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Journal of the American Planning Association

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A Ladder of Citizen Participation

Sherry R. Arnstein

To cite this article: Sherry R. Arnstein (2019) A Ladder of Citizen Participation, Journal of theAmerican Planning Association, 85:1, 24-34, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2018.1559388

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2018.1559388

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A Ladder of Citizen ParticipationSherry R. Arnstein

ABSTRACTThe heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control,” and “maximum feasible involvementof the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. Toencourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples fromthree federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which isdesigned to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent ofcitizens’ power in determining the plan and/or program.

The idea of citizen participation is a little like eat-ing spinach: no one is against it in principlebecause it is good for you. Participation of thegoverned in their government is, in theory, the

cornerstone of democracy—a revered idea that is vigor-ously applauded by virtually everyone. The applause isreduced to polite handclaps, however, when this prin-ciple is advocated by the have-not blacks, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Eskimos, and whites.And when the have-nots define participation as redistri-bution of power, the American consensus on the funda-mental principle explodes into many shades of outrightracial, ethnic, ideological, and political opposition.

There have been many recent speeches, articles,and books1 which explore in detail who are the have-nots of our time. There has been much recent docu-mentation of why the have-nots have become sooffended and embittered by their powerlessness to dealwith the profound inequities and injustices pervadingtheir daily lives. But there has been very little analysis ofthe content of the current controversial slogan: “citizenparticipation” or “maximum feasible participation.” Inshort: What is citizen participation and what is its rela-tionship to the social imperatives of our time?

Citizen Participation is Citizen PowerBecause the question has been a bone of political con-tention, most of the answers have been purposelyburied in innocuous euphemisms like “self-help” or “citi-zen involvement.” Still others have been embellishedwith misleading rhetoric like “absolute control” which issomething no one—including the President of theUnited States—has or can have. Between understated

euphemisms and exacerbated rhetoric, even scholarshave found it difficult to follow the controversy. To theheadline reading public, it is simply bewildering.

My answer to the critical what question is simplythat citizenship participation is a categorical term forcitizen power. It is the redistribution of power that ena-bles the have-not citizens, presently excluded from thepolitical and economic processes, to be deliberatelyincluded in the future. It is the strategy by which thehave-nots join in determining how information isshared, goals and policies are set, tax resources are allo-cated, programs are operated, and benefits like con-tracts and patronage are parceled out. In short, it is themeans by which they can induce significant socialreform which enables them to share in the benefits ofthe affluent society.

Empty Ritual Versus BenefitThere is a critical difference between going through theempty ritual of participation and having the real powerneeded to affect the outcome of the process. This differ-ence is brilliantly capsulized in a poster painted lastspring by the French students to explain the student-worker rebellion2 (See Figure 1). The poster highlightsthe fundamental point that participation without redis-tribution of power is an empty and frustrating processfor the powerless. It allows the powerholders to claimthat all sides were considered but makes it possible foronly some of those sides to benefit. It maintains the sta-tus quo. Essentially, it is what has been happening inmost of the 1,000 Community Action Programs, andwhat promises to be repeated in the vast majority ofthe 150 Model Cities programs.

This article originally published in Journal of the American Institute of Planners (now Journal of the American PlanningAssociation), Volume 35 (1969), Number 4, pp. 216–224, doi:10.1080/01944366908977225.DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2018.1559388 | � 2019 American Planning Association, Chicago, IL.

Color version available at tandfonline.com/rjpa

Journal of the American Planning Association 2019 | Volume 85 Number 124

Types of Participation and“NonParticipation”A typology of eight levels of participation may help inanalysis of this confused issue. For illustrative purposesthe eight types are arranged in a ladder pattern witheach rung corresponding to the extent of citizens’power in determining the end product3 (See Figure 2).

The bottom rungs of the ladder are (1)Manipulation and (2) Therapy. These two rungs describelevels of “non-participation” that have been contrivedby some to substitute for genuine participation. Theirreal objective is not to enable people to participate inplanning or conducting programs, but to enable power-holders to “educate” or “cure” the participants. Rungs 3and 4 progress to levels of “tokenism” that allow thehave-nots to hear and to have a voice: (3) Informing and(4) Consultation. When they are proffered by powerhold-ers as the total extent of participation, citizens mayindeed hear and be heard. But under these conditionsthey lack the power to insure that their views will beheeded by the powerful. When participation is restrictedto these levels, there is no followthrough, no “muscle,”hence no assurance of changing the status quo. Rung

(5) Placation, is simply a higher level tokenism becausethe groundrules allow have-nots to advise, but retainfor the powerholders the continued right to decide.

Further up the ladder are levels of citizen powerwith increasing degrees of decision-making clout.Citizens can enter into a (6) Partnership that enablesthem to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with trad-itional powerholders. At the topmost rungs, (7)Delegated Power and (8) Citizen Control, have-not citi-zens obtain the majority of decision-making seats, or fullmanagerial power.

Obviously, the eight-rung ladder is a simplification,but it helps to illustrate the point that so many havemissed—that there are significant gradations of citizenparticipation. Knowing these gradations makes it pos-sible to cut through the hyperbole to understand theincreasingly strident demands for participation from thehave-nots as well as the gamut of confusing responsesfrom the powerholders.

