Applied Research in Quality of Life (2006) 1:253–277 DOI 10.1007/s11482-007-9020-8

Revisiting the Local Impact of Community Indicators Projects: Sustainable Seattle as Prophet in Its Own Land Meg Holden

Received: 26 July 2006 / Accepted: 24 February 2007 / Published online: 21 April 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. / The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) 2007

Abstract Sustainable Seattle’s Indicators of Sustainable Community project was the first of its kind and remains one of the best known attempts by a community group to measure a wide range of what it values most about local quality of life and sustainability. The great irony in the organization’s notoriety, however, is that S2’s reputation grows with distance from its home in Seattle. National and international recognition has come to S2 much more easily than uptake and implementation of the project, its method, or its recommendations at home in Seattle and King County. This article, based on case study research, provides a closer examination of this received wisdom about the limited local impact of Sustainable Seattle by foregrounding the local legacy of this first generation indicators project in the form of nine different indicator projects that have succeeded the S2 project. All of these projects bear some connection to S2 and can be shown to constitute second, third and fourth generation indicator projects in terms of organizational structure, indicator framework, and approach to mobilizing awareness and policy and behavioural change. This article also offers lessons from indicator projects in the Seattle area about the appeal of an indicators-based approach generally, and the various Seattle models in particular, from the perspective of different key policy actor groups. In sum, the research presented in this article contributes to filling the gap in the community indicators literature with regard to the policy impacts of community indicator projects in their localities and directions for increasing the effectiveness of projects from the perspectives of different indicator organizations and policy actor groups. Keywords Community indicator projects . Seattle . King County . Sustainable Seattle All websites verified as of 5 February 2007. M. Holden (*) Urban Studies and Geography, Simon Fraser University Vancouver, 3rd Floor, 515 W. Hastings St., Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction: The First Generation Sustainability Indicators Project Sustainable Seattle (S2) created the world’s first community quality of life indicators project with an explicit local sustainability orientation in the early 1990s. To describe the project’s impact, the received wisdom has been that even during the project’s heyday in the mid-1990s: the farther one sits from Seattle, the more likely one is to consider S2 an influential project. This result is not particularly surprising; after all, the challenge of becoming a prophet in one’s own land is one of biblical difficulty. This article, however, posits that this result is not entirely true. Close case study analysis reveals the mostly-overlooked local legacy of Sustainable Seattle’s hallmark indicator project. In examining the waves of innovation and diffusion in community sustainability indicator project approaches and outcomes in the Seattle area, this article also presents results of the receptiveness of different key policy actor groups to indicator-based approaches to sustainability and quality of life in local governance. S2 has served as a model from which many community indicator studies have grown. The nonprofit research organization Redefining Progress conducted a survey of indicator organizations in 1998 and determined that over half (54%) of the 170 indicator groups surveyed cited Sustainable Seattle as a motivator or model for their project (Redefining Progress 2000).1 Moreover, S2 has been known not only for the successful production of three indicator reports in 1993, 1995, and 1998, but also for the process through which it developed these reports and its success in gaining international notoriety. The S2 process has been noted in the Bellagio Principles for Assessment of sustainability indicator projects (Hardi and Zdan 1997), cited in books on sustainable development (Portney 2003; Lewis and Buttel 2001; AtKisson 1999; Miller 1999), comparative reports and articles (Mitra 2003; Greenwood 2001; Sustainable Northwest and Oregon Solutions 2001; Baker 1999; Meter 1999; Farrell and Hart 1998; Jackson and Roberts 1997; Pinfield 1997; Brugmann 1997; Leibman and El-Eini 1996; Andrews 1996; Zachary 1995; Russel 1994), and academic theses (Holden 2004; Jacob 1996; Cash Driskill 1998; Gahin 2001). Many newspaper articles outside Seattle have made mention of Sustainable Seattle (Yerton 2001; Stille 2000; Navares 1995; Lindecke 1994; Glessing 1994; Meadows 1993). S2 members’ intent was to initiate and contribute to a city-wide conversation about sustainable development that in time would lead to a new system of urban policy and practice. To S2 members, it made sense to design their project and its process by the key components of this new system: an emphasis on measuring and monitoring, collaboration between citizens, experts and decision-makers, linking indicators into a holistic framework, and the sharing of decision-making power via better information, communication and dialogue (Holden 2006). In taking this approach, S2 worked toward an impact on the policy process that did not take the form of specific new policies. This was a very contentious decision, that garnered S2 harsh criticism from Jeb Brugmann, at the time the Secretary General of the 1

This survey was led by Sustainable Seattle co-founder Alan AtKisson after he left Seattle to work for Redefining Progress, along with other Redefining Progress staff. In 2003, this global directory of indicator initiatives reached a total of 589 initiatives and in 2006, 684 initiatives were listed (http://www.iisd.org/ measure/compendium/).

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International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, the organization that drafted Local Agenda 21, in the journal Local Environment. Brugmann (1997, 64) criticized Sustainable Seattle’s failure to change formal city policy, thus casting doubt on the importance of process to the quest of reducing uncertainty in knowledge more generally. He linked this failure to the organization’s independent nonprofit status, “without connection to major institutions, generally, and the City’s strategic and statutory planning processes, specifically.” Because of this separation, he referred to the overall effect of Sustainable Seattle’s Indicators of Sustainable Community on local policies as “catalytic” at best, an effect he considers far from satisfactory. In a response to this criticism, Pinfield (1997) emphasized the alternative view of the importance of the citizen-based process model spearheaded by Sustainable Seattle, for the very reason Brugmann derided. In this alternate view, Sustainable Seattle served a critically important role to reduction in uncertainty around sustainability by playing a catalytic role in which the organization’s process facilitated the wider diffusion of specific and locally-relevant ideas and measures of sustainable development, improving the quantity and quality of democratic debate about specific policy issues as well as for the direction of urban development in the region more generally. Instead of backing particular policy proposals, S2 sought to create the kind of regional knowledge that “influences as it becomes internalized in the shared understanding of a community” (Innes 1990, 35) engaged in democratic debate. This type of change occurs as debates are framed and agendas set: “as part of taken-for-granted assumptions, which frame problems and put bounds on the solution options” rather than in any rational information processing in selecting among policy alternatives. As an innovative civic organization with no formal scientific or political authority, Sustainable Seattle also served as an inspiration for many other groups locally and around the world to undertake similar processes in their own contexts. In investigating S2’s effectiveness at making this change, it is useful to examine any diffusion of ideas that has occurred from S2 to other groups and individuals engaged in the sustainability, quality-of-life, and community health policy fields in the local region.

