A mayor asks: Why can't civic engagement be more like Tinder?
Civic engagement is supposed to strengthen local democracy and government responsiveness. But lessons from cognitive psychology, user-centered design, behavioral economics, mathematics, and millions of use cases suggest "deeper" engagement might be the disease, not the cure.
One of the nation's innovator-mayors will review the case for traditional civic engagement...then flip the script to reveal how fetishizing it undermines trust, responsiveness, effectiveness, and equity.
We'll consider new design principles for civic engagement, and how government, activists, philanthropy, and innovators can bring them to life with new tools.