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Journal of the American Institute of Planners
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A Ladder Of Citizen Participation
Sherry R. Arnstein
To cite this article: Sherry R. Arnstein (1969) A Ladder Of Citizen Participation, Journal of the
American Institute of Planners, 35:4, 216-224, DOI: 10.1080/01944366908977225
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225
Published online: 26 Nov 2007.
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Sherry R. Arnstein
The heated controversy over “citizen participation,”
“citizen control,” and “maximum feasible involvement
of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated
rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To
encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of
citizen participation is offered using examples from
three federal social programs: urban renewal, antipoverty,
and Model Cities. The typology, which is
designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder
pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of
citizens’power in determiningthe plan and/or program.
The idea of citizen participation is a little
like eating spinach: no one is against it in principle
because it is good for you. Participation of the governed
in their government is, in theory, the cornerstone
of democracy-a revered idea that is vigorously
applauded by virtually everyone. The applause is reduced
to polite handclaps, however, when this principle
is advocated by the have-not blacks, MexicanAmericans,
Puerto Ricans, Indians, Eskimos,and whites.
And when the have-nots define participation as redistribution
of power, the American consensus on the
fundamental principle explodes into many shades of
outright racial, ethnic, ideological, and political
opposition.
There have been many recent speeches, articles, and
books which explore in detail who are the have-nots
of our time. There has been much recent documentation
of why the have-nots have become so offended and
embittered by their powerlessness to deal with the profound
inequities and injustices pervading their daily
lives. But there has been very little analysis of the
content of the current controversial slogan: “citizen
participation” or “maximum feasible participation.” In
short: What is citizen participation and what is its
relationship to the social imperatives of our time?
Citizen Participation is Citizen Power
Because the question has been a bone of political contention,
most of the answers have been purposely buried
in innocuous euphemisms like “self-help” or “citizen
involvement.” Still others have been embellished with
misleading rhetoric like “absolute control” which is
something no one-including the President of the
Sherry R. Arnstein is Director of Communi’tyDevelopment
Studies for The Commons, a non-profit research‘institute in
Washington,D.C. and Chicago. She is a former Chief Advisor
on Citizen Participationin HUD’s Model Cities Administration
and has served as Staff Consultant to the President’s
Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, Special Assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of HEW, and WashingtonEditor of
Current Magazine.
216
United States-has or can have. Between understated
euphemisms and exacerbated rhetoric, even scholars
have found it difficult to follow the controversy. To
the headline reading public, it is simply bewildering.
My answer to the critical what question is simply that
citizen participation is a categorical term for citizen
power. It is the redistribution of power that enablesthe
have-not citizens, presently excluded from the political
and economic processes, to be deliberately included in
the future. It is the strategy by which the have-notsjoin
in determining how information is shared, goals and
policies are set, tax resourcesare allocated, programs are
operated, and benefits like contracts and patronage are
parceled out. In short, it is the means by which they can
induce significant social reform which enables them to
share in the benefits of the affluent society.
EMPTY RITUAL VERSUS BENEFIT
There is a critical difference between going through the
empty ritual of participation and having the real power
needed to affect the outcome of the process. This
difference is brilliantly capsulized in a poster painted
last spring by the French students to explain the
student-worker rebellion.* (See Figure 1.) The poster
highlights the fundamental point that participation
without redistribution of power is an empty and frustrating
process for the powerless. It allows the powerholders
to claim that all sides were considered, but
makes it possible for only some of those sides to benefit.
It maintains the status quo. Essentially, it is what has
FIGURE 1 French Student Poster. In English, I participate;
you participate; he participates; we participate;
you participate . . . They profit.
AIP JOURNAL JULY 1969
8
Delegated power
7 .
Partnership
6 A
Informing
3
I ITherapy
Manipulation
Degrees
of
citizen Dower
Degrees
Of
tokenism
Nonparticipation
F ~ U R E2 Eight Rungs on a Ladder of Citizen Pdrtici-
pation
been happening in most of the 1,000 Community Action
Programs, and what promises to be repeated in the vast
majority of the 150Model Citiesprograms.
Types of Participation and “NonParticipation”
A typology of eight levels of participation may help in
analysis of this confused issue. For illustrative purposes
the eight types are arranged in a ladder pattern
with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens’
power in determining the end pr~duct.~(See Figure 2.)
The bottom rungs of the ladder are (1) Manipulation
and (2) Therapy. These two rungs describe levels
of “non-participation” that have been contrived by some
to substitute for genuine participation. Their real objective
is not to enable people to participate in planning
or conducting programs, but to enable powerholders to
“educate” or “cure” the participants. Rungs 3 and 4
progress to levels of “tokenism” that allow the havenots
to hear and to have a voice: ( 3 ) Znforming and
(4) Considtation. When they are proffered by powerholders
as the total extent of participation, citizens may
indeed hear and be heard. But under these conditions
they lack the power to insure that their views will be
heeded by the powerful, When participation is restricted
to 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 because the groundrules allow have-nots to
advise, but retain for the powerholders the continued
right to decide.
