The Public-Engagement Practice That Meets It
For a decade the industry's engagement strategy was to be quiet and let the tax revenue do the talking. That worked when nobody was paying attention. It stopped working, and the replacement is an actual practice with named tools: the town hall, the transparency portal, the third-party engagement firm. None of these are magic. Each solves a specific problem and creates a specific new one. The practitioner's job is to know which instrument fits which stage of opposition, and to resist the vendor who insists their one tool fixes everything. Empiricism means matching the instrument to the observed problem, not to the invoice.
Knowledge check
What is the recurring failure mode of the community town hall as an engagement instrument?
Show the answer
It is convened too late, after positions have hardened, so it becomes a venue for people to perform opposition to a press audience rather than a genuine consultation that could have shaped the project. The instrument does not fail; the timing does.