• When I started paying attention in the mid-1970s, downtowns were at their lowest point. With the rise of the automobile, families had started moving away from downtowns in the 1920s, followed by retail in the 1950s and offices in the 1960s.
• By the 1970s, what was left in many downtowns was government, the courts, law offices, a few office towers, and a handful of once-grand churches struggling to hold on to their congregations. Some had a historic theater, a civic center, or a stadium that drew crowds a few nights a week. But main streets were pockmarked with empty storefronts, and on most evenings the sidewalks were deserted.
• It wasn’t until the 1990s that downtowns found the keys to success: adaptive reuse of old buildings, housing, wider sidewalks, streetscaping, transit, density, waterfront access, mixed uses, business improvement districts, sidewalk dining, activities and concerts, and a dozen other New Urbanist-inspired strategies.
• Today, downtowns are being revived everywhere in Georgia, from Savannah to Columbus, Augusta to Atlanta. And in new cities like Sandy Springs and Johns Creek, downtowns are being created where none existed before.

The comeback of downtowns isn’t complete but the goal line is in sight. So it’s time to consider: Where will the next great urban revival take place? My guess: in neighborhoods.

You can see neighborhood revival in some cities. In Atlanta, the Beltline is fueling a rush of development into nearby neighborhoods. In other cities, neighborhoods with historic homes and traditional street grids attract outsiders. As a result, you might think cities’ greatest problem is gentrification.

Gentrification is a serious issue, but decay and abandonment are even greater problems for most cities. So how do we turn around declining places and do so in ways that include those living there now?

It gets complicated because, when it comes to reversing neighborhood decline, we’re in the same place as downtowns in the 1970s. We don’t have a playbook. Parts of the downtown playbook might work in some neighborhoods: walkability, mixed uses, transit, and so on. But much of it won’t.

Even more complicating, we had help from big commercial interests in downtowns. We won’t have their help in neighborhoods. And taxpayers will be even less supportive of spending money in other people’s neighborhoods than they were of investing in downtowns. After all, downtowns are used by everyone. Neighborhoods are mostly for their residents.

So whom do we turn to in reviving neighborhoods? Who will write the playbook of neighborhood revitalization? And where do we get started?

My suggestion: Begin with the only genuine asset that neighborhoods have, their residents. Get them involved and organized, help them to learn about positive neighborhood change, then let them share in decision making and provide some of the effort. In other words, create partners so that the city government is no longer doing things FOR neighborhoods, but doing things WITH neighborhoods.

Where will these partners come from? From strong, representative neighborhood associations, along with crime-watch groups, friends of neighborhood parks, community-garden groups, PTAs, small-business associations. Really, any group focused on making a neighborhood—or even a single block—better.

In some neighborhoods, such groups do not exist. That’s why city governments from Riverside, Calif. to Longmont, Colo., Phoenix to Philadelphia are helping residents organize them. There’s no reason we couldn’t do the same in Georgia.

But for this to work, city leaders must practice restraint. In the case of neighborhoods, a wise approach is to help residents organize, learn, discuss, and come to consensus on a short list of achievable projects before the government makes its commitments. Oh, and be sure the neighbors contribute something to the effort, even if it’s just working alongside city crews or offering the proceeds from a bake sale.

After all, groups that have helped scrub graffiti from buildings, sold cakes to turn a vacant lot into a community garden, or worked with police to shut down a drug house won’t let the graffiti come back, the garden fall into disuse, or the drug dealers return. Not without a fight. And that is what cities need if we’re going to turn around troubled neighborhoods: committed, effective partners willing to fight for the places they live.

A version of this posting appeared on the Georgia Municipal Association website.

The Bridge Center will be a place for people suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, and, in particular, an alternative to police and EMTs taking them to jail or an emergency room. This “third option,” as advocates like to call it, should bring a cascade of benefits: relieving overcrowding at emergency rooms and the county jail while dealing with the region’s addiction and mental illness issues more humanely and productively.

It will even be easier for the cops. Processing a prisoner at the county jail can take an hour’s time or more; waiting at an emergency room can take even longer. The Bridge Center’s aim: Complete the handoff in 15 minutes. And did I mention that it will save money? One study estimated that the Bridge Center will save up to $55 million in its first decade over incarceration or emergency room treatment. Little wonder then that nearly every public official, from the mayor to the county coroner, supported it.

But it’s also an example of how hard such things can be. The project began five years ago when a group of law enforcement officials, mental-health advocates, public-health experts, judicial-system leaders, and elected officials met to study Baton Rouge’s problems and identify solutions. Experts from around the country were brought in. There were group visits to a center in San Antonio, Texas, that became the Bridge Center’s model.

A clinical-design team outlined a series of services the Bridge Center could offer and how they could work together. A study suggested how the center might be funded. A nonprofit board was assembled that included the district attorney, the sheriff, mental-health care advocates, physicians, and other stakeholders.

With this mountain of testimonials, documentation, near-unanimous political support, heartrending stories of loved ones lost in the jail, and favorable news coverage, supporters asked voters in December 2016 for a modest tax increase to get the center started. They said no. It took two more years and a massive citizen-engagement effort to get a different result. Last December, voters in East Baton Rouge Parish, where Baton Rouge is located, finally said yes to a 1.5-mil increase in property taxes. Looking back, local officials are convinced the Bridge Center was worth the effort. “It was absolutely a step forward,” says Mayor Sharon Weston Broome.

