Suchergebnisse

Urban infrastructure is typically invisible to the public eye although it is resource- and labor-intensive, rendering services indispensable to daily life. Some facilities appear to provide individually consumable benefits at little individual cost. Therefore, it is usually difficult to rally public support behind changes in the level and nature of infrastructure investments. Consequently, infrastructure decisions tend to be reactive to crises and political pressures, not proactive and strategic. After proposing reasons why the reactive decisions have undesirable long-range consequences, we describe a participatory process that was used in 1994 and 1995 to elicit northeast Ohio's environmental priorities. Surprisingly, urban out-migration emerged as the region's top priority. The key underlying dimension of this choice was concern with the efficient provision, wise management, and quality of the infrastructure. We analyze the participatory mechanisms that rendered infrastructure visible to the lay public, and some strategies for sustaining public interest and enabling it to guide political decisions affecting the environment.