Public Participation in Urban Development: Case Studies from Cincinnati, Ohio

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Public participation in urban development: Case studies from Cincinnati, Ohio

A dissertation submitted to the

Graduate School

of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of Geography

of the College of Arts and Sciences

Susan L. Jakubowski

B.A. Washington and Jefferson College

M.A. University of Cincinnati

25 March 2014

Committee Chair: Colleen McTague, Ph.D.

Abstract

Public participation, a means by which citizens can influence local government in the decision making process, is commonly employed in American cities. Public participation is conceptualized as a significant element of democracy and as such, it is subject to impact in both practice and theory by changes in political ideology. Using three case studies of public participation in urban development projects in Cincinnati, Ohio, this research explores the way that participation strategies have evolved along with and in response to changes in political ideology. The results of these studies are then evaluated within a historical theoretical framework of public participation and indicate that contemporary strategies may not be adequately accounted for by traditional theorizations of participation. The results further indicate that concepts such as empowerment and the public should be expanded within the participatory framework to include the more recent ways in which they have manifested.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

Chapter 2: Unifying Themes 9

Chapter 3: Marching to the beat of a silent drum: Wasted consensus-building and failed

neighborhood participatory planning 19

Chapter 4: Saving the streetcar: Neighborhood organization, protest, and successful

protection of an urban transportation project 59

Chapter 5: In my backyard: Empowered public participation in a rails-to-trails

development project 88

Chapter 6: Conclusion 112

Works Cited 118

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Statement of the problem

The ‘participatory turn’ can be used to characterize the nature of urban development that has been occurring for over a decade (Krivy and Kaminer, 2013).

This turn, characterized by an increased involvement of the public in the decision making processes of urban development, is both a reaction to and a reflection of broader shifts in the political ideologies governing contemporary urban policy making.

Contemporary participatory strategies are tied historically to the strategies that developed in the 1960s under radical, reactionary, and anti-statist ideologies (Krivy and

Kaminer, 2013). Since that time there has been significant shift in government policies towards governance, those processes which rely on market competition for the allocation of resources and which rely on networks with non-governmental actors such as the private corporate sector and the public citizenry to make decisions and implement policy (Tickell and Peck, 1996). Governance evolved out of neoliberal economic policies including devolution, privatization, and retrenchment and these policies carved out new entrepreneurial roles for American cities. The impact that this political shift had on public participation is ambiguous. One group of participation theorists argue that governance allows for more opportunities for public participation due to its collaborative nature and reliance on non-governmental partners (Denters and

Rose, 2005; Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). The concern for this group is that the participation be useful and authentic and not merely posturing (King et al., 1998).

Another camp, however, argues that contemporary participatory strategies have been divorced from these radical ideologies as well as any other significant and meaningful political ideologies and that instead these strategies have been rendered impotent

within the reigning sociopolitical context of neoliberalism (Beaumont and Loopman,

2008).

Much attention has been given to how shifts in ideology in politics in general has impacted the nature of participation, but little has been given to how strategies have reacted to and evolved as a result of these changes. Not paying attention to contemporary strategies has resulted in theory lagging behind practice, exposing voids in the use of theory to account for these strategies within its existing conceptualizations.

This research addresses that theoretical void by examining several current examples of public participation strategies and identifying the areas in which existing theory is unable to account for these strategies. A conceptual examination of the role of power in public participation is the main theme that unifies the three case studies that make up this research.

Case studies

The research that comprises this dissertation examines the state of public participation in urban development in Cincinnati, Ohio. Three case studies are presented and then evaluated within the existing theoretical literature. Each of the case studies is presented in an article formatted for submission to a peer-reviewed academic journal in partial fulfillment of the degree requirements for the Department of

Geography.

The first case study examines the outcome of the participatory planning process that was used to create the 2002 Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan. In that case, the planning process was very intensive and inclusive and produced a document that

created specific goals that reflected the input of participants. One of the goals of the plan called for specific amounts of housing to be developed over specific time periods in order to avoid the displacement of existing residents that many feared would happen with reinvestment into the area. Though satisfied with the goals, over time, participants were less and less satisfied with the results of the development due to the fact that no method for monitoring progress had been instituted, though it was specifically called for within the plan itself. In other words, it was unclear whether the goals were being met or not. In this pilot study, we created and tested a GIS based system to monitor progress on the housing goals and showed that progress could in fact be monitored.

From this, we concluded that a participatory plan that creates specific goals but then does not monitor progress toward those goals renders the participatory process unsuccessful and powerless.

The second case study examines the role that public participation played in the final stages of the decision making process that determined the fate of the Cincinnati streetcar project. Construction of the streetcar system began in 2012 though the project had been in the works for many years before that. The project began under the direction of then Mayor Mark Mallory despite the fact that consensus on the project was never achieved, neither within the city government nor the public. The main issues of contention were how the project would be funded for construction and operation and whether it was a viable engine for economic growth. The debate dominated the

November 2013 election at which time it seemed an anti-streetcar city council had been elected and it was expected that this would obviously lead to the discontinuation of the project. The fate of the project came down to a final vote by City Council in December

of 2013 when the project was saved due to the swing votes of two council members.

The next day the Cincinnati Enquirer proclaimed “Streetcar has engaged citizens to thank” (Andrews, 2013). Just days after the municipal election, a group of concerned citizens had formed a grass roots organization, Believe in Cincinnati, which sought to influence the outcome of the project. These citizens undertook a fast moving campaign in which they sought to organize a large, visible group of supporters of the project.

They collected signatures for a charter amendment to continue the project and worked with council members and members of the corporate community to address the funding issues that were the concerns of council members. The participatory actions of this citizen group were successful in impacting a major urban development decision; however, the nature of the group, the types of participants and the actions undertaken by them do not reflect the typical way that these concepts are developed in participatory literature.

The third case study examines the participatory strategy of a grass roots organization that is seeking to convert an abandoned train rail line into a multi-use recreational trail. This project, the Wasson Way project, was started in 2011 by an individual citizen who gathered public support via a door-to-door campaign and by addressing local neighborhood groups and retail merchants. He then presented the project to members of Cincinnati’s City Council and gained support among its members.

His organization was incorporated as a non-profit with a Board of Directors and eventually evolved into an organized group with specific committees to address and carry out the many activities of the group. The group, with over 3000 supporters as of

2014, utilizes social media such as Facebook and a website to update its members of

the progress of the project, to inform members of upcoming activities, and to link the project to other relevant topics, such as healthcare, child safety, the national Rails-to-

Trails movement, alternative transportation and concerns for property values in order to expand the support base for the project. At the time of this paper, the project was still in progress with the City working to secure the right-of-way necessary to begin construction. Though not finalized, this case is an example of successful public participation by a group of citizens who developed and facilitated the movement of the project through the urban development decision making structure. This study finds that their success can be attributed to the actions of a well-connected and politically, socially and economically savvy group of participants. The group brings knowledge and power to the decision making structure rather than deriving it from the process as is commonly portrayed in participation literature.

These case studies are unified by their treatment of several concepts, especially empowerment and normative definitions of the public, and these will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2. In the next section several essential concepts are defined and the state of participation in urban development in Cincinnati in general is described. Finally the intellectual merit of this project is presented.

Public Participation

Each of the articles that comprise this dissertation address some aspect of public participation. In its broadest sense public participation is a means by which citizens (the public) can impact the decisions made at the local governmental level which directly impact their lives (Lee, 2013). A conceptual relative of public participation is citizen

engagement which can be defined as involving the public in policy-development and decision-making (Lee, 2013). While one could make the case that there are differences between the terms, for the purposes of this research, the terms are used interchangeably.

Public participation strategies are many and highly varied in terms of extent of engagement, requirements, and outcomes. Among the forms that participatory strategies can take are surveys, town hall meetings, charrettes, participatory planning, citizen advisory boards, community organizations and neighborhood councils (Blakely and Evans, 2009; Farazmand, 2012; Leino and Laine, 2011; Webler and Tuler, 2002).

Participatory planning, the focus of the first case study, is a type of participation strategy and is defined as “the systematic effort to envision a community’s desired future, plan for that future, and involve and harness the specific competencies and inputs of community residents, leaders and stakeholders in the process (Beyea, 2009:58).

There is still little consensus on what participation should be in terms of strategy and whether it is or even can be a viable means for citizens to impact decision making

(Ahmed and Ali, 2006; Alfasi, 2003; Hanna, 2000; Huxley, 2000; Kaza, 2006; Miraftab,

2009; Neuman, 2014; Purcell, 2009; Udall and Holde, 2013). Claims to the utility of participatory strategies (Brabham, 2009) are balanced by those expressing uncertainty to their worth (Kaza, 2005, Elwood, 2002). Evaluation of the success or failure of public participation relies on criteria such as the development of long-term, trust-based relationships between the public and the government, whether the public has been empowered by the process, whether consensus has been achieved among the public,

and whether established goals were achieved (Hassan et al., 2011, Kaza, 2006; Vitale,

2006).

Participation is theorized within the context of democracy and can be most frequently found in discussions about deliberative, discursive or communicative democracy which have as their basis the rational exchange of ideas among citizens and with the government (Lee, 2013). Participation in general is a methodology for practicing these types of democracy and so is an instance within which rational exchange occurs.

While the role of participation within democracy is relatively clear, the goal of its practice is much more contested and revolves around a philosophical debate that has at one end consensus and at the other pluralism. The fundamental question becomes then should participatory strategies seek a consensus among the public or should it seek an end that recognizes and values a diversity of perspectives? The consensus ideal is a paradigm rooted in the communicative rationality discourse of Habermas, which states that knowledge is not something objective that exists in space but rather that is something emergent that comes from public debate and discussion (Pennington,

2004). The paradigm based on diversity has been most strongly advanced by Mouffe

(1999) who espouses agnostic pluralism, a theory that values and relies upon a diverse public with a diverse body of knowledge and opinion. Criticism against the consensus model includes the notion that it is an impossible endeavor that can only be achieved by at least one side conceding its position (Kaza, 2006). Further, Kaza (2006) indicates that seeking consensus leads to a ‘tyranny of the median’ in which certain groups are inevitably excluded, particularly those on the extremes poles of whatever issue is being

debated, with an a priori arrival at a median position the result. The pluralist paradigm, based on Mouffe, exerts that consensus-building has dangerous authoritarian implications and that instead democracy does and should depend on diverse publics and the ability to incorporate multiple identities within a conflictive setting (Beaumont and Nicholls, 2008). Others argue that communities marked by heterogeneous ideas need to be reframed as good for democracy and that participatory practices should include avenues for the expression of these ideas within which they can be accommodated with ‘civic integrity’ (Glover, 2012). Delli Carpini et al. (2012) view participation as a means for reconciling these disparate views of a pluralist society by using communicative means.

The next chapter discusses the theoretical threads which unite the three research articles and lead to a unified conclusion which is presented in the final chapter of this paper.

CHAPTER 2: UNIFYING THEMES

Each of the following case studies illustrate ways in which public participation strategies have evolved in relation to both actual changing political ideologies and to changing conceptualizations about political ideologies. Changes in how government is done as well as how it is thought about have impacted how participation is done and how it is thought about. Existing theory does not and cannot fully account for the types of participation that were observed in these case studies. Several themes are explored in this research that help to explain these limitations in existing theory. These themes are the changing relationship between participatory strategy and political ideologies, the way that power is conceived of, negotiated with and distributed, and the way that the public is conceptualized. A better understanding of these themes can aid in recognizing the limitations to participation theory.

Ideological foundations of public participation

The relationship of participatory strategies and democracy has already been discussed in broad terms in Chapter 1. This section will address the impact that changing ideologies have had on the purpose, goals and significance of public participatory strategies.

Public participation in local issues in U.S. cities is not a new phenomenon. Roots of the current participatory movement can be traced to political groups in the 1960s whose participatory strategies were grounded in radical political ideologies which often included anti-statism along with a commitment to equality and to the empowerment of the subaltern (Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). The public continued to pursue participatory strategies throughout the 1970s as a way to mitigate what was seen as an increasingly

enlarging gulf between the government and its citizens (Glover, 2012). The establishment of neoliberal policies, particularly retrenchment and privatization, at the federal level in the 1980s essentially forced local governments into entrepreneurial positions in which they competed against other cities for dwindling federal and state funds and by seeking investments and partnerships with the private, corporate sector

(Harvey, 1989, 2005). These policies and the new role that cities were forced into as a result of them had a significant effect on participation and citizen engagement. The main effect was that citizen participation increased, in both frequency and form, though the nature of that participation differed from earlier, anti-statist forms. The radical participatory groups of the 1960s who demanded the right and the means to participate meaningfully alongside a government with whom they did not agree became ‘diluted’ into community organizations and public consultancy groups working hand in hand, often unwittingly, with the government (Glover, 2012). As responsibility for service provision devolved down the government structure, citizens were given more and more opportunities to participate by a local government who no longer could or would provide these services (Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). Whether citizens and citizen organizations actually gained significant power as a result of this increase in responsibility is widely debated (Elwood, 2002; Fischer, 2006; Hasson and Ley, 1994; Healy, 2008; Hula,

1998).

This collusive form of participation continued throughout the 1980s until in the

1990s local politics underwent a major shift in policy and practice from governing and government to governance. Governance is defined as the institutions by which authority is exercised (Pierre, 2001). It is comprised of mechanisms, processes and

institutions through which citizen groups can express their interests, exercise their rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences (UN, 2004). Public participation and citizen engagement were incorporated into governance polices as a central tenet and key to its success (Fischer, 2006). Refocusing urban policies onto local projects of citizen interest was another indicator of the shift to governance. This shift was evidenced by less commitment to the corporate sponsored, downtown development projects that dominated local agendas throughout the 80s as they competed for investment and status with other American cities (Leitner and Garner,

1993; Kearns and Paddison, 2000). In the 1990s priorities and focus shifted in local politics, reestablishing the arena within which participatory practices would be conceived, implemented and evaluated.

Around the same time as the shift to governance in local politics, the field of planning was undergoing its own foundational shift away from top-down, rational, technocratic, expert-led planning structure to one that is inclusive, bottom-up, and citizen-led (Booth,2009; Halla, 2002; Hassan et al., 2011; Kaza, 2006; Timothy, 1999).

Participatory strategies offered a solution to the professionalization of planning in which knowledge and skills were considered available only to credentialed experts (Woods,

2010). The conditions in both local politics and the field of planning were ripe for increased practice and reevaluation of public participation

the process was much more ambiguous. That ambiguity manifested in a debate centered around the question of whether these new types of participation are authentic means of engagement, giving citizens a meaningful way of being included in local decision making processes (Hassan et al., 2011; Herzer and Shorkhuser, 2013; King et al., 1998) or whether they are tools of a hegemonic, neoliberal state in which citizens are exploited for their knowledge and energy (Hasson and Ley, 1994; Krivy and

Kaminer, 2013; Leal, 2007; Peck and Tickell, 2001; Purcell, 2009).

This debate that is central to understanding public participation is based on political shifts, real and theorized, that have been around for several decades now, and yet the debate is unresolved. In this paper, it is argued that over time strategies have evolved that are able to incorporate these ideological shifts. In other words, new forms of participation have developed in practice but they have not yet been fully incorporated into participation theory.

Next, several key themes that will structure the discussion of the evolution of participation will be presented.

Empowerment

These three articles are unified conceptually in their examination of the role of power in public participation, particularly in terms of how power is conceived of, negotiated with and distributed. Discussions of power and empowerment are essential to understanding the central debate of whether participation is a tool of the government used to incorporate the public into their obscured ideology or whether participation is a valuable strategy by which citizens can contribute in a meaningful way to decisions that impact their lives. This debate leads to two broad conceptions of power: that the

unequal power situation is inevitable or that citizens can gain power from the government in order to minimize inequalities in society.

Lee (2013) discusses participation as a component of good governance and states that it should do the following: increase institutional accountability, further ideals of self-determination and empower marginalized groups. On the other hand, participation can also potentially capture public power for private interests, be used to evade accountability and further the marginalization of certain communities (Lee, 2013).

Hassan et al. (2011) claim that participation should empower citizens and that that empowerment should be characterized by self-efficacy, knowledge and skills, opportunity, action, resources, the ability to impact and by the building of trust and respect between citizens and the government.

Silver et al (2010) discuss power within the context of the loss of the underlying radical ideology in participatory strategies and claim that in order to reinvigorate itself as a viable tool in urban development, discussions of participation must focus on

those who stage participation (the government, planners) and those who are invited to participate (the public). The act of invitation has within it an embedded sense of difference at least, if not inequality. Love (2013) frames participation as a process that occurs within a pre-existing condition of legalism which necessarily precludes any action that could be contradictory to it. In other words, the institutions within which participation occur are perpetually uneven due to the legal constraints that create them and that, therefore, the structure restricts the ability of the public to procure power in any meaningful way.