Then again, local government leaders could afford to be patient with the slow pace. They have an ally, an organization that managed the Bridge Center proposal from first meeting through months of research and two referendums and will stick with it through ribbon-cutting: the Baton Rouge Area Foundation (BRAF), a community foundation that has evolved into a kind of research and development center for civic progress. BRAF’s fingerprints are on numerous projects, from a plan for downtown Baton Rouge to a nature center that takes visitors into a Louisiana swamp. It is trying to launch passenger rail service from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. And this is just a partial list.

By managing so many civic projects, BRAF applies the lessons of one initiative to the next. (One lesson: Don’t take referendums for granted.) Along the way, it has gained a reputation for getting things done, which opens even more doors. As foundation President John Davies says, “When the Baton Rouge Area Foundation asks people to come to a meeting, they will usually come.” And these advantages grow over time. While elected leaders come and go, BRAF Executive Vice President John Spain notes, “we are consistently here.”

Mayor Broome is a fan. “We are extremely fortunate to have a strong foundation like BRAF in our community,” she says. Still, she’s careful to add that the foundation doesn’t dictate to local government; it collaborates. As she sees it, the city and the foundation are “co-creators” of civic progress.

I’ve seen other organizations play this R&D role in a community, at least for a while. Typically, it is a business group such as a chamber of commerce. Occasionally, a university will step up. But most communities have no organized way of learning how civic progress works. They depend on extraordinary leaders (some elected, most not) to figure things out. And here’s the problem with that: In a lifetime, an extraordinary leader may take on one or two big civic projects before drifting out of civic work. When she leaves, her knowledge, skills, and relationships leave with her.

So you may want to ask: How does my community pass civic knowledge from one leader to the next? How do leaders build relationships? How do good ideas find funding? How do they survive disappointments?

If there isn’t an organization or at least a process for learning from successful projects and storing civic knowledge, good ideas may come like rain striking parched ground. They make a splash, raise hopes and then evaporate. Is it time to build a reservoir?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Charley Lhasa licensed under Creative Commons

How successful has BNMC been? Matt Enstice, its president and CEO, recites the numbers off the top of his head: from 4.5 million square feet in 2002 to 9 million today; from 7,500 employees to 16,000; from five institutions to nine anchor institutions plus 150 nonprofits and companies. Fueling all this has been $1.4 billion in private and public investment.

So when Enstice and others began talking about the campus idea in 1999, everyone could see its merits, right? Well, no. The five original institutions, which included a hospital, a cancer research and treatment center, a university, an independent research institute, and a large medical practice, didn’t exactly oppose the idea but weren’t convinced it would work, either.

“It took a huge amount of volunteer time,” to get the medical campus idea off the ground, said one of the founders, Tom Beecher, an attorney and veteran civic leader. Assurances were made to the institutions: This would not be a governance organization and would not replace existing boards. Skeptical neighborhood organizations had to be convinced that these institutions would welcome their ideas. Foundations and political interests had to be persuaded.

And then there was the sheer weight of cynicism. You see, the idea of a medical campus in Buffalo wasn’t a new one in 1999. It had been tried before. Several times. At one point Enstice gathered all the failed plans. “I had a stack of plans up to my waist,” he remembers, “and I’m six feet tall.”

So how did Enstice, Beecher, then-Mayor Anthony Masiello, and consultant Richard Reinhard turn the idea of a collaborative, entrepreneurial medical campus from repeated failure to success?

They did it the way great civic leaders always do these things: They saw the way forward, creating not just a plan but a strategy. That’s a critical distinction. Lots of people, it seems, are good at creating plans, but it’s a rare leader who knows how to move from plan to reality.

This was the case in Buffalo in the 1990s, where many could see the city’s needs. (A big one: What could replace our fading manufacturing economy?) Some could even see solutions. (How about building around one of our bright spots, the city’s medical and biosciences economy . . . perhaps by centering it in a campus?)

But only an experienced and respected leader could see how to put the pieces together by assembling a team of planners, advocates, and strategists, anticipating the objections they would face, shaping the arguments, finding money for starting the effort, identifying early wins, and building momentum.

Fortunately, Buffalo had such a leader in Mayor Masiello. His talents lay in three areas: He had relationships with the right people, he knew how government worked and what it could do, and he was a natural cheerleader.  He also had a good sense of timing. He recognized that, in 1999, there were changes at the top of the medical community, so there was a little more openness to trying something new.

His first step was probably the most important one. Masiello picked the right people for this project. Beecher had deep relationships in the philanthropic and health care communities (he had chaired one of the hospital boards). Enstice and Reinhard, who had been Masiello’s chief of staff, were natural organizers with a deep understanding of communities. And Masiello was comfortable leading from behind, as cheerleader, early funder, and remover of political obstacles.

Along the way these four made smart tactical choices. Example: How they invited people into the planning effort. Their rule: You could participate only if you brought money, which they called “skin in the game.” This built commitment to the project and cleared out the time-wasters and political hangers-on who had bogged down earlier efforts. Another example: When they created the BNMC board, they suggested each of the large institutions have two representatives, one of whom must be the institution’s chair. Their thinking: While the CEO would be focused on the institution, the chair would have a longer, broader view of the city’s wellbeing. Again, it built commitment to the idea of a collaborative campus.

There were a half-dozen other things the team did well, from finding and exploiting early “wins” to involving the neighborhoods in exactly the right way. Knowing that Buffalo was, as Masiello puts it, a “seeing-is-believing town,” they led leadership tours of successful medical campuses around the country.