Though the typology uses examples from federalprograms such as urban renewal, anti-poverty, andModel Cities; it could just as easily be illustrated in thechurch, currently facing demands for power from priestsand laymen who seek to change its mission; collegesand universities which in some cases have become lit-eral battlegrounds over the issue of student power; orpublic schools, city halls, and police departments (or bigbusiness which is likely to be next on the expanding listof targets). The underlying issues are essentially thesame—”nobodies” in several arenas are trying tobecome “somebodies” with enough power to make thetarget institutions responsive to their views, aspirations,and needs.

Limitations of the TypologyThe ladder juxtaposes powerless citizens with thepowerful in order to highlight the fundamental divisionsbetween them. In actuality, neither the have-nots northe powerholders are homogeneous blocs. Each groupencompasses a host of divergent points of view, signifi-cant cleavages, competing vested interests, and splin-tered subgroups. The justification for using suchsimplistic abstractions is that in most cases the have-nots really do perceive the powerful as a monolithic“system,” and powerholders actually do view the have-nots as a sea of “those people,” with little comprehen-sion of the class and caste differences among them.

It should be noted that the typology does notinclude an analysis of the most significant roadblocks toachieving genuine levels of participation. These road-blocks lie on both sides of the simplistic fence. On thepowerholders’ side, they include racism, paternalism,

Figure 1. French student poster. In English, I participate; youparticipate; he participates; we participate; you participate …They profit.

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and resistance to power redistribution. On the have-nots’ side, they include inadequacies of the poorcommunity’s political socioeconomic infrastructure andknowledge-base, plus difficulties of organizing a repre-sentative and accountable citizens’ group in the face offutility, alienation, and distrust.

Another caution about the eight separate rungs onthe ladder: In the real world of people and programs,there might be 150 rungs with less sharp and “pure” dis-tinctions among them. Furthermore, some of the charac-teristics used to illustrate each of the eight types mightbe applicable to other rungs. For example, employmentof the have-nots in a program or on a planning staffcould occur at any of the eight rungs and could representeither a legitimate or illegitimate characteristic of citizenparticipation. Depending on their motives, powerholderscan hire poor people to coopt them, to placate them, orto utilize the have-nots’ special skills and insights.4 Somemayors, in private, actually boast of their strategy in hiringmilitant black leaders to muzzle them while destroyingtheir credibility in the black community.

Characteristics and IllustrationsIt is in this context of power and powerlessness that thecharacteristics of the eight rungs are illustrated byexamples from current federal social programs.

1. ManipulationIn the name of citizen participation, people are placedon rubberstamp advisory committees or advisoryboards for the express purpose of “educating” them orengineering their support. Instead of genuine citizenparticipation, the bottom rung of the ladder signifiesthe distortion of participation into a public relationsvehicle by powerholders.

This illusory form of “participation” initially cameinto vogue with urban renewal when the socially elitewere invited by city housing officials to serve on CitizenAdvisory Committees (CACs). Another target of manipu-lation were the CAC subcommittees on minority groups,which in theory were to protect the rights of Negroes inthe renewal program. In practice, these subcommittees,like their parent CACs, functioned mostly as letterheads,trotted forward at appropriate times to promote urbanrenewal plans (in recent years known as Negroremoval plans).

At meetings of the Citizen Advisory Committees, itwas the officials who educated, persuaded, and advisedthe citizens, not the reverse. Federal guidelines for therenewal programs legitimized the manipulative agendaby emphasizing the terms “information-gathering,”“public relations,” and “support” as the explicit functionsof the committees.5

Figure 2. Eight rungs on a ladder of citizen participation.

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This style of nonparticipation has since been appliedto other programs encompassing the poor. Examples ofthis are seen in Community Action Agencies (CAAs) whichhave created structures called “neighborhood councils” or“neighborhood advisory groups.” These bodies frequentlyhave no legitimate function or power.6 The CAAs usethem to “prove” that “grassroots people” are involved inthe program. But the program may not have been dis-cussed with “the people.” Or it may have been describedat a meeting in the most general terms; “We need yoursignatures on this proposal for a multiservice center whichwill house, under one roof, doctors from the healthdepartment, workers from the welfare department, andspecialists from the employment service.”

The signators are not informed that the $2 million-per-year center will only refer residents to the same oldwaiting lines at the same old agencies across town. Noone is asked if such a referral center is really needed in hisneighborhood. No one realizes that the contractor for thebuilding is the mayor’s brother-in-law, or that the new dir-ector of the center will be the same old communityorganization specialist from the urban renewal agency.

After signing their names, the proud grassrootersdutifully spread the word that they have “participated”in bringing a new and wonderful center to the neigh-borhood to provide people with drastically needed jobsand health and welfare services. Only after the ribbon-cutting ceremony do the members of the neighbor-hood council realize that they didn’t ask the importantquestions, and that they had no technical advisors oftheir own to help them grasp the fine legal print. Thenew center, which is open 9 to 5 on weekdays only,actually adds to their problems. Now the old agenciesacross town won’t talk with them unless they have apink paper slip to prove that they have been referred by“their” shiny new neighborhood center.