Arnstein (1969) developed one of the earliest pictures of public participation in

American urban development and describes participation as a redistribution of power that enables citizens who are excluded from political and economic processes to be included. Her ‘Ladder of Participation’ had as its ultimate expression of good participation ‘Citizen Power’ which she defined as partnership, delegated power and citizen control. ‘Citizen Power’ as a process would be to negotiate with and engage in trade-offs with traditional power holders (Arnstein, 1969). This perspective clearly implies the unequal balance in power between the government (the traditional holder of power) and citizens (those to whom power could be delegated).

For those who theorize that participation is only a tool of the state, the unequal power structure is necessary to their argument. Purcell (2009) states that participation is a means by which the neoliberal state can legitimize itself through communicative processes that pacify the public by seemingly neutralizing the power inequality.

According to him, only counter-hegemonic mobilizations that seek to transform this

unequal power relationship can make participation truly beneficial to the public (Purcell,

2009).

Fischer (2006) states that contemporary politics is defined by elitist and bureaucratic ideals and that new forms of participation that empower and encourage the public to help themselves can counter these exclusive tendencies. He sees opportunity for new forms of participation to develop within newly created spaces between the government and public but cautions that this participation must be carefully organized and facilitated, even cultured and nurtured, a conception that reinforces power inequalities by establishing an almost paternalistic notion of the government.

Regardless of how power is conceptualized, in practically none of the literature is power perceived as something the public can bring to the decision-making process. It is due to this limitation that current theory fails to be able to account for some of the types of participation observed in the case studies discussed in this paper.

Who participates?

Another concept around which these articles are unified, and one very much related to conceptualizations of power and empowerment, is who should the public be that participates in these strategies? Public participation is theorized as a means by which the marginalized and disempowered can participate in local decision making processes (Lee, 2013).

The theme of who should participate in public participatory strategies can be developed around several points. First, the literature is structured such that participation is conceptualized as an activity that occurs between the public and the government. The result of this is first, that the either the corporate sector is theoretically

removed from any urban development discussions or that they are conceptualized in such a way that interaction between the public and, second, that the corporate sector can only occur through the mediation of the government sector (Leitner and Garner,

1993; Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). Another result of this is that ‘the public’ and ‘the government’ are conceptualized as unified blocks, rendering variation within those broad categories invisible.

A second point around which concern for who should participate revolves is the notion that public participation should have as its purpose the inclusion of otherwise marginalized, disenfranchised or less privileged populations (Gaventa, 2012; Lee, 2013;

Silver et al., 2010). This notion is related to the discussion of power in the previous section and depends, as well, on the conceptualization of the public as a unified whole, at a minimum in the sense that there is a public that can be empowered by a government. While some recognize the need to empower marginalized groups within the broader public, this recognition still maintains the relationship between the government and the public in terms of the one with power and the one receiving power, respectively. This notion negates the possibility a priori of citizens with varying access to power via political, social and economic connections made beyond the traditional political institutions.

Case studies revisited

In the case of the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan, the participatory process was a top-down, government initiated project in which the public was invited to participate and contribute their personal knowledge to the process. The nature of this arrangement is such that there is an inherent inequality in power in which the state has

the power and the public can empower itself via the state by participating (Gaventa,

2012). The dissatisfaction with the lack of implementation of the plan leads one to consider whether the public really ever was empowered in a meaningful way or if the process was a means by which to appease a potentially hostile public (Fischer, 2012).

The expression of dissatisfaction by the public is another means by which the public can empower itself, but that empowerment may only be meaningful if it changes the outcome of the process, which was not the case in the first study. Additionally, this project had as a specific goal the inclusion of a disadvantaged or marginalized group, in this case the poor residents of the neighborhood on the brink of a massive redevelopment project, in the process of planning for their futures. The results in terms of including marginalized groups is similar to the process of empowerment, it was successful during the process, but that success dwindled as the plan was not implemented.

The second case study provides an example of how the public sector was able to participate in an urban development decision by serving as a liaison between a deeply entrenched and divided government sector and an uncharacteristically silent corporate sector. The public, in the form of Believe in Cincinnati, was able to depoliticize an issue that was highly contentious to the point of dividing members of the municipal government and to the point of making corporate commitment to one side or another potentially harmful to their position within the city’s business community. This role as a liaison between the government and corporate sectors is one that is relatively unmentioned in participation literature, where traditionally the government serves as the

liaison between the public and corporate sectors. This study therefore provided an example of a new type of empowerment for the public.

The third case study is a similar example of a new type of empowerment for the public. In this case, the public came to the decision making process already empowered from sources and resources outside of the government structure. The

Wasson Way organization identified a development project, gathered support for it, and presented it to City Council along with resources that council could use to evaluate the project as well as bring the project to fruition. In this case, the government was the vehicle through which this project might be achieved but its real momentum and progress came from the strategies of the public.

The next three chapters consist of the individual articles.

Chapter 3: Marching to the beat of a silent drum: Wasted consensus building and failed neighborhood participatory planning. (2013) Applied Geography. 44:182- 191.

Abstract: This paper evaluates a pilot study that examined the viability of monitoring neighborhood land-use changes at the scale of parcels and the feasibility of monitoring progress toward implementing housing goals adopted in a comprehensive neighborhood plan. This comprehensive plan was created in a participatory planning process and consistent monitoring of its implementation did not occur. Participatory planning is frequently employed in urban (re)development plans to incorporate stakeholders knowledge, resources, and community commitment into the planning process. At its core, participatory planning seeks to achieve consensus among its participants, thereby, providing a vehicle to resolve conflict between potentially opposing interests, resolve power differences between various groups, and give groups that are commonly marginalized by institutional structures an opportunity to contribute to the planning process. Using Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood as the case study, we find that it is logistically feasible to obtain the necessary data, create a land- use GIS to analyze the data, update the data, and monitor the progress of the implementation of the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan. We argue that a participatory process that uses consensus-building and creates goals that are not implemented or monitored, fails to uphold the core characteristics that are vital to the participatory process. This failure mutes the process, the plan, and the participants, permitting (re)development to march forward regardless of the plan’s goals and objectives.

Keywords: Participatory planning, Gentrification, Affordable housing, Consensus- building, Comprehensive planning, Cincinnati

I am pleased to present to you the Over-the-Rhine Master Plan.

This plan is the product of years of painstaking dialogues, debates, and decisions. It is the outcome of a process, led by City Manager Valerie Lemmie and Planning Director Liz Blume, that involved hundreds of people who live, work, and play in Over-the-Rhine.

Mayor Charlie Luken (City of Cincinnati, 2002)

INTRODUCTION

Over-the-Rhine, a Cincinnati inner-city neighborhood plagued with crime and violence, is targeted for rapid (re)development due to its strategic location adjacent to the Central Business District, its cultural cachet, and its collection of beautiful historic

buildings. In 2002, the City of Cincinnati adopted a comprehensive plan for the Over- the-Rhine neighborhood created by a participatory consensus-building methodology. A quarter of the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan was devoted to explicit, proportional, and quantifiable goals for various “types” (affordable and market rate) of housing stock to be developed and/or maintained. The City provided updates on the progress of housing (re)development in the neighborhood, but those updates were vague in the terminology used, incomplete in extent, and ambiguous in their data sources (Lemmie, 2003; Lemmie, 2004; City of Cincinnati, 2006). These vague updates provided snapshots of development, but did not monitor the politically delicate proportional balance of the types of housing stock created through the consensus- building process by the diverse stakeholders.

The stakeholders who had invested significant effort into the creation of the plan were not sufficiently satisfied that the goals of the plan were being implemented based on the limited information provided by updates from the City. This lack of clear and precise information led to claims and counter claims among various stakeholders as to whether the true egalitarian nature of the document and the endeavor that created it were being upheld. This frustration eventually morphed into a request from a group of the original stakeholders for accountability and for a process to monitor compliance to the plan. In 2007, this request was answered by a research grant from the University of

Cincinnati to fund a pilot study to determine whether it was even possible to collect the data needed to monitor housing development, and secondly, whether the data could measure the progress made toward achieving the goals stated in the plan.

This paper presents the results of the pilot study. We found that it is logistically possible to collect the necessary and appropriate data, build a land-use GIS to analyze the data, update the data when necessary, and, therefore, monitor the progress of the implementation of the goals of the participatory plan. This raises the question as to why the monitoring was not done. While we can not answer why the City did not monitor, we suggest that the lack of monitoring was especially significant in Over-the-Rhine due to the very nature of the breadth of citizen involvement. This is because, as we argue in this paper, monitoring is an essential component to implementation and implementation is an essential component to the success of participatory planning.

PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

Participatory planning and its theoretical cousin, consensus-based planning, are part of the communicative turn in the field of urban planning. Elements of each of these models are commonly used in urban plans of all scales, from neighborhood gatherings to collect input on local playground design, to city-wide charrettes intended to gather input on long-term, metropolitan-wide comprehensive plans (Innes, 1995; Maginn, 2007;

Monno and Khakee, 2012). Though widely used and commonly heralded as a means to include the public in determining their future, it is not clear how successful this type of planning really is, neither in terms of truly serving as a representative process nor in terms of the successful fruition of plans created via a participatory method (Huxley,

2000; Neuman, 2000; Alfasi, 2003; Miraftab, 2009).

Broadly conceived, participatory planning is the “systematic effort to envision a community’s desired future, plan for that future and involve and harness the specific

competencies and inputs of community residents, leaders, and stakeholders in the process” (Beyea, 2009: 58). The goal of this type of planning is to build consensus around common goals between various groups about what should happen in the future of an area (Kaza, 2006; Healey, 2008; Beyea, 2009; Hassan, 2011). Participatory planning developed in opposition to the conventional, hierarchical models dominating planning methodologies. Grounded in theories of political democracy, participatory planning seeks to institute checks against power, of both the state and the professional planning elite, as well as provide a vehicle for the public, particularly marginalized groups, to actively participate in the creation of a more just and equitable future state

(Smith, 1973; Kaza, 2006; Mason and Beard, 2008; Wood, 2010; Hassan, 2011).

Participatory planning has evolved alongside another phenomenon common in urban development in a post-neoliberal, American context: public-private development collaboration (Goodwin, Duncan, and Halford, 1993; Harvey, 1993; McCann, 2001).

Just as other public services have become privatized, so too has planning and development. As a result of these shifts in local government responsibility, the line between public (government) and private (non-government) has become even more ambiguous. Often within this nebulous dichotomy, the private becomes easily equated with the corporate, the wealthy, or the powerful, entirely excluding the general citizenry.

Participatory planning, ideally, provides a place for the public citizenry to contribute to and engage in the planning and development processes, therefore, regaining a voice in the public-private partnerships.

Participatory planning promises an alternative to static, goal oriented planning paradigms in which information is passed down to, or imposed upon, the public citizenry

situated at the bottom of the political structure. Instead it creates a dynamic situation in which citizens can experience a sense of involvement and ownership with input at one or many moments in the planning process (Timothy, 1999; Halla, 2002; Kaza, 2006;

Hassan, 2011). In this sense, participants have local knowledge and a vested interest in sharing this knowledge in a process that should produce goals reflective of local input and the personal interests of participants. Wood (2010) recognizes participatory planning as a potential solution to the professionalization of knowledge and skills in general where the ability to think about and/or produce future goals and plans has been limited to those with credentials.

A more specific advantage of the inclusive nature of participatory planning is its proven effectiveness to serve as a means to manage the multiple interests of a diverse group of stakeholders. Disparate groups, many of whom might not otherwise have access to the planning process, are united around the creation of common goals (Kaza,

2006). Ideally, participatory planning is the democratization of the planning process, whereby, the knowledge shared and produced in the process and the results of the process, reflect all interested citizenry.

While it is clear that the participatory, consensus-building planning process ideally includes a public that may otherwise be excluded, the process does not necessarily guarantee that the plans created by the public via this process will be completely implemented. Therefore, the success of a plan does not inherently depend upon its complete implementation. However, the lack of implementation (or at least an attempt of implementation) is a particularly significant issue in the participatory planning process. While other models and processes can be deemed successful to the extent

that they guide development rather than dictate specific courses of action based on precise, measurable goals, the consensus-building process risks undermining its purpose by not providing for, or following through with, the implementation stage of development.

A participatory process that does not account for implementation, risks becoming a meritless means of appeasing a potentially hostile or disagreeable public without actually providing the democratic benefits of that process, benefits that are essential to the consensus process. Among the most cited criticisms of the participatory process is the lack of credibility and trust that can occur when follow up to the consensus-building portion of the process is not completed (Halla, 2005). In other words, if there is no means to monitor progress, in this case progress of achieving the goals created in the consensus process, then the process itself cannot be evaluated or determined useful

(Hassan, 2011). The potential for misrepresentation of intentions and abuse of power is much greater when there is no system of monitoring progress. We contend that a participatory plan that is perceived as not implementing its stated goals is a failure to the public that created it, as well as a failure to the participatory process. Specifically, the failure to monitor and implement the housing goals of the comprehensive plan for the

Over-the-Rhine neighborhood muted the consensus-driven plan by allowing the perception of community (re)development to march in the direction of least resistance.

OVER-THE-RHINE: THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Over-the-Rhine, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Cincinnati, has been the subject of a multitude of city and community sponsored development plans (Miller and

Tucker, 1998) and is now one of the keystone projects in the largest (re)development strategies ever implemented in Cincinnati. Currently, Over-the-Rhine is the focus of considerable attention and investment from public-private (re)development partnerships between the City, private investors, and the non-profit Cincinnati Center City

Development Corporation (3CDC). A recent article in the travel section of a Canadian newspaper commented on the attractiveness, effectiveness, and magnitude of the

(re)development effort, noting that “block by block, the city and developers have retaken the neighbourhood that was once dubbed the most dangerous in America and transformed its shabby but beautiful buildings into some of the city’s best bars and restaurants” (Myers, 2013).

The desire for a consensus-driven approach to building a comprehensive plan for the (re)development of Over-the-Rhine is embedded in the socio-political context of the neighborhood. For several decades, the neighborhood suffered from ambivalence toward and tolerance of decay and disinvestment. In 2000, dismal economic prospects and housing conditions plagued the neighborhood. Of the 5,261 housing units in the neighborhood, 1,667 (31.7%) of them were vacant. Of the 3,594 (68.3%) units that were occupied, 3,454 (96.1%) were renter-occupied, and only 140 (3.9%) were owner- occupied. In addition, there were approximately five hundred vacant residential buildings and seven hundred vacant parcels of land (City of Cincinnati, 2002). In 1996, the City contracted with the local office of the Urban Land Institute to evaluate the

potential development opportunities in the neighborhood. Concurrently, small-scale, disjointed revitalization efforts highlighted the visually attractive possibilities of the renovated architecture and the potential economic viability of the area. This revitalization prodded the City to begin a process to create a comprehensive plan to encourage potential economic investment and growth as well as to alleviate and calm concerns that possible (re)development efforts and gentrification would displace the current residents.

In 2001, the housing substructure of the neighborhood was further dismantled by the bankruptcy of the largest provider of subsidized housing in Over-the-Rhine and resulted in the loss of 1,089 subsidized units. Hart Realty received federal subsidies for approximately two hundred Section 8 buildings and created one of the largest concentrations of low-income housing in the country (Peale and Alltacker, 2001). Hart

Realty’s bankruptcy was triggered by a shift of the federal government’s housing assistance practices away from a system of place-based subsidies to a voucher-based system. Under the new practices, this landlord could no longer sustain all of his properties. The bankruptcy produced a huge void in affordable housing in Over-the-

Rhine and simultaneously provided opportunities for potential housing (re)development in the neighborhood no longer stymied by the concentration of low-income housing

(Peale and Alltacker, 2001). Reaction to the new void and the potential

(re)development opportunity escalated tension in the neighborhood.

The increasing pressure fueled by the dichotomous tension between property investment versus fair housing underscored the necessity for consensus-building, fueled the urgency for the completion of a comprehensive plan to mediate the situation,

and shaped the course of events that followed. Those living in the neighborhood and those interested in (re)developing it were racially and economically diverse, and both would bring to the planning table vastly divergent values, cultures, and priorities. This ideological gulf was seen to be best bridged by a consensus-building, participatory process because that is exactly what this process is designed to do.

Over-the-Rhine has characteristics attractive to both opposing interests.