But none of this would have been possible without the decisions made early on by Mayor Masiello: When is the right time to get started? Who are the right people to lead this effort? What obstacles will they face? And what can I do to help them succeed?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo of the medical campus and downtown Buffalo, courtesy of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

And, then, of course, there was crime. In 1981, police recorded 781 robberies in Central Park, but that was surely only a fraction of what took place there. Many victims did not bother to report crimes. Even the cops who patrolled the park did so only in the safety of two-officer cars.

If this is still your image of Central Park, then you owe it a visit. The 840-acre park, whose first section opened to the public in 1858, has been returned to its original beauty. People are using it in record numbers (there were 43 million visitors last year), but no longer abusing it. The trails are inviting and the grass is lush and green again. And as one who has walked across it recently, I can report it is as safe as any place in the city.

So how did this great turnaround happen? There were many factors, but the most important was that New York found a way of managing public spaces through shared responsibility. Founded in 1980, the Central Park Conservancy was the first nonprofit to take the lead in restoring and managing a major city-owned park. Since then, scores of similar organizations have sprung up around the country, from the Balboa Park Conservancy in San Diego to the Piedmont Park Conservancy in Atlanta.

If you’re thinking of starting a nonprofit like this in your city, I have good news. The founder of the Central Park Conservancy, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, recently published a memoir, “Saving Central Park,” that will take you inside the Conservancy’s amazing success. You’ll learn Rogers’ “three Ps”: “patience, passion, persistence.” You’ll discover the value of a vision. In her case, it was a desire to return the park to its 19^th-century design. And you’ll learn why a detailed plan of restoration is important for guiding staff and raising money. (It gave the Conservancy, Rogers explains, “the equivalent of a donor shopping list.”)

These are valuable things to know if you’re starting such a group. But I’d like to turn things around and ask what local-government officials could learn from the Central Park experience. If a group of citizens wanted to form a group to restore a park in your city, what should a smart mayor do? 

The first thing is to recognize what nonprofits are good at and where they are weak. Their strengths are their focus, inventiveness, and ability to raise money and muster volunteers. 

And weaknesses? They’re not good at managing public perceptions. At one point or another, it seems, the Central Park Conservancy angered nearly every group claiming an interest in the park, from birdwatchers to tennis players. And when it did, it was vulnerable to the “who appointed you?” charge. Lesson: A smart mayor will coach nonprofits on politics and occasionally bail them out of controversies.

Not surprisingly, in the case of Central Park’s renaissance one group with a high level of suspicion was city parks employees. Had the Central Park Conservancy not started when it did, as the city was still on the edge of bankruptcy, it is hard to imagine that the parks department would have ever welcomed the nonprofit’s help. Lesson: A smart mayor will spend time counseling city employees on the value of strong outside partners, because all they will see at first are threats.

Finally, a smart mayor will be patient because strong nonprofits aren’t born that way. They become strong over time, as they accomplish things, learn from their mistakes, recruit a strong board and staff, and find their vision and voice.

So a smart mayor will give a fledgling conservancy some space to grow. The Central Park Conservancy worked for 17 years with nothing more than a handshake agreement with three mayors. Only in 1997 did the city feel confident enough to turn the keys of the park over to its staff. Today, every worker in Central Park, including city employees and Conservancy staff, reports to the Central Park administrator, who happens to be the president of the Conservancy. (Important to note: The Conservancy also supplies three-quarters of the park’s budget.)

That level of competence, public trust, and institutional strength isn’t built overnight. And a smart mayor doesn’t just give power away. But when she finds the right partners, she’ll trade power for results.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by gigi_nyc licensed under Creative Commons.

That’s because the void left by the loss of independent, professional reporters will be filled by far less reliable sources of news and other information: rumor, gossip and particularly social media, which so often are dominated by angry or frightened people with little interest in facts. And this will be much, much worse.

This isn’t a warning about the future. It’s happening now as newspapers reduce coverage or simply close up shop, so that local governments that were once covered daily are left in silence. The situation is so dire in New Jersey that the state legislature recently put up $5 million to encourage somebody, anybody, to start covering these “news deserts.”

But assuming no one starts a professional news organization in your community, what can a local government do to connect with its citizens in a post-newspaper world?

I put this question to a former mayor of a city known for its tight bond with citizens. Decatur is a close-in suburb of Atlanta that’s beloved by urbanists for its walkable, transit-oriented downtown and pleasant neighborhoods. It has a well-run local government and was recently named an All-America City by the National Civic League.

Call a meeting in Decatur and the citizens will turn out. I know this because I was involved in a planning effort there in 2010 that began with a large-scale citizen engagement effort. Hundreds of people participated in long meetings about what the city could be. Many of their ideas are being realized today.

Not that you would know any of this if you lived elsewhere in the Atlanta area. That’s because the daily newspapers stopped covering Decatur’s city commission meetings long ago. The only time reporters show up at Decatur City Hall today is when something bad happens, which is blessedly infrequent.

So how has Decatur maintained such a tight bond with its citizens in a post-newspaper era? That’s what I wanted to know from Bill Floyd, who was a city commissioner for 22 years and mayor for most of that time.

I started by asking about a colorful monthly newsletter called Decatur Focus that the city mails to every household. Was this the way Decatur kept citizens informed, basically by starting its own publication?

