The twelve city studies in the present volume provide city administrators with a comparative perspective about how U.S. and Canadian cities carry out their public engagement activities. The myriad examples elevate the experience-base of city administrators striving to achieve a standard of excellence in public engagement. This volume also suggests at least two themes. First, large cities have complex, sometimes overlapping, administrative structures (often including regional transit authorities), and, partly as a result, the larger the city, the more the coordinated effort required to keep the public informed and engaged. Second, rising citizen expectations for digital outreach have raised the bar for public engagement. Approaches to public engagement, nevertheless, vary across cities for historic, demographic, and idiosyncratic reasons. Among large cities, Chicago is innovative in public involvement (e.g., its activities include participatory budgeting). Portland is one of the few cities to delegate decision making to public committees. And San Francisco must assure public involvement for multiple language communities. In Canada, commitment to public involvement emerged earliest in the western cities – Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton, more or less in that order – while the eastern cities appear to have experienced more institutional inertia.
Keywords city management, collaborative governance, municipal service delivery, municipal transportation services, participatory democracy, public consultation, public involvement, service systems