Further up the ladder are levels of citizen power with
increasing degrees of decision-making clout. Citizens
ARNSTEIN
can enter into a (6) Partnership that enables them to
negotiate and engage in trade-offs with traditional
powerholders. At the topmost rungs, (7) Delegated
Power and ( 8 ) Citizen Control, have-notcitizens obtain
the majority of decision-makingseats,or full managerial
power.
Obviously, the eight-rung ladder is a simplification,
but it helps to illustrate the point that so many have
missed-that there are significant gradations of citizen
participation. Knowing these gradations makes it possible
to cut through the hyperbole to understand the
increasingly strident demands for participation from the
have-nots as well as the gamut of confusing responses
from the powerholders.
Though the typology uses examples from federal
programs such as urban renewal, anti-poverty, and
Model Cities; it could just as easily be illustrated in the
church, currentlyfacing demands for power from priests
and laymen who seek to change its mission;collegesand
universities which in some cases have become literal
battlegrounds over the issue of student power; or public
schools, city halls, and police departments (or big business
which is likely to be next on the expanding list of
targets). The underlying issues are essentiallythe same
-“nobodies” in several arenas are trying to become
“somebodies” with enough power to make the target
institutions responsive to their views, aspirations, and
needs.
LIMITATIONS OF THE TYPOLOGY
The ladder juxtaposes powerless citizens with the
powerful in order to highlight the fundamental divisions
between them. In actuality,meitherthe have-nots
nor the powerholders are homogeneous blocs. Each
group encompasses a host of divergent points of view,
significant cleavages, competing vested interests, and
splintered subgroups. The justification for using such
simplisticabstractionsis 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 comprehensionof
the dass and caste differencesamongthem.
It should be noted that the typology does not include
an analysis of the most significant roadblocks to achieving
genuine levels of participation. These roadblocks
lie on both sides of the simplisticfence. On the powerholders’
side, they include racism, paternalism, and
resistance to power redistribution. On the have-nots’
side, they include inadequacies of the poor community’s
political socioeconomic infrastrudure and knowledgebase,
plus difficulties of organizing a representative and
accountable citizens’ group in the face of futility,
alienation, and distrust.
Another caution about the eight separate rungs on the
ladder: In the real world of people and programs, there
might be 150 rungs with less sharp and “pure” distinctions
among them. Furthermore, some of the characteristics
used to illustrate each of the eight types might be
217
applicable to other rungs. For example, employment of
the have-nots in a program or on a planning staff could
occur at any of the eight rungs and could represent
either a legitimate or illegitimate characteristic of citizen
participation. Depending on their motives, powerholders
can hire poor people to coopt them, to placate
them, or to utilize the have-nots’ special skills and
insights.4 Some mayors, in private, actually boast of
their strategy in hiring militant black leaders to muzzle
them while destroying their credibility in the black
community.
Characteristics and Illustrations
It is in this context of power and powerlessness that the
characteristics of the eight rungs are illustrated by
examples from current federal social programs.
1. MANIPULATION
In the name of citizen participation, people are placed
on rubberstamp advisory committees or advisory boards
for the express purpose of “educating” them or engineering
their support. Instead of genuine citizen participation,
the bottom rung of the ladder signifies the
distortion of participation into a public relations vehicle
by powerholders.
This illusory form of “participation” initially came
into vogue with urban renewal when the socially elite
were invited by city housing officials to serve on Citizen
Advisory Committees (CACs) . Another target of manipulation
were the CAC subcommittees on minority
groups, which in theory were to protect the rights of
Negroes in the renewal program. In practice, these
subcommittees, like their parent CACs, functioned
mostly as letterheads, trotted forward at appropriate
times to promote urban renewal plans (in recent years
known as Negro removal plans).
At meetings of the Citizen Advisory Committees, it
was the officials who educated, persuaded, and advised
the citizens, not the reverse. Federal guidelines for the
renewal programs legitimized the manipulative agenda
by emphasizing the terms “information-gathering,”
“public relations,” and “support” as the explicit functions
of the committee^.^
This style of nonparticipation has since been applied
to other programs encompassingthe poor. Examples of
this are seen in Community Action Agencies (CAAs)
which have created structures called “neighborhood
councils” or “neighborhood advisory groups.” These
bodies frequently have no legitimate function or power.g
The CAAs use them to “prove” that “grassroots
people” are involved in the program. But the program
may not have been discussed with “the people.” Or it
may have been described at a meeting in the most
general terms; “We need your signatures on this proposal
for a multiservice center which will house, under
one roof, doctors from the health department, workers
from the welfare department, and specialists from the
employment service.”
218
The signators are not informed that the $2 millionper-year
center will only refer residents to the same old
waiting lines at the same old agencies across town. No
one is asked if such a referral center is really needed in
his neighborhood. No one realizes that the contractor
for the building is the mayor’s brother-in-law, or that
the new director of the center will be the same old community
organization specialist from the urban renewal
agency.
