Over this past week, I largely examined the history of neighborhood associations and community engagement in Portland in greater depth. This orientation was inspired by my discovery of the 1994 recommendations as to the strategies the City could undertake to realize its development goals. These strategies included neighborhood engagement, which was noted to grease the wheels of development by incorporating neighbors within the process, thereby preventing costly and confrontational face-offs.
I found several new sources dealing with this issue, including two dissertations that examined the historical trajectory of neighborhood associations, seeking to construct a narrative of rises and declines in the functionality of community participation. Matt Witt (2004) and Paul Leistner (2013) document and periodize these shifting regimes of policy and orientation. Considering the influence that the Commissioner placed in charge of the ONI has over this mediating institution, neighborhood-city relations can ebb and flow with the political climate, oscillating between that of tokenist rubber-stamping and genuine democratic involvement. Both construct an arc of the establishment of NAs from both grassroots and Model Cities groups in the 70s, encouraged by Mayor Goldschmidt; successful expansion and institutionalization in the 80s; growing conflicts by the 90s between neighborhoods and city over development and funding, fueling efforts to incorporate community engagement structures within the city bureaucracy; and the revitalization of community participation and neighborhood associations by Mayor Potter in 2005.
Overall, the pattern that emerges is that of recursive examinations of the Neighborhood Association structure by the City. Below these contingent shifts, however, has lain a common set of tensions between the NAs and the City, driven by the ambiguous purpose of Portland’s neighborhood associations. They are constituted within the City bureaucracy, receiving their funding from the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, yet independent. They receive their legitimacy by being independent organizations, expression of community power and watchdogs of the City, yet they are chartered by the City and maintain no formal decision-making power. City rhetoric is The two divergent models of community engagement contained within Portland’s NAs were noted in 1976, in Russ Dondero’s analysis of citizen-participation, commissioned for Mayor Goldschmidt. Dondero noted that:
Generally, active citizens at the neighborhood level, who are non-experts in the planning process, and who are not elected officials, tend to see CP as a ‘process’ whereby citizens in the local neighborhoods, who wish to be, can be involved in basic decisions that affect them directly, focusing on the planning process… On the other hand, the experts, the elected officials, the persons on city-wide boards dealing with CP at the city-wide level tend to see CP as a process whereby citizens are brought into the decision-making network at some point as informants and secondary level decision-makers—but the final distinguishing mark of success is not participation but results—a product—be it a comprehensive plan in C-T or HCD monies expended for rehab in SE… One sense that while the rhetoric of commitment to CP is there, the real hope is that what will result is a more efficient mechanism for coopting citizens to the point that they will see the wisdom of the planners, the politicians, the larger city interests. (4)
This situation was tenable in the 70s and 80s, when a wedge had yet to be driven through these cracks and the whole enterprise was buoyed by a “warm glow” that papered over the implications of the contradictory conceptions held. As Dondero continues:
the above generalizations seem important since they explain the commitment all sides have to SP—which is in a sense non-polarizing since nobody communicates that each of the two conceptions are mutually exclusive if taken to their logical conclusion. But few have admitted of the connection, hence possible conflict is avoided.
But were the parties involved to see the issue as one of community power (in the neighborhoods) versus community cooption by the city (of the neighborhoods)—conflict would arise. (5)
In the intervening years, the evidence mounted that the City viewed/views community engagement as a mechanism for more efficient (and they would add just, equitable) planning. By 2005, several district coalition leaders put together a damning indictment of the state of affairs of Portland community engagement, stating that the model of community cooption had dominated over that of community empowerment:
- Neighborhood Associations often view Bureaus/Council as being less interested in listening and more interested in managing, directing or ignoring participation by neighborhood associations. Staff is often defensive around neighborhood associations. Council often chooses to view neighborhood associations as adversaries or allies depending on the political point.
- Bureaus engage in “punch list” public participation and seek engineered solutions rather than authentic collaboration. This is often Public Relations (management) rather the Public Involvement (collaboration). Public involvement intent varies from bureau to bureau.
- In land-use matters, there seems to be a systemic effort to avoid considering comment from neighborhood groups.
To resolve these tensions and reassert Portland’s commitment to community engagement, the City has recently created several plans for providing more power to neighborhood associations and other groups, including the 2008 Community Connect Report and the 2016 Community Involvement Program. While the top-line language in the guiding goals of these documents is utopic in its vision of a city where “People feel connected to one another, and to their communities; All Portlanders, regardless of their backgrounds, have the opportunity to be actively engaged in civic affairs; Government leaders are responsive and accountable to community input and priorities; and The inclusion of more voices in civic affairs results in a healthier and more vibrant city,” these plans represent a dialectic of control wherein power rests fundamentally in the hands of the City. This power is distributed, but never devolved.
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