Literature Review: Diffusion and Use of Community Indicator Studies For those working to define and improve community quality of life toward sustainable futures, the tool of the indicator project has become one of the most popular. Indicators like Gross Domestic Product, the consumer price index, and life expectancy at birth have long been used in the policy craft (Porter 1995). Community indicator projects attempt to deepen these measures in the pool of human values, recognizing that not just how much we produce, what we pay, and how long we live determines the worth of our cities; urban worth is also reflected in the nature, relationships, and quality of our lives. Indicator projects can enumerate a larger and more forward- and backward-looking set of values in social, environmental, and economic realms. They attempt to keep track of our progress in new dimensions of human responsibility and concern (Maclaren 1996; Michalos 1997). While the practice of community indicators has grown in popularity since the early

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1990s, evidence of the effectiveness of this work on improving decisions made that impact community quality of life remains scarce. From experience developing Boston’s sustainability indicator program, Kline (2001) suggests at least ten benefits of the process of conducting such a project, regardless of the direct policy results. These benefits include: revealing core concerns rather than piecemeal symptoms of urban problems; grasping the integrated and regional nature of urban problems; the ability to measure outcomes as well as changes in process and policy; the ability to measure progress at the different scales of neighborhood, city and region; setting the community’s own priorities; flexibility in implementation choices underlain by clear goals; the ability to focus on positive in addition to negative changes; paying attention to questions of maintenance, replacement and reuse; addressing issues of equity; and including qualitative as well as quantitative measures. Attention to such soft impacts of community indicator projects requires an understanding of the community decision-making process that is more nuanced than the rational model. It is uncontroversial, even somewhat trite, to say that power influences the policy process more than indicators or facts do (Flyvbjerg 1998). Less common is the examination of factors which influence policy outcomes other than strict evidence and power dynamics, such as uncertainty (Heclo 1974), local energy, knowledge, and motivations (Hirschman 1971), learning from prior policy outcomes (Dunn 1971), organizational and institutional learning (Wenger 1999), and bounded conflict (Lee 1993). Policymakers customarily work within a framework of ideas and standards that specify not only the goals of policy and the kind of instruments used to attain them but also the very nature of the problems they are to address (Hall 1993). Eckerberg and Mineur (2003) develop a typology for understanding the various development strategies for sustainability indicator projects at the municipal scale and determine that these different approaches to developing sustainability indicators affects their use. The typology differentiates the two ideal types of projects as citizenor expert-oriented according to what indicators are measured, how the project defines sustainable development, the purpose and intended audience of the project, the organizational and political context in which the project is embedded and the actors involved. Five distinct indicator projects in use in two Swedish municipalities, Stockholm and Sundsvall, are examined according to this typology. Differences among these projects point to future ways to examine the development and use of municipal-level sustainability indicator projects, and point in particular to the need for much more attention to improving the participatory and democratic nature of projects, beyond citizen involvement in initial project development. Involvement of policy actors from outside traditional government in problem definition, instrument selection and design, and analysis of problem trends and goals via community indicator projects can bring about changes in policy direction and the status quo, even if these changes are not immediately apparent in the formal policy process.

Research Approach and Methodology Research for this article was conducted using embedded single case study methodology. Embedded case study methodology involves identifying and investi-

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gating different units and subunits of analysis. In this case, the unit of analysis is the organization Sustainable Seattle, whose signature work has been a sustainability indicators project, and the subunits are subsequent and resultant indicator initiatives in Seattle, King County, and Washington State. Embedded case study research enables the researcher to reveal deeper and more holistic understandings of “cultural systems of action,” which are “sets of interrelated activities and routines engaged in by one or more networks of actors within a social context that is bounded in time and space” (Snow and Anderson 1991, 152; Yin 1984). A local sustainability indicator project that demonstrates a range of diverse interpersonal and institutional relationships is a good example of a cultural system of action. A cultural system may range in scope from small groups to whole communities. Data were gathered from a mixture of cooperative and unobtrusive methods. The unobtrusive methods were historical analysis using archival and policy documents and news sources, along with a limited amount of participant observation. The cooperative method was in-depth interviewing, including elite and informal interviews. Two lists of interviewees were drafted: one list of historical and current members of Sustainable Seattle and one list of people active in Seattle sustainability, quality of life and healthy community policy processes from five key groups (elected leaders, local government employees, nonprofit organizations, active citizens, and businesses). Within each list, maximum variation sampling was used to select interviewees. Maximum variation sampling is a nonprobability, judgmental sampling technique in which as wide a sample as possible is drawn from preselected categories until exhaustion or redundancy is reached within the category (Lincoln and Guba 1985).2 Document and archival data review and newspaper review occurred from February 2002 through August 2003 and consisted of a systematic review of all retrievable documents from Sustainable Seattle’s archives, personal archives of some of its founding members and a systematic but more selective review of policy documents from relevant City of Seattle and King County agencies, and news articles related to sustainable development policy. Interview data, archival data, policy documents, and news report data have been triangulated, or cross-referenced in order to provide a multiple perspective analysis of the diffusion of Sustainable Seattle’s indicator project process and strategy and the receptiveness of different groups to using indicators in their work.

Results: The Local Legacy of Sustainable Seattle Nine sustainability indicator projects that originated subsequent to S2 were discovered and investigated for their connections to Sustainable Seattle and are 2

Seventy-one interviews were conducted. These included, in overlapping categories, interviews with 14 former members of Sustainable Seattle, including all but one of the organization’s founding members, nine members of the Sustainable Seattle board, four elected leaders, 29 city and county government employees, one state government employee, 26 people involved in nonprofit organizations (including research and education), six politically-active unaffiliated citizens, one newspaper reporter and nine people employed in for-profit sustainability-oriented businesses. Gender and racial balance among those interviewed was also a goal of this research methodology. Interviewees included 33 women and 11 people of color.