Unfortunately, this chicanery is not a uniqueexample. Instead it is almost typical of what has beenperpetrated in the name of high-sounding rhetoric like“grassroots participation.” This sham lies at the heart ofthe deep-seated exasperation and hostility of the have-nots toward the powerholders.

One hopeful note is that, having been so grosslyaffronted, some citizens have learned the Mickey Mousegame, and now they too know how to play. As a resultof this knowledge, they are demanding genuine levelsof participation to assure them that public programs arerelevant to their needs and responsive to their priorities.

2. TherapyIn some respects group therapy, masked as citizen par-ticipation, should be on the lowest rung of the ladder

because it is both dishonest and arrogant. Its adminis-trators—mental health experts from social workers topsychiatrists—assume that powerlessness is synonym-ous with mental illness. On this assumption, under amasquerade of involving citizens in planning, theexperts subject the citizens to clinical group therapy.What makes this form of “participation” so invidious isthat citizens are engaged in extensive activity, but thefocus of it is on curing them of their “pathology” ratherthan changing the racism and victimization that createtheir “pathologies.”

Consider an incident that occurred in Pennsylvanialess than one year ago. When a father took his seriouslyill baby to the emergency clinic of a local hospital, ayoung resident physician on duty instructed him to takethe baby home and feed it sugar water. The baby diedthat afternoon of pneumonia and dehydration. Theoverwrought father complained to the board of thelocal Community Action Agency. Instead of launchingan investigation of the hospital to determine whatchanges would prevent similar deaths or other forms ofmalpractice, the board invited the father to attend theCAA’s (therapy) child-care sessions for parents, andpromised him that someone would “telephone the hos-pital director to see that it never happens again."

Less dramatic, but more common examples of ther-apy, masquerading as citizen participation, may be seenin public housing programs where tenant groups areused as vehicles for promoting control-your-child orcleanup campaigns. The tenants are brought togetherto help them “adjust their values and attitudes to thoseof the larger society.” Under these groundrules, they arediverted from dealing with such important matters as:arbitrary evictions; segregation of the housing project;or why is there a three-month time lapse to get a bro-ken window replaced in winter.

The complexity of the concept of mental illness inour time can be seen in the experiences of student/civilrights workers facing guns, whips, and other forms ofterror in the South. They needed the help of sociallyattuned psychiatrists to deal with their fears and toavoid paranoia.7

3. InformingInforming citizens of their rights, responsibilities, andoptions can be the most important first step towardlegitimate citizen participation. However, too frequentlythe emphasis is placed on a one-way flow of informa-tion—from officials to citizens—with no channel pro-vided for feedback and no power for negotiation. Underthese conditions, particularly when information is pro-vided at a late stage in planning, people have little

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opportunity to influence the program designed “fortheir benefit.” The most frequent tools used for suchone-way communication are the news media, pam-phlets, posters, and responses to inquiries.

Meetings can also be turned into vehicles for one-way communication by the simple device of providingsuperficial information, discouraging questions, or giv-ing irrelevant answers. At a recent Model Cities citizenplanning meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, the topicwas “tot-lots.” A group of elected citizen representatives,almost all of whom were attending three to five meet-ings a week, devoted an hour to a discussion of theplacement of six tot-lots. The neighborhood is halfblack, half white. Several of the black representativesnoted that four tot-lots were proposed for the whitedistrict and only two for the black. The city officialresponded with a lengthy, highly technical explanationabout costs per square foot and available property. Itwas clear that most of the residents did not understandhis explanation. And it was clear to observers from theOffice of Economic Opportunity that other options didexist which, considering available funds, would havebrought about a more equitable distribution of facilities.Intimidated by futility, legalistic jargon, and prestige ofthe official, the citizens accepted the “information” andendorsed the agency’s proposal to place four lots in thewhite neighborhood.8

4. ConsultationInviting citizens’ opinions, like informing them, can be alegitimate step toward their full participation. But if con-sulting them is not combined with other modes of par-ticipation, this rung of the ladder is still a sham since itoffers no assurance that citizen concerns and ideas willbe taken into account. The most frequent methodsused for consulting people are attitude surveys, neigh-borhood meetings, and public hearings.

When powerholders restrict the input of citizens’ideas solely to this level, participation remains just awindow-dressing ritual. People are primarily perceivedas statistical abstractions, and participation is measuredby how many come to meetings, take brochures home,or answer a questionnaire. What citizens achieve in allthis activity is that they have “participated in partic-ipation.” And what powerholders achieve is the evi-dence that they have gone through the requiredmotions of involving “those people.”

Attitude surveys have become a particular bone ofcontention in ghetto neighborhoods. Residents areincreasingly unhappy about the number of times perweek they are surveyed about their problems andhopes. As one woman put it: “Nothing ever happens

with those damned questions; except the surveyer gets$3 an hour, and my washing doesn’t get done thatday.” In some communities, residents are so annoyedthat they are demanding a fee for research interviews.

Attitude surveys are not very valid indicators ofcommunity opinion when used without other inputfrom citizens. Survey after survey (paid for out of anti-poverty funds) has “documented” that poor housewivesmost want tot-lots in their neighborhood where youngchildren can play safely. But most of the womenanswered these questionnaires without knowing whattheir options were. They assumed that if they asked forsomething small, they might just get something usefulin the neighborhood. Had the mothers known that afree prepaid health insurance plan was a possibleoption, they might not have put tot-lots so high ontheir wish lists.

