Philly’s Community Organizations Have a Critical Role In Development. Can They Play it Virtually?
“I think this [social distancing] is going to be for the long haul, so we really want to set the system up so the development-regulatory process gets back on track, and does not leave anyone behind”
On Philadelphia's official map of Registered Community Organizations, a complex web of overlapping lines. (City of Philadelphia)
On the first Tuesday of every non-summer month, for at least the last 10 years, the Passyunk Square Civic Association in South Philadelphia has hosted a neighborhood meeting, to discuss everything from tree planting to parking and new construction. Typically the meetings are held at a local senior center. But when the coronavirus-related social-distancing guidelines went into effect, the civic association, like dozens of others around the city, had to cancel in-person meetings. In May, aware that the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (OTIS) was still moving ahead with planning a streetscape improvement project on Washington Avenue, a major artery on the northern edge of the neighborhood, the association decided to try holding its meeting virtually.
“We thought, ‘OK, we’ll give this a try,’” says Sarah Anton, the association’s president. “We were happy to experiment with [OTIS], and it went pretty well.”
The association did its typical outreach, mostly through email and its website, Anton says, and used Zoom to host the meeting. Anton facilitated public participation. There are limits to what volunteer groups like hers can do in terms of outreach, Anton says, but the meeting was fairly successful. If it had to host all its meetings online, the group could make it work, she says. But Passyunk Square is a relatively well-off neighborhood in Philadelphia, and community associations’ access to and comfort with video-conferencing technologies may vary greatly from neighborhood to neighborhood. How groups like the Passyunk Square Civic Association negotiate their mandates to cultivate local engagement with construction projects during a time of social distancing could have important consequences for the health of neighborhood democracies, and for the city’s overall development…