After signing their names, the proud grassrooters
dutifully spread the word that they have “participated”
in bringing a new and wonderful center to the neighborhood
to provide people with drastically needed jobs and
health and welfare services. Only after the ribboncutting
ceremony do the members of the neighborhood
council realize that they didn’t ask the important questions,
and that they had no technical advisors of their
own to help them grasp the fine legal print. The new
center, which is open 9 to 5 on weekdays only, actually
adds to their problems. Now the old agencies across
town won’t talk with them unless they have a pink paper
slip to prove that they have been referred by “their”
shiny new neighborhood center.
Unfortunately, this chicanery is not a unique example.
Instead it is almost typical of what has been perpetrated
in the name of high-sounding rhetoric like “grassroots
participation.” This sham lies at the heart of the deepseated
exasperation and hostility of the have-nots
toward the powerholders.
One hopeful note is that, having been so grossly
affronted, some citizens have learned the Mickey Mouse
game, and now they too know how to play. As a result
of this knowledge, they are demanding genuine levels
of participation to assure them that public programs are
relevant to their needs and responsive to their priorities.
2. THERAPY
In some respects group therapy, masked as citizen participation,
should be on the lowest rung of the ladder
because it is both dishonest and arrogant. Its administrators-mental
health experts from social workers to
psychiatrists-assume that powerlessness is synonymous
with mental illness. On this assumption, under a masquerade
of involving citizens in planning, the experts
subject the citizens to clinical group therapy. What
makes this form of “participation” so invidious is that
citizens are engaged in extensive activity, but the focus
of it is on curing them of their “pathology” rather than
changing the racism and victimization that create their
“pathologies.”
Consider an incident that occurred in Pennsylvania
less than one year ago. When a father took his seriously
ill baby to the emergency clinic of a local hospital, a
young resident physician on duty instructed him to take
the baby home and feed it sugar water. The baby died
that afternoon of pneumonia and dehydration. The
overwrought father complained to the board of the local
AIP JOURNAL JULY 1969
Community Action Agency. Instead of launching an
investigation of the hospital to determine what changes
would prevent similar deaths or other forms of malpractice,
the board invited the father to attend the
CAA’s (therapy) child-care sessions for parents, and
promised him that someone would “telephone the hospital
director to see that it never happens again.”
Less dramatic, but more common examples of
therapy, masquerading as citizen participation, may be
seen in public housing programs where tenant groups
are used as vehicles for promoting control-your-childor
deanup campaigns. The tenants are brought together
to help them “adjust their values and attitudes to those
of the larger society.” Under these groundrules, they
are diverted from dealing with such important matters
as: arbitrary evictions; segregationof the housing project;
or why is there a three-month time lapse to get a
broken window replaced in winter.
The complexity of the concept of mental illness in
our time can be seen in the experiences of student/civil
rights workers facing guns, whips, and other forms of
terror in the South. They needed the help of socially
attuned psychiatriststo deal with their fears and to avoid
~aranoia.~
3. INFORMING
Informing citizens of their rights, responsibilities, and
options can be the most important first step toward
legitimate citizen participation. However, too frequently
the emphasis is placed on a one-wayflow of information
-from officials to citizens-with no channel provided
for feedback and no power for negotiation. Under these
conditions,particularly when information is provided at
a late stage in planning, people have little opportunity
to influence the program designed “for their benefit.”
The most frequent tools used for such one-way communication
are the news media, pamphlets, posters, and
responsesto inquiries.
Meetings can also be turned into vehicles for one-way
communicationby the simple device of providing superficial
information, discouraging questions, or giving
irrelevant answers. At a recent Model Cities citizen
planning meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, the topic
was “tot-lots.” A group of elected citizen representatives,
almost all of whom were attending three to five
meetings a week, devoted an hour to a discussion of the
placement of six tot-lots. The neighborhood is half
black, half white. Several of the black representatives
noted that four tot-lots were proposed for the white
district and only two for the black. The city official
responded with a lengthy, highly technical explanation
about costs per square foot and available property. It
was clear that most of the residents did not understand
his explanation. And it was clear to observersfrom the
Office of Economic Opportunity that other options did
exist which, considering available funds, would have
brought about a more equitable distribution of facilities.
Intimidated by futility, legalisticjargon, and prestige of
ARNSTBIN
the official, the citizens accepted the “information” and
endorsed the agency’sproposal to place four lots in the
white neighborhood.s
4. CONSULTATION
Inviting citizens’ opinions, like informing them, can be
a legitimate step toward their full participation. But if
consulting them is not combined with other modes of
participation, this rung of the ladder is still a sham since
it offers no assurancethat citizen concernsand ideas will
be taken into account. The most frequent methods used
for consultingpeople are attitude surveys, neighborhood
meetings, and public hearings.
When powerholders restrict the input of citizens’
ideas solely to this level, participation remains just a
window-dressing ritual. People are primarily perceived
as statistical abstractions, and participation is measured
by how many come to meetings, take brochures home,
or answer a questionnaire. What citizens achieve in all
this activity is that they have “participated in participation.”
And what powerholders achieve is the evidence
that they have gone through the required motions of
involving “thosepeople.”
