Community Demand; Citizen Participation

When you look at the organizational structure of the private and public sectors and compare that to the community sector, you might ask: What’s the point of trying?  

However, when you realize that the community sector pays all the taxes that support the public sector and buy all the products from the private sector, maybe it is time to reassess who truly has the power.   The question is: Will the community reassert its fundamental obligation to exert the forces necessary to balance the accesses of these other two sectors? We are fulcrum; we must act like we are.

The public sector continually pushes for more density to support their transportation system and to get rid of the automobile.   They push for neighborhoods where people can bike and walk everywhere. It sounds like their goal is to support rural small towns which already have this.  They claim that everybody is flocking to the cities yet research done by the The community which, presumably feels powerless in the face of the bureaucracy, must learn to focus its real power.  

It is ironic that the community sector appears to be the weakest of the three sectors when in fact it has the potential to be the most powerful.  The public sector depends upon the taxes paid by the community and the private sector depends upon the purchasing patterns of the community as well.  New tools and new strategies are needed to re-establish the community’s role of balancing the other two sectors in making the Smart Region successful..