[zucker42]

Hmm, I think the problem the person you replied to sees is that sentiment community board meetings are not as good at measuring what the "average citizen" wants as opinion polls. Why do CB meetings have the moral high ground?

[disgruntledphd2]

Because they are part of a local democratic infrastructure that is actually pretty good by global standards in the US.

[rtlfe]

Pretty good at what? They're good at giving outsized power to a small number of wealthy white old people, but I don't think we want that.

This is well researched: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/neighborhood-defenders/...

[dijit]

> that is actually pretty good by global standards in the US

Citation needed.

From a European perspective, it is not my impression that the local democratic system is good in any US city.

But that could be my filter bubble, we only heard bad things because people shout the loudest about bad things.

[thehappypm]

What are the main problems you think of local government? I'm curious what the perception is in Europe. American cities aren't the pretty, walkable, public-transit oriented cities you have in Europe but that doesn't mean they're failures either.

[rtlfe]

I shared this link in a sibling comment, but here it is again: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/neighborhood-defenders/...

A big problem is that local governments place a lot of weight on "community input," but the people giving input don't accurately reflect the community. People who show up to meetings tend to be strongly opposed to change and fit into demographic groups that have a lot of free time, i.e. older, richer, and whiter. This causes a lot of positive changes to be either outright vetoed or delayed indefinitely at the whim of NIMBYs.

[disgruntledphd2]

This is kinda how democracy works, in all it's terrible glory. Apply your same logic to national elections, and you are essentially saying that the votes of some people should be worth less, and others more.

I don't disagree with you that this happens, but I'm not sure that removing the local democratic infrastructure is the right way to solve this problem.

[disgruntledphd2]

So, the US actually has real local government, with elections at very low levels, relative to what is more centralised and formalised system in the UK & Ireland.

I'm not a big fan of the practices of a lot of these low-level elected groups (seriously, fuck you Palo Alto representatives), but the principle behind the existence of all the local town and county governance systems (and particularly the heavy reliance on elected people) are things that seem like really good ideas to me, and that I think should exist in more places (maybe they do, I'm sure the commenters here will alert me to such places ;) ).

[bluGill]

But we are a republic not a democracy for a reason. We don't want a minority who has time to show up to make decisions.