Developers are lured by the central location between the Central Business District, the

University of Cincinnati, and the hospital complexes (“Pill Hill”). The neighborhood also provides a bankable mythology, evidenced by the traditional urban stories evoking

German heritage. The extensive collection of historical styles of buildings, which include Italianate, Greek Revival, and Queen Anne, present creative architectural potential. Finally, the neighborhood’s history of disinvestment makes it potentially profitable for new capital investment.

The opposing interests are focused on the reality that Over-the-Rhine contains the City’s greatest concentration of social services, businesses, and subsidized housing catering to the poor. This social network includes shelters, job-training agencies, day labor temp agencies, soup kitchens, psychological services, medical and dental clinics, and public spaces where the dependent population lives relatively unbothered. All sites are within walking distance of each other and are primarily located in the neighborhood.

Over-the-Rhine also has a history of resistance to (re)development justified by the notion that all citizens, including the poor and homeless, have a right to the city. Over- the-Rhine has resisted large-scale investment strategies for years, through protests, confrontation, and stockpiling properties. Resistance was led by poverty advocate,

Buddy Gray, who fought for the poor’s right to exist in poverty from the 1970s until his murder in 1996 (Miller, 1998). The entrenched social milieux and its supporters defend the status quo and provide the impetus to “preserve” the neighborhood. To generalize the debate among the participants in the Over-the-Rhine planning process broadly, the contestation essentially was between those seeking economic (re)development of the neighborhood, not only for the sake of the neighborhood but also for the economic well being of the entire City, versus those seeking to ensure that long time residents would not be displaced and their established community and neighborhood would not be replaced. The elephant in the room throughout the planning process was and remains gentrification.

The riots of 2001 in Over-the-Rhine put the neighborhood on a city-wide and even national stage, highlighting the failure of the City to deal with this area and its problems. With the knowledge that something had to change, city leaders called for the completion of a participatory plan where opposing interests and concerns would be represented in its development. Ideally, a participatory plan offered an equitable and informed process in which all of the diverse participants and their disparate views would work toward forming a consensus on the needs of the neighborhood. Theoretically, this process would account for everyone’s interests because everyone had the opportunity to participate and everyone had the opportunity to form the consensus, which includes the ability to resist consensus until satisfied.

THE OVER-THE-RHINE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN: JUST ANOTHER PLAN?

In 2002, the Cincinnati City Council adopted the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive

Plan (OTRCP). The endeavor, which created the 2002 plan, relied on a process that included years of dialogues, debates, and compromises between a disparate mix of hundreds of Over-the-Rhine stakeholders who live, work, and invest in Over-the-Rhine

(City of Cincinnati, 2002). The OTRCP is a participatory plan in the general sense that many public stakeholders participated in an extensive and organized planning process.

The Introduction to the OTRCP carefully acknowledges the divergent visions of the neighborhood as it highlights Over-the-Rhine’s assets: the distinct historical architecture, the diverse arts and cultural communities, the cultural heritage of places like Music Hall, Washington Park, and Findlay Market, and the committed residents and stakeholders. The OTRCP also acknowledged its disadvantages: systematic disinvestment beginning early in the 20th century, loss of population and economic activity, crime and perceived danger, concentrations of poverty, and a lack of cohesion

(City of Cincinnati, 2002).

The Executive Summary of the plan states that the plan “was created out of the passion, drive and commitment of many existing neighborhood residents, business owners, property owners, social service providers, development corporations, community business interests and the many other stakeholders who love OTR” (City of

Cincinnati, 2002: 1). Without a doubt, according to the plan, the process that created it and its goals were participatory and inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders. This process was chosen based on recommendations delivered by the local office of the

Urban Land Institute.

Along with the evaluations of the potential development opportunities in the Over- the-Rhine neighborhood, the Urban Land Institute recommended that a coalition organization be established that could serve as an ‘honest broker’ between diverse neighborhood factions and build consensus for planned improvements (Tangi, 1996). A group of volunteers became the ‘honest broker’ and worked to establish the Over-the-

Rhine Coalition, opened an office, recruited stakeholders, provided resident training, and organized a planning process. The City Planning Department provided assistance by broadening the planning partnership to include the Asset-Based Community

Development Residents’ Table (ABCD) and the Over-the-Rhine and Pendleton

Community Councils.

Representative members from these organizations and other stakeholders formed the Planning and Steering Committee (PSC) for the new Over-the-Rhine

Comprehensive Plan. This 27-member committee was considered to be representative of the stakeholders in the neighborhood and was charged with coordinating and monitoring the planning process. The planning process attracted participation from members of the partner organizations as well as additional residents, institutions, businesses, and interested citizens and stakeholders. The responsibilities of the PSC included managing the “Issue Committees”, soliciting information from all committees and volunteers, coordinating public meetings, and managing visioning charrettes (City of Cincinnati, 2002).

Four Issue Committees were created and chaired by the PSC and they were charged with the development of the planning recommendations. The four committees were: Housing Committee, Economic Development Committee, Transportation

Committee, and Quality of Life Committee. Membership and participation in these committees was open to everyone. Experts provided information on topics relevant to the neighborhood and committees, while City representatives provided information on current projects and future plans. The committees discussed difficult and contentious issues, shared ideas for change and improvements, identified target issues, and developed goals and strategies to address their topics of focus. The work completed by the Issue Committees represented the basis for the recommendations made in the comprehensive plan.

Over two hundred community stakeholders joined professional architects and planners in a community visioning process. The visioning process created the geographic and design recommendations that accompanied the policy recommendations developed by the PSC and the four Issue Committees. This process included day-long working meetings with neighbors and stakeholders, tours of the neighborhood, and sessions creating the concept designs for target areas. A team of urban designers then translated community ideas into urban design solutions presented in the plan. Additional community participation was encouraged through three public meetings and one-on-one interviews with staff of the City Planning Department for individuals who were uncomfortable sharing their ideas in a public setting.

Housing goals

The housing goals, consensually created through this participatory process, were clearly stated in the plan: encourage and welcome new investment at all income levels of the housing market and ensure the long-term sustainability of enough affordable

housing to house current residents; provide appropriate housing-related services for all residents; and protect, preserve, and enhance the significant landmarks and areas of

Over-the-Rhine’s historic, architectural, and cultural heritage without displacement (City of Cincinnati, 2002:7). Additionally, the plan provided key recommendations for housing development: establish the Mixed Income Housing Model (Figure 1); give priority to mixed income projects; provide homeownership opportunities at all income levels; support the rental housing market by upgrading rental housing; and create larger family units at all income levels (City of Cincinnati, 2002).

The Mixed Income Housing Model categorizes housing into two types of “Market

Rate” housing and two types of “Affordable” housing. These categories are based on the Area Median Income (AMI), a figure provided by the United States Department of

Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD uses this figure to categorize households in order to determine their eligibility for subsidized housing. The categories

HUD uses include “very low income”, which is an income at or below 50% of the AMI, and “extremely low income”, which is an income at or below 30% of the AMI.

Mixed Income Housing Model

Total Housing Units in Over-the-Rhine 1-5 5-10 10-15 15-20 Rental Mortgage Cost years years years years Market Rate: Unlimited 20% 20% 20% 25% Market Rate: 61%-100% of AMI 20% 20% 30% 25% Affordable: 31%-60% of AMI 20% 35% 25% 25% Affordable: up to 30% of AMI 40% 25% 25% 25%

AMI = Annual Median Income ($60,500) Source: 2002 Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan

Figure 1

The goals in the Mixed Income Housing Model acknowledge the gentrification elephant. The goals strive to provide opportunity for economic development within the top two categories of “market rate” housing types and also provide for the maintenance of affordable housing within the bottom two categories of “affordable” housing types.

The model provides for an evolutionary time frame to allow current residents time to adjust to the impending change in the nature of the neighborhood. The goals of the model provide the means to create a balanced, diverse community.

With the housing goals solidified and the comprehensive plan adopted,

(re)development in the neighborhood continued. Visible signs of investment and change as well as media fanfare around City sponsored projects indicated that investment and (re)development were increasing. What exactly was being developed, particularly in terms of housing stock, and whether the explicit goals in the

Comprehensive Plan were being pursued and attained, proved ambiguous.

The plan provided implementation strategies and it explicitly states that “a monitoring system will need to be established to provide an annual count of housing units” (City of Cincinnati, 2002:49). However, it did not provide for a systematic method of counting housing units or for the collection of essential information necessary to guide and monitor the plan's implementation. It did provide for who would be responsible for the implementation:

A new Community Development Corporation (CDC) should be privately

formed to act as developer, broker, and facilitator, and provide technical

expertise in areas of housing and economic development project

development. The mission of the organization should be to advance the

objectives of this plan through the development and production of real

estate development and through partnership arrangements with the many

other development organizations in the community (City of Cincinnati,

2002:147).

The plan also describes the structure and membership of the CDC:

The CDC should be established with a Board and a staff. The Board

should include people from the OTR resident and development

community, and from the various cultural, business and financial

institutions and foundations represented in the neighborhood. The Board

should provide the community with the access to the resources and

technical expertise that will make it successful (City of Cincinnati,

2002:147).

An umbrella CDC whose sole responsibility was to oversee the plan’s implementation was not established. Nor was the Board of the CDC that was charged to oversee the plan’s implementation composed of the stakeholders described in the OTRCP. As a result, progress occurred without holistic tracking and without consideration of the plan's objectives and priorities. Additionally, the lack of timely and accurate information concerning the number, characteristics, and locations of affordable and market rate

housing units created claims and counter claims about gentrification and displacement from stakeholders who were part of the original planning process.

Updates to the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan

The contentious nature of the (re)development activities within the neighborhood led to three status reports between January 2003 and September 2006 releasing information concerning the progress of the implementation of the comprehensive plan.

Within the first two years of adoption, the City Manager issued two interdepartmental memos updating the Mayor and Members of City Council on the status of the OTRCP.

Four years after the plan’s adoption, a larger update was released to the public by the

Department of Community Development and Planning.

Memo One. The memo dated January 29, 2003, described current and past actions categorized in the four following headings: Completing strategic land acquisition; Identifying development opportunities and possible funding; Reviewing current/proposed projects to determine their continued feasibility; and Positioning for implementing consultant’s recommendations. Also listed in the memo under “Building

Rehabilitation and New Construction” were ten housing projects in various and vague states of development, creating types of housing other than those in the plan, and the amount of city funding spent for each of them. The following projects and their descriptions illustrate the ambiguity of the memo: the Vine Street Project will produce

“30 affordable units”; the St. Anthony Village will produce “22 low income and 6 market rate” units; 15th Street will have “market rate housing”; Community Views will have

“mixed income rental housing”; Findlay Market Housing Phase I will have “rental market

rate units”; and the Vine, Republic and Clay Streets project will convert small “currently section 8 units” into “19 affordable 2 and 3 bedroom apartments with hardwood floors, central heat and air”. The listings were vague and ambiguous in terms of what these descriptive terms meant, how they were determined, and how they fit into the Mixed

Income Housing Model in the OTRCP. While the housing goals are not referenced at all, the memo did have an explicit reference to the OTRCP in the Strategic Property

Acquisition section: “Consistent with the concept included in the OTR Comprehensive

Plan, these homes would have secure parking and balconies overhanging the right of way” (Lemmie, 2003). This meager reference that some development was “consistent” with the OTRCP did not reduce stakeholders’ angst over the direction of the

(re)development. Nor did it assuage those who sought empirical data monitoring the implementation of the plan (even though this reference did acknowledge that some development was “consistent” with the OTRCP). Further, confusion was created with its use of language that differed from the language used by the plan describing housing types.

The memo also pointed out that “implementation is more than the public sector’s responsibility. Private investment has increased, and several ideas about who/what entity will coordinate overall implementation or development is being discussed”

(Lemmie, 2003). In July 2003, Mayor Luken created the Cincinnati City Center

Development Corporation (3CDC) and announced that it was responsible for the oversight of the OTRCP implementation. Memo One also indicated that the City of

Cincinnati Economic and Development Task Force also recommended oversight of the

OTRCP to be the responsibility of 3CDC (Lemmie, 2003). Based on 3CDC’s current

website, funding for the organization is obtained “mostly through corporate contributions”, its partners “are members of the Cincinnati corporate community”, “more than 30 corporate leaders make up 3CDC’s Board of Directors”, and “the corporate leadership of 3CDC is vital to its existence and its success” (Cincinnati City Center

Development Corporation, 2013). However, the OTRCP called for a broader and more inclusive board of stakeholders: “The Board should include people from the OTR resident and development community, and from the various cultural, business and financial institutions and foundations represented in the neighborhood” (City of

Cincinnati, 2002: 147). With the installation of 3CDC at the helm of Over-the-Rhine’s

(re)development and the exclusion of the general citizenry from 3CDC’s Board of

Directors, corporate leadership supplied the only private contribution to the public- private collaboration.

Memo Two. The second interdepartmental memo dated March 2004 had as its subject: “Over the Rhine Implementation - Anthem Budget 2003-2004”. This memo directly addressed the interaction between the City and the “OTR Stakeholders” since the adoption of the plan. The City facilitated two OTRCP implementation meetings with

Over-the-Rhine stakeholders where the stakeholders were updated on projects, introduced to 3CDC, and told what roles the City would play in the development process. The memo also indicated that a schedule of quarterly meetings for the Over- the-Rhine stakeholders had been established. The memo further emphasized the City’s commitment to the participatory process. However, it is unclear who exactly comprised the “OTR stakeholders” and whether the same stakeholders that helped create the plan were included in the quarterly meetings (Lemmie, 2004).

Memo Two also described how the City would fund the implementation of the plan with $2,000,000 a year from the Anthem Fund. The Anthem Fund was created with funds from a financial compensation settlement received from the demutualization of Anthem. The yearly funds dedicated to the implementation process were intended to

“jump start and enhance” efforts already underway by the City and other stakeholders.

The budget also included $3,250,000 committed to two large-scale housing projects.

The memo stated that City Council allocated $15,000,000 in Anthem Funds to the

Cincinnati Housing Development Fund and that as of January 31, 2004, of the

$7,094,095 already lent, $4,744,095 had gone to Over-the-Rhine. The memo made it clear that interest, effort, and funding of the development of housing in Over-the-Rhine was moving forward, however, the specific types of housing being developed were not made clear (Lemmie, 2004).

Implementation Update. Attached to Memo Two was the Over the Rhine

Comprehensive Plan Implementation Update, January 2004. It described in great detail various projects under the following categories: Safety, Public Services and Amenities,

Parks and Beautification, Transportation and Parking, and Community Development and Planning. Contained within Community Development and Planning, approximately

21 different housing development projects were described. These descriptions included the dollar amounts of public and private investment, the location, the progress, and the types of units created in each project. However, the description of the types of units created relied on the following ambiguous and inconsistent terms: “market rate rental units”, “market rate homeownership”, “affordable home ownership”, “market rate homeownership with great views!”, “mixed income units for rent”, “mixed income with 12

units (2 market rate, 10 affordable)”, “affordable units”, “section 8 units converted into affordable units”, “units developed using low income and historic tax credits”, and “units as part of low-income housing tax credit redevelopment” (Lemmie, 2004). With no defining parameters of the types of units, assessment as to whether the goals of the

Mixed Income Housing Model were being met could not be done.

2006 Update. Two years later, the City released Over the Rhine: An Update on

Implementation of the Comprehensive Plan, Summer 2002 - Summer 2006, Celebrate

Progress. Compiled by the City of Cincinnati’s Department of Community Development and Planning, the 48-page document presented a summary of progress made on various projects, categorized according to the four goals in the OTRCP in table format.

For each of these projects, the following information was included: objective, strategies, potential partners, implementing agency, contribution to strategy, total project costs, and current status (City of Cincinnati, 2006).

The update vaguely stated on its cover that “this document was compiled using various data sources” and advised interested parties to contact the City for additions or corrections. Clarification or updates of this document have never been released. The information in the update that concerned housing types described them as either

“Affordable” or “Market Rate” and did not provide a definition of what those terms represented or identify the sources for the data. While this was the most comprehensive and detailed of the updates on the OTRCP, how the new housing in

Over-the-Rhine fit the Mixed Income Housing Model still remained unclear. As with each previous update, the terminology failed to correlate with the terminology used in the plan or to define how they were comparable (City of Cincinnati, 2006).

The 2006 Update was presented at the Over-the-Rhine Summit held September

21, 2006, and hosted by the University of Cincinnati’s Community Design Center and

Niehoff Urban Studio in partnership with the City’s Department of Community

Development and Planning. The event was designed to showcase student work focused on Over-the-Rhine, to highlight the accomplishments of 39 organizations based in Over-the-Rhine, and to provide a public forum to discuss the status of the implementation of the OTRCP. One speaker, Sister Monica McGloin, a Dominican nun, the former President of the Over-the-Rhine Community Council, and a participant in the creation of the OTRCP, stated that many of the goals of the plan had not been achieved and that the residents had been excluded from the City’s implementation activities. She stated, “We were never invited to set up a planning committee, as the plan called for.