Well, Floyd said in his polite way, Decatur Focus was useful for communicating the city’s plans. “You have to stay in touch with people,” he said. And he was amazed by how many people read the newsletter and commented on it.

But, no, it wasn’t the newsletter alone. In fact, Floyd went on, there is no single way cities can communicate in a social media world. Nor would a single communicator be effective, even one at city hall. Rather, he said, you need an army of communicators in the social media, most of them residents. And Decatur has built just such an army through its endless citizen-engagement efforts.

The bedrocks are Decatur 101 and the Citizens Police Academy. Decatur 101 is what it sounds like, two-hour classes on how the city works, delivered over a seven-week period. Other cities have programs like this; this one is simply done better. Started in 2000, Decatur 101 became so popular that in 2006 the city began running two classes, with morning and evening sessions. There’s a waiting list of citizens who want a spot. Later, Decatur 101 inspired the Citizens Police Academy, a 10-week course on the local police and criminal-justice systems. (There’s even a Junior Police Academy for 11-to-14-year-olds.)

The result of these and other city programs, Floyd said, is that there are hundreds of citizens who know how to get information from the city. So, if a rumor starts on a neighborhood website about, say, car break-ins, or if someone spreads falsehoods about a rezoning case, a citizen who has been through Decatur 101 or the Police Academy is bound to see it, call a city official and have the facts in short order. “And when somebody says, ‘Here’s what the city says,’ it just stops the rumors cold,” Floyd added.

Decatur did not create its citizen-engagement programs in response to social media. There were no social media in 2000. It started them because it believed that informed, involved citizens made it a better place. That the city discovered a way to thrive in a post-newspaper world was a happy, unintended benefit. Wouldn’t accomplishing the same thing be good news for your community?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Felix63 licensed under Creative Commons.

In his 31 years in office, Charleston, S.C. Mayor Joseph Riley had an even subtler impact on his city. Yes, there were big things he facilitated—the launching of the Spoleto arts festival, for one—but Riley’s true legacy is in the fabric of the city, the way streets were tended, buildings cared for, and parks placed. Under Riley’s long watch, Charleston became a national treasure.

Other longtime mayors have had that kind of impact on cities. Boston’s late mayor, Thomas Menino, once declared that “visionaries don’t get things done” and denied that he had a vision for his city. He preferred the term “urban mechanic.” But Menino’s steady tinkering with services and amenities made Boston gleam as never before.

So, yes, we need steady, incremental change. But, with apologies to Mayor Menino, sometimes we also need great leaps, the kind of visionary projects he disdained. This is especially so in cities that are depressed or dispirited, that need a change of direction or attitude.

So what is a great project? It can be anything that signals a new direction: a stylish convention center, a 21st century transit system, a signature downtown park, a beautiful riverwalk, an exciting arts center. One mayor described these things as “man on the moon” projects–efforts that are bold, visible, a clear break from the past, and undeniably successful.

I’ve studied great projects for years, tracing how they came to be, who supported them and at what point, the obstacles they faced and overcame, and why they ultimately succeeded. And I’ve noticed some common elements among these otherwise very different undertakings. Here are seven:

1. Most great projects start outside city hall. That is, they begin with a citizens group or nonprofit that brings its idea to city hall. Smart elected officials aren’t threatened by these outside ideas; they welcome them.
2. They depend on collaborations to succeed. This may be why so many successful projects start outside city hall. By the time the government is involved, partners are already in place.
3. There’s something in the project that resonates with the public, even if it isn’t apparent why. This is why elected officials should ask those advancing a big project to take their idea to the public before asking for city hall’s support. After all, who knew New York needed a linear park 30 feet above street level before the organizers of the High Line project created a demand for it?
4. The turning point is when a leader sees the way forward. This is where political leadership becomes crucial. A great project can grow organically but only to a point. For the project to succeed, someone in power has to figure out how to overcome its obstacles and structure the project for success. This can involve a small group, but in most cases it’s the work of a single experienced leader.
5. In the structure that emerges, the city’s role remains limited. Average leaders seize control of projects, but great ones are comfortable sharing the wheel. That’s because they know that, if you lose the collaboration, you lose the energy, creativity, and resources that partnerships bring.
6. As the project advances, other interests will support the project for reasons that are wholly unrelated to yours. This doesn’t mean the project has lost focus. It’s usually a result of the excitement the project is generating. So take this as a sign of success.
7. When the project is completed, a whole new set of challenges will present themselves, and smart leaders will anticipate them as well. Nothing is sadder than yesterday’s great project that has fallen on hard times (say, New York’s Central Park in the 1970s). The time to think about long-term support is before the project is finished. Here again, collaboration is the key. After all, mayors come and go, and their interest in parks may wax and wane, but the Central Park Conservancy remains focused—and is here to stay.

Can a leader be both an incrementalist and a visionary? Well, yes, but it may be the wrong question to ask. A better question is, what does your city need at this time—a great project or steady progress? If the wind is at your city’s back, incremental change may be all it needs. But if the wind shifts, you may need something big and bold. When that happens, keep an eye out for ideas from the outside that arrive with a few good habits.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by M.V. Jantzen licensed under Creative Commons.

But what about the first? How does a government know the right things to do? And what can you do if a government loses its way?

It isn’t a hypothetical question. I’ve seen governments that were lost. Many cities staggered through the 1960s and 1970s, attempting one half-hearted solution after another as their middle classes fled, downtowns declined, and businesses moved to the suburbs. It took decades to find a set of strategies for turning things around.

