<
https://www.ourtownsfoundation.org/the-civic-soft-power-of-public-places/>
"Town residents are very good at taking stock of their own community’s natural
assets. If you ask people what’s special about their town, they’ll quickly list
the walking and biking trails; the parks, lakes, or riverfronts; the wide-open
spaces or rolling hills. Sometimes they’ll talk about the natural light, which
artists love. Or the fresh mountain air. Or, surprisingly often, the taste of
the local drinking water. Man-made assets are equally important: Public
libraries, town museums, stadiums, hospitals, schools, Main Street, public art,
playgrounds, and favorite eateries.
Organizations have developed different scales that attempt to measure these
assets. Real estate companies rate walkability. Environmentalists measure tree
cover. Meteorologists index air quality. Chambers of Commerce track new
businesses. Education and civic groups, newspapers and magazines rank schools,
crime rates, even civic health. When we lived in Shanghai, every day I would
pass a digital sign on a busy street near our apartment that announced the
ambient decibel level from cars. In our current hometown of Washington DC, the
digital sign in front of the Vice-President’s house at the Naval Observatory
ticks out the official time. It replaced an earlier read-out of the national
debt—probably a good switch.
Residents of towns often, very often, say that their number one asset is “Our
People”. It’s hard to put a number on what they mean; presumably not the
population count but rather some measure of spirit. Residents in so many places
have been adamant that this is a distinctive asset.
During our travels and reporting for
Our Towns, I came to appreciate a
fuzzier-sounding asset that felt very important but was hard to calculate, pin
down, or sometimes even describe. It was a feeling, an attitude, an impression.
This was elusive and not easily measurable.
I would call this phenomenon “civic soft power,” and we often saw it expressed
in public places and public spaces. Everyone recognizes the soft power of
sports diplomacy. (Ping-pong between the US and China back in the 1970s; the
international spread of basketball and baseball since then.) Or the cultural
soft power of American music and movies . Or the psychic soft power of
advertising or propaganda.
In the communities I’m talking about, if you show up in these public places,
you’ll often get a feeling for the town, and can sense the nature of its soft
power—its particular civic soft power.
In my experience, being in public places can take yourself out of the
everydayness. These are the habits, both imposed and chosen, of your personal
life— where you shop, how you get the kids around town, well-worn commutes.
Time spent in public places gives you a chance to peer into the values or
make-up or evolution of your town. To literally rub the shoulders of the town
that you don’t normally touch. Here are a few places where I have found this
kind of soft power, and what I learned there about these towns."
Via
What Could Go Right? October 12, 2023:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/israel-hamas-palestine-attacks-war/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