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Table 1 Sustainable Seattle’s local legacy of sustainability indicator projects Second generation indicator projects State

County/region

Third generation indicator projects

Fourth generation indicator projects Sustainable Washington Advisory Panel (2003, 2004) PSRC Puget Sound Milestones (2001–2005)

Growth Management Communities Count Benchmarks (2000, 2003, 2005) (1996–2006) PSRC Regional Review (1997, 1998) City Comprehensive Department of Information Environmental Action Agenda Plan Indicators Technology indicators (2002, 2005, 2006) (1996, 1998, 2003) (2002, 2004) Nongovernment Northwest Environment Watcha (now: Sightline Institute) (2004–2006) Cascadia Scorecard

a

Northwest Environment Watch (NEW) is now known as the Sightline Institute. It will be referred to in this article by the name it had at the time of research, NEW.

considered part of the S2 local legacy. These projects are listed in Table 1, according to scale and ‘generation,’ a classification that reflects commonality of approach as well as timing of origin following S2. Each generation represents a different approach to the organization, intent and application of indicators, as summarized in Table 2. Relative to the organization, intent and application of indicators in the S2 model, these projects represent different approaches to: & & &

Collaboration in the organization of the project and the role of the public and leaders, Measuring linkages among different indicators and dimensions of sustainability, and Targeting the use, integration into decision-making, and mobilizing power of the indicators.

For second generation indicator projects, concerned with monitoring trends in growth management and comprehensive plans, the main dimension of change beyond the S2 model has been in the linkages dimension. The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) began a series of reports to update policy makers and citizens on the region’s progress toward growth management goals established in the Vision 2020 long term land use plan (Puget Sound Regional Council 1990, 1995). King County developed a set of benchmarks (King County GMPC and Office of Budget 1998–2006) to fulfill its legal commitment to the State of Washington Growth Management Act (1990) as well as the Countywide Planning Policies (King County Growth Management Planning Council 1994, 2005). The City of Seattle (1994, 2005) developed indicators to demonstrate the city’s progress toward the Comprehensive Plan goals (City of Seattle Department of Design, Construction and Land Use 2003). For third generation projects, which have expanded the scope of community indicators beyond legal requirements and growth management into social, health,

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Table 2 Key features of second, third, and fourth generation indicator projects 2nd generation

3rd generation

4th generation

Collaboration

Indicators for legal and policy compliance Community-defined indicator values

Indicators for appeal to leaders and media

Linkages

Indicators for comprehensive growth management implementation and monitoring Indicators tied to specific policies

Broad public participation in indicator generation Respect for qualitative information and underrepresented groups Indicators for expanding and defining the scope of sustainable development Intent to empower civic groups

Strategy to improve indicator positioning in policy decisions Specific targets set and responsibilities established

Powersharing

Indicators used as grant criteria

Selecting fewer indicators at broader spatial scales

and information technology realms, change has occurred from the Sustainable Seattle model primarily along collaborative lines. King County produced a comprehensive social and health indicator set called Communities Count (Public Health-Seattle and King County 2000, 2003, 2005) and Seattle produced a set of indicators encapsulating the effects of information technology on the community (City of Seattle Information Technology Indicators Project 2002). Fourth generation projects, when viewed in relation to the Sustainable Seattle model, demonstrate a more focused vision of collaboration and the beginning of new powersharing strategies. These projects include then-Governor Locke’s Sustainable Washington Advisory Panel (2003, 2004) indicators, the Puget Sound Regional Council Puget Sound Milestones (2001–2005) project, the City of Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment (2002, 2005, 2006) (OSE) Environmental Action Agenda, and the nongovernment organization Northwest Environment Watch’s (now: Sightline Institute) (2004–2006) Cascadia Scorecard. Both the Governor’s Panel and the OSE projects directly involve leaders from Sustainable Seattle. Puget Sound Milestones and the Cascadia Scorecard are the only two of the nine projects without a direct tie to S2 or its members. The Puget Sound Milestones project has an indirect link as it does follow from the PSRC Regional Review, and the Cascadia Scorecard project developed based on informed decisions to move away from the S2 approach resulting from the experience of Northwest Environment Watch staff engaged with S2 indicator process. The assessment framework according to which each generation is discussed below includes the attempt to monitor change, constant among all projects, the extent of collaboration amongst different sectors and interested groups, the consideration of linkages among indicators toward an integrated sustainable development view, and power-sharing for increasing indicator project impact. Second Generation Indicator Projects Seattle’s second generation indicator projects show little commitment to collaboration. They derive directly from legislation and policy, although one project, the Comprehensive Plan indicator project, shows an understanding of the value of

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collaboration through its use of community-defined values in indicator selection. These projects demonstrate a drive for comprehensive indicator sets covering the range of social, economic, and ecological issues associated with population growth and urban development in order to link these explicitly to growth management and planning policies. King County’s Growth Management Benchmark program has 45 indicators to monitor progress toward growth management goals, PSRC Regional Review measured 31 indicators, and the Comprehensive Plan indicators included 25 measures. The sheer number of indicators selected in each of the second generation projects is evidence of this breadth and certain indicators within each set demonstrate recognition of the linked nature of different physical and social conditions to the task of growth management planning. Each project includes indicators that one would not necessarily expect to see under the heading ‘growth management,’ indicating that a broad and comprehensive perspective has been taken. The Benchmark project, for example, includes an indicator ‘High school graduation rate’ under the Economy heading and ‘Ratio of land consumption to population growth’ under Land Use. PSRC’s Regional Review includes the indicator ‘City Park Acreage as a Percentage of Total City Area’ under ‘Rural Preservation.’ The Comprehensive Plan indicators include a measure of ‘Commuting to Work’ under ‘Environmental Stewardship.’ King County Executive Ron Sims’ thinking about indicators reflects his understanding of the importance of linkages among the kinds of measures being collected, what these mean to the larger condition they are trying to affect, and how the process of measuring and monitoring can lead to policy spin-offs and advances. Following a chain of linked indicators related to wild salmon decline, for example, an indicator monitored by Sustainable Seattle, enabled Sims to reframe policy issues around environment and development in King County. Sims listened to ecologists in order to develop his position, in his own policy language, on fish and amphibian decline, microenvironments, the need for shade trees along stream banks, and the removal of exotic species. He explained: In the past, we looked at wetlands habitat as being needed for the protection of salmon, because we had a fish measure. Now we realize that wetlands function well away from streams, rivers, and lakes, because they create microhabitats for a variety of species ... we thought we were doing this great job by acquiring all this wetland and protecting all the shoreland and ... now we don’t do that: a wetlands policy stands on its own. And we look at microenvironments.3 In addition to this evidence of a broadening understanding of the interrelated nature of different policy domains, second generation projects represent an increase in government accountability, which broadens the power base. This is the difference between King County’s Growth Management Benchmarks program, for example, and King County’s Annual Growth Report, which is a statistical abstract of growth measures that has been published by the county since 1983. Because the Benchmarks program is tied to the Countywide Planning Policies (King County Growth Management Planning Council 1994, 2005) and mandated by state

3

Ron Sims, King County Executive, interview 15 May 2002.