A classic misuse of the consultation rung occurredat a New Haven, Connecticut, community meeting heldto consult citizens on a proposed Model Cities grant.James V. Cunningham, in an unpublished report to theFord Foundation, described the crowd as large and“mostly hostile:”9

Members of The Hill Parents Association demanded toknow why residents had not participated in drawing upthe proposal. CAA director Spitz explained that it wasmerely a proposal for seeking Federal planning funds—that once funds were obtained, residents would bedeeply involved in the planning. An outside observerwho sat in the audience described the meetingthis way:

”Spitz and Mel Adams ran the meeting on their own.No representatives of a Hill group moderated or evensat on the stage. Spitz told the 300 residents that thishuge meeting was an example of ’participation inplanning.’ To prove this, since there was a lot ofdissatisfaction m the audience he called for a ’vote’ oneach component of the proposal. The vote took thisform: ’Can I see the hands of all those in favor of ahealth clinic? All those opposed?’ It was a little likeasking who favors motherhood.”

It was a combination of the deep suspicion arousedat this meeting and a long history of similar forms of“window-dressing participation” that led New Havenresidents to demand control of the program.

By way of contrast, it is useful to look at Denverwhere technicians learned that even the best inten-tioned among them are often unfamiliar with, and eveninsensitive to, the problems and aspirations of the poor.The technical director of the Model Cities program has

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described the way professional planners assumed thatthe residents, victimized by high-priced local storekeep-ers, “badly needed consumer education.”10 The resi-dents, on the other hand, pointed out that the localstorekeepers performed a valuable function. Althoughthey overcharged, they also gave credit, offered advice,and frequently were the only neighborhood place tocash welfare or salary checks. As a result of this consult-ation, technicians and residents agreed to substitute thecreation of needed credit institutions in the neighbor-hood for a consumer education program.

5. PlacationIt is at this level that citizens begin to have some degreeof influence though tokenism is still apparent. Anexample of placation strategy is to place a few hand-picked “worthy” poor on boards of Community ActionAgencies or on public bodies like the board of educa-tion, police commission, or housing authority. If they arenot accountable to a constituency in the communityand if the traditional power elite hold the majority ofseats, the have-nots can be easily outvoted and out-foxed. Another example is the Model Cities advisory andplanning committees. They allow citizens to advise orplan ad infinitum but retain for powerholders the rightto judge the legitimacy or feasibility of the advice. Thedegree to which citizens are actually placated, of course,depends largely on two factors: the quality of technicalassistance they have in articulating their priorities; andthe extent to which the community has been organizedto press for those priorities.

It is not surprising that the level of citizen participa-tion in the vast majority of Model Cities programs is atthe placation rung of the ladder or below. Policy-makersat the Department of Housing and Urban Development(HUD) were determined to return the genie of citizenpower to the bottle from which it had escaped (in afew cities) as a result of the provision stipulating “max-imum feasible participation” in poverty programs.Therefore, HUD channeled its physical-social-economicrejuvenation approach for blighted neighborhoodsthrough city hall. It drafted legislation requiring that allModel Cities’ money flow to a local City DemonstrationAgency (CDA) through the elected city council. Asenacted by Congress, this gave local city councils finalveto power over planning and programming and ruledout any direct funding relationship between communitygroups and HUD.

HUD required the CDAs to create coalition, policy-making boards that would include necessary localpowerholders to create a comprehensive physical-socialplan during the first year. The plan was to be carried

out in a subsequent five-year action phase. HUD, unlikeOEO, did not require that have-not citizens be includedon the CDA decision-making boards. HUD’sPerformance Standards for Citizen Participation onlydemanded that “citizens have clear and direct access tothe decision-making process.”

Accordingly, the CDAs structured their policy-making boards to include some combination of electedofficials; school representatives; housing, health, andwelfare officials; employment and police departmentrepresentatives; and various civic, labor, and businessleaders. Some CDAs included citizens from the neigh-borhood. Many mayors correctly interpreted the HUDprovision for “access to the decision-making process” asthe escape hatch they sought to relegate citizens to thetraditional advisory role.

Most CDAs created residents’ advisory committees.An alarmingly significant number created citizens’ policyboards and citizens’ policy committees which are totallymisnamed as they have either no policy-making func-tion or only a very limited authority. Almost every CDAcreated about a dozen planning committees or taskforces on functional lines: health, welfare, education,housing, and unemployment. In most cases, have-notcitizens were invited to serve on these committeesalong with technicians from relevant public agencies.Some CDAs, on the other hand, structured planningcommittees of technicians and parallel committeesof citizens.

In most Model Cities programs, endless time hasbeen spent fashioning complicated board, committee,and task force structures for the planning year. But therights and responsibilities of the various elements ofthose structures are not defined and are ambiguous.Such ambiguity is likely to cause considerable conflict atthe end of the one-year planning process. For at thispoint, citizens may realize that they have once againextensively “participated” but have not profited beyondthe extent the powerholders decide to placate them.