There’s not a sense of inclusion” (Pierce, 2006).

In reference to Sister McGloin’s remarks, the newly appointed City Manager,

Milton R. Dohoney Jr., acknowledged that the end result of the plan may not have been part of the original vision and that the “laundry list of projects is not as important as the process by which we undertook to get those things done. In many instances, the projects became unifiers of the community where they had always been divisions. In some cases, the divisions were physical barriers, in other cases, the divisions were imaginary barriers. I have been here for a short period of time, but I have been struck by the imaginary barriers that we work around” (Pierce, 2006).

Based on Sister McGloin’s remarks, the sense of unity that may have developed in the process of creating the plan, that same unity Mr. Dohoney referenced, diminished and fell silent when the goals developed in that process were brushed aside and

considered not as important as the process. Despite any efforts made by the City to inform stakeholders with updates, many of them felt excluded and were not satisfied.

Without monitoring the housing (re)development process, stakeholders feared that the

Mixed Housing Model was no longer an implementation goal. Unfortunately, it was unknown whether the goals were being met or not. There simply was no comprehensive, detailed public assessment of the housing (re)development. Amid accusations of gentrification, displacement, and exclusion of the existing residents and non-corporate stakeholders, no one was able to say definitively what was happening.

The scapegoat became 3CDC as the representation of corporate desire for control and profits against the powerless residents, social service providers, and housing advocates. Many original participants felt that at this point it was in everyone’s best interest to collect the data necessary to empirically evaluate what type of housing was being developed.

PARTICIPATORY MONITORING USING THE LUMIS

The impetus to advance a pilot study to determine the feasibility of creating a land-use monitoring information system (LUMIS) emerged from the concerns expressed by many of the original consensus-builders over the implementation of the housing goals of the OTRCP. In informal ad hoc meetings with interested stakeholders, concerns grew into a broader desire to create a comprehensive database to monitor all development in the neighborhood at the parcel-level scale that could be updated easily and available to all stakeholders. In 2007, The University of Cincinnati’s Center for

Sustainable Urban Engineering funded a proposal to build a pilot system that could

monitor the implementation of the OTRCP. The pilot study was designed to collect and analyze the desired comprehensive land-use information for a small but representative area in Over-the-Rhine. An important component of the pilot study was to evaluate the availability, quality, format, and ease of data access for the initial creation and periodic updating of a system that could monitor the (re)development goals established in the

OTRCP.

The development of the LUMIS had several objectives: it should collect, organize, and analyze information about all private and public land-use; it should allow for frequent (annual or bi-annual), inexpensive (not dependent on special grants), and rapid updates (taking advantage of existing institutional structures, databases, or methodologies where possible); it would provide critical current data of the number, location and characteristics of market rate and subsidized housing units in Over-the-

Rhine; and that the system could be replicable in other neighborhoods. These objectives assured that the goals of efficiency and consistency were maintained while monitoring the dynamic process of documenting and modeling neighborhood change.

In addition, the LUMIS could impact future planning decisions with transparent information that would allow for greater consensus among residential, commercial, and social interests. Most importantly, the LUMIS could serve as a tool for “participatory monitoring” allowing the vested stakeholders who had participated in the creation of the plan to continue to actively engage in the implementation process by both providing and accessing neighborhood data through the system. Consultations with stakeholders in ad hoc meetings and personal interviews guided the data selection, survey creation, data collection, and data analysis.

Parcel-level data and variable selection

The pilot study required the creation of a survey instrument to collect parcel-level data used to create the database for monitoring land-use change in the neighborhood.

The instrument first collected baseline data. Subsequent data collections and updates would be used to evaluate progress made toward the housing goals stated in the comprehensive plan. A broad range of ideas for potential variables was collected to evaluate their utility in land-use analysis and their ease of collection. A comprehensive list of potential information requirements was gathered from stakeholders in ad hoc meetings and individual consultations, and from professionals with specialized knowledge useful to the project. The stakeholders who regularly met in the ad hoc meetings represented the Over-the-Rhine Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1992 whose mission is to “preserve and revitalize Cincinnati’s most historic, diverse and architecturally rich community” (Over-the-Rhine Foundation, 2013) and the Over- the-Rhine Community Housing, a non-profit organization that “works to build and sustain a diverse neighborhood that values and benefits low-income residents” (Over- the-Rhine Community Housing, 2013). Additionally, consultation with authors of previous Over-the-Rhine land-use studies, developers, residents, Over-the-Rhine researchers, and members of the City of Cincinnati’s Planning Department provided valuable insight. The land-use and housing sections in the comprehensive plan also informed and guided the process.

From the OTRCP, four general categories of housing characteristics were determined to be of interest: housing capacity and availability; housing tenure; subsidized and affordable housing; and historical, cultural, and commercial assets.

From the comprehensive list of desired information requests gathered through consultations, it was determined that the following specific data should be collected: number (parcels, buildings, units), size (acres of parcels, square feet of building footprint, number of floors, number of units, and square feet of units), location (street address, parcel number, geocoded on map), condition (structural soundness, architectural type), cost (rent or lease rates per unit), value (auditors market value per parcel or per unit for condos), and ownership (public/private/non-profit, tenure, holding size). From this final list of information requirements, 207 individual data variables were identified (see Appendix 1: variable structure). A survey instrument was then created to collect the data (see Appendix 2: Survey). A database with all the survey data organized according to parcel number and/or street address was created.

Study area

A study area was identified that was logistically and financially manageable to fit within the parameters established within the pilot study, representative of the diversity of land-uses and conditions found in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and demonstrative of the capabilities of the LUMIS. The study area, a two-block section bounded by

Liberty Street, Walnut Street, 14th Street, and Main Street, is located centrally in the

Over-the-Rhine neighborhood within an area referenced in the OTRCP as Melindy

Square. The two-block area is the core of Melindy Square. According to the OTRCP, this area contains a future housing project that is “under review” and will contain 61 rehabilitated, home-ownership, market rate units. The plan also contained detailed architectural renderings of the potential (re)developed area.

Study Area

Over-the-Rhine

Figure 2: Study area within Over-the-Rhine

At the time of the data collection, the buildings in the study area exhibited a wide range of states of renovation, from completely renovated to no signs of any renovation; as well as a wide range of maintenance efforts, from well-maintained to abandoned and condemned. These characteristics were reflective of the spectrum of conditions and stages of (re)development that characterized the neighborhood at the time of the study.

Sources of data

Potential sources for the data variables were identified to optimize the collection, management, and analysis requirements. The collection of data had to be inexpensive, time efficient, replicable, and easy to update. Three types of data sources were identified: owner disclosed, visual inspection, and secondary sources. Some data were obtainable from only one of these sources, while others were obtainable from multiple sources that could be cross-referenced and compared for correctness and/or efficiency.

Owner disclosed. The survey data from property and business owners proved to be the most difficult to obtain. However, the data from the property owners proved to be the most valuable data for analyzing housing in terms of the goals of the Mixed Income

Housing Model. Property ownership and owner contact information were obtained primarily from the website of the Hamilton County Auditor. When data obtained at this site were found to be incomplete or out of date, internet searches, resident input, and

“for rent” or “for sale” signs were used to locate owners. All of the owners in the study area were identified and contacted. Data from owners were obtained via a format method (interview, mailed survey, phone) selected by the owners to facilitate willingness to participate. Owners of large-scale developments frequently had databases of organized information that they used to completed the survey form, or they submitted the databases electronically to us and we completed the surveys from this information.

Owners of small-scale developments most often supplied the data in person or via telephone. Property owners provided the most useful information concerning the size, cost, and subsidization of individual rental and/or condominium units (see Appendix 2:

Survey).

Contact information for the business owners was most often found by using an internet search or by visiting the business. Business owner interviews were conducted in person or by phone and the survey instrument was used to the guide data collection

(see Appendix 2: Survey).

Visual inspection. Visual inspection was necessary to gather data for the architectural and structural condition variables, and to “ground truth” data collected from secondary sources, such as street addresses and the existence of built structures.

Data gathered via visual inspection was collected by graduate students using a carefully constructed survey instrument. The survey included explicit parameters and keys that limited subjectivity and also minimized training. The parameters and keys were established through consultation with experts in the fields of architecture and historic preservation and through repeated testing to achieve consistent results (see Appendix

2: Survey).

Secondary sources. Much of the data accumulated for the pilot study were available from secondary sources. However, several critical considerations and cautions were associated with these secondary sources: the format of the data was not convenient; databases were not always current, maintained, reliable, and/or complete; data were not updated frequently; and some sources were difficult to access and/or import into the LUMIS.

The website of the Hamilton County Auditor provided most of the data from secondary sources used in the LUMIS. Secondary data from the Auditor was particularly useful in obtaining ownership, historic, and value related information. All data from the Hamilton County Auditor website required hand-entry into the LUMIS

database. The Auditor’s office indicated that in the future, this data will be available in a more efficient electronic format.

Other secondary sources provided information regarding subsidies, tax information, code violations, and building permits. Additional sources of secondary data included Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System (CAGIS), Housing and Urban

Development (HUD), Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, Ohio Housing Finance

Agency, the City of Cincinnati Department of Buildings and Inspections, and the

Community Design Center. Some of the other sources of secondary data were directly imported into the LUMIS database. The survey form identified the types of secondary data being collected and the source for those data (see Appendix 2: Survey).

RESULTS

The pilot study successfully demonstrated the feasibility of (1) creating a LUMIS

(participatory monitoring) for the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood; (2) collecting and analyzing housing data; and (3) monitoring and evaluating the progress of the implementation of the housing goals established in the OTRCP.

The pilot project created a comprehensive checklist of neighborhood parcel-level characteristics in consultation with stakeholder partners and area experts. A survey instrument collected the required information from three types of sources: owner disclosed, visual inspection, and secondary sources. The survey instrument created consistent and replicable results and could be easily updated regarding the current use and physical condition of all buildings and parcels in the study area. The quality and accessibility of the secondary data was assessed through “ground truthing” against

known details collected with the survey instrument. Once the data was collected, it was imported into a comprehensive database and used to create a GIS-based Land-Use

Monitoring Information System (LUMIS). The LUMIS provided the information necessary to monitor the land-use and the goals of the Mixed-Income Housing Model established in the OTRCP.

Data collection limitations and considerations

Each of the three types of data sources (owner disclosed, visual inspection, and secondary) presented different limitations, though all of these limitations potentially can be overcome through a unified, institutionally supported administration. The survey tool was designed, tested, and refined to ensure consistency in its use to collect data from all three sources.

Owner disclosed. The success of the collection of this data is dependent upon proper administration and collection of the survey questions. The difficulty in contacting and obtaining information from the owners presented significant limitations. Many owners expressed hesitation with participating in yet another attempt to collect data that seemingly goes nowhere. Some owners, not involved in the participatory planning and the potential “participatory monitoring” processes, questioned whether the data would be used to support goals that were contrary to their personal interests. Other owners, particularly those with single or small land holdings, were either absentee or they were unable to be reached at addresses available on the Auditor’s website. These limitations could most efficiently be overcome through centralized administration and promotion of the survey. With proper education concerning the importance and purpose of the

survey, contact information and return rates could be greatly improved. These would best be achieved with widely promoted institutional backing.

Visual inspection. Inherent in the process of collecting primary data is the necessary monetary cost. Particularly when documenting historic buildings, the start-up costs to produce the surveys, train the data collectors, and enter the data in the LUMIS must be institutionally funded. The costs, along with the long-term commitment, coordination, and interest in the project would inevitably be best borne by a funded institution.

Secondary sources. The data collected from secondary sources is subject to the following significant scrutiny: what is the format of the data, how frequently is the data updated, how reliable is the data, and finally, does the data provide the intricate information necessary to measure gentrification? A centralized administration of the

LUMIS would ensure that data compatibility issues and the timing of LUMIS updates are coordinated, the survey tools are used, and surveyors were properly trained.

Data analysis: housing goals

Due to the temporally static nature of the data collected for the pilot study, it is not possible to determine whether implementation of the housing goals are moving forward. However, we conclude that over time the data can be collected with the survey instrument and analysis with the LUMIS can make that determination. The following numbers consider the data that we did collect and discusses how that data over time could be used to monitor progress towards the housing goals. All parcels are not included in the housing analysis because all owners did not participate in the survey.

The area includes 68 individual parcels with a variety of land-uses representative of the neighborhood. Among those parcels, 35 of the lots were built, 16 were parking lots, 4 were parks, 2 were vacant, and 11 were parts of throughways. Of the 35 built lots, 18 were mixed residential and commercial buildings, 10 had residential buildings, 6 contained commercial buildings, and 1 was industrial. Of the 28 parcels with residential uses, 21 were rentals, 4 were vacant, and 3 had condominiums. Based on the limited rental information in the LUMIS, Melindy Square had the following proportions of types of units:

Mixed Income Housing Model

Total Housing Units in Over-the-Rhine Goal Pilot Estimated 1-5 5-10 Melindy monthly Rental Mortgage Cost years years year 6 rent* Market Rate: Unlimited 20% 20% 0% $1514 + Market Rate: 61%-100% of AMI 20% 20% 2% $923 - $1513 Affordable: 31%-60% of AMI 20% 35% 52% $469 - $922 Affordable: up to 30% of AMI 40% 25% 32% $0 - $468 Vacant - - 14% na

AMI = Annual Median Income ($60,500) *Based on 30% of income spent on rent (City of Cincinnati, 2002:42) Source: 2002 Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan

Figure 3: Sample Results

For the 24 occupied residential buildings in the study area, there were six building owners with holdings ranging from one to eight buildings. The response rate from the six owners to survey was mixed: two owners with 16 properties between them provided detailed data; one owner with 4 properties promised data but did not respond

within the time frame of the pilot study; one owner with 1 property declined to participate citing disillusionment with previous participation in housing data surveys; and two owners with 3 properties between them could not be contracted. While only two of the six (33%) owners responded within the time frame of the pilot study, their holdings accounted for 16 of the 24 (67%) parcels in the study area. Additional data essential to monitoring the types of available housing described in the OTRCP was obtained from databases of housing subsidies from city, state, and federal sources. Spatial analyses of all the other variables are also possible.

CONCLUSIONS

The consensus-building participatory planning process designed to create the

Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan and to guide the future (re)development of this neighborhood successfully involved a broad spectrum of stakeholders. The City of

Cincinnati provided a forum for all interested stakeholders, including the local public citizenry, to contribute to and engage in the planning processes and outcomes that ultimately reflected their input and interests of the participants. More importantly, this process successfully brought together disparate groups with disparate visions of the neighborhood who might not otherwise have access to the planning process or the opportunity to create consensus over common goals for (re)development.

For marginalized groups, the opportunity to actively participate in the creation of a plan with an outcome of just and equitable goals for the neighborhood was perceived as an important social victory. Due to the extraordinary effort of the City to be inclusive in the participatory process, the expectations were high that the consensus-driven goals

would be implemented as stipulated in the plan. However, these expectations were not met due to the failure of the City to include the stipulated stakeholders on the board of the CDC charged with overseeing the implementation process. Without the City’s participation or oversight, many stakeholders attempted to repeat the consensus- building methodology by meeting together to discuss how to ensure the implementation of the OTRCP and how to monitor the plan’s implementation. One of the outcomes of these ad hoc meetings was the request for and creation of the LUMIS pilot study designed to determine if monitoring could be done efficiently and effectively.

The results of this study suggest that it is possible for the LUMIS to efficiently and effectively monitor housing and land-use changes at the neighborhood level. The results also suggest that institutional support for the LUMIS is necessary for two reasons: (1) to give credibility to the LUMIS, thereby, encouraging the cooperation of property owners to release the necessary parcel information and (2) to fund the costs associated with creating, maintaining, and utilizing the LUMIS. The stakeholders and researchers who created the pilot study approached the City requesting implementation of the LUMIS, however, the City did not find it a funding priority.

The successful results of the pilot study, coupled with the disinterest of the City in monitoring (re)development, raise the question as to why so much time, money, and effort was invested into creating a consensus-building planning process and so little time, money, and effort was invested into monitoring the implementation of the consensus-built plan. We cannot answer this question. While the success of a OTRCP does not inherently depend only upon its implementation, the perceived lack of effort to

implement it was a particularly significant issue in the Over-the-Rhine post-planning process. Monitoring could have provided evidence of implementation.

