Living in an ancient city, with some very obvious remnants of its past clearly visible, I  recall what the engineers of the past of done in the name of progress  such as John Hudson knocking a massive hole in the city walls to permit his train line through or most recently developers attempting to extend a shopping mall within feet of historic Clifford’s Tower, the site of the massacre of York’s Jewish population in 1190. The first was done when a majority of the population didn’t even have a vote, the latter stirred up an international uproar and was rejected after a planning inquiry,

The priority for our urban spaces should be improving them for the majority who use them, so rather than developing technology displays that tell them how depleted the atmosphere is becoming, it should have trees and greenery planted to resolve the issue. Yes, the cities can be provided with networks and technology to facilitate that minority that works in such industries but it wants to be done as part of a plan not the usual ad-hoc installation that so frequently happens i.e. separate runs of dark fibre or wireless transmitters digging up roads or decorating buildings.

My own city has electronic notices on the main roads into it, that used to occasionally pop up and say when a road was busy or closed. That stopped and they then they reminded you to fasten your seat belt or not drink and drive, now they just stand idle and ugly in the middle of poorly-managed verges. They were probably the latest technology when the council obtained money for them from central government…

Too often slick (but let us not forget fragile) technology is employed for purposes that waste energy and money instead of saving it. Instead of leaving it to gurus and technophiles, can the citizens be consulted and not by wizzy methods that will not draw on their aggregate responses such as this recent example – GeniUS, award winning as it is!

CivicPlus label the six stages – static, emerging, active, receptive, participatory and fully-engaged and I state again, if only matters we that simple…

However, am I alone in finding much of what comes out of Twitter as ‘brown-nosing’? Is it necessary to keep saying how wonderful one’s political leaders are in public? Are most of them capable of fulfilling to dual function of typing into social media and listening to the debate going on in front of them? Social media have their place but are they really such a big deal?

A great deal of effort has clearly been employed in these areas of St Paul, MN, USA and the preparatory analysis of the make-up of those communities is really interesting, along with the groundwork to involve people in the electronic forums but as it states on page 54 - ”the sparse participation of local elected officials on forums can feel like stonewalling to forum participants, one of whom said, “It takes a lot of discussions going for government officials to respond.” A Frogtown community member felt strongly about accountability, saying, “I think the elected officials – the decision-makers – need to be online to answer questions to make the forum a more effective online engagement [tool]. Ideally, you’d want to have full participation [across all groups].”

An interesting read and a telling story of trying to develop local e-democracy in the USA.

This is yet another person who is bringing a bit of rationality to the debate – can we end it now?