And today, it seems to me, it is states that are most at risk, due not so much to overwhelming problems as to divide-and-conquer politics and ideology. We’ve seen it recently in places like Kansas, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, where narrowly elected legislative majorities rammed through laws punishing labor unions or gay citizens, recklessly outsourcing public services, or cutting taxes to the point that education funding was in jeopardy.

I’ve detailed elsewhere why some states have lost their way. But a more interesting question is, what can we do now? How do you put a government back on track once its elected officials have jumped the track?

My answer: Take a page from what local governments learned about turning to the citizens. Starting in the 1980s, some cities started convening residents in open-ended discussions about what they needed and wanted, using a process known as “visioning.”

It was based on two principles. First, you ask citizens things they know from their own experiences, such as the kind of city or neighborhood they want to live in. Second, you let them talk about these things first in small groups, and then report out their ideas. The process tends to refine the ideas and ground them in reality.

Out of this process came demands for many of the things that make cities work today: walkable neighborhoods, lively downtowns, new investments in parks and trails, greater collaboration between schools and local government, transit improvements, and bike lanes. In recent years, these conversations have turned up a new concern, that urban success is depriving cities of the human diversity that fuels them.

Could such conversations be held across an entire state? And if so, who should hold them? State legislatures would hardly be the ones to ask citizens how to fix the problems they’ve played such a large role in creating.

The answer to the first question is yes, there’s no reason we can’t scale visioning to the size of a state. As for the second question, I would like to nominate a surprising convener: state political parties.

My reason is simple. Bad politics are at the heart of what ails state governments today. And the way to fix bad politics is with good politics. If one party (probably the minority party) listens to citizens in a systematic way, reports honestly what they say, and builds its legislative agenda around those desires, it will change politics for the better . . . and possibly make a majority out of the minority party. Warning: Running a dishonest visioning process, one in which you stack the meetings with partisans or report only the ideas you like, is worse than running no process at all. My advice: Trust the process.

But trust it to do what? What is it that citizens are likely to say in these meetings? Well, no one can know for sure until the meetings are held, but based on my experience at the local level, they’ll ask for things that can make their lives and communities better. Sensible things like better public schools, greater access to vocational and higher education, more transportation options, help with economic development, and amenities that might help their cities or towns hold on to their young people. For the most part, they won’t demand things that punish other citizens, satisfy extremist groups, or reward special interests.

In this way, citizens can help focus states once more on their serious work in human development, economic development, and infrastructure. This won’t thrill the ideologues. But it’ll delight the citizens.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Josh Graciano licensed under Creative Commons.

But increasingly I’ve found myself worrying about state governments—and, in particular, their legislatures—because something troubling is happening there. The immediate problem is that we are seeing a wave of “preemption” legislation, laws aimed at forbidding cities from doing things state legislators don’t like.

Now, I am not opposed to all preemptions. If local governments habitually pass ordinances discriminating against minority groups, rewarding cronies, or favoring one form of real estate development over another, I think state governments ought to step in. (The courts usually do a good job of stopping isolated problems.) I also think state governments have a role in preventing cities, counties, school districts, and authorities from spending themselves into insolvency.

But this wave of preemptions has nothing to do with bias, corruption, favoritism, or profligacy. It’s about forbidding local governments from doing things that legislators oppose for political reasons—things like ordinances protecting gay citizens, enacting minimum wages, taxing sugary sodas, restricting fracking, or regulating the use of plastic shopping bags. The Texas legislature even considered several bills limiting cities’ ability to preserve their tree canopies.

You may or may not agree with these local decisions. But I see no reason for one level of government imposing its political judgments on another’s. Especially when the preempting government is the more distant one.

Still, if this were just about heavy-handed legislatures, I wouldn’t be as concerned as I am. We’ve had overbearing legislatures before. It’s how and why legislators are coming to these judgments that is new and ominous.

Many of the preemptions are driven by out-of-state corporations that don’t want to deal with these issues city by city. Having a state legislature ban all cities from taxing soft drinks, regulating plastic shopping bags, or imposing rules on Uber and Lyft saves lobbyists from fighting battles in dozens of city halls.

So the corporate interests are clear. Selfish, lazy, and damaging to good government, but clear.

But why would a legislature go along with these things? Why would legislators run roughshod over a sizable portion of their voters and pick a fight with a formidable group of local elected officials?

Well, in part because they can. In most cases, legislatures can extend or withdraw home rule as they wish. And in part because the benefits of doing so (contributions from out-of-state corporations) outweigh the risks (blowback from citizens, mayors, and the media). Again, the interests are clear. Venal but clear.

O.K., but why now? Why are we seeing this wave of special-interest preemptions today and not 20 years ago? And how are legislatures getting away with it? Three reasons, I think.

First is the decline of the mainstream news media, which kept a watchful eye on state legislatures in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. There simply aren’t as many reporters in statehouses today as 20 years ago. So when legislatures act in ways that benefit the few at the expense of the many, there’s a good chance no one will notice.

Second, we’ve seen the rise of organizations that marry ideology with self-interest and are aimed specifically at influencing legislatures. The most obvious is the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, the right-wing organization behind many of the preemption measures and a lot of other bad ideas that have spread from state to state. (For a glimpse of how ALEC works, read this New York Times editorial.) ALEC has little-brother organizations in nearly every state now, right-wing “think tanks” supported by big corporations and ideologists, churning out dubious research and “model legislation.” (Who are the people in your city writing op-ed articles that call public transit a boondoggle and promote private-school vouchers? It’s likely someone on the payroll of one of these state-level mini-ALECs .)

