I got to experience the obsession with minutiae firsthand when presenting a plan to Brooklyn's CB6 to renovate a historic building in Brooklyn for one of my school projects. The board members—all people of retirement age—debated back and forth for 30 minutes about the color on the railing on our ADA-accessible ramp. Ultimately they settled on something hideous, which they officially recommended to the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners...who completely ignored their input.
Great article—looking forward to hearing what else you learn and what progress you might make!
Wow this was so informative! I had to look up the difference between a "No Standing" and a "No Parking" sign because I always wondered what the heck they even meant.
I'd love to join my local community board, but I'm honestly not sure I can keep up with the time commitment. I wonder if that's why your board (and likely others) tend to skew older; older folks might be retired and have more flexible schedules.
I definitely think the large time commitment is discouraging for people with less free time. Improving representativeness is a big part of why I'm interested in streamlining the meetings to reduce the burden on volunteer members.
Re: the amount of time consumed by hyperlocal matters: What do you think about the size of community boards, in terms of population (and geographic area) served? Do you think they’re potentially too large?
Here in DC, we have something similar called Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, and we have 46 for a population of ~680,000, meaning a mean population per ANC of ~14,800—a stark contrast to NYC’s 59 community boards for 8.5 million people (~144,000 people/CB, on average). Like NYC’s CBs, DC’s ANCs spend a ton of time on hyperlocal issues. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to do that for 200,000 people like in your case!
This is a great point! Manhattan's CB8 is definitely one of the largest in terms of population. I believe several NYC community boards have only 50k-100k residents. It's a big variation!
I think the ideal size largely depends on what task we're trying to optimize community boards to serve. If we're focused on micro-scale approvals of sidewalk dining and modifications to historic buildings then smaller areas are likely most helpful. If we're focused on large, cross cutting policies like housing and transportation, I'd intuit that operating over larger areas would be best.
I got to experience the obsession with minutiae firsthand when presenting a plan to Brooklyn's CB6 to renovate a historic building in Brooklyn for one of my school projects. The board members—all people of retirement age—debated back and forth for 30 minutes about the color on the railing on our ADA-accessible ramp. Ultimately they settled on something hideous, which they officially recommended to the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners...who completely ignored their input.
Great article—looking forward to hearing what else you learn and what progress you might make!
Wow this was so informative! I had to look up the difference between a "No Standing" and a "No Parking" sign because I always wondered what the heck they even meant.
I'd love to join my local community board, but I'm honestly not sure I can keep up with the time commitment. I wonder if that's why your board (and likely others) tend to skew older; older folks might be retired and have more flexible schedules.
Thanks for the feedback!
I definitely think the large time commitment is discouraging for people with less free time. Improving representativeness is a big part of why I'm interested in streamlining the meetings to reduce the burden on volunteer members.
Re: the amount of time consumed by hyperlocal matters: What do you think about the size of community boards, in terms of population (and geographic area) served? Do you think they’re potentially too large?
Here in DC, we have something similar called Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, and we have 46 for a population of ~680,000, meaning a mean population per ANC of ~14,800—a stark contrast to NYC’s 59 community boards for 8.5 million people (~144,000 people/CB, on average). Like NYC’s CBs, DC’s ANCs spend a ton of time on hyperlocal issues. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to do that for 200,000 people like in your case!
This is a great point! Manhattan's CB8 is definitely one of the largest in terms of population. I believe several NYC community boards have only 50k-100k residents. It's a big variation!
I think the ideal size largely depends on what task we're trying to optimize community boards to serve. If we're focused on micro-scale approvals of sidewalk dining and modifications to historic buildings then smaller areas are likely most helpful. If we're focused on large, cross cutting policies like housing and transportation, I'd intuit that operating over larger areas would be best.