Attitude surveys have become a particular bone of
contention in ghetto neighborhoods. Residents are increasinglyunhappy
about the number of times per week
they are surveyed about their problems and hopes. 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 that day.” In some
communities, residents are so annoyed that they are
demanding a fee for research interviews.
Attitude surveys are not very valid indicators of community
opinion when used without other input from
citizens. Survey after survey (paid for out of antipoverty
funds) has “documented” that poor housewives
most want tot-lots in their neighborhood where young
children can play safely. But most of the women answered
these questionnaireswithout knowing what their
options were. They assumed that if they asked for
something small, they might just get something useful
in the neighborhood. Had the mothers known that a
free prepaid health insuranceplan was a possible option,
they might not have put tot-lots so high on their wish
lists.
A classic misuse of the consultation rung occurred at
a New Haven, Connecticut, community meeting held to
consult citizens on a proposed Model Cities grant.
James V. Cunningham, in an unpublished report to
the Ford Foundation, described the crowd as large and
“mostlyhostile:”
Members of The Hill Parents Association demanded
to know why residents had not participated
in drawing up the proposal. CAA director
Spitz explained that it was merely a proposal for
seeking Federal planning funds-that once funds
were obtained, residents would be deeply involved
in the planning. An outside observer who sat in
219
the audience described the meeting this way:
“Spitz and Me1 Adams ran the meeting on their
own. No representatives of a Hill group moderated
or even sat on the stage. Spitz told the
300 residents that this huge meeting was an
example of ‘participation in planning.’ To prove
this, since there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the
audience, he called for a ‘vote’on each component
of the proposal. The vote took this form: ‘Can I
see the hands of all those in favor of a health
clinic? All those opposed?’ It was a little like
asking who favors motherhood.”
It was a combination of the deep suspicion aroused at
this meeting and a long history of similar forms of
“window-dressing participation” that led New Haven
residents to demand control of the program.
By way of contrast, it is useful to look at Denver
where technicianslearned that even the best intentioned
among them are often unfamiliar with, and even insensitive
to, the problems and aspirations of the poor.
The technical director of the Model Cities program has
described the way professional planners assumed that
the residents, victimized by high-price.dlocal storekeepers,
“badly needed consumer education.” lo The residents,
on the other hand, pointed out that the local
storekeepers performed a valuable function. Although
they overcharged, they also gave credit, offered advice,
and frequently were the only neighborhood place to
cash welfare or salary checks. As a result of this consultation,
technicians and residents agreed to substitute
the creation of needed credit institutions in the
neighborhood for a consumer education program.
5. PLACATION
It is at this level that citizens begin to have some degree
of influence though tokenism is still apparent. An
example of placation strategy is to place a few handpicked
“worthy” poor on boards of Community Action
Agencies or on public bodies like the board of education,
police commission, or housing authority. If they
are not accountable to a constituency in the community
and if the traditional power elite hold the majority of
seats, the have-notscan be easily outvoted and outfoxed.
Another example is the Model Cities advisory and
planning committees. They allow citizens to advise or
plan ad infinitum but retain for powerholders the right
to judge the legitimacy or feasibility of the advice. The
degree to which citizens are actually placated, of course,
depends largelj. on two factors: the quality of technical
assistance they have in articulating their priorities; and
the extent to which the community has been organized
to press for those priorities.
It is not surprising that the level of citizen participation
in the vast majority of Model Cities programs is at
the placation rung of the ladder or below. Policymakers
at the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) were determined to return the genie
of citizen power to the bottle from which it had escaped
220
(in a few cities) as a result of the provision stipulating
“maximum feasible participation” in poverty programs.
Therefore, HUD channeled its physical-social-economic
rejuvenation approach for blighted neighborhoods
through city hall. It drafted legislation requiring that
all Model Cities’money flow to a local City Demonstration
Agency (CDA) through the elected city council.
As enacted by Congress, this gave local city councils final
veto power over planning and programming and ruled
out any direct funding relationship between community
groups and HUD.
HUD required the CDAs to create coalition, policymaking
boards that would include necessary local powerholders
to create a comprehensive physical-social plan
during the first year. The plan was to be carried out in
a subsequent five-yearaction phase. HUD, unlike OEO,
did not require that have-not citizens be included on the
CDA decision-making boards. HUD’s Performance
Standards for Citizen Participation only demanded that
“citizens have clear and direct access to the decisionmaking
process.”
Accordingly, the CDAs structured their policymaking
boards to include some combination of elected
officials; school representatives; housing, health, and
welfare officials; employment and police department
representatives; and various civic, labor, and business
leaders. Some CDAs included citizens from the neighborhood.
Many mayors correctly interpreted the HUD
provision for “access to the decision-makingprocess” as
the escape hatch they sought to relegate citizens to the
traditional advisory role.
Most CDAs created residents’ advisory committees.