Plans and their processes can be deemed successful when they guide development without dictating specific courses of action based on specific measureable goals. However, the OTRCP included not only measurable goals, but also specific methods for monitoring and specific procedures for oversight. Cincinnati’s participatory process was undermined by its lack of monitoring and implementation of consensus- built goals throughout the (re)development process. When there are no means to monitor progress, the process itself cannot be evaluated and the potential for misrepresentation of intentions and potential abuse of power also increases. Further, the perception of the imbalance of power between the professionals and the public as well as the private and the public which the participatory process seeks to rectify is made greater by alienating the public. An alienated public may grow skeptical of participating in any future endeavors. In effect the failure to monitor and implement the housing goals of the OTRCP muted the consensus-driven plan and created the perception of community (re)development marching to the beat of least resistance and greatest profit.

With the passing of years with little to no monitoring of housing (re)development, the OTRCP became increasingly obsolete and forgotten. In 2009, the City of Cincinnati began soliciting citizen involvement in the planning process for a new city-wide comprehensive plan. Plan Cincinnati was approved by City Council in 2012 and was completed: “After three years, hundreds of meetings, thousands of conversations, and countless ideas bandied back and forth by community members, business people, city

leaders, students from elementary school to college, and property owners, we found that Cincinnatians had a lot to say” (City of Cincinnati, 2012: 14). The obsolete 2002

Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan fell permanently silent.

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Chapter 4: Saving the streetcar: Neighborhood organization, protest, and successful protection of an urban transportation project

Abstract: This paper presents the results of an analysis of the role that public participation played in the final stage of the decision by Cincinnati City Council as to whether Cincinnati should continue or cancel its streetcar project. We found that, in this case study, there is no binary power structure between the government and the public but rather that interests cross these categorical boundaries and that there are significant complicated divisions within each of these groups that aren’t fully accounted for in theories that dichotomize them. We suggest that traditional thought about public participation and citizen engagement are inadequate in accounting for the complex relationships that exist and processes that occur between the government and the public in post-neoliberal urban development. We further suggest that the complexity of the processes and participants renders binary evaluative frameworks inadequate, such that public participation or citizen engagement cannot be meaningfully evaluated by a dichotomous success/failure framework.

Keywords: Participation, civic engagement, streetcar, Cincinnati, governance

Introduction

This paper presents the result of an empirical study in which the participatory strategies that were employed by a group of citizens in the final stages of the decision making process that determined the fate of the Cincinnati streetcar project are evaluated within the theoretical context of public participation. We found that the analytical frameworks within which notions of how the public can participate in urban development are developed were restrictive and inadequate. We argue that the restrictive way that participation is articulated denies the theoretical possibility for alternative articulations, such as those observed in this study. Our results show that existing conceptions of participation fail to completely account for the following: that the public is able to serve as a direct facilitator of and empowered actor in decision making about urban development projects, rather than merely as a provider of or receptacle for

knowledge or as an inherently disempowered group; that the public is not a uniform and cohesive group, nor are the government and business sectors uniform and cohesive, and that to theorize them as such is detrimental to a robust understanding of the potential role for participatory strategies in urban development; that the public can serve as a mediator between the government and business sectors in terms of decision making, thus potentially depoliticizing certain issues and therefore allowing for practical rather than political decisions to be made; and that criteria based on these restrictive theorizations for evaluating what constitutes participation, let alone successful participation, are too narrow to be useful. We offer insight into how conceptions about participation in urban development can be expanded. While we do not suggest that participatory events should be evaluated on a case by case study, we do suggest that the theoretical constructs can be expanded upon to include new manifestations of participation that arise from changing situational contexts.

Public participation

Public participation in its broadest understanding is a means for citizens and government to engage with each other. The forms by which they can engage are plenty and include strategies as varied as participation in surveys, town hall meetings, charrettes, participatory planning, citizen advisory boards, community organizations, and neighborhood councils (Blakely and Evans, 2009; Farazmand, 2012; Leino and

Laine, 2011; Webler and Tuler, 2002). The theoretical foundations upon which conceptions of public participation are based are equally as varied and include political foundations such as associative democracy, direct democracy, deliberative democracy, republicanism, as well as linguistic and philosophical foundations such as

communitarianism and agnostic pluralism. All of these practices and theories together comprise the ‘participatory turn’ which has characterized urban development for well over a decade now. The breadth of literature evaluating this ‘turn’ and its composite practices and theories reference a family of topics that include: deliberative democracy, civic engagement, citizen participation, public participation and communicative action.

While there are a variety of ways in which participation can manifest itself, it is generally accepted that the resurgence in all participatory strategies and practices is related to the shift from government to governance, brought on by the implementation of neoliberal policies at the local level beginning in the 1980s (Brenner and Theodore,

2005; Fischer, 2006; Gaventa, 2012; Hasson and Ley, 1994; Love, 2013; Peck and

Tickell, 1994; Pierre, 2000). Federal policies of devolution and retrenchment created fiscal crises in urban governments leading to their own policies of retrenchment and widespread privatization (Harvey, 1989). The immediate results of these policy shifts at the urban level were the need to seek alternative sources of funding in order to pursue development projects and a devolution of sorts at the local level in which the municipal governments gave responsibility for the provision of many services to the private sector, both not-for profit and for profit.

Similarly and to some extent, related, planning, as both an activity of urban development embedded in local governmental processes and as a theoretically based discipline, underwent a transformation from being top-down, rational, professional, empirically based, and goal driven to being more universal, process based, and accessible (Hassan et al., 2011; Kaza, 2006). This shift in thought in the field of

planning, along with the reaction to a seemingly increasingly inaccessible local government, led to the resurgence in participatory strategies.

These policy shifts in both urban governance and in urban planning had a complex range of impacts on the evolution of public participatory strategies which, we will argue later in this paper, led to the inadequacy of theories to account for the current strategy addressed in this case study. Unable to rely on traditional sources of funding, most significantly the federal government, urban governments were forced to compete with other metropolitan areas for alternative sources of funds and forms of revenue, taking on a managerial and entrepreneurial role rather than that of service provider

(Brenner and Theodore, 2001). These new fiscal needs were widely met via strategic alliances with corporate partners and the creation of urban regimes engaging in public

(government)- private partnerships (PPPs) (Hackworth, 2005). This new arrangement effectively introduced, on an unprecedented scale, the corporate sector and corporate money into the arena of urban development decision making under the term stakeholder. By positing the corporate sector on par with the public and the government in that arena, the traditional structure, within which the government made decisions and then was accountable to the public who voiced opinion on those decisions via elections, was disrupted (Love, 2013). In this new power arrangement, the government essentially became the mediator between a corporate sector, free of accountability and with relatively endless funds, and a public with no funds and decreasing significance in the public sphere (Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). The public was rendered powerless in the face of an impotent government subject to corporate control (Glover, 2012).

Theories about public participation, meanwhile, continued to be based on participation defined as an activity between two sectors: the public and the government.

The utility of public participation is based on many factors reflecting directly or indirectly this dichotomous relationship, including such issues as its ability to increase institutional accountability (Lee, 2013), to empower citizens (Hassan, 2011), to guard against heavy handed democracy and government inefficiency (Silver et al., 2010), to provide services to citizens (Moran, 2004), to promote the construction of citizenship and strengthen responsive and accountable governments (Gaventa, 2012), to redistribute power in the decision making process (Arnstein, 1969; Bloomfeld et al., 2001; Ng et al., 2013).

Focus on issues related to access, empowerment, accountability, and citizenship reinforce the fact that the public–government dichotomy is at the center of participatory strategies and the thoughts about them.

Two debates dominate and appear frequently in treatments of public participation and each of these further reinforces the emphasis on participation as an activity between the public and the government, and both fail to fully account for the presence and role of the business sector in urban decision making. The first debate is whether participation is or should be a top-down or a bottom-up process in order to be an effective means of engagement for citizens (Silver et al., 2010; Stenberg, 2013). In other words, the assumption is that the public and the government will engage, and the question is how best that should happen. The role of the business sector is assumed on the side of the government as a partner in development, with government serving as the link and the mediator between the business sector and the public (Leitner and

Garner, 1993; Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). According to Krivy and Kaminer (2013), the

state is the sole power capable of keeping the market at bay and is often positioned as the “bogus enemy” of participatory movements.

The second debate also examines what participatory strategies are and should be by considering whether they are viable means by which a disenfranchised public can meaningfully engage an increasingly inaccessible and corporate sponsored government or whether these strategies have in fact been co-opted and rendered meaningless by governments who use them to legitimize their agendas and mollify the public (Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Elwood, 2002; Hasson and Ley, 1994; Krivy and Kaminer, 2013;

Leal, 2007; Silver et al., 2010). This debate, like the previous one, relies on a preconceived notion of a dichotomy between the public and government and the peripheral and indirect role of the business in this structure. These preconceptions serve to limit the ability of theories relying on them to fully account for the potential relationship and engagement that can occur between the public and the business sector still within the urban development decision making process.

Discussions of power within the participatory literature further reinforce the dichotomy and limit the potential for alternative actions by the public by assuming the public is powerless by nature and that power is something bestowed upon it by the government within the decision making process. Empowerment of citizens in general and of marginalized and disenfranchised populations is an often cited goal of participatory processes (Arnstein, 1969; Beaumont and Nicholls, 2008; Bloomfield et al.,

2001; Cohen and Rogers, 2003; Fung and Wright, 2003; Hassan et al., 2011; Krivy and

Kaminer, 2013; Lee, 2013; Silver et al., 2010). The International Association of Public

Participation (IAP2) has developed a spectrum of Public Participation that lists

empowerment as the public participation goal with the highest level of public impact.

The IAP2 defines empowerment as: To place final decision making in the hands of the public (IAP2, 2013). As a methodology, participation should allow groups who otherwise would not have access to the planning process an opportunity to engage (Kaza, 2006).

The foundation of these discussions on empowerment is often based on notions of equity and justice. Arnstein (1969), who created the Ladder of Citizen Participation, defines citizen participation as the redistribution of power that enables the have-not citizens the opportunity to be included in processes affecting their future. The preconceived notion of power limits the ability of participatory strategies to reflect changing participatory practices as they evolve along with the logistics of urban governance.

These rigid structures serve to limit the ability of theorists to properly evaluate public participatory practices and outcomes. There is still little consensus on what participation should be and whether it is useful (Ahmed and Ali, 2006; Alfasi, 2003;

Hanna, 2000; Huxley, 2000; Kaza, 2006; Miraftab, 2009; Neuman 2014; Purcell, 2009;

Udall and Holde, 2013). Claims to the utility of participatory strategies (Brabham, 2009) are balanced by those expressing uncertainty to the utility of such actions (Kaza, 2006;

Elwood, 2002). Success is often evaluated on criteria such as the development of long- term, trust-based relationships between the public and the government, whether the public has been empowered and whether consensus on an issue was created among the public (Hassan et al., 2011; Kaza, 2006; Vitale, 2006)

The framework for interpreting what constitutes public participation and the criteria for evaluating its success based on this framework are relatively rigid. In the

next section we examine a case study which calls into question whether this framework and these criteria are sufficient for explaining a multifaceted and diverse instance of public participation.

Case study: Who saved the Cincinnati Streetcar?

“In the end, the road to Cincinnati’s streetcar was paved by one man: a new councilman who first supported the project, then opposed it, then changed his mind after brokering deal with a private foundation.”

Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec 19, 2012

“The controversial streetcar project ultimately was saved by business and civic leaders who had largely sat on the sidelines while debate raged for years in public”

Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec 20, 2013

“A groundswell of citizen support rose up from nowhere in just six weeks to save

Cincinnati’s streetcar, pressuring politicians and business leaders into last week’s

“Miracle on Plum Street.””

Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec 26, 2013

The ‘Miracle on Plum Street’ in the quotation from the article in the Cincinnati

Enquirer on December 26, 2013 refers to the process by which the Cincinnati City

Council voted to continue with the construction of an already in progress streetcar project which had been halted due to a previous 5-4 vote by the very same council just a few weeks earlier. The ‘miraculous’ part of the process was that the council had just

been elected on November 5, 2013 with an anti-streetcar majority after a contentious election that was decided, to a large extent, on that very issue. The municipal election very much boiled down to candidates’ stance on the streetcar, with other issues for the most part, secondary. The results very much pointed to a victory for anti-streetcar sentiment with a 6-3 majority on council and newly elected anti-streetcar Mayor John

Cranley declaring just a day after the election, “I think its dead” (Prendergast, 2013a).

In response to approximately 500 emails that Cranley received in the few days after his election via the Cincinnati Enquirer’s “talk to your government” tool, most of which asked him to save the streetcar, Cranley responded, “The conversation about the streetcar is over” (Prendergast, 2013a).

The streetcar project was ten years in the making, first discussed in a regional transportation report in 2004, and much of the ensuing development process has been marked by a profound schism between those who support the project and those who oppose it. The schism was one that transcended political parties, ideologies, geographic boundaries, and socioeconomic classifications. The schism also transcended the power structure that organizes urban development in a post-neoliberal world with pro- and anti-streetcar sentiment evident in each of the following sectors: government, public citizenry, corporate. In this case, the corporate sector was relatively silent, with few, if any corporations taking a stance on a highly controversial political issue. The feelings were profound and clear, however, among both supporters and non-supporters in both the government and the public.

Ground was broken in 2012 on the controversial project by former Mayor Mark

Mallory well into his second and final (due to established limits) term, despite the fact

that a consensus was never reached, neither within the government nor among the citizens. The project, at the time of groundbreaking, was plagued with large gaps in funding as well as other controversies, such as whether the city was responsible or not for the $15 million already spent to relocate utilities under the streetcar route. These unresolved issues carried over into the 2013 elections, which many viewed as a second or final chance to change the course of events, despite the fact that millions of dollars had been spent, the route had been prepped and some tracks already laid.

Far from ‘dead’ or ‘over’ as Mayor Cranley declared, the six weeks following the municipal election would prove to be among the most active and, ultimately, decisive in guaranteeing that the streetcar project would proceed, throughout the history of the project. How much Cranley’s dictatorial declarations spurred the events that transpired is unclear, but it is clear that a small segment of the public was motivated to react and the grassroots organization, Believe in Cincinnati, was born in the living room of one of its members on November 9, 2013. This particular group of engaged citizens would profoundly shape the proceedings of the next few weeks via a multi-pronged attack that would engage an even larger portion of the public, pressure council members by voicing support for the streetcar in City Hall proceedings, in the media and in public gatherings, and by working behind the scenes to help secure funding to fill in the gaps that were part of the reason many were opposed to the project (Andrews, 2013). What is significant about this case of citizen engagement is that it involved a relatively small group of citizens focused on a very specific and limited goal. Also, it relied on engagement across sectors in order to succeed so that traditional notions of ‘the people’

versus ‘the government’ or versus ‘corporate power” do not apply. This case is an example of an issue based engagement that transcends traditional notions of power.

History of the project

While this paper focuses on the final six week period between the November 5,

2013 municipal election and the December 19th city council vote, some insight into the history of the development of this project is essential to understand how and why things transpired the way they did and, therefore, how this particular form of public participation was able to occur as it did.

Ground was broken for the streetcar by then Mayor Mark Mallory on February

17th, 2012 but the project had begun years prior. The idea of a downtown streetcar was first introduced as a part of a long-range transit plan approved in June 2004 by the regional transportation planning agency, the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of

Governments. After various cost-analysis studies, in April 2008, City council voted 6-2 to approve a plan for a $137 million dollar streetcar plan that would run from Downtown through Over-the-Rhine to Uptown, serving as a functional mode of transportation connecting the CBD with the gentrifying historical neighborhood next door to it and then up a steep slope to the university and hospital complexes. Financing for this plan depended on approximately $66 million in as of then unsecured funds. By August 2010,

City Council authorized city administrators to allocate $44 million in grants and $64 million in city issued bonds to finance much of the first phase of the Downtown to

Uptown streetcar line. In a major setback, in March 2011, the Ohio Transportation

Review Advisory Council at the behest of the administration of the newly elected

Governor John Kasich withdrew almost $52 million in funding that had been targeted for

the streetcar project. Forced to downsize, the city amended the plan to eliminate the

Over-the-Rhine to Uptown portion of the route, cutting off the leg that would link the downtown to the University and Hospital complex. In December 2011, the U.S.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood awarded a $10.9 million federal grant to the city, allowing the city to extend the southern route of the line an additional mile to reach The

Banks, a recently completed $66 million multi-use development along the city’s riverfront. The city had competed with 827 other applicants to receive that funding from the Department of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER)

III funding process. On February 10th, 2012, despite no resolution on the financial responsibility for relocating the utilities and with large gaps in funding, Mayor Mallory announced official plans to begin construction on the streetcar. Ground was broken just seven days later.