Results of a staff study (conducted in the summerof 1968 before the second round of seventy five plan-ning grants were awarded) were released in aDecember 1968 HUD bulletin.11 Though this publicdocument uses much more delicate and diplomatic lan-guage, it attests to the already cited criticisms of non-policy-making policy boards and ambiguous compli-cated structures, in addition to the following findings:

1. Most CDAs did not negotiate citizen participationrequirements with residents.

2. Citizens, drawing on past negative experiences withlocal powerholders, were extremely suspicious of

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this new panacea program. They were legitimatelydistrustful of city hall’s motives.

3. Most CDAs were not working with citizens’ groupsthat were genuinely representative of model neigh-borhoods and accountable to neighborhood con-stituencies. As in so many of the poverty programs,those who were involved were more representativeof the upwardly mobile working-class. Thus theiracquiescence to plans prepared by city agencieswas not likely to reflect the views of theunemployed, the young, the more militant resi-dents, and the hard-core poor.

4. Residents who were participating in as many asthree to five meetings per week were unaware oftheir minimum rights, responsibilities, and theoptions available to them under the program. Forexample, they did not realize that they were notrequired to accept technical help from city techni-cians they distrusted.

5. Most of the technical assistance provided by CDAsand city agencies was of third-rate quality, paternal-istic, and condescending. Agency technicians didnot suggest innovative options. They reacted bur-eaucratically when the residents pressed for innova-tive approaches. The vested interests of the old-linecity agencies were a major—albeit hidden—agenda.

6. Most CDAs were not engaged in planning that wascomprehensive enough to expose and deal withthe roots of urban decay. They engaged in “meet-ingitis” and were supporting strategies that resultedin “projectitis,” the outcome of which was a “laun-dry list” of traditional programs to be conducted bytraditional agencies in the traditional manner underwhich slums emerged in the first place.

7. Residents were not getting enough informationfrom CDAs to enable them to review CDA devel-oped plans or to initiate plans of their own asrequired by HUD. At best, they were getting super-ficial information. At worst, they were not even get-ting copies of official HUD materials.

8. Most residents were unaware of their rights to bereimbursed for expenses incurred because of par-ticipation—babysitting, transportation costs, andso on.

9. The training of residents, which would enable themto understand the labyrinth of the federal-state-citysystems and networks of subsystems, was an itemthat most CDAs did not even consider.

These findings led to a new public interpretation ofHUD’s approach to citizen participation. Though therequirements for the seventy-five “second-round” ModelCity grantees were not changed, HUD’s twenty-seven

page technical bulletin on citizen participation repeat-edly advocated that cities share power with residents. Italso urged CDAs to experiment with subcontracts underwhich the residents’ groups could hire their own trustedtechnicians.

A more recent evaluation was circulated in February1969 by OSTI, a private firm that entered into a contractwith OEO to provide technical assistance and training tocitizens involved in Model Cities programs in the north-east region of the country. OSTI’s report to OEO corrobo-rates the earlier study. In addition it states:12

In practically no Model Cities structure does citizenparticipation mean truly shared decision-making, suchthat citizens might view themselves as “the partners inthis program… .”

In general, citizens are finding it impossible to have asignificant impact on the comprehensive planningwhich is going on. In most cases the staff planners ofthe CDA and the planners of existing agencies arecarrying out the actual planning with citizens having aperipheral role of watchdog and, ultimately, the “rubberstamp” of the plan generated. In cases where citizenshave the direct responsibility for generating programplans, the time period allowed and the independenttechnical resources being made available to them arenot adequate to allow them to do anything more thangenerate very traditional approaches to the problemsthey are attempting to solve.

In general, little or no thought has been given to themeans of insuring continued citizen participation duringthe stage of implementation. In most cases, traditionalagencies are envisaged as the implementors of ModelCities programs and few mechanisms have beendeveloped for encouraging organizational change orchange in the method of program delivery within theseagencies or for insuring that citizens will have someinfluence over these agencies as they implement ModelCities programs… .

By and large, people are once again being planned for.In most situations the major planning decisions arebeing made by CDA staff and approved in a formalisticway by policy boards.

6. PartnershipAt this rung of the ladder, power is in fact redistributedthrough negotiation between citizens and powerhold-ers. They agree to share planning and decision-making

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responsibilities through such structures as joint policyboards, planning committees, and mechanisms for re-solving impasses. After the groundrules have beenestablished through some form of give-and-take, theyare not subject to unilateral change.

Partnership can work most effectively when there isan organized power-base in the community to whichthe citizen leaders are accountable; when the citizensgroup has the financial resources to pay its leaders rea-sonable honoraria for their time-consuming efforts; andwhen the group has the resources to hire (and fire) itsown technicians, lawyers, and community organizers.With these ingredients, citizens have some genuine bar-gaining influence over the outcome of the plan (as longas both parties find it useful to maintain the partner-ship). One community leader described it ’’like comingto city hall with hat on head instead of in hand.”

In the Model Cities program only about fifteen ofthe so-called first generation of seventy-five cities havereached some significant degree of power-sharing withresidents. In all but one of those cities, it was angry citi-zen demands, rather than city initiative, that led to thenegotiated sharing of power.13 The negotiations weretriggered by citizens who had been enraged by previ-ous forms of alleged participation. They were bothangry and sophisticated enough to refuse to be “con-ned” again. They threatened to oppose the awarding ofa planning grant to the city. They sent delegations toHUD in Washington. They used abrasive language.Negotiation took place under a cloud of suspicionand rancor.

