So on my quest to get strangers to talk, I am in the process of researching existing tools and programs that allow people to do this. My results from my research, interviews, and experiments, show time after time that there needs to be some commonality, whether this is a goal or a problem, to bring diverse people together and maintain those relationships.
I was lucky to catch the last stages of the brainstorming phase in the participatory budgeting process this weekend in District 38. Sara M. González is the Councilwoman who represents this district which is composed of Bay Ridge Towers, Borough Park, Gowanus, Greenwood Heights, Red Hook, South Slope, Sunset Park, and Windsor Terrace. I am particularly interested in this area because of it's diversity and has not yet been totally gentrified.
I'm interested in PB because it is one of the few platforms that accomplishes in solving many of the issues I am looking into. Issues such as lack of face-to-face communication, segregation between groups and feeling apathetic or powerless to make change. Many tools that aim to solve these problems use technology but this puts certain people at a disadvantage who cannot access these resources.
This past weekend I went to two PB meetings, one in Sunset Park and one in Red Hook. From September to October, residents collectively brainstorm as many ideas as they can for proposals and then they vote on their top three. The first phase reminded me a lot of the design processes I've been learning at school. It's all about the listening to the user and gathering their needs which involves interacting with all the stakeholders. Both experiences followed the same protocol but were vastly different in experiences. Each meeting would start with an introduction about PB, followed by a short Q&A. Participants would break into smaller groups where the brainstorming would start with one facilitator writing down all the ideas. After 20 minutes, everyone would vote and pick their top 3. All the groups would then reconvene and each group would share their top 3 ideas. At the end of the meeting, participants have the option of signing up to be a budget delegate who act as representatives for their district and continue to work on these ideas until April. They are responsible for fleshing out and refining the concepts into proposals which get voted again by the community and then pitched to the Council.
Sunset Park
Saturday's meeting took place in Brooklyn Chinese Baptist Church, located in a predominately Chinese area. There were a handful of volunteers and one main representative of PB. Since majority of the participants were Chinese, they had to bring in Chinese translators. Over time, I could see overlapping ideas from all the groups. I'm not too familiar with Sunset Park but I was surprised to see that many were concerned with the safety of their neighborhood.
Demographic overview:
80 participants
10% seniors, 70% 40-50, 10% 20-30, 10% <20
90% Chinese, 10% other
60% men, 40% women
Insights:
top 3 themes: safety (security cameras), street infrastructure (pot holes, traffic lights, garbage cans, etc.), and transportation (subway entrances)
loud and seemed chaotic but surprisingly organized
people were confused what was considered capital vs. expense (operations, service)
everyone was extremely engaged and everyone listened to each other
ideas inspired other ideas
Red Hook
Sunday's meeting took place in Visitation Church located right near Coffey Park. This was a much more intimate setting so I was able to listen and observe participants' discussions closely. We started out by giving a short introduction about ourselves. This group was a lot more diverse than Sunset Park in terms of background and socio-economic status even though it was a much smaller group. There also wasn't as many overlapping ideas although most of the ideas revolved around maintenance to public buildings.
Demographic overview:
10 participants
25% 60+, 50% 30-40, 25% 20-30
70% Caucasian, 20% African American, 10% Latina
90% Women, 10% Men
Insights:
top 3 themes: park (bathrooms, bins, turf), schools, library maintenance
a handful of participants seemed to be involved in some organization related to their neighborhood
this group seemed more concerned about services/programs, not infrastructure
It was a really great experience to see how people communicated with each other. In both instances people were respectful of each other's ideas and everyone seemed to be equally involved. I would say though that they should have started with individuals writing down their own ideas before grouping to avoid too much influence on each other. It's too early in the process to see where there are gaps and issues but I hope to continue to observe until its over. So far from what I experienced, here are a few issues that were already prominent:
involve the community at every part of the process and not just the brainstorming phase
focus on both capital and expense and provide alternatives in how expense projects can get proposed
I think there needs to be more accessibility to this process where participants can connect. I wonder if live streaming all the meetings and allowing people to comment remotely after the brainstorming would be helpful. The second point is interesting because I did notice how participants had to think longer about infrastructural needs. I don't think infrastructure and services should be separate because its easier to think about the infrastructure needs in the context of a service.
Next steps:
volunteer and work with budget delegates
interview community members on their experiences of PB