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legislation, it represents a new kind of accountability for King County. Project founder Cynthia Moffitt emphasizes: “that was really, really important to us – that we tie every indicator to a particular policy. We just didn’t pull them out of thin air. We chose the policy first because . . . everybody agreed on this, all the cities. This is the way we’re going to grow for the next 20 years.”4 Operating inside local government, the major effect of second generation indicator projects has been to increase government accountability to implement policies in ways that make a difference to measured indicator trends. PSRC created its Milestones reports in order to clarify connections one indicator at a time. Along similar lines, King County intends to begin publishing an outline of the indicator set side by side with the most relevant policies for each Benchmark indicator. The 2003 City of Seattle Comprehensive Plan indicator report makes policy implications clearer by citing specific plan goals and implementation tools in place that may affect each trend. These projects are vital information sources for policy analysts and citizen groups engaged in the policy process. Although not all government employees are convinced of the utility of this information and the reports are underutilized by citizen groups as well, to Moffitt, the work remains valuable. Even if this information is not immediately applied in policy development, its continued tracking and reporting preserves a new opportunity to measure progress against performance for as far back as the data allow: “so as long as we continue to look at the trends . . . that’s really valuable information that we’ve never put together before.”5 Third Generation Indicator Projects Seattle’s third generation indicator projects have used sophisticated and widereaching collaborative public participation processes in project design, based on and expanded from that of S2. Both projects contracted with S2 to design the indicator selection process and both demonstrate significant learning and extending the collaborative design used by S2. They also showed mutual respect between expert and nonexpert forms of knowledge by including qualitative information gathered from underrepresented groups. Taking the prime example, much of the information gathered from underrepresented groups had never before been collected and was of critical importance to representing trends for the entire community. The Communities Count process demonstrates significant learning from and surpassing S2 about how to conduct a broad public participation process from a base within government. The Communities Count process involved more people from a larger spatial area than did S2, and collected more primary data, improving the local relevance of the information and enlarging the body of support for the project. Even though many of S2’s indicators did in fact apply beyond city limits, the perception of the project, owing to its name and the extent of its public participation and distribution processes, was restricted to within the City of Seattle. Communities Count’s county-wide focus made broader support for this project possible from

4

Cynthia Moffitt, King County Policy Analyst, interview 19 March 2002.

5

See footnote no. 4.

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funders, King County and local governments outside Seattle, and underserved citizens. Project manager Sandy Ciske explains that the participatory process followed by Communities Count made primary data collection necessary: “as government, when you ask people what matters, they come up with a lot of things that aren’t available in secondary data.” Measures of social and community health are scarcely available; they are: “the kind of thing that has been least likely to be captured in any formalized data collection that is institutionalized by government or private”6 agencies. Executive Sims noted the Communities Count report’s value for forecasting problems that may be lurking behind the level of widespread public awareness and policy action. For example, Sims said: “We don’t want to say that we’re saving the fish and watch housing affordability become increasingly more difficult.”7 Nea Carroll, founding member of S2 who assisted Communities Count on behalf of S2, noted the breadth with which the Communities Count steering group defined public health: “[the process] did I think open up their thinking to a more whole-system approach to health. I think it’s done a lot of whole systems consciousness-raising.”8 The large public involvement process that determined the indicator set helped to incorporate some controversial measures into Communities Count. An important example of this is the result from the telephone survey that income inequality was a major determinant of social and health inequalities. Although members of the steering group were wary of including a measure like this that would risk alienating “people in this community that have money,” they could not refute that this was an important measure that needed to be included because it was important to the people whom the project intended to serve. These arguments caused a shake-down within the steering group in which the members most strenuously opposed to these community-driven indicator decisions resigned and the remaining group maintained this focus.9 To Ciske, the ability of participants to determine the content of the project altered the nature of the project from one oriented toward politics internal to government agencies and their allies toward a project with a populist agenda. Similar to the case with Communities Count, the process design for the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) indicators project was based on that of S2. DoIT used S2’s managerial assistance and improved on the S2 process by collecting more primary data and including a series of telephone surveys. The process has been subject to citizen guidance and review at every stage. The indicator selection process began with a 1-day public forum in February 2000, entitled “Technology and the Community: What Should a Healthy Future Look Like?” The event drew 135 participants from across the city’s neighborhood groups, social service providers, business people, local politicians, representatives of educational and recreational institutions, and activists. At this forum, important value categories were set, along with initial possibilities for indicators within those categories. Next, DoIT selected a technical advisory committee of 20–25 experts in data collection and 6 Sandy Ciske, King County Division of Epidemiology, Planning and Evaluation Program Analyst, interview 10 January 2002. 7

See footnote no. 3.

8

Nea Carroll, S2 Co-founder and consultant to Communities Count, interview 18 April 2002.

9

Lee Hatcher, S2 former Director and consultant to Communities Count, interview 20 June 2002.

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analysis as well as the various fields of education, technology, business and community development. This advisory committee filled remaining topical gaps in public forum results by narrowing the field to 60 potential indicators. Certain participants were recontacted via email as the work progressed to further narrow the indicator set. The draft indicators and values were distributed to all public forum participants, who were asked to submit comments back to the technical advisory group. The draft was revised and sent out for another iteration of comments and revision, resulting in the final indicator set. Four supplementary reports to the final indicator report were published, covering specific survey results, and a new residential technology survey was undertaken in 2004. These surveys provided a way to include more people in the public process, like small business leaders, small neighborhood groups, and new immigrants. Each report presented results of a telephone survey conducted with different interest groups regarding the group’s access to and use of information technology. Alongside this process, a smaller working group consisting of members of the Citizen’s Community Technology Advisory Board met to discuss higher-level issues, such as how to make the project’s scope manageable. Project director David Keyes reported that the project “was much bigger than I certainly ever thought it was going to be and there was a lot more interest as well.” This result speaks once again to the interest of citizens in value-setting and “big picture” processes, making the broad “technology-healthy community” approach of the DoIT indicator project more attractive to citizens than predicted by government employees.10 Both third generation projects, through their choice of S2 for project management and support and through other steps to conceive the project in broad sustainability terms, represent a willingness on the part of project leaders to embrace the breadth and holistic framework represented by sustainability. This is a step forward from traditional approaches to the management of social, health and information technology programs. Fourth Generation Indicator Projects Fourth generation projects departed from third generation-style collaboration, designing a dissemination model in which the target audience is more focused and the collaboration more selective. Among fourth generation projects, the City Office of Sustainability and Environment Environmental Action Agenda indicators assume a new level of power and influence by setting targets for each indicator that specific city departments have responsibility for reaching. The NEW project has taken power-sharing in a different direction, developing strategies to explicitly move the project into the hands and minds of decision-makers and to position the organization for consultation on policy alternatives. As opposed to engaging in a participatory, community-based process to select the indicator set, NEW followed a more expert-based process. The model NEW aspired to was that of the Doomsday Clock, a project to measure society’s political

