Agora for every suburb

Ancient Athens was a genuine democracy partly because of the physical existence of agora, circular or semi-circular seating designed for all members of the community to come together as one and collaborate in decision making.

Such public structures are rare or non-existent in representative "democracy" in an effort, perhaps often instinctive and unconscious, to keep the population divided and isolated in their private lives, to consolidate and facilitate the power monopoly of the so-called elected "representatives".

Public seating, if it exists at all, is invariably for small groups facing away from each other. Most public space being for motorized transportation or walking between private places or recreation, not politics. Protest marches often seem annoying or inconsiderate as there is no specific space for them so they inevitably end up blocking traffic. 

The closest thing to public agora in recent history was the occupy movement which had to resort to commandeering parks illegally.

It was also ironically plagued by desperate and dysfunctional, often homeless, people created by the system they were opposing. This issue would unfortunately have to be addressed with security and/ or help, perhaps even agora group therapy, until issues of casualties of capitalism are solved.

Sports fields and stadiums, designed to divide the population and preoccupy them with vacuous animalistic trivia and preparation for war might be better reversed in design to become modern agora, community hubs for creative collaborative participatory democracy.  

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A similar version of this was sent to the mayor and councillors of Wellington City and got the following response:

Good morning David

 

Many thanks for this and I'm always looking for better ways to increase democracy and inclusiveness in our society.  However, the costs of running this city are also placing increased costs that are making it unaffordable for many residents and businesses.

 

Building Agora infrastructure in every suburb would be tremendously expensive, much less even finding the space to do this. 

 

However, I do agree that this idea has merit and will copy this to our EMQ to get feedback from our planning team.

 

Cheers Ray

 

 

 

Rayward R Chung

Wellington City Councillor

Onslow Western ward

Wellington City Council

Hi again

 

Yes cost of making agora from scratch in every suburb would be great, but might be an investment. 

 

As I suggested sports stadiums might double as agora, also university lecture theatres and school halls maybe, central city concert halls could perhaps be shared, used in rotation by different suburbs.  

 

I think try one or two before introducing them in every suburb, to see if people are interested, they may be more interested in escaping reality online

 

thanks again for considering my idea

 

David

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Hi David

I would say that to proceed with this, we'll need to put this proposal into the Long-Term Plan and so it'll need to be an agenda item.  I'll discuss this with the officers.  We might be able to re-purpose some of our existing facilities as you suggest, like school halls and existing community facilities?

Cheers Ray

Retiring Councillor Nīkau Wi Neera also expressed support for idea in a private message.   

People having the power to directly shape their local community and economy through agora might reduce the migration crisis throughout the world. At present for many migration seems the only hope for improving one's situation, it shouldn't be.

I think direct local democracy is likely to be more interesting, manageable and comprehensible, so more successful, if developed in conjunction with more diverse, self reliant local economies. The book 'All those in Favor Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting and Community' ( in Vermont) says town meetings work considerably better in small towns than big cities, this may be why, great scale may be good for the ego but gets unwieldy. Perhaps suburbs could be more self reliant and complete like small towns.

Developing creative collaboration skills and attitudes ( Robert Kelly. Collaborative Creativity. 2020.) rather than seeing politics as a competitive, often destructive, game is also probably essential for success of agora.

Also the book 'Slow Democracy' points out town meetings have to have some real power, as in Vermont and New England, if politicians stage town meeting for show but then ignore what people say in them, people will stop turning up.  

Finally agora meetings would go a long way towards creating community, which is often non-existent in industrial "society".