4. Build an Infrastructure to Monitor and Respond to Emerging Issues and Potential Unrest Scenarios.
One of the key benefits of having a planning committee that reflects multiple stakeholder interests is the ability to communicate quickly and effectively about developing concerns or tensions in the community. As illustrated in Chapter 2’s Bloomington example, it can also be helpful to firm up, name, and publicize for the public the entity that may operate more informally to hear and deal with concerns. Such a group can play a vital role in identifying and addressing tensions before they escalate.
This communication network, when effective, is regularly used and reciprocal: community leaders, with their understanding of their constituents’ pulse, alert public officials to matters warranting attention to prevent adverse escalating activity. They might also provide a relevant historical context that enriches shared understanding. Public officials play a key role in timely sharing with community leaders those developments that they might be monitoring. What cements its use is the participants’ shared confidence in the trustworthiness – credibility – of the information source because all participants share a desire and commitment to prevent damage to their community’s values: community leaders are neither perceived as “information moles,” nor are public officials perceived as evasive or misleading in their communication.
Why take this step?
In today’s fast-paced information environment, news and rumors spread rapidly—especially via social media. If leaders are aware of these communications and can assess their accuracy, they can respond quickly to prevent escalation. Timely, informed responses can deter polarizing actions, such as protestors turning concerns into inflammatory slogans or rigid demands.[1]
More positively, when leaders act based on community insight, residents gain confidence that their concerns are being heard and addressed. This responsiveness strengthens trust and reinforces the community’s resilience.
How to take this step
CHECKLIST: Strengthen Infrastructure to Listen and Respond
- Develop broad and broadly representative advisory groups that meet regularly with key public officials regarding particular activity sectors – e.g., housing, economic development, education, law enforcement.
- Create and publicize ways by which individual citizens can contact and alert community leaders of issues affecting a segment of the community, including websites, text numbers, or office addresses.
- Use social media that enables planning committee members to be knowledgeable of current activities.
- Use surveys, deliberative polling, or other information-gathering methods to help identify community division and to assess how deeply the various segments of the community regard the division.
- Monitor warning signs that can inform the urgency of planning efforts, such as media headlines or reports that exacerbate tensions; hate or bias incidents occurring within a community sector. unexpected demographic shifts (such as an increased presence of an immigrant population being bused or flown into one’s community); or episodes involving police-community interactions that have exacerbated tensions.[2]
- Utilize scanning systems from noted organizations, such as the Community Relations Service form for assessing racial division.[3]
- Staff the infrastructure for listening and dealing with concerns, select neighborhood liaisons, hold listening forums, initiate actions in response to concerns, create a call-in number and website to share resources and information and post concerns. They sponsor conferences to discuss community issues. Staff regularly update the mayor’s office on residents’ concerns, ideas, and questions.
ILLUSTRATION | Columbus, OH
Creating an infrastructure to listen and respond
The Columbus, Ohio Department of Neighborhoods website, offers residents a variety of ways to interact with their government. Each neighborhood has a liaison who meets regularly with residents and is available for ideas. A 311 number or mobile application provides a 24/7 channel for input on problems, along with responses to requests sent. A Customer Services Center lists additional opportunities to contribute or learn.[4] Department staff hold conferences with residents and regularly report what they are learning about concerns and ideas to the mayor’s office.
- See generally Susan Carpenter & W.J.D. Kennedy, Managing Public Disputes (2001). ↵
- See e.g., Community Relations Service, Distant Early Warning Signs (DEWS) System (2012), https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crs/legacy/2012/12/17/dews.pdf (indicators with which communities can assess community division). ↵
- Id. ↵
- https://www.columbus.gov/Community/Department-of-Neighborhoods. ↵