10

David Keyes, City of Seattle DoIT Indicators Project Director, interview 25 July 2002.

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proximity to nuclear holocaust using the metaphor of a clock.11 This project appealed to NEW because it was a memorable and effective communications device that was appealing enough to the media to get regular coverage: “It was a communications device for getting lots of people to stop what they’re doing and think for a moment about nuclear holocaust and it was extraordinarily effective.”12 After assembling approximately 1,000 different indicators from a range of indicator reports worldwide and 30 reports within the bioregion, research director Clark Williams-Derry and other NEW staff set about determining which indicators would work best. In contrast with the approach of second generation projects, the intent was to find a very small number of indicators with the maximum power in revealing trends across the broadest possible policy spectrum. The selection process involved consultation with experts in specific fields related to each selected indicator topic. Among the questions asked of indicators was whether each was intuitively compelling and adequately comprehensible for scientists and journalists alike. This question was not asked for the broader public and non-experts were not invited to comment.13 NEW’s expert-based approach to indicator selection was taken for practical reasons of time and money constraints and to limit the number of indicators in the final set. The organization could not afford the time and resources required to conduct an effective community process at the bioregional scale. Also, the organization did not consider a broad-based community process capable of narrowing the indicator set down to a very small number. More indicative power from a smaller set of measures was traded against the other option of involving more people and values in indicator selection. NEW Executive Director Alan Durning made this trade-off explicitly to avoid S2’s experience of failing to provide a single, consistent, compelling story in its indicator reports: Many of the indicator projects [using Sustainable Seattle as a prototype] came up with a grab bag of different things that told no single compelling story. They had no consistent point of view because everyone was at the table creating them. . . they operated by consensus and they had so many different views represented that they never could get to a smaller list for a single story. It’s like trying to make a feature film through a community involvement process or write a novel by a committee – it doesn’t work. So you end up with Sustainable Seattle’s 40 indicators . . . and that approach is fantastic as a data set for professionals but if you’re trying to move an agenda with major media outlets who are pressed for time and want to know what’s going on, then . . .14 Specifying a target audience also enabled NEW to develop an indicator project that communicates directly to the “felt-need” of the audience. In other words, NEW recognized that their project must “tell [targeted readers] something they care about” 11

The Doomsday Clock was developed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 and regularly calculates and reports symbolically the global level nuclear danger http://www.thebulletin.org/doomsday_ clock/.

12

Alan Durning, Executive Director Northwest Environment Watch, interview 11 July 2003.

13

Clark Williams-Derry, Research Director Northwest Environment Watch, interview 25 March 2003.

14

See footnote no. 12.

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and “be somehow connected to action.” NEW recognized that policy makers, upon reading an indicator, immediately want to know how the indicator can be applied to a policy context in order to maximize the performance of that policy-maker’s office. Fourth generation indicator projects are working harder for name recognition, having learned from past generations that simply providing better information is only half the battle to using the information to improve the quality of policy debate. To ensure that they meet these goals, NEW has used a “consumer product marketing model” in project development. Project staff consist equally of people with indicator expertise and those with marketing and communications expertise. The marketing model features briefings on the project, fundraising events, and focus groups with business management consultants and separate groups of conservative and liberal consumers. In addition, NEW completed two rounds of in-depth interviews with opinion leaders. The first round tested proposed messages and measures. The second round was conducted for NEW by other opinion leaders already committed to the project. NEW hopes to help leaders connect indicators and policies, to become “the region’s policy eyes” in this respect: “we’re trying to position ourselves as an organization that has useful and interesting ideas to give to leaders and the media about not just environmental things but also social things as well.”15 The Environmental Action Agenda, Puget Sound Milestones, and the Governor’s Sustainability Panel projects share with the NEW project a renewed emphasis on design and presentation to make the indicator reports attractive and accessible to the public and opinion leaders. This was key to the S2 project as well, but received less attention during second and third generation projects that were more concerned with pre-report public access to inform the selection process. OSE (2003) has limited the main themes of its Environmental Action Agenda to three, with a total of only 16 indicators, and has emphasized communications and outreach strategies. Puget Sound Milestones has gone further by reporting on only one indicator at a time, once or twice yearly. Limiting the number of indicators and improving their presentation improves the post-report-production accessibility of the indicator reports. An additional consideration of linkages apparent among fourth generation indicator project leaders is the notion of improving linkages between the indicator projects themselves without duplicating effort. In the case of the statewide sustainability indicators tasked to the Governor’s Panel, the route to nonduplication was the inclusion of NEW and S2 leaders and the initial focus on combining and repackaging indicators already reported in individual state departments in a more accessible format. The Governor’s Panel indicator work group hoped to seek synergies with other indicator initiatives, including partnership via an envisioned state sustainability innovations institute. The Governor’s Panel contained a communications work group, with a goal of distributing the report to 100 key decision-makers in the state, in addition to holding as many one-on-one meetings as possible and to speak to community groups in order to create a groundswell of public interest or political pressure. This communications plan included distribution to groups not normally associated with sustainability, such

15

See footnote no. 13.