An alarmingly significantnumber created citizens’policy
boards and citizens’ policy committees which are totally
misnamed as they have either no policy-makingfunction
or only a very limited authority. Almost every CDA
created about a dozen planning committees or task forces
on functional lines: health, welfare, education, housing,
and unemployment. In most cases, have-not citizens
were invited to serve on these committees along with
technicians from relevant public agencies. Some CDAs,
on the other hand, structured planning committees of
technicians and parallel committees of citizens.
In most Model Citiesprograms, endless time has been
spent fashioning complicatedboard, committee, and task
force structures for the planning year. But the rights
and responsibilities of the various elements of those
structures are not defined and are ambiguous. Such
ambiguity is likely to cause considerable conflict at the
end of the one-year planning process. For at this point,
citizens may realize that they have once again extensively
“participated” but have not profited beyond the
extent the powerholders decide to placate them.
Results of a staff study (conducted in the summer of
1968 before the second round of seventy-five planning
grants were awarded) were released in a December
1968 HUD bulletin.*’ Though this public document
uses much more delicate and diplomatic language, it
AIP JOURNAL JULY 1969
attests to the already cited criticisms of non-policymaking
policy boards and ambiguous complicated structures,
in addition to the following findings:
1. Most CDAs did not negotiate citizen participation
requirements with residents.
2. Citizens, drawing on past negative experiences
with local powerholders, were extremely suspicious
of this new panacea program. They were legitimately
distrustful of city hall’s motives.
3. Most CDAs were not working with citizens’
groups that were genuinely representative of model
neighborhoods and accountable to neighborhood constituencies.
As in so many of the poverty programs,
those who were involved were more representative of
the upwardly mobile working-class. Thus their acquiescence
to plans prepared by city agencies was not
likely to reflect the views of the unemployed, the young,
the more militant residents, and the hard-core poor.
4. Residents who were participating in as many
as three to five meetings per week were unaware of their
minimum rights, responsibilities, and the options available
to them under the program. For example, they did
not realize that they were not required to accept technical
help from city techniciansthey distrusted.
5. Most of the technical assistance provided by
CDAs and city agencies was of third-rate quality,
paternalistic, and condescending. Agency technicians
did not suggest innovative options. They reacted bureaucratically
when the residents pressed for innovative
approaches. The vested interests of the old-line city
agencieswere a major-albeit hidden-agenda.
6. Most CDAs were not engaged in planning
that was comprehensiveenough to expose and deal with
the roots of urban decay. They engaged in “meetingitis”
and were supporting strategies that resulted in “projectitis,”
the outcome of which was a “laundry list” of
traditional programs to be conducted by traditional
agencies in the traditional manner under which slums
emerged in the firstplace.
7. Residents were not getting enough information
from CDAs to enable them to review CDA developed
plans or to initiate plans of their own as required
by HUD. At best, they were getting superficial
information. At worst, they were not even getting
copies of official HUD materials.
8. Most residents were unaware of their rights
to be reimbursed for expenses incurred because of participation-babysitting,
transportation costs, and so on.
9. The training of residents, which would enable
them to understand the labyrinth of the federalstate-city
systems and networks of subsystems, was an
item that most CDAs did not even consider.
These findings led to a new public interpretation of
HUD’s approach to citizen participation. Though the
requirementsfor the seventy-five“second-round”Model
City grantees were not changed, HUD’s twenty-seven
page technical bulletin on citizen participation repeatedly
advocated that cities share power with residents.
ARNSTEIN
It also urged CDAs to experiment with subcontracts
under which the residents’ groups could hire their own
trusted technicians.
A more recent evaluation was circulated in February
1969 by OSTI, a private firm that entered into a contract
with OEO to provide technical assistanceand training
to citizens involved in Model Cities programs in the
northeast region of the country. OSTI’s report to OEO
corroborates the earlier study. In addition it states: l2
In practically no Model Cities structure does citizen
participation mean truly shared decisionmaking,
such that citizens might view themselves
as “the partners in this program. . . .”
In general, citizens are finding it impossible to
have a significant impact on the comprehensive
planning which is going on. In most cases the staff
planners of the CDA and the planners of existing
agencies are carrying out the actual planning with
citizens having a peripheral role of watchdog and,
ultimately, the “rubber stamp” of the plan generated.
In cases where citizens have the direct
responsibility for generating program plans, the
time period allowed and the independent technical
resources being made available to them are not
adequate to allow them to do anything more than
generate very traditional approaches to the problems
they are attempting to solve.
In general, little or no thought has been given
to the means of insuring continued citizen participation
during the stage of implementation. In
most cases, traditional agencies are envisaged as the
implementors of Model Cities programs and few
mechanisms have been developed for encouraging
organizational change or change in the method of
program delivery within these agencies or for insuring
that citizens will have some influence over
these agencies as they implement Model Cities
programs. . . .
By and large, people are once again being
planned for. In most situations the major planning
decisions are being made by CDA staff and
approved in a formalistic way by policy boards.
6. PARTNERSHIP
At this rung of the ladder, power is in fact redistributed
through negotiation between citizensand powerholders.
They agree to share planning and decision-making
responsibilities through such structures as joint policy
boards, planning committees and mechanisms for resolving
impasses. After the groundrules have been
established through some form of give-and-take, they
are not subjectto unilateral change.
