On Sunday, Chris Satullo, the editor of the Inquirer’s editorial page, announced a project that might help transform politics in this city: Great Expectations: Citizen Voices on Philadelphia’s Future. As I explain in this blog post, this is a project that has the potential to radically improve politics in the city. Please can find out more, and sign up to take part in the project here.
A joint project of The Inquirer Editorial Board’s Citizen Voices project and the University of Pennsylvania’s Project on Civic Engagement, Great Expectations will have a number of key components. One is to engage community leaders and citizens from around the region in a series of dialogues that identify the key problems we need to solve in the next ten years if Philadelphia is to become the next great city. A second is to send editorial board writers to others cities to find the best practices and solutions to deal with these problems. What they find out, along with reports from experts on urban issues, will be the subject of a series of issues forums. Other components will involve training citizen journalists to cover the 2007 election, candidate debates, and other projects that will ultimately lead to the drafting of a an agenda for our newly elected council and mayor.
If you have been following what I’ve been writing about politics in the city, you already know why I think this project has so much potential. The great failing of our politicians in Philadelphia is that they aims far too low. Instead of trying to create more good things in the city—more economic opportunities and jobs, a more vibrant cultural life, better schools, a 21st century transit system—politics in all about trying to get just a little larger share of the patronage and contracts that provide the good things we have now.
And we citizens pretty much do the same. We are so scared of losing the support of our politicians for what we have now, all we ask of them to do help our individual homes, businesses and neighborhoods.
The only way to transform politics is to replace this politics of fear with a politics of hope. We need people to look up from their own concerns and think about the city as a whole. We need them to imagine what a great city would look like. And we need them to recognize that there are creative and innovative public politics being put in place around the world that can make an urban region better for everyone in it.
By drawing citizens out, and asking them to talk about what would make our city and region a much better place, and by pointing citizens to the best practices in urban areas, the Great Expectations project can go far to create a new sense of hope. If it works, we citizens will demand more from our politicians. We won’t vote for politicians out of fear of losing what we have, but will vote for those politicians who can plausibly show us how life can be better for everyone.
Once we do that, then quickly—indeed, far more quickly than we can imagine now—politics will look a lot different in Philadelphia. The tremendous energy you can see among citizen activists in every neighborhood and among leaders in the non-profit and private sectors, will greatly animate our politics. And Philadelphia will finally realize the great potential it has.
So I urge you all to sign up to take part in this project.