The Cupertino Project: A case study in facilitating meaningful city–community feedback
Image by ILRI
The City of Cupertino, De Anza College, and the Public Dialogue Consortium (incl. Dr. Shawn Spano, who writes below) partnered on a landmark “Cupertino Project” in the late '90s. Their mission was simple: engage Cupertino residents about issues affecting their community, and brainstorm solutions. The fascinating study (recapped below) utilized focus groups, town halls, and action plans—to put findings into practice. From the Rogue Comm Domain Directory.
Overview of Phase I
The PDC started work on the Cupertino Project in March 1996. The first phase of the project consisted of a series of ten focus group meetings involving close to 90 Cupertino residents. Each of the meetings lasted two hours and included a cross-section of residents, including business owners, retirees, high schools students, homemakers, teachers, law enforcement officers, and foreign-born citizens. Focus group members were contacted by the PDC from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters list obtained through the city.
The focus group meetings were designed and facilitated so that participants were free to express their own views of the city in whatever way felt comfortable to them. For example, participants were encouraged to talk about what they liked about Cupertino and the kind of community they would like Cupertino to be, in addition to identifying issues that were of most concern to them personally and to the long-term health of community. The PDC group facilitators were careful not to impose an agenda on the group or introduce their own topics in the discussion. In addition, participants were assured anonymity in an attempt to help foster an open and honest communication climate. …
The PDC assessed the themes and issues emerging from the focus group meetings and developed a plan to continue public discussion of the cultural richness and community safety issues. The goal in continuing the project was to broaden the number of participants and to increase the opportunities for discussion. At the same time, we sought to focus discussion more specifically on peoples' visions for cultural richness and community safety and their plans for turning their visions into specific plans and policies.
Overview of Phase II
Phase II of the Cupertino Project started in September 1996 and progressed along two parallel tracks. The first track consisted of training over a 100 students from the two local high schools, Monta Vista and Cupertino High, to conduct intergenerational, community interviews on cultural richness and community safety. Members of the PDC conducted three separate training sessions with students. Each session began with a brief overview of an interviewing technique called "appreciative inquiry," or AI. Briefly, AI encourages respondents to talk about what they value in a given situation. It attempts to frame a situation around what is positive and possible rather than defining it as a problem in need of a solution.
After learning about AI, students were then given a semi-structured interview protocol consisting of the following questions: What does cultural richness/community safety mean to you? Could you tell me about a positive experience you have had with cultural richness/community safety? What can the Cupertino community do to help make positive experiences happen in the future? …
The second track of Phase II consisted of eight dialogue group meetings involving 40 Cupertino residents. Similar to the focus groups, participants were contacted by PDC members from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters list. …
The dialogue group meetings were divided into two parts, corresponding to the two topics of interest: cultural richness and community safety. Participants first discussed their meanings for the term "cultural richness" and their visions for how Cupertino can best take advantage of cultural richness in the future. Next, participants were asked to develop a series of action plans for how to turn their visions into reality. This same interview protocol was then used in the second half of the meeting where discussion focused on the community safety issue. …
Some of the more common suggestions offered by the groups were community celebrations, educational opportunities (seminars, workshops) that provide cultural knowledge and awareness, institutional activities at the public schools that promote and reward cultural richness, cultural activities that involve children and senior citizens, a fact sheet, pamphlet, and/or multicultural calendar containing relevant cultural and demographic information, and a welcome booklet or a newcomer club to help people who move into Cupertino learn about the community.
The community safety issue, on the other hand, was envisioned by group participants in terms of "mutual support," where residents work together to help make Cupertino a safe place to live. This sort of community solidarity leads to what can be described as "emotional safety." In addition, community safety was also talked about in terms of "physical safety," or the freedom to move about the city without the threat of violence. There was also discussion of "transportation safety" involving pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists safely coordinating access to public roadways. Finally, community safety was envisioned when law enforcement are "present" and "visible" in the city and where the composition of law enforcement officials reflects the ethnicity of the city.
Action plans generated by the dialogue groups for community safety included community or neighborhood policing. This type of activity was seen by participants as a way for law enforcement and citizens to develop friendly and trustful relationships with one another. Group participants spoke favorably of the Neighborhood Watch Program and encouraged their continuation and expansion. Another action plan included the development of educational presentations by law enforcement so that citizens could learn about burglar proofing their homes and preparing for natural disasters like earthquakes. Participants also discussed the need for a "hot line" which would enable people to contact law enforcement about issues or problems that threaten the safety of the community. …
The culmination of Phase II of the Cupertino Project was a Town Hall Meeting held on November 20, 1996 at the Quinlan Community Center in Cupertino. Approximately 150 residents participated in the 2 and 1/2 hour meeting. This provided the PDC and the community with an opportunity to talk about issues in a large public forum …
Overview of Phase III
… Beginning in December, PDC members interviewed the Mayor and each of the City Council to help gauge their responses to the first two phases of the project and to begin charting out a specific plan for the third phase. …
First, we propose training city officials and community residents to practice our communication methods. This move toward decentralization will ultimately create more opportunities in the community for people to discuss cultural richness, community safety, and other social issues. More specifically, on January 25, the City Council will meet with the PDC for a "Team-Building" day. During this day, the PDC will conduct a training for the City Council in ways of facilitating public dialogue; will work with the Council in responding in a dialogic manner to the voices of the community; and will work with the Council in planning for a training session to be held in February.
In late February, between 50 and 100 civic leaders will be personally invited by members of the City Council to participate in a two-day training session. The specific agenda of this session will be developed by the PDC and the Council at the January 25 meeting, but its general purposes are clear. They include: 1) explaining to the leaders of the community the communication principles that lie behind the project; 2) inviting them to join the project by facilitating the development of better patterns of communication throughout the community; and 3) inviting the leaders of the community to join the Council in thinking through its proposed response to the community's voices gathered in Phases I and II.
The second aspect of Phase III calls for creating different types of public forums for discussion of social issues. … [W]e plan on exploring other types of meetings that would, in fact, fact achieve different goals. …
The third and final aspect of Phase III involves scholarly research. From its inception, the PDC has focused on the practical issues of improving the quality of "real" public discourse. At the same time, we have attempted to solve these practical problems by incorporating theoretical and methodological practices derived from a social constructionist communication perspective. As a result, we have always traversed the two worlds of scholarship and application, believing that both can be enriched by the other. … First, we plan on doing "network analysis" of the community to find out not only what is being talked about by various segments of the community, but how the topics of these conversations are being discussed.
The second avenue for scholarly research includes the use of thematic discourse analysis. For example … How did this theme [of cultural richness] shape the discourse of the Town Hall Meeting?
Read the whole thing here.
Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity
Opp Now enthusiastically welcomes smart, thoughtful, fair-minded, well-written comments from our readers. But be advised: we have zero interest in posting rants, ad hominems, poorly-argued screeds, transparently partisan yack, or the hateful name-calling often seen on other local websites. So if you've got a great idea that will add to the conversation, please send it in. If you're trolling or shilling for a candidate or initiative, forget it.