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as the League of Women Voters, in hopes that these groups might recognize the report’s agenda as one that also serves group interests.16 The Cascadia Scorecard communications strategy began with selection of a target audience of 40 major media outlets in the Cascadia bioregion, along with the identification of a set of opinion leaders, or “people whose ideas and words galvanize views” in the region. Williams-Derry refers to the process of selecting the audience as “a power-mapping exercise.”17 Through these two target audiences, NEW hopes to reach the newspapers read by a wide array of citizens and consumers and the minds of the region’s most influential thinkers. This focused outreach method ensures that NEW is ‘preaching’ to those in positions to make change who are not already in the ‘choir’ and so garnering new points of power and influence for furthering their sustainability work. In conjunction with other work, NEW also hopes to be able to tie the indicator results to policy research suggesting specific ‘catalytic reforms’ for worsening indicator trends. ‘Catalytic reforms’ is a term crafted by NEW to refer to “high-leverage changes to policy and practice that could redirect business as usual to more sustainable ends.”18 With opinion leadership status to ensure that leaders turn to the organization for information on major policy trends, and with research efforts to be in a position to make suggestions about policy alternatives, NEW stands to gain considerable power as an organization and for the information that it collects and publishes.

The Differential Appeal of Seattle Area Indicator Project Models Community indicator projects in the Seattle area have taken off from the original innovation of S2 within different government bodies as well as in another nongovernment group, demonstrating generational iterations of features related to organizing the project, selecting the indicators, and putting the indicators to use. This situation, and the direct and indirect ties from S2 to these newer indicator projects, constitute the local legacy of S2. In order to determine how this situation has arisen, we need to investigate reasons for the spread of these various indicator projects throughout Seattle. This section examines the appeal held by indicator projects for different groups of policy actors and indicator users active in the Seattle area: opinion and government leaders, government employees, the public, civil society and media, and private business. Examining the appeal and drawbacks of indicator projects (Table 3), and the Sustainable Seattle model in particular, to each of these key groups also reveals potential limits to the further diffusion of indicator-based approaches to local quality of life and sustainability policy.

16

Lynn Helbrecht, Department of Ecology, interviews 12 April 2002 and 19 June 2003.

17

See footnote no. 13.

18

Quotation excerpted from the organization’s website at: www.northwestwatch.org/topics/measuring. html. Examples of catalytic reforms include compact urban development, pay-by-the-mile auto insurance, and tax shifting.

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Table 3 The appeal and drawbacks of indicator projects from different policy perspectives Indicators user group

Appeal

Drawbacks

Opinion and government leaders

Lend well to the validation of a wide variety of agendas Encourage intergovernmental cooperation Can reveal and compel action on negative trends Can showcase positive trends for building prestige and recognition Government projects are tied into policy process with good chance for impact Allow agencies to interact with purpose

Different interpretations of the same data can stymie debate Support is often insufficient for long-term project funding

Government employees

Public/civil society/media

Businesses

Support long-term visioning and planning Can present a sense of urgency to motivate media and public pressure for change Data equally compelling to scientists and journalists Can powerfully challenge common assumptions about trends e. g. GDP Compel government accountability Lend themselves well to marketing and fundraising efforts

Government projects do not command the same legitimacy as NGO-created May represent simple repackaging of existing efforts rather than new programs May represent new layer of bureaucratic evaluation rather than resources for more services Lack of awareness among the public due to insufficient marketing and publicity Actual measures often do not adequately excite readers or reveal trends Responsibility for action on trends and alternatives is often unclear

Appeal to Opinion and Government Leaders For opinion leaders and elected officials in the Seattle area, indicator projects have a distinct appeal. They provide data that can legitimize and ‘validate’ a wide variety of previously-held positions, improving the quality of policy debate. S2 operated with the intent of maintaining political neutrality and succeeded in gaining credibility as a group whose mission was primarily fact-finding for the public benefit. This neutrality made the group’s efforts attractive to government agencies. King County Executive Sims describes S2 as a politically-neutral ‘validator’: Sustainable Seattle is credible, which helps a lot. It is not seen as being captive by any body. You know: here are the reports, can you refute them? And the reports measure what people see, feel, hear, or are thinking about. So . . . it was natural. And you need validation. When government puts out a report, people just kind of think it’s our self-interest. When you have a nonprofit that is a reputable nonprofit issuing the report, it gets credence with the press and with the citizens in the area. So it was a merger of our mutual interests: our desire to have a sustainable community, our desire to have a comprehensive plan for the region. We wanted it

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to work, we wanted people to feel comfortable with our strategies, and so Sustainable Seattle was a validator. That’s what that really was.19 S2’s involvement with the King County Benchmarks project leant this latter project credibility and neutrality, resulting in a product that interested conservative and liberal politicians alike. Moffitt reflected on one of the most positive outcomes of the Benchmark program as finally finding “a way in which to track things that was nonpartisan.” She recalled the satisfaction of releasing the initial report to support across the local political spectrum: “it was so cool to see the most . . . conservative republican council member from King County and then very liberal democrat . . . who was chair of the Seattle City Hall, jumping up and down when this report came out.” The report did not guarantee consensus across ideological divides on how to manage growth and development in the region, but it provided a set of information based on which “at least we could start the conversation.”20 For Communities Count, ‘starting the conversation’ between city and county governments about social and health issues has been a major positive outcome of the project. Although King County has clearly taken the lead on Communities Count, Seattle Mayor Nickels was a supporter of the project in his previous post as county council member. As chair of the county council’s Human Services Committee, Nickels organized a series of regional forums around several of the 2000 report’s key topics, inviting members of the steering group to participate.21 At the 2002 release event, Nickels spoke in support of the project by recalling his use of the report’s data for the public budget hearings (King County News Release 2002). This marked a change from the 2000 report release, which Sims also attended but which Seattle’s then-Mayor Schell did not. Mayor Nickels has shown support for several of the city’s indicator projects. This is in spite of Nickels’ reputation as a much more conservative mayor than the city has had in past decades (Young and McOmber 2003; Brunner 2003). DoIT’s first full indicator report was released at a public event in conjunction with the announcement of the year’s recipients of technology matching fund grants. Mayor Nickels, new to office since the project’s initiation, wrote a letter of introduction to the report and spoke at the launch citing data from the report, a good initial sign of support. Keyes later received unsolicited comments that policy makers recognize “the information that we’re giving here is really valuable for [the mayor] and for other departments in terms of planning, programming and delivering city services effectively.”22 NEW’s experience shows that the interest of opinion leaders in indicator projects is growing. NEW gauges the appeal of its projects to opinion leaders by the response to a series of specially-targeted update e-mails the organization has been sending out to opinion leaders. These e-mail updates have had a 25% response rate, although

19

See footnote no. 3.

