to provide prototypical examples for a wide audience of design professionals. However, the chapters soon jump back into more transferable projects that pull out various themes from the process. These examples include discrete projects by corporations, institutions, and developers, as well as city-wide rezoning and redevelopment initiatives. All of the examples have a significant civic component; not included are residential projects requiring zoning variance input from neighbors, for example.
Many have questioned the validity of the "public process" as it typically exists: a few vocal individuals try to steer, or in some cases hijack, a project toward their individual ends, while the promoters attempt to hunker down and diffuse resistance. Faga maintains overall neutrality on the nature of the public process, instead taking the attitude that it exists whether design professionals like it or not. They can take a range of views, from seeing the public as a nuisance that must be dealt with to treating the public as a useful partner. The public process can be a complete waste of time, or it can inform a successful design, and Faga believes that, given the increasing tendency of municipalities to require a public process, it is better to shoot for the latter. As she puts it, "It's entirely possible to conduct months of public process from a defensive crouch. But experience proves that it's much more effective to initiate a proactive process to involve the public. That's not to say it's easy, just that it works better and produces better results in the long run."
Faga accepts the existence of NIMBYs, in addition to the more extreme BANANAs (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone), and the even more extreme NOPEs (not on planet earth). Her suggestion in dealing with these types is to engage them when possible, and ignore them if necessary: "Naysayers will always be a very tough sell, and sometimes it may be better to go around them. But just as we'll always find opponents, it is always possible to find supporters. In some cases, their support is obvious, but in others we have to work harder to discover the key issues and incentives." Instead of allowing the process to compromise designs, managing the public component from the beginning can ensure that a design is truly the result of broad input, as opposed to the result of the views of a given (and often self-interested) few. As Faga profoundly notes, "The public isn't just the people who show up for meetings."
Although the book is targeted at the design professionals, citizens who regularly engage in the process would benefit from reading it as well, particularly sections like "Missed Opportunities," which outlines how "the public" can lose out when it is unwilling to compromise. As Faga points out, the church and community center in Clarkdale, Georgia, are still boarded up and abandoned, even though the Norfolk Southern railroad, which eventually was able to build its intermodal facility, had at one point offered to fund the church's renovation. Often, projects that are initially proposed still happen, but without the benefit of certain concessions that could have been achieved--instead, the money eventually went toward litigation and a more combative public process.
The ultimate goal of the public process is consensus, and the purpose of the book, as the title implies, is to suggest how design professionals can guide the process in that direction. As Faga observes, "The important point to remember is that 'the public' is an aggregate term for a multitude of individuals. Although our first contact with the public may be in a large auditorium, we as professionals need to have a good idea of who is there and why." After reading Designing Public Consensus, design professionals will be well-positioned to tackle projects with significant public components; however, the real education will come through hands-on engagement with the process itself.
Zachary R. Heineman is a consultant with Public Architecture, a San Francisco-based nonprofit focused on improving the built environment.
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