🗞️ Community Healing With Dr. Larry Schooler, Masterminds Meeting About Post-Pandemic City Planning, & more!
October 29, 2024 edition
EngagingCities shares outstanding work by our network of planners and changemakers, who actively involve their communities in creating better places and a brighter future.
🔥 Fireside Chat with Larry Schooler
Beyond Tragedy: Community Memorials and Healing
Dr. Larry Schooler started his career working for NPR before transitioning into city government. He has over 15 years of experience in facilitation, mediation, and public engagement, and is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. We delve into his work facilitating community engagement for memorial projects, including Virginia Beach and Pulse Nightclub. Larry emphasizes the crucial role of integrating family and survivor feedback, leveraging past experiences to shape the approach, and the importance of consensus-based decision-making. We also explore broader lessons for historic preservation and public projects, highlighting the value of digital engagement in amplifying diverse voices and expanding public participation.
Key Takeaways
🗣️ Importance of Storytelling: Effective memorials should prioritize the stories of individuals affected rather than just the events, fostering deeper connections. This approach ensures that the lives of victims are honored, contributing to healing within the community.
🤲 Role of Community Input: Engaging the community in memorial planning is essential. Input from various stakeholders helps to shape an inclusive narrative that reflects their collective history and values, ensuring that the memorial serves its intended purpose.
🕰️ Timing of Engagement: Delaying public engagement until at least six months post-tragedy allows for a more reflective and sensitive dialogue. This timing recognizes the grieving process and encourages thoughtful participation.
🤝 Consensus vs. Voting: A consensus-driven approach is crucial for sensitive projects, as it seeks to address all concerns and find common ground, rather than simply tallying votes, which can alienate some community members.
🌐 Hybrid Engagement Methods: Utilizing both in-person and online platforms for community input allows for greater inclusivity, ensuring that voices from various demographics can contribute without barriers.
🔄 Flexibility in Facilitation: Facilitators must be adaptable, allowing conversations to evolve and acknowledging historical grievances while keeping discussions relevant to current projects.
📜 Historical Context Matters: Understanding the history of the community and past grievances is vital in facilitating discussions, as it influences how participants perceive current initiatives and their emotional responses to them.
“The biggest need is for creativity in the decision making and solution development, meaning that you can't just go with the thing that will get majority, you need to go with something that everybody feels will satisfy their underlying interests.”
Dr. Larry Schooler, Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Austin
👀 Watch or listen to the Fireside Chat.
📧 Contact Dr. Larry Schooler on LinkedIn.
🌐 Visit the following websites for more information:
Pulse Orlando Memorial: https://www.pulseorlando.org/Memorial
Virginia Beach Memorial: https://loveforvb.com
📅 Engaging Events
📌 EngagingCities Masterminds: Post-Pandemic City Planning
There are a few more seats open for our first EngagingCities Masterminds meeting! The topic is Post-Pandemic City Planning, which is about adapting city planning practices in response to lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, including online community engagement, remote work trends, and changes in public health considerations.
We are honored to have the discussion moderated by Jordan McKenzie, AICP, TCEcD, who is the Director of Community Building and Economic Opportunity for the City of Memphis and Shelby County Community Redevelopment Agency.
These moderated online group discussions are an excellent opportunity for participants to learn from each other and solve their problems with input and advice from the other group members.
Date and time: Wednesday, October 30, 12:00 - 1:00pm MDT
Location: Zoom (link will be shared after you register)
Registration: https://lnkd.in/e5saTkp5
🚀 Fresh Insights
💡 Introducing the "Habermas Machine" for Dynamic Community Consensus Building on Divisive Issues
Google DeepMind researchers published the "Habermas Machine", showing how AI can mediate and iteratively facilitate heterogenous groups to find common ground on divisive topics like BREXIT, minimum wage, and climate change.
⚙ The how: The large language model was trained to identify and present areas of overlap in the ideas shared by participants. Participants gave feedback on these common ground statements to reflect the nuance of their opinions, iteratively refining the summary statement to maximize endorsement.
🌏 The implication: AI can be applied to help polarized societies to find common ground on complex, politically salient subjects - at scale.
— Shared by Beth Goldberg
💡 How Strategic Placemaking Empowers Communities to Transform Unique Local Assets into Growth Engines
In today's economic development landscape, placemaking is no longer just a buzzword—it's a necessity, especially for rural communities looking to grow and attract new residents. Whether it's creating vibrant public spaces, promoting local culture and heritage, or leveraging natural assets for outdoor recreation, effective placemaking can transform small towns into thriving hubs of activity and opportunity.
— Shared by Robert Harrington MPA MEDP
💡 Integrating Subjective Well-Being Into Urban Design
We often focus on optimization and efficiency, but what if we also measured how spaces feel to people? This study takes a deeper look at incorporating aesthetics, liveliness, and safety into computational models, shifting the focus from pure performance to a more human-centered approach.
— Shared by Abhinav Bhardwaj
✨ Read more fresh insights here.
💼 Job Opportunities
📎 Director Climate Community Engagement - Climate United
📎 Community Planning Division Manager - City of Seattle
📎 Director of Housing, Community and Economic Development - Metropolitan Planning Council
🗃️ Find more jobs here.
🙌 Support for APA Interest Group
We believe the practice of Community Engagement should have its own Interest Group within the American Planning Association (APA) as a place to network, find inspiration, and share best practices. Help EngagingCities make the case by filling out this online form to express your support and get updates along the way. You may view the existing Divisions and Interest Groups within APA here for reference.
➡️ Visit EngagingCities.org and follow us on X and LinkedIn for more stories like these!
💬 Do you have an interesting story, event, or job to share? Interested in being a guest on our podcast? Email us at hello@engagingcities.org
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