Partnership can work most effedively when there is
an organizedpower-base in the communityto which the
citizen leaders are accountable; when the citizens group
has the financial resources to pay its leaders reasonable
honoraria for their time-consuming efforts; and when
the group has the resources to hire (and fire) its own
technicians, lawyers, and community organizers. With
these ingredients, citizens have some genuine bargain-
221
ing influence over the outcome of the plan (as long as
both parties find it useful to maintain the partnership).
One community leader described it “like coming to city
hall with hat on head instead of in hand.”
In the Model Cities program only about fifteen of the
so-called first generation of seventy-five cities have
reached some significant degree of power-sharing with
residents. In all but one of those cities, it was angry
citizen demands, rather than city initiative, that led to
the negotiated sharing of p0wer.1~ The negotiations
were triggered by citizens who had been enraged by
previous forms of alleged participation. They were both
angry and sophisticatedenough to refuse to be “conned”
again. They threatened to oppose the awarding of a
planning grant to the city. They sent delegations to
HUD in Washington. They used abrasive language.
Negotiation took place under a cloud of suspicion and
rancor.
In most cases where power has come to be shared it
was taken by the citizens, not given by the city. There
is nothing new about that process. Sincethose who have
power normally want to hang onto it, historically it has
had to be wrested by the powerless rather than proffered
by the powerful.
Such a working partnership was negotiated by the
residents in the Philadelphia model neighborhood. Like
most applicants for a Model Cities grant, Philadelphia
wrote its more than 400 page application and waved it
at a hastily called meeting of community leaders. When
those present were asked for an endorsement, they
angrily protested the city’s failure to consult them on
preparation of the extensive application. A community
spokesman threatened to mobilize a neighborhood protest
ugainJt the application unless the city agreed to give
the citizens a couple of weeks to review the application
and recommend changes. The officials agreed.
At their next meeting, citizens handed the city officials
a substitute citizen participation section that
changed the groundrules from a weak citizens’ advisory
role to a strong shared power agreement. Philadelphia’s
application to HUD included the citizens’
substitution word for word. (It also included a new
citizen prepared introductory chapter that changed the
city’s description of the model neighborhood from a
paternalistic description of problems to a realistic analysis
of its strengths, weaknesses, and potentials.)
Consequently, the proposed policy-makingcommittee
of the Philadelphia CDA was revamped to give five out
of eleven seats to the residents’ organization, which is
called the Area Wide Council (AWC). The AWC
obtained a subcontract from the CDA for more than
$20,000 per month, which it used to maintain the neighborhood
organization, to pay citizen leaders $7 per
meeting for their planning services, and to pay the
salaries of a staff of community organizers, planners,
and other technicians. AWC has the power to initiate
plans of its own, to engage in joint planning with CDA
committees, and to review plans initiated by city agen-
222
cies. It has a veto power in that no plans may be submitted
by the CDA to the city council until they have
been reviewed, and any differences of opinion have been
successfullynegotiated with the AWC. Representatives
of the AWC (which is a federation of neighborhood
organizations grouped into sixteen neighborhood
“hubs”) may attend all meetings of CDA task forces,
planning committees,or subcommittees.
Though the city council has final veto power over the
plan (by federal law), the AWC believes it has a
neighborhood constituency that is strong enough to
negotiate any eleventh-hour objections the city council
might raise when it considers such AWC proposed innovations
as an AWC .Land Bank, an AWC Economic
Development Corporation, and an experimental income
maintenance program for 900 poor families.
7. DELEGATED POWER
Negotiations between citizens and public officials can
also result in citizens achieving dominant decisionmaking
authority over a particular plan or program.
Model City policy boards or CAA delegate agencies on
which citizens have a clear majority of seats and genuine
specified powers are typical examples. At this level, the
ladder has been scaled to the point where citizens hold
the significant cards to assure accountability of the program
to them. To resolve differences, powerholders
need to start the bargaining process rather than respond
to pressure from the other end.
Such a dominant decision-making role has been attained
by residents in a handful of Model Cities including
Cambridge, Massachusetts; Dayton, and Columbus,
Ohio; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri;
Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut; and Oakland,
California.
In New Haven, residents of the Hill neighborhood
have created a corporation that has been delegated the
power to prepare the entire Model Citiesplan. The city,
which received a $117,000 planning grant from HUD,
has subcontracted $110,000 of it to the neighborhood
corporation to hire its own planning staff and consultants.
The Hill Neighborhood Corporation has eleven
representatives on the twenty-one-member CDA board
which assuresit a majority voice when its proposed plan
is reviewed by the CDA.
Another model of delegated power is separate and
parallel groups of citizens and powerholders, with provision
for citizen veto if differences of opinion cannot
be resolved through negotiation. This is a particularly
interesting coexistence model for hostile citizen groups
too embittered toward city hall-as a result of past
“collaborative efforts”-to engage in joint planning.