In most cases where power has come to be sharedit was taken by the citizens, not given by the city. Thereis nothing new about that process. Since those whohave power normally want to hang onto it, historically ithas had to be wrested by the powerless rather thanproffered by the powerful.

Such a working partnership was negotiated by theresidents in the Philadelphia model neighborhood. Likemost applicants for a Model Cities grant, Philadelphiawrote its more than 400 page application and waved itat a hastily called meeting of community leaders. Whenthose present were asked for an endorsement, theyangrily protested the city’s failure to consult them onpreparation of the extensive application. A communityspokesman threatened to mobilize a neighborhood pro-test against the application unless the city agreed togive the citizens a couple of weeks to review the appli-cation and recommend changes. The officials agreed.

At their next meeting, citizens handed the city offi-cials a substitute citizen participation section thatchanged the groundrules from a weak citizens’ advisoryrole to a strong shared power agreement. Philadelphia’s

application to HUD included the citizens’ substitutionword for word. (It also included a new citizen preparedintroductory chapter that changed the city’s descriptionof the model neighborhood from a paternalisticdescription of problems to a realistic analysis of itsstrengths, weaknesses, and potentials.)

Consequently, the proposed policy-making com-mittee of the Philadelphia CDA was revamped to givefive out of eleven seats to the residents’ organization,which is called the Area Wide Council (AWC). The AWCobtained a subcontract from the CDA for more than$20,000 per month, which it used to maintain theneighborhood organization, to pay citizen leaders $7per meeting for their planning services, and to pay thesalaries of a staff of community organizers, planners,and other technicians. AWC has the power to initiateplans of its own, to engage in joint planning with CDAcommittees, and to review plans initiated by city agen-cies. It has a veto power in that no plans may be sub-mitted by the CDA to the city council until they havebeen reviewed, and any differences of opinion havebeen successfully negotiated with the AWC.Representatives of the AWC (which is a federation ofneighborhood organizations grouped into sixteenneighborhood “hubs") may attend all meetings of CDAtask forces, planning committees, or subcommittees.

Though the city council has final veto power overthe plan (by federal law), the AWC believes it has aneighborhood constituency that is strong enough tonegotiate any eleventh-hour objections the city councilmight raise when it considers such AWC proposed inno-vations as an AWC Land Bank, an AWC EconomicDevelopment Corporation, and an experimental incomemaintenance program for 900 poor families.

7. Delegated PowerNegotiations between citizens and public officials canalso result in citizens achieving dominant decision-making authority over a particular plan or program.Model City policy boards or CAA delegate agencies onwhich citizens have a clear majority of seats and genu-ine specified powers are typical examples. At this level,the ladder has been scaled to the point where citizenshold the significant cards to assure accountability of theprogram to them. To resolve differences, powerholdersneed to start the bargaining process rather thanrespond to pressure from the other end.

Such a dominant decision-making role has beenattained by residents in a handful of Model Citiesincluding Cambridge, Massachusetts; Dayton andColumbus, Ohio; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Louis,

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Missouri; Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut; andOakland, California.

In New Haven, residents of the Hill neighborhoodhave created a corporation that has been delegated thepower to prepare the entire Model Cities plan. The city,which received a $117,000 planning grant from HUD,has subcontracted $110,000 of it to the neighborhoodcorporation to hire its own planning staff and consul-tants. The Hill Neighborhood Corporation has elevenrepresentatives on the twenty-one-member CDA boardwhich assures it a majority voice when its proposedplan is reviewed by the CDA.

Another model of delegated power is separate andparallel groups of citizens and powerholders, withprovision for citizen veto if differences of opinion can-not be resolved through negotiation. This is a particu-larly interesting coexistence model for hostile citizengroups too embittered toward city hall—as a resultof past “collaborative efforts”—to engage injoint planning.

Since all Model Cities programs require approval bythe city council before HUD will fund them, city councilshave final veto powers even when citizens have themajority of seats on the CDA Board. In Richmond,California, the city council agreed to a citizens’ counter-veto, but the details of that agreement are ambiguousand have not been tested.

Various delegated power arrangements are alsoemerging in the Community Action Program as a resultof demands from the neighborhoods and OEO’s mostrecent instruction guidelines which urged CAAs “toexceed (the) basic requirements” for resident participa-tion.14 In some cities, CAAs have issued subcontracts toresident dominated groups to plan and/or operate oneor more decentralized neighborhood program compo-nents like a multipurpose service center or a Headstartprogram. These contracts usually include an agreedupon line-by-line budget and program specifications.They also usually include a specific statement of the sig-nificant powers that have been delegated, for example:policy-making; hiring and firing; issuing subcontracts forbuilding, buying, or leasing. (Some of the subcontractsare so broad that they verge on models for citi-zen control.)

8. Citizen ControlDemands for community controlled schools, black con-trol, and neighborhood control are on the increase.Though no one in the nation has absolute control, it isvery important that the rhetoric not be confused withintent. People are simply demanding that degree ofpower (or control) which guarantees that participants or

residents can govern a program or an institution, be infull charge of policy and managerial aspects, and beable to negotiate the conditions under which “out-siders” may change them.

