Content about Public engagement

Nearly every public project conducted in the United States incorporates some form of public outreach. Today, in an increasingly global and digital era, traditional public meetings often fall short of reaching the increasingly diverse and information-saturated citizens of today’s American cities. Or, the efforts fail to incite the interest required to achieve the long-term buy-in for planning and design strategies that’s needed to see a project through to successful implementation.

The fact that the Internet is one of the most powerful organizing tools in history is both thrilling and vexing to public engagement practitioners working to create the conditions for more effective public involvement in public life. We know that the Internet supercharges political campaigning and we know that like-minded individuals are more able than ever to connect with one another because of the Internet. But what is still unclear is how the Internet might help build capacity and momentum for inclusive, collaborative and boundary-crossing problem-solving at all levels of public life (from the national level to the local level).