This is sometimes what you feel like on the inside...
I really enjoyed our session at APA in Boston. I don’t have a full post yet for the great questions and war stories shared by folks, but in the interest of getting a discussion going, we would love you to share your own personal stories of hardship in public participation and how you did or didn’t work through it. We think this is a great opportunity to build a little bit of a sharing and learning space for the hard but important work of public participation. Share your stories in the comments below! More will be posted here about the session, including the paper checklist we handed out.
Great session at APA, and a few horror stories to add to the mix.
The first was a neighborhood meeting where a developer was presenting a plan for a new subdivision. The property was adjacent to a “commune” that housed some residents with very anti-establishment views. This group showed up the meeting and essentially attacked everyone (both developer and government officials) about everything they saw wrong in the world. Their diatribe ended however, when the father of a Planning Commissioner noted that he had never seen them at any other neighborhood meetings, questioning just how much they really cared about the neighborhood. That stopped them cold.
Ironically, in the exact same venue, another neighborhood meeting regarding another potential development became the unwitting venue for a show by a pair of self-styled performance artists who derailed the meeting with increasingly bizarre comments. The lesson out of this is sometimes you just have to cut your losses and take comfort in that people who intentionally disrupt meeting are usually not in it for the long haul of a planning process.