The Challenge: Democracy is power in citizens’ hands. But what if citizens don’t use this power? Texas ranked as a state with one of the lowest civic participation in the US, but it is unclear why. Our team was challenged to discover the barriers to healthier civic life of Austinites.
What Was Done: In collaboration with the City of Austin, as a team of three, we performed deep ethnographic research across different Austin population demographics to understand the root causes of drastically low civic participation.
Impact: Research findings are used by City of Austin Office of Innovation as a part of a l strategic initiative towards improvement of civic engagement in Austin.
As a recent immigrant with no right to vote (just yet!) I didn't know much about US politics assuming that there is not much for me to do as a Green Card Holder. But the beauty of design research is that you have a chance to dive deep into the unknown and figure out how to improve things you've never thought about before.
Our research started with diving in the world of local politics and learning about a phenomena of civic engagement in general and in Austin specifically.
Typically, civic engagement is considered as a mix of three main activities:
Austin, as well as Texas in general, has low levels of civic engagement.
According to Texas Civic Health Index Report that compares civic health in Texas with other states, Texas is placed far towards the end of the list in every category.
Even though Austin follows a similar trend, it has its own reasons for low civic engagement, such as young students being a core part of the population and gigantic amount of newcomers who don't have strong connections with the city and feel less responsible for its future.
But what about local Austinies who dedicated their lives to this city? Do they have an established way to communicate with the city? Do they feel heard? Do they achieve their goals and if so, how? And if not, why?
During eight weeks of research, my team and I immersed ourselves into the life of the city. We wanted to meet people who don't interact with the city and those who do, and learn about their civic experiences and perception of local government.
We started our research simply knocking on people's doors. Just like that, no magic.
We decided to start at, perhaps, the most ambivalent part of the city—East Austin. This area experiences rapid changes in terms of physical environment, status and population. What used to be a forbidden, "unsafe" zone, has become one of the most competitive real estate markets. We wanted to learn about experiences of both sides—native occupants and newcomers.
Along with knocking on people's doors, we took public transportation in order to conduct short interviews. We chose buses because public transportation is a known problem and riding a bus is an interaction with the city by itself. During the rides, we established relationships and scheduled in-depth contextual interviews.
Additionally, to find people who are actively civically engaged we attended several Town Hall meetings at City Hall. We also visited public libraries, community centers, and events.
As a result, we conducted 19 in-depth interviews: 15 with Austin residents and 4 with subject matter experts.
We met Kathy while we were walking through East Austin neighborhoods.
She opened the door, but left the net screen closed. "What do you need?" – she sounded irritated. We told her that we are researchers seeking to learn about native long-term citizens' experience of living in the neighborhood. She smiled, opened the screen and came outside. "It's so nice that somebody is interested in it. Let me bring chairs so we can sit down and talk."
Kathy is a disabled woman, she was born and raised in the house that was built in 1892. Now, it is a home base for her entire family. She told us about her childhood, how she used to know everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knew her. "It was a community that looked out for everybody," - she said. The place of social gathering for her was the church that was just across the street from her house, she met all her friends there.
That church doesn't exist anymore. And almost everybody she knew does not live in the neighborhood any longer. Moreover, Kathy herself struggles to keep her house standing under the pressure of gentrification happening in Austin and on the East side in particular.
More and more new people are moving into her neighborhood, but they don't become friends.
My neighbors are nice. On a couple of occasions we have managed to come out, but we are not a community... They are generally friendly but they aren't the people I think of when I say "neighbors." Nobody is outside, nobody is hanging in the streets saying anything or having real conversations. It's mostly "hi" and "bye."
Kathy doesn't feel that her neighborhood belongs to her anymore, and so she doesn't come outside much. She believes that she doesn't fit in it:
If I went to one of these places [new local businesses] I would think it would be like a lot of young white millennials there looking at their computers and their coffee and that's about it. And I don't think they would want to talk to me.
But there is another side to it: Kathy thinks that her new neighbors could be a source of problems for her personally. Recently, she got called out by Code Enforcement for having an illegal duplex on her property, even though she obviously does not have a duplex. It didn't make sense, but that brought attention to her property and showed that she's having a hard time keeping her house up to code in general. She believes that it might have been her new neighbor who called, in an effort to make her sell her house. Not long ago, he asked her if she was selling, and she said no.
There are days that I really do feel like they want me out. Like you said, that lot back there is huge and they do a lot of stuff to try and push me out of here.
Who can help her in this situation? It would be a good assumption that it should be the city who helps a disabled woman to keep her house standing under the pressure of gentrification. And apparently it is what certain departments within the City do. But how can she rely on the city to help her solve her problems? She's fighting so hard with the City's Code Enforcement while others have used code enforcement as a weapon to aid gentrification. Keeping in mind hundreds of years of complicated relationships between her race and the government, it isn't an easy thing for her to do.
We met Ellen in a neighborhood library where she often comes with her grandchildren. She is a retired CapMetro driver living on the East Side. She told us about the one time she tried to convince the City to add a traffic light on the road across her grandchildren's school because she was concerned with their safety.
She was lucky to meet a councilman in that same library one day. She pulled herself together and told him about her concerns. He sounded very empathetic, he asked for her phone number and promised to call back.
I knew, at the time, that he wasn't actually going to do anything about it though. He probably just thought I was some crazy person bugging at him or something.
After not hearing back from the councilman, Ellen decided to go another direction and sent a message to an email address she found on City's website. She opened her email, clicked "Create a new message" and... lost all her words.
What should I write about? How do I start? I don't even know who is going to read this, their names. Should I go straight to my problem or should I introduce myself? I didn't know what to do, so I never actually sent anything.
She knew that there is another way to voice her concerns—a Town Hall meeting. She went there several times, but never got brave enough to speak. As a result, she believes that she just does not have the power to make her voice heard.
The government is a kings' sport. You need to be wealthy to play.
After hours and hours of analyzing what we heard in the 19 interviews, and trying to make sense of the loads of information, we were able to put together a list of breakdowns that we believe can and should be addressed.
Breakdown #1: Weak neighborhoods.
A lot of residents don’t feel connected to their neighbors anymore. Once strong neighborhood associations have seen diminishing returns on their ability to effect change due to rapid gentrification.
Breakdown #2: Luck of trust in themselves.
Many Austinites believe that there is a special skillset they need to be able to participate in local government.
Breakdown #3: Luck of trust in the government.
Previous unsuccessful experiences and historical facts of confrontation between the City government and its population make it hard for people to consider local government as a partner and not an enemy.
Breakdown #4: City is not set up to work effectively with individual requests.
People who try to interact with local government individually often fail, because of the complexity of the process. This failure makes them believe that there is no way to go around it.
The research gave us a lot of insights into civic participation in Austin, gifted beautiful stories and surfaced key breakdowns in the process of critically important communication between the local government and city residents.
How might we bring people together and provide opportunities to people to interact with the city in ways that are suitable and efficient?
And how might we change the perception of this interaction from overwhelming to enjoyable?
You can check out the answers we found and one of the solutions in the following case study: Service Design: How Comedy Can Change Your Civic Life.