Since all Model Cities programs require approval by
the city council before HUD will fund them, city councils
have final veto powers even when citizens have the
majority of seats on the CDA Board. In Richmond,
California, the city council agreed to a citizens’ counterN
P JOURNAL JULY 1969
veto, but the details of that agreement are ambiguous
and have not been tested.
Various delegated power arrangements are also
emerging in the Community Action Program as a result
of demands from the neighborhoods and OEO’s most
recent instruction guidelines which urged CAAs “to
exceed (the) basic requirements” for resident participation.I4
In some cities, CAAs have issued subcontractsto
resident dominated groups to plan and/or operate one or
more decentralized neighborhood program components
like a multipurpose service center or a Headstart program.
These contracts usually include an agreed upon
line-by-line budget and program specifications. They
also usually include a specific statement of the significant
powers that have been delegated, for example: policymaking;
hiring and firing; issuing subcontracts for
building, buying, or leasing. (Some of the subcontracts
are so broad that they verge on models for citizen
control.)
8. CITIZEN CONTROL
Demands for community controlled schools, black control,
and neighborhood control are on the increase.
Though no one in the nation has absolute control, it is
very important that the rhetoric not be confused with
intent. People are simply demanding that degree of
power (or control) which guarantees that participants
or residents can govern a program or an institution, be
in full charge of policy and managerial aspects, and be
able to negotiate the conditions under which “outsiders”
may change them.
A neighborhaod corporation with no intermediaries
between it and the source of funds is the model most
frequently advocated. A small number of such experimental
corporations are already producing goods and/or
social services. Several others are reportedly in the
development stage, and new models for control will
undoubtedly emerge as the have-nots continue to press
for greater degrees of power over their lives.
Though the bitter struggle for community control of
the Ocean Hill-Brownsville schools in New York City
has aroused great fears in the headline reading public,
less publicized experiments are demonstrating that the
have-nots can indeed improve their lot by handling the
entire job of planning, policy-making, and managing a
program. Some are even demonstrating that they can do
all this with just one arm because they are forced to use
their other one to deal with a continuing barrage of local
opposition triggered by the announcement that a federal
grant has been given to a community group or an all
black group.
Most of these experimental programs have been capitalized
with research and demonstration funds from the
Office of Economic Opportunity in cooperation with
other federal agencies. Examples include:
1. A $1.8 million grant was awarded to the
Hough Area Development Corporation in Cleveland to
plan economic development programs in the ghetto and
ARNSTEIN
to develop a series of economicenterprises ranging from
a novel combination shopping-center-public-housing
project to a loan guarantee program for local building
contractors. The membership and board of the nonprofit
corporation is composed of leaders of major community
organizations in the black neighborhood.
2. Approximately $1million ($595,751 for the
second year) was awarded to the Southwest Alabama
Farmers Cooperative Association (SWAFCA) in Selma,
Alabama, for a ten-county marketing cooperative for
food and livestock. Despite local attempts to intimidate
the coop (which included the use of force to stop
trucks on the way to market), first year membership
grew to 1,150 farmers who earned $52,000 on the sale
of their new crops. The elected coop board is composed
of two poor black farmers from each of the ten economically
depressed counties.
3. Approximately $600,000 ($300,000 in a
supplemental grant) was granted to the Albina Corporation
and the Albina Investment Trust to create a
black-operated, black-owned manufacturing concern using
inexperienced management and unskilled minority
group personnel from the Albina district. The profitmaking
wool and metal fabrication plant will be owned
by its employees through a deferred compensation trust
plan.
4. Approximately $800,000 ($400,000for the
second year) was awarded to the Harlem Commonwealth
Council to demonstrate that a community-based
development corporation can catalyze and implement an
economic development program with broad community
support and participation. After only eighteen months
of program development and negotiation, the council
will soon launch several large-scale ventures including
operation of two supermarkets, an auto service and
repair center (with built-in manpower training program),
a finance company for families earning less
than $4,000per year, and a data processing company.
The all black Harlem-based board is already managing
a metal castings foundry.
Though several citizen groups (and their mayors)
use the rhetoric of citizen control, no Model City can
meet the criteria of citizen control since final approval
power and accountability rest with the city council.
Daniel P. Moynihan argues that city councils are
representative of the community, but Adam Walinsky
illustrates the nonrepresentativeness of this kind of
representation: l5
Who . . . exercises “control” through the representativeprocess?
In the Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto
of New York there are 450,000 people-as many
as in the entire city of Cincinnati, more than in
the entire state of Vermont. Yet the area has only
one high school, and 80 per cent of its teen-agers
are dropouts; the infant mortality rate is twice the
national average; there are over 8000 buildings
abandoned by everyone but the rats, yet the area
received not one dollar of urban renewal funds
223
during the entire first 15 years of that program’s
operation; the unemploymentrate is known only
to God.
Clearly, Bedford-Stuyvesant has Some special
needs; Yet it has always been lost in the midst of
the city’s eight million. In fact, it took a lawsuit
to win for this vast area, in the year 1968, its
first Congressman. In what Sense can the representative
system be said to have “spoken for” this
community, duringthe longyears Of negled
decay?
helpful: B. H. Bagdikian, In the Midst of Plenty: The poor
in America (New Yo&: 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 Atelier Populaire, a graphics center launched by students from
the Sorbonne’s &ole des Beaux Art and &ole des Arts Decoratifs.
