There are all sorts of criticisms about the process but it can also facilitate real action (eDemocracy.org and an extensive case study about Chicago’s experimentation with deliberative democracy: http://books.google.com/books?id=htiAzTjR-AAC&dq=empowered+participation+fung&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=konKSbSqMeLqnQe6v-WcAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result).

Other readings to peruse:

Francesca Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements

John Gastil and Peter Levine, eds. The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Citizen Engagement in the 21st Century

Robert Dahl, On Democracy

John Dewey, The Public and its Problems

Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Marr doesn’t want to hear my concerns; my concerns being that this is a waste of time, and the least efficient way to go about developing an economic development “vision” for Fayetteville.

I’m just a bitter Coody supporter, wondering when my yard debris will be picked up, waiting on my free Wi-Fi to come down the landscaped boulevard to my affordable house.

Cleantech industries. Get it. Get it in south Fayetteville.

How? I don’t know. Thats not my job, nor is it the job of Joe Cool Hippie or Rita Recycler. Its the job of the people making 6 figures to run this city, and their overweight, former anonymous blogging, appointed lackeys.

Polluting industries and low wage high volume industries. Skip it. Don’t pursue it.

Ok.

Now what else do you city employees wasting tax dollars need to know?

Oh, if you’d like ideas on how to attract cleantech businesses, why don’t you network with other similar cities who have attracted similar industries, attend the mayors’ conferences, become connected with other civic leaders; collaborate, share ideas; and maybe consider outsourcing the recruitment to a consultant who specializes in that field?

Wait, thats what Coody was doing. It can’t be right. Lets ask the Llama Lady and some south Fayetteville hippie-billies what they think, instead.

I need a new bag of popcorn to watch this circus.

I predict that the results of this summit will be a “vision” as nebulous as the results of the first half of the Eva Klein study. Consensus is simply not possible in a city of 70,000 people, except as a watered-down, generic, lowest-common denominator platitude.

When viewing Marr’s insistent criticism of the “incompleteness” of the data from the Klein study, one must bear in mind that the second part of the Klein study was never done, and the entire endeavor was criticized as having been wasteful by the people in charge now.

I wonder how much money is required to put on this 4 day event, including brining in outside moderators. Is it really going to be less expensive than the second half of the Eva Klein study would have been? I find that hard to believe. But, Coody hired Eva Klein, so its bad. Very BAAAAAAAD….

Will the results of this ambitiously titled forum be a focused vision of what the city needs to do to drive economic development in a way that improves this city?

I really think that a few people who are elected as leaders, i.e. the City Council, Mayor, and other city staff should craft a “vision” themselves, with feedback from residents as the residents desire to give it. Isn’t that part of what leadership is about? Why have elections if everything is going to be done by ballot and charrette? Inefficient.

This entire “we must include everyone” just seems so tiresome and unrealistic to me. Everyone has the chance to be included in Fayetteville. They have had this for decades. There is no shortage of citizen input in this city. There never has been. Yet we’re told again and again that the “people’s voice” isn’t being heard. I really don’t see how that can possibly be true. What is true is that the extremely vocal super-enviro-preservation minority isn’t happy with anything going on, and they are persistent in their protest.

This process, while idealistic, won’t yield any new results. We’ll still have a very vocal, anti-development faction which has proven itself unreasonable in its insistence to protest EVERY SINGLE DAMNED DEVELOPMENT IN THE CITY, INCLUDING AWESOME NEW URBANIST PROJECTS LIKE RUSKIN HEIGHTS, and a business community that is treated unequally dependent on which ones of them are longtime Fayetteville residents or played football at the U of A.

Working folks with families and actual lives will not attend. Empty nesters and semi-employed hippies will attend, and so it won’t be any different than your typical city council or planning commission meeting.

I suppose Marr thinks that “everybody” will come to an agreement via this forum.

The result will be the same results we’ve had for years. The vocal anti development folks will drive the debate, and thusly, Marr and Jordan will have this “mandate” to drive their decisions for the remainder of their terms.

I will stop typing here to avoid the fat jokes that are itching to be typed by my cynical little fingers.