In most cities I’m familiar with, City Hall is a distinct, self-contained building separated from most of the key residential, business and entertainment areas of the city. The staff that work in the City Hall building typically don’t visit the neighbourhoods and the employees who work on the streets and in the communities rarely visit city hall.
Perhaps this is not the most efficient nor innovative way to run a city. If a city were like a private corporation, better connecting all employees to “their product” would bring productivity as well as morale gains.
For my regular, Monday posting on workplace trends at CreativeClass.com, this week I detail the new Boeing 737 facility in Renton, WA (a Seattle suburb). By combining the engineers, sales and administrative staff with the factory floor manufacturing workers, productivity increased 40%. Suddenly engineers were not isolated from the product they designed — nor were sales staff removed from appreciating the details of the aircraft they sell. This also allowed for innovative, spontaneous problem solving.
Cities have numerous challenges on the ground that would benefit from similar thinking. Perhaps city hall workers need to have a variety of locales from which they can work. Sitting in an office overlooking a poor neighborhood filled with the homeless, mentally ill and/or drug addicted might help inspire more creativity in solving this issue. Reporting to work in a struggling business district similarly might allow city workers to better understand the needs of businesses in that area. Just being in close proximity would encourage spontaneous dialog, which can’t but help.
With today’s flexible workplace designs supported by mobile technologies this is easily possible, especially as technology costs continually decline. City employees themselves might enjoy the flexibility of getting out more and the sense of accomplishment from seeing their initiatives and efforts pay dividends for everyday citizens.
Anyone know of a decentralized City Hall?
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[...] bar.Addendum: I ponder whether there are lessons for cities in this style of workplace organization here.Tags: [...]
the city hall of Lausanne has two buildings: the ancient one, located in the main square, and a new one, located in a new, mixed-use district.
the old one:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Town_hall_of_Lausanne
the new one:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bel-air_pregamma_1_fattal_alpha_0.886_beta_0.884_saturation_1.jpg
There is a difference between decentralization and less isolation. You have to be careful with decentralization to not do what I call intra-city sprawl and lose agglomeration benefits.
I was struck by how the City Hall, Municipal Building, and Central Library in Seattle don’t have security checkpoints, unlike those buildings in DC.
And their neighborhood councils have offices in communities, with one city-supplied staff member. DC’s equivalent commissions have to beg and borrow space, and hire assistance from their limited budgets.
Richard, good points on whether decentralization would destroy proximity benefits. You could also get some people feeling isolated and out of the loop.
My thought was that if we made more city workers mobile, on wireless lap tops rather than chaining them to desk top computers, that they could work in the location that made the most sense for their job, responsibilities, etc. and for some, this might change week to week, month to month or even day to day.
I didn’t know that Seattle doesn’t have security at city hall — but I’ve never thought about it. I recall Fort Worth having rather rigorous security back in the early 1990s when I lived there. I was just trying to pay a parking ticket and needed to go through a metal detector, be frisked, and have my bag searched.