Finally, some state politicians have learned to use distraction and division as a strategy. That is, they use emotional but symbolic issues (in the 1990s these were called “wedge issues”) to create smokescreens for their real interest, which is passing laws that few would support—if they knew about them.

This explains the bathroom bills, which are unadulterated acts of demagoguery. You probably remember the one in North Carolina that set off a national firestorm of protests and boycotts, resulting in the legislature’s retreat. Surely, given that experience, no other state would go down the same road, right? On the contrary. Similar bills have been introduced (and passed) in other states.

Why? Because, in truth, the North Carolina bill accomplished what it set out to do: It divided voters over symbolism while distracting them from issues of substance. The odds of a North Carolinian sharing a public restroom with a transgender person were small to begin with. The chances that any harm would come if he did were . . . zero. And yet for a year this became the dominant political issue in North Carolina—more discussed than education, transportation, water, economic development, the environment, or any other issue that might actually affect the state’s citizens.

Over the years, ALEC and its allies have gotten good at driving wedges and laying down smokescreens with constitutional amendments forbidding gay marriage, crazy concealed-carry laws (and now, laws permitting silencers!), so-called religious liberty laws, elaborate voter-suppression efforts, and other legislation aimed at riling half the citizens of a state while rallying the other half. This is politics at its worst: distracting, destructive, and dangerous. And unless we figure a way to stop the demagoguery, things will grow only worse.

But how could we do that? I have a suggestion: Let a political party begin listening to the citizens. Not in a metaphorical sense, but literally. Start holding meetings around the state asking citizens what they need and want.

In doing so, we will quickly see that, given an opportunity to think about things, citizens aren’t interested in wedge issues; they’re interested in “web issues” (to use a Bill Clinton phrase). That is, issues that nearly everyone agrees are important, that unite us rather than divide us.

I’ve seen it over and over in years of citizen engagement work at the local level. With space to think about what they truly need and want, citizens don’t ask for voter-suppression laws, handgun silencers, privatized education, or the right to chop down trees. They ask for better public schools, more transportation options, new forms of economic development, greater access to broadband, and more ways of keeping young people in cities, towns, and rural areas.

But hold on. Meetings convened by a political party? Held across an entire state? Open to any citizen? Could anything good come from such an effort?

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is . . . well, let me explain.

Why engaging citizens is right for today. The most obvious reason is because politics are so broken in our states. We need something to shock legislators back into focusing on what their citizens need and want, and not what out-of-state corporations and wealthy ideologues are willing to pay for.

And there is nothing more convincing to a politician than hearing citizen after citizen, from one end of the state to the other, asking for the same basic things from their government. Not in an angry protest or online petition. Not in a town-hall screaming match. But in calm, neutral discussions in small-town church basements, suburban school cafeterias, and neighborhood libraries.

Can it be done? And can it be done across an entire state? Yes. And yes. We do it at the local level all the time, so we don’t lack experience in holding civil, meaningful discussions about public policy or the ability to make sense of what the citizens are telling us. We lack a motivated sponsor. (If you’re interested in how to create civil conversations, start with this, then read this, then this. Oh, and know that we’ve held inclusive, polite, forward-looking, communitywide conversations for a long time . . . at least since the 1940s.)

O.K., but could we hold these discussions across an entire state? There’s no reason to think not. I’ve been involved over the years in visioning projects that convened a dozen or more meetings in different parts of a city or county. A state is larger, of course, but the principles are the same: to hear the voices of citizens, go to different parts of the state and ask essentially the same questions. (Here are some good ones: If your community could be everything you’d like it to be, what would it look like and how would it work? What would need to change? What needs to stay the same? Then ask: If the state government could help your community achieve these things, what are the most important two or three things it should do?)

But why ask a state political party to do it? Because it’s the surest way of repairing our broken state politics. Nothing focuses attention like serious competition. If one political party is convening meetings across the state asking citizens what they need while the other is cozying with special interests and engaging in demagoguery, citizens will notice. And eventually so will the leaders of both parties.

But why a political party? Why not a candidate? This gets us a little deeper in the thicket of state politics. State political parties are pretty feeble organizations. That’s because most of them don’t do much but carry out light-housekeeping election responsibilities and wait for candidates to emerge. They have neither the ambition nor the resources to do anything else.

Which strikes me as odd, given how important the labels “Democrat” and “Republican” have become in the past 30 years. Book after book and scholarly article after article have documented the rise of partisan identity in America. Some even see partisanship behind where people choose to live today. In many states, having an “R” or “D” next to your name is enough to ensure your re-election or doom you to defeat, depending on the district. No company in America has brand loyalty as great as America’s political parties.

So if you are the minority party in a one-party state, why not try to change your brand? Why not give those who would never consider voting for a Democrat a reason to see things differently? I believe having a state political party, year after year, holding civil, open, constructive conversations with voters—and publishing what it hears—could be just such a game changer.

But couldn’t a candidate do this kind of thing even better than a party? After all, plenty of politicians have begun their campaigns with “listening tours” in which they asked voters what’s on their minds. One candidate, Lawton Chiles of Florida, kept it up for his entire campaign. In 1990, Chiles asked people to tell him what was working in their communities all the way to election day. (The voters must have liked this unusual way of campaigning. They elected him governor.)

