Park Heights Community Project: Enhancement of Public Involvement inTransportation Planning

摘要

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to provide an assessment of thetransportation needs of the Park Heights community and to generate a strategic plan focusing on citizen participation in possible transportation-related facilities. The methodology used involved doing a demographic appraisal, an ethnographic overview of the community, and in-depth interviews with community leaders. The information from a review of the literature on citizen participation in matters related to transportation facilities, as well as that garnered from the methods used, revealed that, transportation, although of significance to elderly church goers and others without cars--who did not wish, or were not entitled, to avail themselves of unofficial transportation facilities like hacks, taxis, and privately owned vans--was not as important to community residents as crime, drugs, boarded-up houses, trash, and alleged insouciance on the part of elected officials. Based on this information, three models were identified as relevant to facilitating citizen participation: (1) the social disorganization model that speaks to the mobilization of individuals on the basis of fear; (2) the public relations model that seeks to mobilize individuals by way of advertising to techniques used in the mass media to persuade potential customers to purchase a particular product; and (3) the collective action model whereby, mobilization occurs by recourse to a variety of resources.