The significance of this final vote comes from the fact that the development of the project and the contentious debates over its merits had been ongoing for almost ten years. Consensus to develop a streetcar was never reached, neither among city leaders nor among city residents. The issue was put to ballot twice and both times voters did not support measures that would permanently end the project. In 2009, Issue

9 was defeated 56% to 44% and in 2011, Issue 48 was defeated 52% to 48%. While streetcar advocates claim these voting outcomes as signs of support for the streetcar, streetcar opponents point out that the votes against these issues, which, in addition to dealing with the immediate streetcar project, would have had greater restrictive implications for all future rail transportation projects in the city and therefore were not a

mandate in favor of the project. Essentially what is most clear in these close and ambiguous votes, is that the city is very much divided on the project.

The final six weeks

The final dramatic phase of the project, the six weeks between the November 6,

2013 municipal election and the December 19, 2013 vote on the whether to continue or cancel the project once and for all, was realized through three related events: the municipal election, the vote by a newly elected city council to pause construction on the streetcar project, and a deadline for the city to make a decision imposed by the FTA.

The first event was the election of an anti-streetcar majority to city council as well as an anti-streetcar mayor in the municipal election. This election was particularly significant because throughout the majority of the course of the development of this project it has been most closely associated with former Mayor Mark Mallory, who served from 2006-2013, and who was ineligible due to term limits to run for reelection in 2013.

Mallory, his city Manager Milton Dohoney and his Vice-Mayor Roxanne Qualls, along with several members of the 9 seat city council, provided the consistent support and power behind the streetcar project. As mentioned, it was Mallory who broke ground on the project despite insecure funding and an obvious lack of consensus among council members and citizens. The project then was very closely aligned with the Mayorship of

Mark Mallory. The election represented the last viable opportunity to impact the project, which at the time of the election had already incurred more than $30 million in expenses. Without something as monumental as a regime change, streetcar opponents had very little possible recourse to the project that they never wanted in the first place.

The mayoral race was a battle between two Democrats ultimately positioned as antipodes on the streetcar issue. Roxanne Qualls, an avowed supporter of the project who was a carryover from the previous administration, lost to staunch anti-streetcar candidate John Cranley. Cranley, received 57.92% of the votes (33,428) and Qualls received 42.08% (24,288). The total voter turnout for the election was approximately

28%. Cranley interpreted his election as a mandate to stop the project and declared the issue dead (Prendergast, 2013b).

The City Council race resulted in the election of five anti-streetcar members,

Christopher Smitherman, Amy Murray, Charlie Winburn, David Mann and Kevin Flynn and four pro-streetcar members, Chris Seelbach, Yvette Simpson, P.G. Sittenfeld and

Wendell Young, in addition to the anti-streetcar mayor. These numbers seemingly ensured an anti-streetcar majority.

The second event was the vote by City Council to indefinitely halt the project. On

December 5th, council voted 5-4 to pause construction on the in-progress project. This pause, which council members viewed alternatively as temporary or as the first step towards cancellation, afforded the opportunity for an independent analysis on the costs to continue the project versus the cost to cancel the project to be undertaken. This signified a profound shift in the argument that had been at the center of streetcar debates since its inception from one in which the utility and financial feasibility of the project was considered to one in which the cost to continue the project was compared to the cost to cancel it. This shift provided an apolitical focus for a council that ‘inherited’ rather than created the contentious issue. Once this new focus was established, council could deal in practical realities – the project has already started, now how much

is the current decision (to cancel or continue) going to cost? This shift then opened the floor for two council members who came to be viewed as swing votes, though each was elected on anti-streetcar platforms. At this point, David Mann, a Charterite and former mayor of Cincinnati, and first time council member and real estate attorney Kevin Flynn, both indicated that they would take into consideration both the findings of the cost- analysis of continuing versus quitting as well as options for securing funding from the private sector for the operation of the project should it be completed, another of the major issues raised by the anti-streetcar contingent. Their willingness to reconsider their stance provided a window of opportunity for pro-streetcar supporters to influence their vote. A window that, we shall see, the streetcar supporters used to their full advantage.

The third event leading to the culmination of years of streetcar debates was the deadline imposed by the Federal Transportation Administration forcing the city to make a decision on the project by midnight December 19th or risk losing an additional $45 million in federal funds granted for other transportation projects in the city and possibly having to reimburse the federal government for the $4.4 million already received. This event provided both a sense of urgency in achieving a timely resolution as well as an urgency resulting from the threat of potentially damaging future relations between the

FTA and the City and impacting funding for other transportation projects.

So the conditions that framed the final six weeks revolve around the newly elected city council who voted to pause construction so that additional information on the cost of the project and its viability could be considered. Their time to collect information and deliberate was given a deadline with significant current and future

consequences if not met. The main issues at this point became the costs to cancel the project, which were estimated to be between $50-80 million not counting the $45 million already allocated to the city by the federal government, versus the cost to continue, which was estimated to be $70 million, with projected 30 year operating costs estimated to be $56-70 million. The cost to cancel, of course, would be with nothing to show for it and so would be money lost, as well as the repayment of funds received from the federal government. The cost to continue then introduced the issue of how the future operating costs would be funded. It is at this point in the debates that newcomers Mann and Flynn indicated that they would consider the situation before making a final decision on whether to vote for or against the project. This is the window of opportunity that the engaged citizens group, Believe in Cincinnati, was able to exploit.

Public participation in the final six weeks

Believe in Cincinnati was formed November 9, 2014 just four days after the election of the anti-streetcar contingent. Comprised of a “loose-knit leadership team that harnessed the energy of well over 1,000 residents upset about the possibility of canceling the streetcar”, the group depended upon social media to quickly spread their agenda to a large population. (Andrews, 2013). The core of the group consisted primarily of Over-the-Rhine residents and business owners, including the group’s founder and de facto leader, Ryan Messer, a sales manager with no prior former political experience. Both the organization and agenda of the group developed quickly and “organically in response to fast-moving events” (Andrews, 2013). According to the

Cincinnati Enquirer article “Streetcar has engaged citizens to thank”, Believe in

Cincinnati influenced City Council in three significant ways: the group organized a large,

visible and vocal contingent to express support for the streetcar project; they collected signatures for a charter amendment to continue construction on the project; and they worked “behind-the-scenes in securing the private commitments to help pay for streetcar operations” (Andrews, 2013).

Believe in Cincinnati members and supporters, spoke up “in large numbers at council meetings, in calls and emails, and, especially, at a December 1 rally of up to

1,000 people along the streetcar route in Over-the-Rhine” (Andrews, 2013). That support influenced Council Member David Mann, one of the two swing votes, who stated in the Enquirer just four days before the final vote: “I am very impressed by the intensity of the support and the number of people. That gives me some optimism that, one way or another, the streetcar will work” (Andrews, 2013).

The group also played a significant role in orchestrating the commitment by the private sector to help pay for future operating costs. The unsecured operating costs were a major issue for the anti-street car council members including Kevin Flynn, the second swing vote, for whom “(t)hose costs became the main sticking point” (Andrews,

2013). Even Mayor Cranley, who had never wavered in his commitment to cancel the project, indicated that he would not stop the project if the $80 million in estimated operating costs could be secured. Paul DeMarco, the lawyer for Believe in Cincinnati, along with Messer, worked to secure the funds and, in the short time frame available, they were able to secure a commitment for $9 million from the The Carol Ann and Ralph

V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, “an independent family foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for residents in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

We are concentrating our efforts and resources in areas about which Carol and Ralph

were most passionate: Arts and Culture, Community Development, Education, and

Human Services” (Haile, 2014). The commitment for this amount was enough for Flynn to commit to vote for the continuance of the streetcar project.

The group also gathered 11,300 signatures, more than double the amount needed, in just 8 days for a charter amendment to restart the project. The signatures were collected by a team of approximately 1,400 people who canvassed the city and utilized social media to announce when and where signatures could be collected. Ian

James, the CEO of StrategyNetwork, a group that helps organize ballot initiative and who advised Believe in Cincinnati, stated “We’ve never seen that outpouring of civic participation from volunteers” (Andrews, 2013). The charter amendment was a fallback plan by Believe in Cincinnati in case they were not able to secure the votes necessary to continue the project.

Believe in Cincinnati had a very specific plan with clear goals and they created a network of engaged citizens, politicians and private investors, using outside strategic expertise to secure these goals.

Discussion

The focus of this paper is on the role of public participation in the crucial events that determined the ultimate fate of the city of Cincinnati’s streetcar project. We have shown that the public, particularly in the form of Believe in Cincinnati, has had a significant impact in the outcome of the events that led to the final decision on the streetcar, especially in the final six weeks between the municipal election and the final city council vote. We suggest that the complexity of the situation, in terms of both the political events that formed the process as well as the development and actions of the

“public” that engaged with the political process, demands a more robust framework for understanding and interpreting the role of the public participation. This section focuses on the particularities of the way that the public participation manifested itself within these events. We re-evaluate the actions of the group in light of the principles of public participation that we laid out in the second section.

While the traditional conception of urban power can be conceived in terms of three participants, the public, the government and the corporate sectors, with the government serving as the mediator between the other two, this case study presents a unique situation which serves to elucidate the shortcomings of these traditional structural assumptions. The public and the government were severely divided on the issue of the streetcar, from its inception to the final vote. This division was evidenced in the exceptionally close votes on both the streetcar related Issues and in the November

2013 municipal vote. The final six weeks showed a significant outpouring of public participation with hundreds of volunteers collecting thousands of signatures. The signatures were collected at sites all over the city, indicating participation on a scale much larger than the project itself. While this was evidence of broad public participation, it was not evidence of a consensus on the issue by any means. The thousands of signatures indicated that the public wanted to put the issue back on the ballot, not that they would necessarily support the project. Public participation, mobilized by the pro-streetcar group, was not in support of any stance on the issue.

The government too was in complete disconcert on the issue, both the previous administration as well as the newly elected one. Deep fault lines penetrated both sectors to the extent that, in terms of this particular issue, there was neither a public nor

a governmental stance. Rather there were pro- and anti-streetcar advocates in each sector.

The third sector of the urban power structure was exceptionally quiet about the streetcar project throughout much of its development. With a host of Fortune 500 companies with headquarters in Cincinnati, as well as many other large businesses with a vested interest in the well-being of the city, the normally vocal and active corporate sector did not take a stance on the project, very much out of character in a redeveloping downtown that has been the recipient of millions of dollars of corporate funding. Only in the final six week phase, when the entire debate was boiled down to the very tangible question of weighing the cost to continue versus the cost to cancel the project, did several members of the corporate community step in to offer funding towards future operating costs, though the question of where these funds would come from had been on the table for a long time. Obviously the streetcar project became highly politicized, rendering it a precipitous project for corporations to take a stance in favor or against. If we consider this lack of an expressed corporate opinion on the project in light of the traditional notion that the corporate sector dictates via its investments urban development projects and renders the public and, for the most part, the government powerless, it intimates that possibly the notion of the impenetrable corporate development machine can be reimagined. Regardless, this case study presented a new forum for public participation within which a segment of the public could step in and influence the outcome of policy decisions.

In terms of who the theorized ‘public’ is, Believe in Cincinnati shakes this up as well. Believe in Cincinnati is described by the media and describes itself as a grass

roots organization. Their Facebook page proclaims “We are the grassroots movement that organized to complete the streetcar” (Believe in Cincinnati, 2014). Grass roots organizations are often dichotomized with the political structure or with the elite (Love,

2013). If we look at the core membership of Believe in Cincinnati, as well as their actions, it is clear that this dichotomous characterization does not hold up in this context.

In the nature of their formation and in their ability to mobilize a large portion of the public to act in some manner on the streetcar issue, in this case giving a signature to support putting the issue on the ballot, Believe in Cincinnati is a grass roots organization. However, their educated, well connected, well financed and knowledgeable membership, many of whom had a vested, personal interest, and significantly, a financial interest in the outcome of the project, do not meet the definition of grass roots. Ryan Messer, the de facto leader of the group, is a sales manager at the locally based Johnson and Johnson Corporation. Messer owns a property in Over-the-

Rhine in the immediate vicinity of the streetcar route and thus has a financial interest in the completion of the project. Messer also recently wed his partner in the first same sex marriage ceremony held at the recently renovated Washington Park in Over-the Rhine, an event covered widely in the local media (Fox, 2013). Additionally Messer was covered in the Cincinnati Enquirer while participating in an Over-the-Rhine neighborhood program that attempts to aid youths in the area (Noble, 2013). Messer is seemingly not part of the disenfranchised, alienated public that participatory strategies traditionally target, yet he also evidently is socially and civically active in his neighborhood. He has a vested financial stake in the development of the area and, at

the same time, he engages in activities to aid his neighbors. Messer, like other members of Believe in Cincinnati with similar pedigrees, is not the typical engaged citizen identified in participatory and engagement literature.

Members of Believe in Cincinnati are well connected. The real estate agent who sold Messer his Over-the-Rhine residence is former losing mayoral candidate and city council member, Roxanne Qualls. The group contacted Qualls while strategizing, with

Qualls stating “(Believe) consulted a number of people, myself included. But, bottom line, it was their effort, and it had to be….The only thing that was going to win the day was a people’s movement” (Andrews, 2013). The group’s attorney, Paul DeMarco, joined out of personal interest but had previous experience “in the intersection of legal and political strategy” (Andrews, 2013). DeMarco contacted fellow lawyer, swing vote council member Kevin Flynn, and helped to negotiate with the corporations and organizations that would eventually pledge the funding that would convince council members to vote in favor of continuing the project. DeMarco also brought in a professional strategist company based in Columbus Ohio, Strategy Network, who helped to organize and advised on the petition drive for signatures. The CEO of

Strategy Network, Ian James, states about the success of the drive “We’ve never seen that outpouring of civic participation from volunteers. It was miraculous, especially given the time of year.” (Andrews, 2013). Clearly the group had resources and connections and were able to use them successfully to influence the people and events that they needed to in order to achieve their goal of saving the streetcar. Believe in Cincinnati, a citizen group, acted as the mediator between the public, the government and the corporate sector via their connections, upending the traditional notion that the state

mediates between the public and the corporate. Prior to the final vote, swing vote city council member Mann stated “I am very impressed by the intensity of the support and the number of people. That gives me some optimism that, one way or another, the streetcar will work” (Andrews, 2013).

The nature of this participatory event, similarly, is not that typically recognized in the literature or in theory. This participatory event was not a long term build-up of trust or exchange of information that successfully integrated alienated citizens. Rather it was a topical, reactive and short term event that involved a relatively elite, localized group of core members who then mobilized a broader community into general action, not into consensus on an issue. The key to the success of Believe in Cincinnati, in terms of influencing council members on the interests of the public, was in showing that people were participating, rather than that they had come to an agreement. Even leaders of the opposing public participation group ceded this, with the attorney for the anti- streetcar group COAST acknowledging the success of Believe in Cincinnati, stating

“they used many of the same techniques we used very effectively. What concerns us is when people get despondent and stay home and don’t engage. There’s nothing better than citizen activists rising up” (Andrews, 2013). Acknowledgement from the enemy on the success of their ability to mobilize a public, not to reach a consensus, is indicative of deliberative democracy that depends on rational debate rather than consensus seeking.

Believe in Cincinnati achieved success on the streetcar issue. Messer, shortly after the final vote, stated that the group would continue to participate in civic issues.

He states, “There’s a reason we called ourselves Believe in Cincinnati versus Believe in the Streetcar….A group with such diverse backgrounds and experiences- we must

capture this and begin to address other pressing needs in the community” (Andrews,

2013). As of February, the group’s website remains incomplete, with the About the

Movement page indicating that more information is coming soon. Entries in the

Updates section of the site end on December 20, the day after the final successful vote.

The group’s Facebook page continues to be updated with entries describing the progress of the streetcar project. There is little public evidence of the group engaging in any other activity at this point. Regardless of future directions, the group was successful in this particular instance of public participation, relying on immediate actions rather than the long term build-up of trust and relationships proposed in participation literature.

By indicating how these participants and their actions do not fit into traditional definitions and principles of public participation, we are not trying to negate their success or nullify their position as a participating public. On the contrary, we argue that they represent successful public participation and further that the frameworks for identifying, defining and evaluating successful examples of public participation are lacking.

Conclusion

The media heralded the vote in favor of continuing the streetcar as a result of the successful campaign of the engaged citizens. In an almost David versus Goliath epic tale, the Cincinnati Enquirer described how a grass roots organization, that only came in to existence six weeks prior to the December 19th vote, was able to create enough influence and momentum to change the vote in what had essentially been viewed as an anti-streetcar council. It is clear that the success of the public participation is dependent

upon that participation having practical and real consequences in influencing the actions of other participants in the development process. In other words, the success of the public participation is meaningful only because it invoked changes both in the governmental and corporate realms, moving beyond rhetoric into tangible results.

