An older civics conversation in Sarasota

Jeff LaHurd has a terrific piece about how Sarasota County owes its independence to a split from Manatee County in 1921, to form its own more perfect union. It's not an entirely unfamiliar ring to it:

In September, Edwards, Sarasota's first mayor, who was in charge of gathering relevant data, reported: "The territory comprising the proposed new county is paying considerably more into the county treasury in the way of taxes than it is receiving back; the area which comprises one-half of the present county is represented by one commissioner, while the other half is represented by four." More...

A terrific photo of the temporary old courthouse accompanies the text -- they had angle parking downtown even then - who knew?

Is there such a thing as a civic quotient?

Among the books mentioned during Civics 101 was Bowling Alone, an influential documentation of the increasing fragmentation and isolation of modern US living.

How social is our society? Are there metrics that we can apply, or must we rely on anecdotal evidence? Clearly there are different intensities of sociability in different communities. In mine, which has 1,600 homes, we have one organization that attracts a small fraction of the residents to meetings.

Here's a bit of random evidence that I found startling -- from a discussion about "Creating Healthy, Livable Cities" on LinkedIn, from Han Blok, a contributor based in The Netherlands:

Citizens are in general too lonesome and too individualistic. My village has 650 houses and we have 50 active social associations (culture, hobby, sport etc) all associations run by volunteers. many similar villages are present at 5 km distance. The houses and streets are not the core of the structure but the integrated social structure is the essence. Such social cores could also be achieved in neighboorhoods or quarters of larger cities. It requires thinking about social behaviour not calculating the supporting force of a concrete construction. A 20 store city building may house the same number of living units without any social coherence and most people there feel lonesome.

What are the drivers behind this level of intense volunteerism and social creativity? Does it help to ask: which is a more telling metric of "civicness": Geoffrey West's model of cities as supercenters of creativity, or a metric that compares things like civic participation?

Richard Dreyfuss on Civics

When I ask students what was so revolutionary about our Revolutionary War, the answer is usually that we broke away from Great Britain. And I say, no, it was that for the first time ever, we were actualizing the idea that the ruler and the ruled were one thing and that the people were not the audience to the performance of the nobility, that we were all the same value and all contributed. And that was at the time probably the most important message in 13,000 years of politics.

A remarkable, thoughtful conversation with Richard Dreyfuss from the Diane Rehm Show about his new life's direction - from acting he's moved on to actualizing civics through a new organization, The Dreyfuss Initiative.

His website outlines what the Initiative is:

Civic education is the founding mandate of public education. Free public schools were developed in America for the express purpose of raising up good citizenship. This purpose has been abandoned and must be regained. Thus the mission of The Initiative is to create a demand for a more expert learning experience and to give our kids the splendid pleasure of learning what power they have.

Research over the past fifty years has demonstrated that the average American has, to say the least, a rather poor understanding of Civic Knowledge. But, by example, America has made democracy the governance system of choice.

Democracy, in any incarnation is the only governing system that requires some engagement by the civic body.