designing public consensus

In her latest post on the Planetizen blog, Barbara compares two public process meetings, one in an EU country and one in the American South. She describes one meeting: 

Just as the lead developer was about to introduce the design team, we heard screaming people storming the entrance. There was visible concern among the attendees, and I believe the first thought of everyone in the room was “Are these people armed?”  

A few weeks later, another meeting on another continent:

The PR firms’ intent was to learn what people thought of possible development. Well, you can imagine what people thought—over a three-hour time span we learned that people are angry that they had moved from the city to the county only to find more development coming to the county than was expected in the surrounding cities for the next decade. 

How did these public meetings miss the mark? Why did they stoke rather than allay people’s anger? Read Barbara’s post. 

The Washington Post reports on a Swedish town that has voted to relocate before the iron ore mine beneath it literally “undermines” their terra firma.

The citizens of Kiruna—who dub themselves “the No-Problem people”—have taken on this geological challenge with gusto. Last month, the town council voted to move much of the 23,000-person city to a spot 1.25 to 2.5 miles northwest of its current location, away from the direction of the cracks.

The town plans to move in stages, with the entire relocation accomplished by 2099. The mining company says it will cover most of the costs of the move.

Kiruna officials are hoping their move can become a model for communities that will be affected by climate change in the coming decades. The predicted sea level rises will eventually force many cities in the developing world to move tens of thousands of people to higher ground, and Kiruna is organizing a conference in 2008 that will examine how best to do this.

Now that’s a cheerful approach to disaster planning.