INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL & INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

BY EYAL FEDER-LEVY

Zencity, a community input and insights platform, is lowering the barriers to civic engagement and helping dozens of local authorities across the country gain and utilize resident feedback necessary for environmental and infrastructure projects.

When we talk about smart cities, public engagement isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind.

But Zencity believes that listening to and collaborating with the community is critical for shared success. Over 300 agencies that represent over 100 million people use our innovative software daily to improve the services they provide, promote major projects, increase satisfaction, and build trust with those they serve.

Capital Projects & Community Engagement

In addition to keeping our world running, local governments shoulder responsibility for the infrastructure on which their cities’ futures are built. This demands more than planning for the complex engineering, legal, and financial requirements. When the community objects to a plan, it’s not a mere inconvenience. Progress is slowed—or halted—by city council or county commission approvals. Demonstrations or protests may stop the work. But when the community supports a project, they are partners in its progress. Instead of meeting resistance, the work can be executed effectively and efficiently and result in greater satisfaction. Today, most governments have limited tools for building trust, the most common being a public hearing or meeting. But too many meetings wind up as half-empty rooms, dominated by those strongly objecting to any change. Borrowing from one of our partner mayors, Zencity calls this the “STP” challenge: the same 10 people who show up to every community meeting, who call and email their city administration daily. STPs overshadow the majority of residents who don’t know about or can’t make it to community meetings. Residents who work one or more jobs, have children or dependent elders, who have limited mobility, or don’t speak English fluently—all these voices that aren’t being heard because these opportunities for public comment are not opportune for them. This isn’t because local governments want to exclude residents. But true engagement presents a complex challenge that requires a multifaceted solution. The good news is that the “smart city” is ready to help meet this challenge.

Meet Residents Where They Are

To hear from the community, you have to meet people where they are. Recent studies have indicated that the average American looks at their phone anywhere from 52 to 344 times a day. In 2021, internet access penetration in the United States passed 95%. Today, meeting people where they are means meeting them online, allowing us to build trust in novel ways.

Zencity’s platform collects public input from diverse online sources and uses machine learning and AI to make sense of this rich information. The first layer comes from what people are sharing in public forums, such as social media posts, comments on local websites, and customer service data the city collects. The second layer comprises rapid community surveys, which use online advertising channels to solicit residents’ opinions on local initiatives. These surveys boast incredibly high response rates, especially from hard-to-reach communities that are more inclined to engage online than show up at city hall.

The third layer is our online engagement sites through which the city can share its plans and invite the public to collaborate in design and decision-making. The fourth is experience surveys, a means of post-contact resident engagement following service delivery or participation in a city-run activity. All these layers are offered in one platform that allows a 360-degree view of what really matters to a community.

Recognize, Collaborate, Listen & Measure

Applying this approach to a complex infrastructure project begins with recognizing the community’s needs. We do that by analyzing organic online discussions and running representative surveys. After identifying focus areas, we make the community a stakeholder in the project by inviting them to be part of its co-creation. Then, we leverage our ability to listen to online conversations, recognize emerging trends, and make sure the work is wellexecuted. If we observe challenges or dissatisfaction, we can react in a meaningful, informed way. After we’ve finished, we use surveys to measure the impact of our infrastructure project. Then we can ask, are people more satisfied with life in their community now than before?

A few examples help illustrate how online engagement improves outcomes from capital projects. Take the town of Winthrop, Massachusetts, which wanted to build a downtown business improvement district. Work was slated to commence in April 2020—just as COVID was markedly changing our routines. To accommodate construction, one neighborhood’s water supply would be shut for 12 hours, just as residents were housebound and reliant on water to maintain proper hygiene. When the city announced the groundbreaking, online conversations reflected high negative sentiment. The city therefore adjusted its plans to shorten the water interruptions, as well as equip construction workers with protective equipment. Following this, negative sentiment dropped from 50% to 15%.

Another example comes from Seguin, Texas, where improvements to stormwater infrastructure required the imposition of a utility fee, which sentiment evaluation and surveys indicated was highly unpopular. Engagement with the community led to a compromise, which saw both greater education around the need for improved infrastructure and a lowering of the fee that residents accepted.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, plans to build a soccer stadium for Inter Miami faced resistance from a small, vocal group, prompting hesitancy among city council members. However, online sentiment analysis indicated that there was far more positivity than negativity associated with the project. Construction proceeded, and subsequent evaluations confirmed that the stadium was popular with residents.

The City of Normal, Illinois, ran surveys

Eyal Feder-Levy

CEO, Zencity

Tel Aviv, Israel asking residents to rate their priorities for allocating funds received under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This enabled the city to understand the interests of different demographic groups, allowing them to focus on previously underrepresented communities. This led to more nuanced and effective decision-making that supported trust between the administration and the diverse communities they serve. In fact, following the announcement of the ARPA allocations, 85% of related online conversations were positive in sentiment.

These are just a few examples that demonstrate the capacity of online technologies, including Zencity’s unique platform approach, to engage more residents in collaborative processes that result in better outcomes around critical infrastructure and other initiatives. If we invest in these methods, we can make our cities not just smart, but inclusive, responsive, and satisfied.

Eyal Feder-Levy is the CEO and co-founder of Zencity, the platform for community input and insights. Zencity helps hundreds of local governments, including 4 of the 5 largest cities in the U.S., build trust with their communities by supporting decision-making grounded in residents’ priorities, and was the first GovTech company recognized as an AI leader by CB Insights AI 100. Feder-Levy, an urban planner by training, was part of the founding team of “City Center,” the urban research center at Tel Aviv University. He also served on the World Economic Forum’s Future of Cities advisory board and was the youngest board member of the Israeli Planning Association.