The problem is that most of the listening tours are just political tactics that are quickly dispensed with. Chiles’ efforts weren’t—he truly seemed to learn something by talking with voters—but he didn’t stick with it once he became governor. Candidate “listening tours,” then, aren’t sustainable. Nor are they systematic.

And that’s what we need: A new form of state politics based on listening to citizens in ways that are systematic and sustainable. And we can’t depend on candidates to do this. We need a permanent sponsor, an organization that sees value in engaging citizens year in and year out and is in a position to change politics.

And the only entity I can think of that fits this description is a political party.

So what would it take for a political party to take on a statewide citizen engagement process that continues indefinitely?

It takes a leader. Not a candidate or office holder (elected officials have their hands full with their own campaigns), but a donor, staff member, or party activist. Someone in a position to answer the three “P” questions of public policy: How do we manage the politics (inside the party)? How do we bring the public along (by positioning this new initiative)? And how do we pay for it (by finding donors willing to support such a bold new initiative)?

But what about publicizing and holding the meetings and making sense of what the citizens say? Isn’t this difficult? Well, it does require a talent for organization, a devotion to listening and reporting things accurately, and some skill with facilitation, but none of these is particularly hard to learn. (Trust me, I’ve learned all these things.) You can find consultants who can help, but if the party does it long enough, it will create these skill sets among its own staff.

So let me summarize: We have a way of changing the toxic nature of politics today. It has been thoroughly tested at the local level. It could change the way voters look at the two parties—to the benefit of the one bold enough to undertake such an initiative. It could bring purpose to one of our most underutilized political institutions, state political parties. We need just one thing: a leader willing to fit the pieces together in her state and make it work.

This sounds good, but wait a minute. What would we do with the results of all this citizen engagement? If the Georgia Democratic Party or the California Republican Party went from city to suburb, town to country asking people what they wanted, if it made sense of what the citizens needed and wanted, if it created a report listing the top 10 (or 20) needs . . . then what?

In essence, nothing. Publish the results on a website (videos from the meetings would be nice) and send out a press release. (“Here is what the citizens of Georgia told us in 12 open-ended conversations across our state.”) Then repeat the following year.

After the first year, nothing will happen. Probably not much will happen after the second year. But about year three, the media, reformers, and your party’s leaders will start paying attention—and so will the opposition party’s leaders.

Among other things, they’ll notice that, in conversations across the state, in neighborhood libraries, suburban school cafeterias, and small-town church basements, citizens asked for the same things, over and over. They’ll also see that the citizens have big ambitions for their communities—a bigger vision than elected officials—but are realistic about the state’s role. And as these things sink in with legislators, the tide will turn.

As legislators and the news media see what the citizens really want, the demagogues will look foolish and those peddling special-interest legislation will be unmasked. Members of the party sponsoring the citizen meetings will rush in with bills responding to the citizen needs. Members of the other party will cast doubt on the meetings, but that won’t last long because the needs and wants will be so . . . obvious. And if they persist in denying the needs, that’s fine too. Because they won’t be the majority party for long.

My aim in putting this idea forward isn’t to elect more Democrats in Georgia or Republicans in California, but to change state politics. It probably would elect more Democrats to my state’s legislature because it would give voters a reason to reconsider the party. After all, it’s a great tactic. (“The Democrats listen to Georgia’s citizens, the other party listens to out-of-state interests.”)

But it’s more than that. It’s a way of reorienting politics to listening to citizens and treating them as equals in decision making. No government, state or local, should ever do things for citizens. It ought to do things with citizens. With, that is, the understanding that individuals, families, nonprofits, institutions, charities, religious organizations, and other governments have roles to play in making places better. All progress in complex societies is collaborative.

It begins with some simple questions: What do you need and want? What are you as citizens willing to do to achieve these things? What could others in your community do? And what could the state government help with?

And there’s only one group that can answer these questions: the citizens.

Postscript one: I’ve learned from long experience that one thing is essential in citizen engagement, and that is integrity. Manipulate the meetings by asking leading questions or packing the sessions with supporters, and you’ll be spotted as a fraud. You must make a sincere effort to get a cross-section of citizens to attend, and you must ask open-ended questions whose answers are recorded publicly and reported accurately.

Likewise, as you compile and analyze the comments and search for common themes, your methodology must be made clear. It has to answer this question: In combing through thousands of comments made by hundreds of citizens, how did you decide these were the things they wanted?

Trust me, the other party will criticize everything you did. So be prepared to defend everything you do. (Having videotapes of the meetings will help.)

Postscript two: Small detail but big consideration. Should you let elected officials speak at these citizen meetings?

My answer: no. Elected officials (of either party) should be welcome to come, observe, and—if they wish—join the citizens as a citizen in talking about local needs. But allowing them to address the meeting would open the process to charges that the results were manipulated (see postscript one). These meetings should be about listening to the citizens. And that’s what elected officials should do in them: Stand to the side and listen attentively. They just might learn a thing or two.

In Manhattan they’ll turn right and head north until they reach the Willis Avenue Bridge and cross into the Bronx, where they’ll basically make a U-turn back to Manhattan. The rest of the 26.2-mile run will be, comparatively speaking, a breeze, through Harlem, into the Upper East Side, with a triumphant finish in Central Park. The world’s best runners will finish in under two and a half hours. Mere mortals will take a while longer.

It’s an amazing spectacle. And if you’re lucky enough to see it (or better yet, participate in it), you may wonder: Where did the inspired idea of running a marathon through five boroughs and all these neighborhoods come from? And what does it tell us about how things like this happen in cities?

