Matt Leighninger

In the DemocracySpace.Org blog, Matt Leighninger recently posted an article about “Neighborhood Democracy,” specifically referencing an upcoming meeting, organized in part by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. In his post, Matt mentions some of the groundbreaking experiments in neighborhood democracy, launched over 30 years ago and the lessons that have been learned in the last 15 years.

One of the interesting developments going on at E-Democracy.Org, is the fact that the latest wave of online Issues Forums are being launched at the neighborhood level. Having learned from successful online neighborhood forums at the hyper-local level, such at the Cleveland Park (Washington, DC) project, E-Democracy.Org has begun to take their model of city-wide issues forums and adapt them to “neighborhood life” forums, which provide simple online spaces for neighbors to connect and share information and opinions about things going on in their neighborhoods.

While these neighborhood forums are not meant to replace or compete with the kinds of neighborhood decision making and problem solving bodies that Matt describes in his post. Online neighborhood forums can be powerful tools to strengthen and support these experiments in Neighborhood Democracy. An online neighborhood forum, provides a place for local residents to connect on everyday issues, like finding a babysitter or swapping plants, to the bigger issues being addressed by their Neighborhood/District Council, such as traffic calming or crime prevention. Ideally, a neighborhood forum can serve as a “soft” entry point into the civic life of a community, for newcomers to a neighborhood and those who lack the confidence to simply show-up at a community meeting.

Here are some examples of the “neighborhood life” forums recently launched by E-Democracy.Org:

• Headington & Marston Neighborhood, Oxford (UK)
  
• Brislington, Bristol (UK)
• Seward, Minneapolis (USA)