From 10 Lessons in More Engaging Citizen Engagement – by Brent Toderian and Jillian Glover.
A favourite:
8. Open the Doors to City Hall – ‘Doors Open’ is a successful concept used in cities around the world, and has been growing in popularity in Canada. In each ‘Doors Open’ event, cities provide a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the most popular and well-known venues operate, giving people the chance to look and experience new levels of civic engagement.
The City of Surrey recently held its second annual Surrey Doors Open, inviting the public to explore local attractions, venues, facilities, historic landmarks, and parks with self-guided tours and free admission. Activities included an Art Walk, fire truck tours, a Ukrainian lunch, a nature scavenger hunt, the chance to observe a Sikh wedding, and more.
This would be another example of bread and circuses with no actual increase in citizen influence. See http://jaksview3.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/spreading-the-manure-far-and-wide/
This is not meaningful citizen engagement. This is a show and tell, with the “teacher”, the city, showing its ” pupils”, the citizen what the city does for them. Its like the old television show “Father Knows Best”.
There is no active exchange or dialogue here. This is how neighbourhoods get feeling disenfranchised.
Maybe, just maybe, this entices somebody into City Hall, gives them a sense of familiarity and comfort about the building and the processes that happen there, and then when there’s an issue they care about (say a Community Plan for Grandview-Woodlands), they’ll feel a little more confident about going in there and having their say. This is hardly the whole spectrum of all citizen engagement, it’s one event, that’s probably even supposed to be a bit of fun, and is just one part of the picture that includes a range of other events, web sites, and other means of exchange or dialogue, as imperfect as that picture is.
Or possibly it’s a mean-spirited conspiracy on the municipality’s part to disenfranchise neighbourhoods and stick it to the citizens, distracted by their Ukranian (symbolic, no?) lunches. yeesh