eBay for Cities

It's not a new idea to CEOs for Cities. Larry Keeley at Doblin has made the power of platforms central to work with innovation teams from our member cities. But as we sit here in Providence today on Day Three of our Remix Tour with Charlie Leadbeater, I keep asking myself, what is the equivalent platform to eBay for cities? What would a platform for mass citizen participation look like that would have the utter clarity of purpose, the nature of participation and metrics of eBay?

Cities are awash in so-called "citizen participation" that could be better described as "citizen opinion sharing." A few people show up at public meetings and complain. People organize to prevent a zoning change in their neighborhood. And those forms of engagement can be valuable. But they can often devolve into endless conversations for people with the luxury of time to participate and an ability to stop things but not start things.

In Portland, we heard from Ryan Christensen, a successful clothing entrepreneur and founder of Same Underneath, who confessed that he had prepared to be a teacher not an entrepreneur. He hadn't gone to business school. But he pointed out that the cost of the mistakes he's made in business were about equal to the cost of business school. From his point of view, by starting a business he got an education better than an MBA, and it cost him no more.

(His story seems analagous to Charlie's metaphor of throwing a party for a 10-year old. Just do it, create some boundaries and keep a light touch.)

It strikes me that so many times we have no idea what we are accomplishing in typical community participation processes. In fact, many times, we don't even know what we are trying to accomplish. Our metrics are how many people showed up at the meeting. (But real outcomes? Forget it.)

I suggest again that we take the eBay platform metaphor seriously. So once more: What does the eBay platform for cities look like?

  

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