20

See footnote no. 4.

21

See footnote no. 6.

22

See footnote no. 10.

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they contain no specific request for feedback. Most responses are brief accolades for the work and expressions of interest in hearing more about the project.23 The inclusion of both negative and positive trends in indicator projects is important to bring needed attention to conditions that are deteriorating. The positive trends highlighted in indicator reports, on the other hand, provide leaders with ‘bragging rights’ that can lend pride and public recognition to places and catalyze projects that build on existing strengths. At the Earth Day 2002 release of the Environmental Action Agenda, for example, Mayor Nickels highlighted the importance of continuing efforts toward innovation in pollution reduction, irrigation systems, pesticide and paper use reduction, environmental justice and other issues, even given the city’s present economic challenges: “We’re already recognized nationally and internationally as a leader in environmental stewardship . . . This community has a proud history of stepping up to environmental challenges, and turning them into opportunities. This agenda builds on those accomplishments, and keeps us moving forward” (Nickels 2002). As another case in point, the Governor’s Sustainability Panel was motivated by Governor Locke’s need to prepare a speech for acceptance of a state sustainability award from the Resource Renewal Institute. Indicator projects also carry specific drawbacks for leaders. From a perspective of participatory democracy, contributing indicators to policy debate is only useful if the data somehow improve the democratic quality of the debate, whether by including more people, including people more productively, or advancing the debate toward consensus. In Seattle, where indicator data have been used with equal fervor by both sides of a policy debate without increasing the level or quality of understanding between people, this potential value is lost. The Comprehensive Plan indicator project has faced such challenges, with its results leading different readers to opposite conclusions. In one policy debate over development proposals for the South Lake Union neighborhood, council members and citizen groups opposing growth in the neighborhood used the 2003 report’s growth indicators to argue that city resources should be directed to other neighborhoods. Other council members and developers who support growth in South Lake Union used the same data to argue that the neighborhood’s growth supports the mayor’s proposed further investment in urban development there. Lish Whitson, the planner in charge of the Comprehensive Plan indicator project, admits that neither side of the debate has an exclusive claim to the ‘truth’ of the matter: “They are both legitimate decisions from the same data.” In this case, the indicators do not seem to help move the debate beyond political deadlock. When asked which alternative his office supported, Whitson responded that the data play no role in his department’s position: “we work for the mayor’s office and his decision is that he wants to put attention into focusing more growth [in South Lake Union].”24 A further limitation to the appeal of indicator projects to leaders is that support tends to fall short of full financial backing over the long term. To fund the Benchmarks program, for example, Moffitt explains: “I literally had to go to the

23 24

See footnote no. 12.

Lish Whitson, Land Use Planner, Department of Design, Construction and Land Use, interview 25 June 2003.

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State. And the State gave me a grant because they thought this was so important.”25 The program proved impressive, earning a State award and motivating similar projects in other counties, based on advice from Moffitt. Moffitt has since passed the Benchmarks program on to a colleague who dedicates approximately one-quarter of a full-time position to updating the annual reports. With cuts to programs throughout King County, the Benchmarks program remains vulnerable to funding and staff cuts. Communities Count, for another example, has received significant in-kind support from the city and county. This support has come in particular from City Council member Richard Conlin who has emphasized the relevance and importance of Communities Count to the Growth Management Policy Council. In 2000, the GMPC passed an unfunded resolution recognizing the utility of Communities Count and calling for the report to be updated and submitted to the GMPC every two years (King County GMPC 2000). Most of King County’s support for Communities Count is in the form of time and expertise from employees who manage the project. The County Executive’s expressed wishes for the Communities Count report to be produced annually rather than biannually ring hollow in the ears of the steering group, as an unfunded mandate. The project’s continuance depends on the commitment of its steering group and the success of external funding searches. Ciske has attributed the existence of an updated report to “the sheer will and support of the people involved around the table and our willingness to . . . put in the work to find the funds.”26 Moreover, the Communities Count group’s success in leveraging funding from a variety of sources has made it the envy of other projects. This suggests an additional appeal of indicator projects from a programmatic perspective: improving the ability of government agencies to seek and leverage funding and to explore new partnership funding mechanisms. Appeal to Government Employees Indicator projects housed within government and staffed by government employees demonstrated appeal and drawbacks. These projects include those in second and third generations as well as the OSE Environmental Action Agenda. The most oftencited value is their institutionalization within the policy process, improving their chances of direct impact on policy decisions. In the case of Seattle and King County projects, another appeal is that projects have contributed to interactions among departments, improving interdepartmental communication as well as understanding of the interrelated purposes of their work. OSE Director and S2 co-founder Steve Nicholas believes that the major local impact of S2 resides primarily in local government: “the local government sector is the sector in which the ideas, the concepts, the philosophy, the mindset if you will, that S2 was and still is trying to promote . . . is the sector in which it’s been most successful, by far.” This is reflected, to Nicholas, in the name recognition that S2 commands still among city employees compared to the number of citizens that

25

See footnote no. 4.

26

See footnote no. 6.

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recognize the name; the outcome amounts to a “conceptual or impressionistic . . . imprint on city government.”27 Somewhat different is the impression held by S2 cofounder Alan AtKisson that S2’s legitimacy came as the result of a “ping-pong effect” in which recognition from other nongovernment groups and government groups outside the city led to recognition inside the city and vice versa.28 Even with strong support from elected leaders, acceptance of the value of indicator reports within the rank and file of Seattle and King County government has been neither easy nor obvious. In fact, government employees within Seattle and King County are indicator projects’ harshest critics. Their critiques of the contribution of indicator efforts stem from questions about the projects’ legitimacy and ability to take a critical stance and about the effectiveness of allocating scarce resources to indicator projects. To some employees of Seattle and King County government, indicator projects are mere repackaging of efforts already underway, rather than new approaches to understanding and approaching problems. Projects are seen by some to provide more elaborate ways to evaluate employees’ shortcomings at the cost of providing more resources to improve service delivery and work toward sustainable development. In the late 1990s, while encouraging the use of King County Benchmarks within government, Moffitt encountered strong resistance. Her initial intent was for all county departments to develop and monitor individual indicators selected from the Benchmarks report. She found that this was an impossible task: “the cultural change, acceptance of indicators just wasn’t there.”29 Departmental staff were concerned that the focus on indicators would take away from their own objectives and worried about this new threat to their accustomed way of being evaluated in their jobs. Speaking about this experience, Moffitt said: . . . it’s very interesting that to me, working within government, a lot of people don’t see the value of indicators . . . It’s just a cultural change that we have to make, that we haven’t made . . . A lot of people think: ‘Well, if I’m just doing a good job, what does it matter whether we track it and give it an A,B,C?.’ . . so they don’t use this work.30 This statement suggests that more effort is required to convince government employees of the utility of indicators. In 2002, Moffitt began to see glimmers of change in this direction. Moffitt hopes that more cities in King County will follow the lead of Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond, in developing their own growth management indicator programs, and welcomes the “friendly rivalry” she sees developing between those cities that are developing them. DoIT has seen its indicator project encourage collaborative work with King County and the Seattle Human Services Department on improving the access of nonprofits to technology and work with the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods to organize neighborhood leadership training sessions in response to DoIT survey results. In implementing the 27

