Setting up DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions for success

The previous entry on Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods as a great example of "civic engagement infrastructure" reminds me that I've been meaning to write about DC Mayoral candidate and At Large Councilmember Robert White's "initiative" to improve DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions  ("It’s Time to Modernize the Office of the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, press release).  

It is time, and it was when I started writing about this issue 15+ years ago.

-- "System transformation or people vs. systems and structures," 2007
-- "Contempt of the citizenry," 2007
-- "Stultified vs. flat organizations, democracy vs. autocracy," 2007
-- "ANCs and civic engagement," 2007
-- ""Incentivizing" ANC Commissioners," 2006
-- "An aha! moment about why DC Government is "problematic"," 2006
-- "YIMBYs from Brooklyn to DC -- Thinking about Community Participation in Shaping Development," 2005
-- "ANCs build up political muscle, and yet....," 2005
-- "The uncreative city #2: neighborhood capacity building and leveraging the power of proximity and networking," 2010

The thing that always amazes me about DC Government "initiatives" to improve something is that they don't appear to do a serious "deep dive" review of best practice, peer cities, etc., before they come up with conclusions.

Second, some ANC commissioners are quoted in tarticles about how they could help with insights, but I'm not impressed ("Council member Robert White aims to modernize DC’s advisory neighborhood commissions office," WTOP radio).

It mostly proves my line that "practitioners are s****y at generating meta-theory" or the overarching understandings of the system and structure of what they did, and how to duplicate or replicate it.

Without reading my previous entries, there are a bunch of key points:

(1)  The city government should provide adequate budget to ANCs for "administration" separate from the money that some use for community grants, funding basic functions like office space and bank accounting services;

(2) Like the Seattle, Calgary ("Community association planning committees a hidden gem?," Calgary Herald), and Minneapolis examples in particular, as well as how the Main Street commercial district revitalization program has a national conference, national and state trainings, the city should develop a training and capacity building infrastructure for ANCs.

Other examples include the Urban Information Center at the Dallas Public Library, which collects books, periodicals and other relevant materials, and the Massachusetts Citizen Planner Training Collaborative.

And I would offer the Project for Public Spaces "How to Turn A Place Around" workshop as a training program in urban design and community "repair."  

The idea would be to move the workshop around the city, serving specific neighborhoods, but participation would be open to ANC commissioners, citizens, and community organizations in other neighborhoods too, as a training opportunity.

(3) ANCs should be treated as a network at both the Ward and City-wide scales.  Collectively they should meet a few times a year ward-wide and at least once/year city-wide, as opportunities to generate and develop best practice, work on issues of mutual concern that cross ANC boundaries, etc.

The Atlanta Park Pride "friends of the parks" organization has an annual training conference open to parks stakeholders and friends groups across the city.

(4)  Like the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods annual awards program, DC should do something similar, for ANCs, residents, and community organizations.

(5) I would also consider a small stipend for Commissioners.  It should be paid out based on meeting attendance, holding 2-4 Single Member District meetings. (I think one should be a "service" project, like neighborhood cleanups, etc.).

(6) The law creating ANCs provides for the creation of standing committees, as well as opens the membership of committees, including chairing committees, to community members.  But most ANCs do not do this, stinting on their ability to address issues as well as reducing the ability to develop a knowledgeable citizenry capable of high quality civic engagement.  This should be addressed.

(7) In terms of dealing with proffers and community benefits, communities need consensus neighborhood plans to set priorities and guide funding.  

Outside of the "Small Area Planning Process," which is mostly focused on identifying build out opportunities and how to manage them, the city needs to create a process for community strategic plans, to help Councilmembers, ANCs and residents deal better with the potential for change.

-- "Systematic neighborhood engagement," 2007
-- "Neighborhood Planning website
-- the PPS HTTAPA workshop could be a "quick and dirty" way to create thumbnail community action plans along these lines.

I am also a big fan of the structure of the Nashville Community Character Manual as a way to shape such a process.

-- "DC and the zoning rewrite and the approach not taken," 2012

(8) Use Participatory Budgeting methods to allocate grants.

Etc.

All of these recommendations are about building the capacity of ANCs and citizens to participate at a higher level in civic affairs, at the neighborhood, ward, and city-wide scales.

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This is tough though.  For example, the American Planning Association has a special cheaper affiliate membership for locally elected officials and ANC Commissioners should qualify.  

When I was on the ANC6C Planning and Zoning Committee, I tried to get the Commission to pay for subscriptions to planning publications and the Main Street News newslettter.  They had almost zero interest, and zero interest in attending local Main Street trainings, which included an excellent session on historic architecture and design.

The willingness to invest in our capacity for quality civic participation seems to minimal.  In doing various community workshops, especially in DC, where citizens tend to be highly educated, there is a sense that a lot of people feel like they already know everything, that there is nothing they need to learn.

The Layman approach to best practice development and diffusion: Indicate; Duplicate; Replicate; Communicate; Accelerate.

From "Revitalization planning vs. positive thinking* as planning," (2018) and "Helping Government Learn," (2009). 

My own take on innovation theory and the development, replication, and the diffusion of innovation is along these lines.  First develop a new practice and figure out if it works. Duplicate it to see if it is more than a one-off thing. Continue to scale it up and figure out all the elements. Once you've one that, communicate out so it can be and is successfully diffused across communities.

1. Indicate -- identity the particulars of processes and structures of success and failure.
2. Duplicate -- figure out how to duplicate (repeat) success.
3. Replicate -- develop the systems, structures, frameworks to apply programs to different situations and communicate them throughout innovation networks.
4. Communicate -- push out the final product to communities of practice for more widespread adoption, recognizing that other places will bring new elements to the model.
5. Accelerate -- figure out how to speed up successful innovation and programs.