3This 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 Neighborfied
sum of money contracted to them. If the ground- hood Control.
4For an article of some possible employment strategies, see,
rules for these programs are clear and if citizens under- Edmund M. Burke, “Citizen participation Strategies,” ~~~~~~lof
stand that achieving a genuine place in the pluralistic the American Institute of Planners, XXXIV, No. 5 (September
1968), 290-1.
scene subjects them to its legitimate forms of give-and- 5 U.S., Department of Housing and Urban Development,
take, then these kinds of programs might begin to Workable Program for Community Improvement, Answers on Citizen
Participation, Program Guide 7, February, 1966, pp. 1 and 6.
demonstrate how to counteract the various corrosive 6 David Austin, “Study of Resident Participants in Twenty
political and socioeconomicforces that plague the poor. 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
through population growth, it is unlikely that strident M. Fox of Harvard University for some of his general insights into
citizens’ groups like AWC of Philadelphia will even- therapy being used as a diversion from genuine citizen participation.
8 See, Gordon Fellman, “Neighborhood Protest of an Urban
tually demand legal power for neighborhood self- Highway,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, XXXV,
government. Their grand design is more likely to call No. 2 (March 1969)I 1 ~ ~ 2 .
9 James V. Cunningham, “Resident Participation, Unpublished
for a city achieved by the process- Report prepared for the Ford Foundation, August 1967, p. 54.
In cities destined to remain predominantly white for the 10 Interview with Maxine Kurtz, Technical Director, Denver
foreseeable future, it is quite likely that counterpart CDA.
11US., Department of Housing and Urban Development,
groups to AWC Will Press for separatist forms of “Citizen Participation in Model Cities,” Technical Assistance Bulleneighborhood
government that can create and control t i n ~NO. 3 (December 1968).
12Organization for Social and Technical Innovation, Six-Month
education systems, and health facilities. Much may February I, 1969, pp. 27, 28, and 35.
13 In Cambridge, Massachusetts, city hall offered to share power
tain demands for resource allocation weighted in favor representative citizens group could be engaged, and the ambiguities
of authority, structure, and process would be resolved. At the request
of the mayor, HUD allowed the city to spend several months
of the poor, reversing gross imbalances of the past.
Among the arguments against community control are: of Model Cities planning funds for community organization activiit
supports separatism; it creates balkanization of public ties. During these months, staff from the city manager’s office also
helped the residents draft a city ordinance that created a CDA comservices;
it is more costly and less efficient; it enables posed of sixteen elected residents and eight appointed public and
minority group “hustlers” to be just as opportunistic private agency representatives. This resident-dominated body has
the power to hire and fire CDA staff, approve all plans, review all
and disdainful of the have-nots as their white prede- model city budgets and contracts, set policy, and so forth. The
cessors; it is incompatible with systems and pro- ordinance, which was unanimously passed by the city council also
includes a requirement that all Model City plans must be approved
fessionalism; and ironically enough, it can turn Out to be by a majority of residents in the neighborhood through a refera
new Mickey Mouse game for the have-nots by allow- endum. Final approval power rests with the city council by federal
statute.
ing them to gain but not them suffi- 14U.S., Office of Economic Opportunity, OEO Instruction,
cient dollar resources to SUcCeed.16 These arguments are Participation of the Poor in the Planning, Conduct and Evaluation
not to be taken lightly. But neither can we take lightly of Community Action Programs (Washington, D.C.: December 1,
1968), pp. 1-2.
the arguments of embittered advocates of community 15Adam Walinsky, “Review of Maximum Feasible Misundercontrol-that
every other of trying to end their standing” by Daniel P. Moynihan, New York Times Book Review,
February 2, 1969.
victimization has failed! 16 For thoughtful academic analyses of some of the potentials
and pitfalls of emerging neighborhood control models, see, Alan
Altshuler, “The Demand For Participation in Large American
Cities,” An Unpublished Paper prepared for the Urban Institute,
NOTES December 1968; and Hans B. C. Spiegel and Stephen D. Mittenthal,
“Neighborhood Power and Control, Implications for Urban
1The literature on poverty and discrimination and their effects Planning,” A Report prepared for the Department of Housing and
on people is extensive. As an introduction, the following will be Urban Development, November 1968.
224 AIP JOURNAL JULY 1969
Walinsky’s point on Bedford-Stuyvesant has general
It is
therefore likely that in those ghettos where residents
have achieved a significant degree Of power in the
Model Cities planning process, the first-yearaction plans
will call for the creation of Some new community
institutions entirely governed by residents with a specito
the ghettosfrom coast to coast.
In cities likely to become predominantly
public services such as police protection, Progress Report to Ofice of Economic Opportunity, Region 1,
dependOn the Of city governmentsto enter- with residents and anticipated the need for a period in which a