Answer: It came from a meeting in 1975, where two people found a way of connecting their entirely different needs in a way that created not just a common solution but a sensation. The central figures were Percy Sutton, the Manhattan borough president, and Fred Lebow, head of the New York Road Runners.

The two could not have been more different. Sutton was a polished lawyer and politician. Lebow was a Romanian refugee who made money in New York’s garment district before falling in love with long-distance running. Sutton knew power; Lebow knew showmanship. In short, they were the odd couple.

Their needs, too, were completely different. During one of New York’s worst years ever, Sutton was looking to change the narrative about his city, to give it something hopeful in the Bicentennial year of 1976. (He also hoped to become New York’s first black mayor.) Lebow wanted something to distinguish New York’s marathon from the much older and better known Boston Marathon. At the time, New York’s race was run entirely inside Central Park, with runners dodging cyclists and families pushing strollers.

What brought them together was a misunderstanding. Lebow and others were talking about running the marathon in the streets (as Boston’s was). By the time the idea reached Sutton, it had somehow become a race through every one of New York’s boroughs. Sutton was intrigued by the idea; Lebow, once he heard what was on the table, was horrified. (The cost, the logistics, the likelihood that something would go wrong . . . this was a crazy idea.)

And here’s where the magic happened. Once they sat down and started talking, the two men found answers to every objection. And more: They found greatness in the idea. This wasn’t just a partial answer to New York’s image problems or a way to make the New York Marathon distinctive. This was a way of creating a spectacle that could rival 1945’s V-J celebrations in Times Square . . . and, if successful, could be held every year.

Their relationship held Sutton and Lebow together as they worked through the security, logistics, organizational, and cost issues. But the opportunity of a great civic spectacle became their driving force.

If anything, the New York Marathon has grown beyond anything Sutton and Lebow could have imagined: it’s a showcase of great runners (and tens of thousands of average ones) and great urban neighborhoods, an economic and tourism boost for the city, an irresistible draw for the news media, and a civic celebration. But it also is an illustration of how legendary civic projects come about: when odd-couple leaders find ways of connecting their needs and creating solutions that become greater than the problems they began with. You see it in the origins of Atlanta’s Beltline project and the reinvention of Denver’s Union Station.

There is no way to plan for these things. Having an open door and lots of relationships helps. So does having a creative mind that can connect needs in creating solutions. But luck plays a role. How else can you account for the fact that, had Percy Sutton not misunderstood Fred Lebow’s original idea, we would not today have one of the world’s greatest athletic events and urban celebrations?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Peter Miller licensed under Creative Commons.

I come to my criticism with respect for these programs and some knowledge. I’ve spoken to dozens of civic leadership programs in the last 35 years. I’ve studied them on behalf of a foundation. I’m an alumnus of two leadership programs myself. And I’m a member of the national Association of Leadership Programs.

I’m impressed by the people who participate in the programs and those who run them. The participants are exactly who you’d hope they would be: people in their 30s and 40s who are ready to step up to civic leadership and eager to learn how. The program managers often do their jobs with the skimpiest of resources.

And perhaps it’s too much to think people would emerge from these programs ready to lead. We don’t expect brand new college graduates to be fully accomplished in their professions. Surely civic leadership demands the same level of on-the-job learning as the law, medicine, or city planning.

And, yet, I think community leadership programs could do better.

Their greatest limitation is their structure. Most programs are nine-month affairs with monthly meetings, starting or closing with a retreat. In these sessions, the programs try to shoehorn two massive courses of study. The first is what is called “community awareness,” which is an introduction to the community’s issues and processes. So a class of 40 might visit the courts to learn how the criminal-justice system works, a charity hospital to learn about health issues, or the mayor’s office to learn the ins and outs of local government.

On top of this, some programs layer a second set of courses dealing with leadership skills. They might include sessions on diversity, team building, group facilitation, or conflict resolution—all things civic leaders need to know to be effective.

That’s a huge amount of learning for nine sessions. At the end, graduates are given a certificate, a better grasp of the community’s issues, a new set of friends and contacts, and an exhortation to get involved. Then it’s time for the leadership program to choose the next class of 40.

What more could a leadership program do? After all, participants’ time is limited (most have demanding jobs). The fees they pay barely cover expenses. Few of these programs have other financial resources.

Answers: You could stretch the learning process and take on a third level of leadership training. To do all this, you need to create a graduate program that invites alumni to return regularly and deepen their learning.

What would they learn in these sessions? They’d learn about strategy. In the community context, this means where you get started with change, how you overcome the obstacles you’re sure to face, and how you assemble the team and resources for the journey.

Where could a cash-strapped leadership program find people to teach this? All around. In every city, there are veteran leaders who would be delighted to explain how they mounted a successful referendum, raised money for building a museum, or took on a major community problem like homelessness. Oddly enough, they’re rarely asked about these things.

Leadership programs are the natural homes of this transfer of knowledge. And by bringing graduates back on a regular basis for “how to” seminars, the programs could increase their worth to their communities, deepen alumni support, and offer new opportunities for philanthropic and business sponsorships.

More important, when you hear enough of these stories of successful change, you notice they have common elements. That’s because in every city there is a path to success, a way good ideas become reality. Collect the stories, mark the path, and in no time the leadership program could do more than educate would-be leaders and award them certificates. It could offer them guidebooks.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Josh Hallett licensed under Creative Commons.