At the same time, to call this series of events a success of the public in swaying the government or politicians would not be accurate. This was the success of a relatively small, limited and select portion of the public with a very specific agenda. The actions of the participatory group reflected their interests. They did not, however, reflect the interests of the public in general, especially not in a public that is posited as counter to the government. This was an example of a successful process of public engagement premised on a particular interest and achieved by a limited and self-empowered group, rather than a success of a public against a government. The results of this study suggest that Believe in Cincinnati was successful in their endeavor to sway the key votes of city council in favor of continuing the streetcar project. The results also suggest that, in order to critically understand and evaluate the mechanics of this complex process of public participation, a broader understanding of the relative positions of participants in the overall process is useful.

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Chapter 5: In my backyard: Empowered public participation in a rails-to-trails development project

Abstract: This study examines the role that public participation played in the development process of a rails-to-trails project that is under way in Cincinnati, Ohio. The project was conceived, developed and facilitated by a small group of citizens who relied on intellect, political and social awareness and connections to move the project through the traditional urban development decision making structure. Public participation is usually conceptualized as a means by which the public can become empowered via the state in the decision making process. Further, a goal of public participation strategies is to serve the interests of the marginalized and give them opportunity to influence decisions. In this case study, we found that citizens can be part of the decision making process without completely relying on the state to empower them. In other words, the citizens who engaged in this rails-to-trails project empowered themselves via social and economic mechanisms outside of the state, and then brought their empowered selves to the government with a project that was already supported. This observation indicates that theories that describe the relationship between power and participation are unable to account for the actions observed in this case and then they need to be expanded to recognize alternative, non-traditional forms of engagement.

Keywords: Public participation, Rails-to-trails, Citizen engagement, Cycling, Grass roots

Introduction

Public participation, broadly conceived, is a means by which citizens (the public) can impact the decisions made at the local level which directly impact their lives (Lee,

2013). Participation can manifest in a variety of strategies including voting, rallying, lobbying, membership in a community organization, membership in an issue-oriented group, town hall meetings, and surveys (Delli Carpini, 2012). Despite the diversity of potential manifestations of participation, there is agreement that participation, or citizen engagement in general, is an action between two sectors: the public and the government (materialized as both actors and institutions) (King et al., 1998). This dichotomous arrangement brings with it an inherent structure within which power is conceived of, negotiated with and made available. Traditionally, the source of power

within this decision making structure is the government and the public, at times, the recipient of this power. There is little discussion within the participatory literature of situations in which citizens can empower themselves via their own resources, external to the government structure, and bring themselves, as an empowered public, to the decision making process. In this empirical case study, we observe and analyze an example of a participatory strategy in which a limited, well-connected and sophisticated group of citizens develops an issue and then facilitates its movement through the decision-making processes of local government. Based on the observations of this study, we suggest that the definition of participation, including who participates, how power is derived within the process and what is considered successful participation be reevaluated to account for new methods of participation which allow for alternative materializations. We argue that a pre-empowered public with a vested interest in an issue can facilitate a project through the traditional local decision making structure via traditional participatory strategies and offer suggestions as to how participation theory can incorporate this alternative, non-traditional form. We argue further that expanding theoretical notions of empowerment within this literature can help to facilitate more successful participation for the truly marginalized and powerless group upon which much theory is based.

Wasson Way is a grassroots project conceived of by a father-daughter pair of

Cincinnati residents with the goal of transforming an old and no longer used railroad line into a bike trail. The project began in April 2011 with the pair seeking support by directly contacting fellow residents by going door to door and handing out literature on the project. They drummed up enough potential interest for them to form a Facebook- and

Internet-based organization to facilitate these efforts in November 2011. This group continued to grow and eventually was incorporated as a non-profit organization. The project has been on the agenda of City Council proceedings, on and off, for the past several years as the City and the Wasson Way group work to overcome the three main obstacles the project faces: securing the right of way for the rail line from its current owners, Norfolk Southern, securing funding for both the land acquisition and construction costs, and addressing opposing concerns and alternative uses for that same land.

In the next section we examine the way that public participation is traditionally conceptualized, and how those conceptualizations give rise to preconceived notions of

‘public’ and ‘empowerment’ that may not be conducive to a robust understanding of the current state of public participation strategies.

Public participation

The ‘participatory turn’, characterized by the engagement of citizens in decision making processes, has framed discussions of urban development for over a decade

(Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). Public participation in local issues in U.S. cities is not a new phenomenon. Roots of the current participatory movement can be traced to political groups in the 1960s whose participatory strategies were grounded in radical political ideologies which often included anti-statism along with a commitment to equality and to the empowerment of the subaltern (Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). The public continued to pursue participatory strategies throughout the 1970s as a way to mitigate what was seen as an increasingly enlarging gulf between the government and its citizens (Glover,

2012). The establishment of neoliberal policies, particularly retrenchment and

privatization, at the federal level in the 1980s essentially forced local governments into entrepreneurial positions in which they competed against other cities for dwindling federal and state funds and by seeking investments and partnerships with the private, corporate sector (Harvey, 1989). These policies and the new role that cities were forced into as a result of them had a significant effect on participation and citizen engagement. The main effect was that citizen participation increased, in both frequency and form, though the nature of that participation differed from earlier, anti-statist forms.

The radical participatory groups of the 1960s who demanded the right and the means to participate meaningfully alongside a government with whom they did not agree became

‘diluted’ into community organizations and public consultancy groups working hand in hand, often unwittingly, with the government (Love, 2013). As responsibility for service provision devolved down the government structure, citizens were given more and more opportunities to participate by a local government who no longer could or would provide these services (Krivy and Kaminer, 2013). Whether citizens and citizen organizations actually gained significant power as a result of this increase in responsibility is widely debated (Elwood, 2002; Fischer, 2006; Hasson and Ley, 1994; Healy, 2008; Hula,

1998).

This collusive form of participation continued throughout the 1980s until in the

1990s local politics underwent a major shift in policy and practice from governing to governance. Governance is defined as the institutions by which authority is exercised

(Pierre, 2001). It is comprised of mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizen groups can express their interests, exercise their rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences (UN, 2004). Public participation and citizen engagement

were incorporated into governance polices as a central tenet and key to its success

(Fischer, 2006). Refocusing urban policies onto local projects of citizen interest was another indicator of the shift to governance. This shift was evidenced by less commitment to the corporate sponsored, downtown development projects that dominated local agendas throughout the 80s as they competed for investment and status with other American cities (Leitner and Garner, 1993; Kearns and Paddison,

2000). In the 1990s priorities and focus shifted in local politics, reestablishing the arena within which participatory practices would be conceived, implemented and evaluated.

(Booth, 2012; Halla, 2002; Hassan et al., 2011; Kaza, 2006; Timothy, 1999).

Participatory strategies offered a solution to the professionalization of planning in which knowledge and skills were considered available only to credentialed experts (Woods,

2010). The conditions in both local politics and the field of planning were ripe for increased practice and reevaluation of public participation

So while the ideologies of the structures within which local development decisions are made, local government and planning departments were reconstituted with a seeming recommitment to citizen engagement and participatory practices, whether and how these changes actually impacted the role that citizens could have in the process was much more ambiguous. That ambiguity manifested in a debate that has at its poles the question of whether these new forms of participation are authentic means of participation, giving citizens a meaningful way of being included in local

decision making processes (Hassan et al.,2011; Herzer and Shorkhuser, 2010; King et al., 1998) or if they are tools of a hegemonic, neoliberal state in which citizens are exploited for their knowledge and energy (Hasson and Ley, 1994; Krivy and Kaminer,

2013; Leal, 2007; Peck and Tickell, 2001; Purcell, 2009).

Theoretically, participation can be housed within discussions of the different types of strategies that can be found within different types of democracy. It can be theorized as a complement to representative democracy in which participation is seen as a means to critique, reinforce or replace voting behavior (Stenberg, 2013). More frequently participation is conceptualized as a constitutive component of deliberative, discursive or communicative democracy in which emphasis is placed on the role of rational exchanges of ideas among citizens and with the government (Krivy and

Kaminer, 2013)

In all of these democratic explanations of participation, there is a fundamental debate on what the goal of democracy in general and participation in particular should be. This philosophical debate can be boiled down at its most basic form to a dichotomy between whether citizen participation should have communal consensus as its goal or whether a diversity of perspectives is more fruitful to the advancement of democratic ideals. The consensus ideal is a paradigm rooted in the communicative rationality discourse of Habermas, which states that knowledge is not something objective that exists in space but rather that is something emergent that comes from public debate and discussion (Pennington, 2004). The paradigm based on diversity has been most strongly advanced by Mouffe (1999) who espouses agnostic pluralism, a theory that values and relies upon a diverse public with a diverse body of knowledge and opinion.

Criticism against the consensus model includes the notion that it is an impossible endeavor that can only be achieved by one side giving in (Kaza, 2006). Kaza (2006) claims that seeking consensus leads to a ‘tyranny of the median’ in which certain groups are inevitably excluded, particularly those on the extremes poles of whatever issue is being debated, with an a priori arrival at a median position the result. The pluralist paradigm, based on Mouffe, exerts that consensus-building has dangerous authoritarian implications and that instead democracy does and should depend on diverse publics and the ability to incorporate multiple identities within a conflictive setting

(Beaumont and Nicholls, 2008). Others argue that communities marked by heterogeneous ideas need to be reframed as good for democracy and that participatory practices should include avenues for the expression of these ideas within which they can be accommodated with ‘civic integrity’ (Glover, 2012). Delli Carpini et al. (2012) view participation as a means for reconciling these disparate views.

So while unresolved debates dominate discussions of public participation, one theme that remains unquestioned and around which consensus is formed is the role and purpose of participatory strategies as a means of empowering citizens within political activity. Lee (2013) discusses participation as a component of good governance and states that it should do the following: increase institutional accountability, further ideals of self-determination and empower marginalized groups.

On the other hand, participation can also potentially capture public power for private interests, be used to evade accountability and further the marginalization of certain communities (Lee, 2013). Hassan et al. (2011) claim that participation should empower citizens and that that empowerment should be characterized by self-efficacy, knowledge

and skills, opportunity, action, resources, the ability to impact and by the building of trust and respect between citizens and the government.

“substantive redistributive outcomes”. In other words, focus must be on more than merely including the public but on empowering it and neutralizing unequal power among participants based on access to information and pre-existing class inequalities (Silver et al., 2010). Moran (2004) examines the role of participation in improving infrastructure and finds that it is useful for technical and economic goals as well as social goals such as empowerment and capacity building. Gaventa (2012) states that participatory strategies can be used to develop cohesive societies within which marginalized groups can be included. Krivy and Kaminer (2013) acknowledge that promises of equality are frequent in conceptualizations of participation despite the inherent inequality between those who stage participation (the government, planners) and those who are invited to participate (the public). The act of invitation has within it an embedded sense of difference at least, if not inequality. Love (2013) frames participation as a process that occurs within a pre-existing condition of legalism which necessarily precludes any action that could be contradictory to it. In other words, the institutions within which participation occur are perpetually uneven due to the legal constraints that create them and that, therefore, the structure restricts the ability of the public to procure power in any meaningful way.

Arnstein (1969) developed one of the earliest pictures of public participation in

According to him, only counter-hegemonic mobilizations that seek to transform this unequal power relationship can make participation truly beneficial to the public (Purcell,

2009).

A preconceived notion of power as something conferred to citizens from the government depends upon the conceptualization of the public as a unified whole, at a minimum in the sense that there is a public that can be empowered by a government.

While some recognize the need to empower marginalized groups within the broader public, this recognition still maintains the relationship between the government and the public in terms of the empower(er) and empower(ed), respectively. This notion negates the possibility a priori of citizens with varying access to power via political, social and economic connections made beyond the traditional political institutions.

The next sections describe the grassroots nature of the project, the characteristics of the process that qualify it as a participatory strategy, and the ways that current thinking about participation fail to account for aspects of these particular strategies. Finally, we discuss how expanding the conceptions of participation can aid all participation strategies, including those for and by marginalized populations.

Wasson Way

The Wasson Way project is an in-progress project led by a group of Cincinnati residents to convert 6.5 miles of unused railroad track in the heart of Cincinnati into a mixed use recreation trail. The trail would connect Xavier University, located in the east-central part of the city, to the Little Miami Recreational Trail which begins in

Newton, Ohio, approximately 11 miles east of downtown Cincinnati. The project literally began in late 2010 when Cincinnati, Ohio residents Jay Andress and his daughter, Julie, drove along Wasson Road, a street in the Hyde Park neighborhood of the city and Julie proclaimed “wouldn’t it be great if those rail tracks were a bike trail?” (Andress, 2011).

Andress agreed that it was a great idea though he dismissed his daughter’s idea as

impractical until upon further research he discovered that the line was no longer in use.

In November of 2010, the Andress’ created a group to begin exploring the feasibility of such a project and a few months later a Facebook page was created to better inform the public of the project and to gather support. Julie Andress moved away shortly after, but

Jay Andress spent months presenting their project to various neighborhood councils, gathered support in City Council, and continues to facilitate its progress as it gets closer and closer to fruition. The next section examines the participatory strategies used by

Jay Andress to facilitate the project.

Citizen Participation

The strategies employed by the Wasson Way organization are exemplary of traditional strategies of grass roots citizen participation. The effort is citizen led, appeals to the interests of the public, and is an attempt by citizens to be involved in the decision making process on an issue that will impact them (Lee, 2013). So while the process is in line with traditional definitions of grass roots efforts, efforts made by the citizens rather than those within the political structure (Halla, 2002), at the same time, it is very sophisticated, well-connected, deliberate and empowered. The issues that Andress addresses indicate a knowledge of local and national events and trends and his strategies indicate knowledge of how development is done and the channels by which decisions are made within a local setting. While Andress and the Wasson Way organization work in conjunction with the city, the relationship is one of exchange rather than of empowerment.

Several months after the initial idea for the project, on April 23, 2011, Andress and his daughter crafted a letter describing the intent of the project and hand delivered it

to homes in the area immediately surrounding the proposed trail. The letter was personal in nature, describing the conversation between Andress and his daughter, as well as his personal connection to the neighborhood and the railroad tracks. He described the potential benefits of the trail and the areas it would positively impact, addressed potential concerns residents might have and described the potential impact the trail could have on property values. Finally the letter provides contact information, the address to the Facebook page for the project, and an offer to answer questions for any interested parties. The one page letter is sophisticated in that it balances the authors’ personal interests and positions as fellow residents with practical and factual information. The letter uses the Little Miami Trail, another mixed-use trail in the

Cincinnati area, to provide context for the proposed Wasson Way project. It includes a statement from a neighbor of the Little Miami Trail about his initial concerns and how they were proven to be unfounded. This pre-emptive strategy anticipates the natural initial hesitation a neighbor might feel and attempts to diffuse it. The letter also provides a link to an economic analysis done by researchers at the University of Cincinnati which shows that houses closer to the Little Miami Trail have higher property values. The letter is citizen to citizen and appeals to those most immediately impacted by the potential project in an organized, researched and thoughtful manner.

Community Engagement

After delivery of the letter, Andress and a small group of volunteers spent the next several months presenting the project to neighborhood groups, community councils and the general public in most of the six neighborhoods through which the trail would run: Evanston, Hyde Park, Oakley, Mt. Lookout, Fairfax and Mariemont. The group

presented at local coffee shops and businesses, at events such as neighborhood festivals (Hyde Park Blast) and at city-wide events such as the Bike to Work Week Main

Event in downtown Cincinnati. The group announced events and chronicled developments on its Facebook page as they occurred, keeping followers up to date on progress. The group made connections with the Midwest Regional Coordinator for the national group Rails-to-Trails, a group who specializes in this type of development. The

Wasson Way project also attracted the attention of an Architectural Design class from

Miami University who were interested in studying the project. The Wasson Way project was adopted by the University of Cincinnati’s Niehoff Urban Design Center as its focus for two years. The Design Center provides input from over 100 geography, engineering, real estate, and design students under the guidance of professors from each of these departments. In February of 2014, the Wasson Way organization teamed up with the

Cincinnati Public Schools to promote the project in conjunction with addressing children’s health and obesity.