A neighborhood corporation with no intermediariesbetween it and the source of funds is the model mostfrequently advocated. A small number of such experi-mental corporations are already producing goods and/or social services. Several others are reportedly in thedevelopment stage, and new models for control willundoubtedly emerge as the have-nots continue topress for greater degrees of power over their lives.

Though the bitter struggle for community controlof the Ocean Hill-Brownsville schools in New York Cityhas aroused great fears in the headline reading public,less publicized experiments are demonstrating that thehave-nots can indeed improve their lot by handling theentire job of planning, policy-making, and managing aprogram. Some are even demonstrating that they cando all this with just one arm because they are forced touse their other one to deal with a continuing barrage oflocal opposition triggered by the announcement that afederal grant has been given to a community group oran all black group.

Most of these experimental programs have beencapitalized with research and demonstration funds fromthe Office of Economic Opportunity in cooperation withother federal agencies. Examples include:

1. A $1.8 million grant was awarded to the HoughArea Development Corporation in Cleveland to planeconomic development programs in the ghettoand to develop a series of economic enterprisesranging from a novel combination shopping-center-public-housing project to a loan guarantee programfor local building contractors. The membership andboard of the non-profit corporation is composed ofleaders of major community organizations in theblack neighborhood.

2. Approximately $1 million ($595,751 for the secondyear) was awarded to the Southwest AlabamaFarmers Cooperative Association (SWAFCA) inSelma, Alabama, for a ten-county marketingcooperative for food and livestock. Despite localattempts to intimidate the coop (which includedthe use of force to stop trucks on the way to mar-ket), first year membership grew to 1,150 farmerswho earned $52,000 on the sale of their new crops.The elected coop board is composed of two poorblack farmers from each of the ten economicallydepressed counties.

3. Approximately $600,000 ($300,000 in a supplemen-tal grant) was granted to the Albina Corporation

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and the Albina Investment Trust to create a black-operated, black-owned manufacturing concernusing inexperienced management and unskilledminority group personnel from the Albina district.The profit-making wool and metal fabrication plantwill be owned by its employees through a deferredcompensation trust plan.

4. Approximately $800,000 ($400,000 for the secondyear) was awarded to the Harlem CommonwealthCouncil to demonstrate that a community-baseddevelopment corporation can catalyze and imple-ment an economic development program withbroad community support and participation. Afteronly eighteen months of program developmentand negotiation, the council will soon launch sev-eral large-scale ventures including operation of twosupermarkets, an auto service and repair center(with built-in manpower training program), afinance company for families earning less than$4,000 per year, and a data processing company.The all black Harlem-based board is already manag-ing a metal castings foundry.

Though several citizen groups (and their mayors)use the rhetoric of citizen control, no Model City canmeet the criteria of citizen control since final approvalpower and accountability rest with the city council.

Daniel P. Moynihan argues that city councils arerepresentative of the community, but Adam Walinskyillustrates the nonrepresentativeness of this kind ofrepresentation:15

Who… exercises “control” through the representativeprocess? In the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto of New Yorkthere are 450,000 people—as many as in the entire cityof Cincinnati, more than in the entire state of Vermont.Yet the area has only one high school, and 80 per centof its teen-agers are dropouts; the infant mortality rate istwice the national average; there are over 8000 buildingsabandoned by everyone but the rats, yet the areareceived not one dollar of urban renewal funds duringthe entire first 15 years of that program’s operation; theunemployment rate is known only to God.

Clearly, Bedford-Stuyvesant has some special needs; yetit has always been lost in the midst of the city’s eightmillion. In fact, it took a lawsuit to win for this vast area,in the year 1968, its first Congressman. In what sensecan the representative system be said to have “spokenfor” this community, during the long years of neglectand decay?

Walinsky’s point on Bedford-Stuyvesant has generalapplicability to the ghettos from coast to coast. It istherefore likely that in those ghettos where residentshave achieved a significant degree of power in theModel Cities planning process, the first-year actionplans will call for the creation of some new communityinstitutions entirely governed by residents with a speci-fied sum of money contracted to them. If the groun-drules for these programs are clear and if citizensunderstand that achieving a genuine place in the plural-istic scene subjects them to its legitimate forms of give-and-take, then these kinds of programs might begin todemonstrate how to counteract the various corrosivepolitical and socioeconomic forces that plaguethe poor.

In cities likely to become predominantly blackthrough population growth, it is unlikely that stridentcitizens’ groups like AWC of Philadelphia will eventuallydemand legal power for neighborhood self-govern-ment. Their grand design is more likely to call for a blackcity hall, achieved by the elective process. In cities des-tined to remain predominantly white for the foreseeablefuture, it is quite likely that counterpart groups to AWCwill press for separatist forms of neighborhood govern-ment that can create and control decentralized publicservices such as police protection, education systems,and health facilities. Much may depend on the willing-ness of city governments to entertain demands forresource allocation weighted in favor of the poor,reversing gross imbalances of the past.