Government Engagement

As the group gained a grassroots following and received supportive votes and interest from various parties, it also started to make connections within the City government. For each event to which it was invited, the group assembled a well- informed and well-rounded group of presenters to make the case for city support of the project. The group was invited to meet then Vice-Mayor Roxanne Qualls on May 25th and then invited to address City Council’s Quality of Life Committee, fronted by council member Laure Quinlivan, who would go on to be one of the groups greatest supporters, on June 7, 2011. Speaking in front of the committee was a group that included

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representatives from several neighborhood groups, a bicycle group, the retail and residential communities, as well as an attorney and Andress. The group met with and gained support from several other council members over the course of the next several months. In October 2011 the group was invited by the Ohio Department of

Transportation to join the Eastern Corridor Development Team, a group that studies and seeks to improve transportation options that would better connect the eastern communities with the downtown area. On December 2, the group met with Hamilton

County Commissioner, Todd Portune, who declared the project “wonderful” (Wasson,

2014) and who several weeks later invited them to speak to the Regional Transportation

Improvement District Meeting, a group that is part of most major transportation developments. Within its first year of existence the group made substantial connections to the political structure responsible for development project such as the Wasson Way project.

The project would continue to be on the agenda of City Council for the next few years. On May 8, 2012, the City Council passed a resolution that the Planning

Department immediately proceed with a study to determine the best use of the rail line.

On June 26, 2012, City Council approved a motion that allowed the City to begin negotiations for the right-of-way on the rail line. A City Planning meeting in which the

Wasson Way project was discussed was held on November 14, 2012, and was attended by approximately 120 people. As of September 13, 2013, the City continued to negotiate with Norfolk Southern. Council members sought the aid of the Wasson

Way organization, asking them to procure endorsements for the project from local businesses. As the City continues to work to secure the right-of-way and the funds to

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undertake the project, on February 23, 2014, the head of the city’s Department of

Transportation Engineering appointed a planner to be the Project Manager for the

Wasson Way project. Though the project has not come to complete fruition, the group has successfully engaged both the public and government sectors for several years.

Wasson Way Organization

The organization evolved from a small group of residents with an idea to a complex and structured group organized to meet its expanding functional needs. The

Wasson Way held its first Board Meeting, on June 19, 2012. The Board was comprised of individuals who had supported the project from its inception. The ten members include neighborhood and council representatives, business owners, attorneys, and cycling enthusiasts. An organizing meeting was held on August 11, 2012, to determine how to best move forward on the project. About 60 people attended and another 15 committed to participate. The meeting was covered by a local news team with the coverage broadcast on the evening news. The group determined that committees should be formed to facilitate activities and within a month 80 volunteers were divided among 5 committees: Marketing, PR (Special Events), Implementation, Volunteers, and

Fundraising (with three subgroups: business, grants and public). About this, the group states on their Facebook page, “It is hard to believe we have gone from an idea…to a small group of supporters….to a real organization in 18 months” (Wasson, 2014). On

September 26, 2012, they posted: “As our various Committees take shape there is one feature that really sticks out…the people are really outstanding in terms of their qualifications and ability to make the Wasson Way happen (Wasson, 2014). On

December 12, 2012, the group was officially incorporated as a non-profit entity with help

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from one of its attorney members. The group has hosted dozens of meetings and events since its inception. Membership has grown from Jay and Julie Andress to approximately 3000 supporters as of October 3, 2013. Meeting attendance has increased significantly from the small group who eventually formed the Board of

Directors, to hundreds of citizens showing up at meetings and city council hearings.

Citizens have contributed time, money and services – offering legal services, print and marketing services, refreshments, attendance and vocal support over the years.

Opposition to the project

While much support was garnered over the years, the project also faced opposition. The location of the proposed trail through the center of the city and into the not well connected eastern region has rendered it attractive to a variety of transportation interests. The most vocal of these groups are the supporters of Light Rail Transit who claim that the path should be preserved so that light rail can be installed in the future.

They argue that once a bike trail is installed, the likelihood of it being converted to light rail once funding is secured are slim to none, based on examples from other American cities. The Wasson Way group incorporated the concerns of Light Rail advocates into their rhetoric, arguing that preservation of the right-of-way is something both groups want and need to realize their interests. Wasson Way met with Light Rail supporters and offered to include the provision that should the opportunity arise for the implementation of Light Rail in the future, it would have priority over the bike trail. The strategy of Wasson Way served to neutralize the arguments of the Light Rail supporters, leaving them somewhat powerless as opposition. The group showed

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similar savvy in dealing with less threatening opponents, using statistics from other trails to quell residents’ fears about crime and litter, using the need to preserve the right-of- way of this one of a kind corridor to stop local merchants from paving over sections of the route to expand parking lots and by generating or at a minimum identifying significant sources of funding from private and non-profit groups to appease residents who had concerns about the use of tax dollars. In addition to quickly infiltrating the public and government sectors, the Wasson Way organization proved itself savvy when faced with major potential obstacles to its goals.

Funding

Cincinnati, like most mid-size American cities, is facing budgetary issues which have the effect of making non-essential development projects, such as the Wasson

Way project, as highly contested issues. Concerns for whether a project is needed, who it will serve, and whether it is an appropriate expenditure of city funds permeate development discussions. The Wasson Way group had two funding issues with which it had to be concerned. The first was the actual funding of the group as it developed and moved along its agenda. The group relied on donations as well as personal financing.

According to the website, thousands of dollars of personal money was invested into the group during its early stages (Wasson, 2014). Further funding concerns were addressed by a committee developed to handle such matters. One result of this was the securing of a grant from non-profit Interact for Health, a group that supports projects that proactively support the health of local communities. The success of procuring this grant was two-fold in that it provided independent funding which was used to develop a professional feasibility study undertaken by a local design firm. It was also significant in

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that it reflected the broad appeal of the project due to the way that the Wasson Way group presented the project. Because the organization was careful to link their particular project to broader contexts, namely cycling and citizen health, they were able to secure money from a seemingly incongruous source. The deliberate actions of the group, including their rhetoric and marketing strategies,

Broad appeal and de-politicization

This broad appeal strategy benefitted the group not just in terms of funding but by building a wide base of support in general. One of the ways this was able to happen was by the group’s ability to depoliticize the issue. This is particularly significant given that the city recently emerged from a very politicized battle over whether the downtown streetcar project should be discontinued or complete. Up until the very final complicated set of events, the streetcar issue was firmly divided between supporters and opponents both within the public and the city’s leadership. The issue permeated the municipal elections that took place in November 2013, and was such a hot topic, the normally involved and vocal business sector refused to commit to the project on one side or the other, and definitely did not publicly commit funds to the project on one side or the other.

The Wasson Way group has maintained the integrity of their project by ensuring that it stays depoliticized. The project was impacted by the 2013 municipal elections though not to the extent that the streetcar was. The group did however, lose several of its biggest supporters including Laure Qunilivan who had been among the earliest to commit to it and who helped procure vital connections in its early stages. Additionally, the group was supported by then Vice-Mayor Roxannne Qualls, a staunch streetcar

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supporter who ran for mayor and lost to anti-streetcar candidate John Cranley. Due to the lack of political affiliation of the Wasson Way project, Mayor Cranley has become a strong advocate, despite defeating Qualls in the November 2013 mayoral election. The project then was able to withstand a highly contested election as well as a turn-over in

City Council. More recently, the group came close to being embroiled in another controversy as the City earmarked $3 m in funds from a controversial parking lease program which has again served to divide the city. Wasson Way group has been adamant that though they welcome the funds that would allow them to procure the right- of –way from Norfolk Southern, they are not affiliated with any stance on the parking issue. Instead, the group linked the project to the national movement of converting rails to trails for the health and recreational benefits of citizens. They linked it to concerns that kids in cities do not have access to safe areas in which to ride their bikes. They even link it to The National, a national alternative rock band that is perhaps Cincinnati’s most famous musical export and whose drummer is the husband of a member of the

Wasson Way group. That the group has the knowledge and ability to exploit its many links, that it could appeal to such a large base of citizens and be subject to changes in the political structure and still remain outside of the realm of politics is evidence of the group’s successful strategy.

Conclusion

As of March 13, 2014, the Wasson Way Project’s Facebook status states that

Mayor Cranley is continuing to talk with representatives of Norfolk Southern, that his comments continue to be promising, and that negotiations for the City to procure the right-of-way are progressing. (Wasson, 2014). While the project is not complete at the

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time this article was written, it is clear that that team was successful thus far in facilitating this project.

In this participatory strategy, the City of Cincinnati didn’t empower Jay Andress by facilitating an authentic listening experience, by organizing town hall meetings at times that would give him the maximum likelihood of opportunity to attend, building trust.

Instead, Andress brought with him to the city a viable project which he has continuously marketed to maintain momentum. The group also attracted and then exploited the talents and connections of a diverse group of members. Wasson Way also procured funding for and initiated an independent feasibility study done by a professional firm, the results of which they will be able to present to the city, along with the results generated in the UC Niehoff Urban Studio.

The experiences of the Wasson Way group cannot be accounted for in the current public participation literature. Wasson Way is not a marginalized, disempowered group. They are, however, the public and they are participating in order to affect the decision making processes that impact their life. They are a group whose members may have interest in the project based on proximity, based on financial interests, based on an interest in the health and welfare of the general public, based on their interest in cycling and recreation, based on their interest in alternative transportation, or based on their future hopes for Light Rail. We suggest that rather than classify if the group is a public worthy of participatory strategy recognition, that attention be given to the particular and successful methodologies that they employed.

In other words, even an elite or well-connected and empowered public can contribute to the understanding of participation.

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We suggest that by allowing for a broader understanding of the types of projects, the types of citizens and the methods by which engagement and participation can happen in an urban development setting, a newer understanding of the role and purpose of participation can be developed. By acknowledging that the power structure between the government and the public is neither holistic nor dichotomous and that the needs of citizens have changed, studies of participatory strategy can relink the processes to their original underlying political ideologies. In other words, a public participatory process that is successful, as the Wasson Way project thus far is, can inform strategies employed by all citizens, including those who work with and have access to resources and the government, as well as those marginalized populations that these strategies originally developed to help.

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Chapter 6: Conclusion

Participatory strategies are commonly used by both local governments and citizens in urban development projects for many reasons. Governments might employ them to gain and utilize citizen knowledge, to appease a potentially contentious public, or to assign responsibility for certain services (King et al., 1998). The public might employ them to influence decisions about issues that impact their lives, to promote certain projects or to provide insight into local issues (Hassan et al., 2011). Public participation can be a very useful tool in urban development. As such it is important to be able to evaluate participation strategies using relevant criteria and in relation to the goals of the strategy. For this reason, it is important that theories about what participation should be reflect the current state of the actual practice of those strategies.

The findings of these three case studies indicate several useful insights about participation strategies.

The results of the study in which the outcome of the participatory planning process that was used to create the 2002 Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan were examined, indicate that a failure in the implementation stage of the process renders the participatory strategy as a whole, a failure. The process that was used to create the

Plan was successful in that it included a wide variety of stakeholders including low- income, long-term residents, higher-income recent residents, business owners, young urban professionals, neighborhood and religious groups, and the City government. The

City made extraordinary efforts to be inclusive and the result was that even those groups who are most frequently marginalized in these types of processes, were included. The process truly offered marginalized populations the opportunity to

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participate. The production of the plan itself was evidence of the success of the consensus seeking process.

In this type of top-down, state led participation it is essential that the goals which are developed by the process are implemented, even if the process itself meets the established normative criteria. The participatory process is, in this manifestation, supposed to create the opportunity within which citizens can be empowered by the state. The dissatisfaction of the participants and their demand that the implementation of the goals be monitored are sufficient evidence that, no matter how extensive the participation was in the plan development stage, without proof that the goals the citizens helped to create, the process becomes futile. The goals are the end product of deliberation between the many disparate groups that participated. The goals, and more specifically the implementation of measures to meet those goals, are where the power in the process truly lies. In this case, the power remained with the state who, despite organized pleas for follow-up and empirical evidence indicating the possibility for reasonable monitoring provided by the LUMIS Pilot Study, failed to do so. Failure at this point made it clear that the power that the citizens gained and held during the development stage was, at best, temporary, and at worst, meaningless. This conclusion was far from the one citizens expected from their participation.

The results of the study that examined the role that public participation played in deciding the fate of the Cincinnati streetcar project provide a different insight into these strategies, particularly about the role of power in these strategies. In this case, a grass roots citizen organization, Believe in Cincinnati, acted as a facilitator between the corporate and government sectors to provide the information and resources necessary

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for several members of Cincinnati’s City Council to make a decision in favor of continuing the streetcar project. Prior to the intervention of this group, several council members, in order to support the continuation of the project, had required that commitments be made by private and corporate investors to ensure a decade worth of funding for the operational costs of the streetcar. However, those sectors had been unusually quiet throughout discussions and development of the highly contentious, politically volatile project. It was the citizen group, with less at stake than either the government or corporate sectors, who were able to make the behind the scenes connections and act as liaisons. This type of participatory strategy is interesting for several reasons. First, it presents the public in a role for which it is not recognized in participatory literature: as a facilitator between the government and corporate sectors.

Traditionally, the only structure for interaction between these groups includes has the government as mediator between the public and corporate sectors. Second, though

Believe in Cincinnati was comprised of citizens, it was not representative of the public in general, which was highly split on the streetcar issue, nor was it a group working in opposition to the government, who also was divided on the issue. This case presents a departure from the holistic and dichotomous way that the relationship between the public and the government is traditionally conceived. Third, this case had no obvious social or political ideologies as its concern or goal. Further, the public group was at its core comprised of well-connected individuals with both a vested interest in the outcome of the issue, who were able to use their resources to mobilize people and resolve the issue. This case then presented an example of public participation in which a public group, representing a segment of the public, worked with government and corporate

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sectors to achieve a goal. This type of public participation, divorced from direct social issues, concern with equality, empowerment, redistribution or access for marginalized groups, or any radical political ideologies is not well represented in participatory literature. It is an example of successful public participation, though not by traditional standards.

The final case study had results similar to the second one in that the public who participated, the goals that they set and the means by which they achieved those goals, cannot be wholly accounted for by traditional participation theory. Like the second case, this study involves a public that is not marginalized and which has a vested interest, both social and financial, in the completion of the project. This was a project that was conceived of and then facilitated through the government structure by a well-connected and intelligent public. From the original grass roots letter delivered door to door by one man and his daughter to the solicitation of thousands of dollars in grants and the procurement of professional design services via a bidding process, to the intelligent use of social media, and to the thoughtfulness to embed the project within the context of other projects and concerns, this has been a carefully thought out and orchestrated effort. Also like the second case study, the public that participated in this project is not representative of the entire public. The Wasson Way project inevitably competes with other proposed trails in other parts of the city, the residents of those parts likely not supporters of this particular project, especially if it takes resources from their own interests. The public in this case is not in any type of antagonistic or dichotomous relationship with the government. In fact, the government will benefit greatly from this project. The project was conceived, researched, marketed and then presented to the

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city, already in progress to some extent. Much of the legwork for the advancement of the project has been funded by members of the organization or with funds solicited by their Funding Committee. The prepared and developed state in which this project has been presented to the city makes it an attractive project. This third case presents a clear example of a public empowered via its own resources outside of the political structure. That public is still subject to the institutional controls that govern development decision making, however, they have not been reliant upon the state for their empowerment or inclusion and an argument can be made that they presented to the city such a well-developed project, that they made it something that leaders could not reasonably refuse.

The three projects provide examples of the variety of forms participatory strategies can take. Participation is theorized as providing opportunities for empowerment and access to decision making processes. While the results of this paper indicate that not all public participation must have social goals and that they are not the only source of empowerment, participatory strategies can still be very useful for the alleviation of inequality. As such, the insights gained in this research can provide valuable lessons about these strategies, particularly in relation to power, and can be employed for public participation in social issues. The first study shows how the power gained in a participatory planning process can be lost and the impact that can have on the public. This study can provide useful insights for both the government and the public in terms of how the empowerment that occurs within these processes can be maintained. In the latter two projects it is impossible to deny that the public, at least the leadership, are educated, financially independent, and well-connected citizens who

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obviously have access to resources that a marginalized public might not. It is also obvious that the projects in which these publics are involved are projects with broad real or potential economic impact and which therefore make them immediately appealing to the City. So while it would be foolish to assume that a less well connected public with less access to resources, social or financial, and having concern for issues that might not contribute directly to the economic development of the city could engage in the same strategies as those presented here, there are insights gained as to what constitutes successful participation that could benefit the marginalized. Among those insights might be how to connect a project to other issues and place it within a broader context to gain widespread support, the types of connections that can be made and exploited to facilitate a project, and strategies for soliciting funds or for connecting potential funding sources with issues. These insights however will rely on an expanded conception of who the public is, how the public can participate and how power in participatory projects can be gained or lost. The results of these case studies, by providing examples not currently able to be accounted for within the literature, can provide a starting point for the expansion of limited traditional conceptions.

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