Among the arguments against community controlare: it supports separatism; it creates balkanization ofpublic services; it is more costly and less efficient; it ena-bles minority group “hustlers” to be just as opportunisticand disdainful of the have-nots as their white predeces-sors; it is incompatible with merit systems and profes-sionalism; and ironically enough, it can turn out to be anew Mickey Mouse game for the have-nots by allowingthem to gain control but not allowing them sufficientdollar resources to succeed.16 These arguments are notto be taken lightly. But neither can we take lightly thearguments of embittered advocates of community con-trol—that every other means of trying to end their vic-timization has failed!

ABOUT THE AUTHORSHERRY R. ARNSTEIN is Director of Community DevelopmentStudies for The Commons, a non-profit research institute inWashington, D.C., and Chicago. She is a former Chief Advisor onCitizen Participation in HUD’s Model Cities Administration and hasserved as Staff Consultant to the President’s Comittee on JuvenileDelinquency, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of HEW,and Washington Editor of Current Magazine.

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NOTES1. The literature on poverty and discrimination and their effects on

people is extensive. As an introduction, the following will be

helpful: B. H. Bagdikian, In the Midst of Plenty: The Poor in

America (New York: Beacon, 1964); Paul Jacobs, “The Brutalizing

of America,” Dissent, XI (Autumn 1964), p. 423–8; Stokely

Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of

Liberation in America (New York: Random House, 1967); Eldridge

Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968); L. J. Duhl,

The Urban Condition; People and Policy in the Metropolis (New

York: Basic Books, 1963); William H. Grier and P. M. Cobbs, Black

Rage (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Michael Harrington, The

Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York:

Macmillan, 1962); Peter Marris and Martin Rein, Dilemmas of

Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United

States (New York: Atherton Press, 1967); Mollie Orshansky,

"Who’s Who Among the Poor: A Demographic View of Poverty,”

Social Security Bulletin, XXVII (July 1965), 3–32; and Richard T.

Titmuss, Essays on the Welfare State (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1968).

2. The poster is one of about 350 produced in May or June

1968 at At�elier Populaire, a graphics center launched by

students from the Sorbonne’s �Ecole des Beaux Art and �Ecole

des Arts Decoratifs.

3. This typology is an outgrowth of a more crude typology I

circulated in March 1967 in a HUD staff discussion paper titled

“Rhetoric and Reality.” The earlier typology consisted of eight

levels that were less discrete types and did not necessarily

suggest a chronological progression: Inform, Consult, Joint

Planning, Negotiate, Decide, Delegate, Advocate Planning,

and Neighborhood Control.

4. For an article of some possible employment strategies, see

Edmund M. Burke, “Citizen Participation Strategies,” Journal

of the American Institute of Planners, XXXIV, No. 5 (September

1968), 290–1.

5. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,

Workable Program for Community Improvement, Answers on

Citizen Participation, Program Guide 7, February, 1966, pp. 1

and 6.6. David Austin, “Study of Resident Participants in Twenty

Community Action Agencies,” CAP Grant 9499.

7. Robert Coles, “Social Struggle and Weariness,” Psychiatry,

XXVII (November 1964), 305–15. I am also indebted to Daniel

M. Fox of Harvard University for some of his general insights

into therapy being used as a diversion from genuine citizen

participation.

8. See, Gordon Fellman, “Neighborhood Protest of an UrbanHighway,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, XXXV,No. 2 (March 1969), ll8–22.

9. James V. Cunningham, “Resident Participation, UnpublishedReport prepared for the Ford Foundation, August 1967, p. 54.10. Interview with Maxine Kurtz, Technical Director,Denver CDA.

11. U.S., Department of Housing and Urban Development,“Citizen Participation in Model Cities,” Technical AssistanceBulletin, No. 3 (December 1968).

12. Organization for Social and Technical Innovation, Six-MonthProgress Report to Office of Economic Opportunity, Region 1,February 1, 1969, pp. 27, 28, and 35.

13. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, city hall offered to sharepower with residents and anticipated the need for a period inwhich a representative citizens group could be engaged, andthe ambiguities of authority, structure, and process would beresolved. At the request of the mayor, HUD allowed the city tospend several months of Model Cities planning funds forcommunity organization activities. During these months, stafffrom the city manager’s office also helped the residents draft acity ordinance that created a CDA composed of sixteenelected residents and eight appointed public and privateagency representatives. This resident-dominated body has thepower to hire and fire CDA staff, approve all plans, review allmodel city budgets and contracts, set policy, and so forth. Theordinance, which was unanimously passed by the city councilalso includes a requirement that all Model City plans must beapproved by a majority of residents in the neighborhoodthrough a referendum. Final approval power rests with the citycouncil by federal statute.

14. U.S., Office of Economic Opportunity, OEO Instruction,Participation of the Poor in the Planning, Conduct andEvaluation of Community Action Programs (Washington, D.C.:December 1, 1968), pp. 1–2.

15. Adam Walinsky, “Review of Maximum FeasibleMisunderstanding" by Daniel P. Moynihan, New York TimesBook Review, February 2, 1969.

16. For thoughtful academic analyses of some of the potentialsand pitfalls of emerging neighborhood control models, see,Alan Altshuler, “The Demand For Participation in largeAmerican Cities,” An Unpublished Paper prepared for theUrban Institute, December 1968; and Hans B. C. Spiegel andStephen D. Mittenthal, “Neighborhood Power and Control,Implications for Urban Planning,” A Report prepared for theDepartment of Housing and Urban Development,November 1968.

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