Steve Nicholas, S2 Co-founder and Director, OSE, interview 20 March 2002.

28

Alan AtKisson, S2 Co-founder, interview 25 November 2003.

29

See footnote no. 4.

30

See footnote no. 4.

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OSE Environmental Action Agenda, as well, Nicholas aims to stimulate increasing cultural acceptance of the value of indicators by working with other city departments to help them develop indicator sets for which they will be individually responsible. Even with these efforts, Nicholas has little hope that the OSE indicator set could become as compelling as that of S2, because it lacks the same grassroots base: “[S2’s indicators] were developed in a much more participatory way. Ours are mostly internally-generated.” Lynn Helbrecht, one of the Governor’s Sustainable Washington Panel facilitators, believes that a partnership with a nonprofit organization for the state indicator set is essential for legitimacy: “For an agency to do indicators that reflect its own performance on its own responsibilities is a question of vested interest. It isn’t that we knowingly twist the numbers . . . but still, I think for such a program to be legitimate, it really needs to be a partnership with a non-profit.”31 Appeal to the Public, Civil Society, Media and Business Leaders To those indicator report users who are not in government, and to nongovernment civil society groups contributing to indicator project work, such as the Cascadia Scorecard and the Governor’s Sustainability Panel indicator project, the reports again have distinct appeal and drawbacks. Indicator projects can appeal to the public because the data tend to support visioning and long-term planning processes, which seldom are given adequate attention by governments more interested in short-term political objectives. The Governor’s Panel work group on sustainability indicators is a case in point. At a quarterly public meeting held in Bellingham in June 2003, panelists were impressed by the level of engagement and interest among members of the public in attendance. Panelists had expected the public to raise concerns about the high ambitions and lofty vision of the Governor’s Sustainability Report. Instead, members of the public spoke up about the panel’s blind spots with regard to unmentioned critical sustainability issues such as agriculture. Members of the public were motivated by the opportunity to think in terms of vision for the long term, what Helbrecht saw as the key value of the report: “I think what it does is it sets up that vision, a long-range vision for a 30-year period. And that’s so rare in government, where thinking is more often oriented around short-term budgets. The most important thing is to back up and think about the future we want and people are motivated by that.”32 Because projects can reveal trends in need of urgent attention, they are attractive to the media as a potential source of sensational stories, and to the public, who may also seize evidence of an urgent trend to put public pressure on policy makers. NEW released initial data on sprawl in major news outlets in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, reaching 10 million readers, which Durning called “by far the most successful outreach campaign we’ve ever done.”33 NEW was again overwhelmed by the media response to its initial data on gasoline consumption and economic security,

31

See footnote no. 16.

32

See footnote no. 16.

33

See footnote no. 12.

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which the organization expected would be less appealing than the sprawl indicator. Measured trends can be instrumental in motivating policy change toward sustainability by adding a sense of urgency to conditions. Businesses find the capacity of indicator projects to define and clarify the implementation of public policies appealing in the way they hold governments accountable for stated policy intent. Somewhat surprisingly for Moffitt, support for the King County benchmarks program has been quicker to come from the private sector housing development industry than it has from local government. Many of those in the industry were wary that growth management legislation would allow government officials to stymie growth altogether or to direct growth arbitrarily toward their pet projects. Rather than risk this, the private sector was one of the main bodies to demand indicators to ensure the tracking of growth and development and to ensure that permitting is unbiased and nonpartisan within the urban growth area.34 Indicator projects have the potential to report data in ways that are equally compelling to scientists who understand what was done to compile the data and journalists and members of the public who understand a compelling story. Both the creation and the use of indicator projects by the public and civil society groups have the potential to challenge commonly-held beliefs with powerful, data-driven arguments. In this context, one of Durning’s main goals for the NEW Cascadia Scorecard project has been to present sufficient data and analyses to severely undermine the legitimacy of reports on Gross Domestic Product. The NEW project intends to shake up people’s conception of what is valuable in the Cascadia bioregion sufficiently that, by the end of five years, “people chuckle or raise their eyebrows when they hear the report of GDP growth, and say: ‘Oh, that’s quaint, they’re still reporting that?’”35 Moreover, indicators often lend themselves to use by businesses and nonprofit groups for marketing and grant development. For example, the Citizens’ Communication Technology Advisory Board now uses the DoIT indicator report for its intended purpose: to set priorities for disbursement of technology matching funds according to neighborhood need. Building on publicity through city documents and independent conference presentations, the DoIT work has also attracted the attention of a nongovernment group in Maine and a civil society network called the Global Cities Dialogue.36 In addition, several local organizations and firms have been able to use report data to further specific goals. The Seattle Community Technology Alliance has begun to use the report to assess and better direct its outreach efforts 34 The Benchmarks program and the Growth Management Act as a whole have faced their greatest obstacle from a coalition of churches and schools led by he Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, arguing that size limits on new developments outside the urban growth boundary is religious discrimination (Dudley 2000). King County weathered this obstacle by putting a restatement of its commitment to religious freedom on the November 2001 ballot, which passed easily, along with a development moratorium pending further study (Pryne 2001). 35

See footnote no. 12.

The international Global Cities Dialogue is “a worldwide network of cities . . . interested in creating an information society free of digital divide and based on sustainable development.” The Global Cities Dialogue is attempting to begin an international conversation about the possibility of developing information technology indicators for cities worldwide. Information can be found on the organization’s website: http://www.globalcitiesdialogue.org/.

36

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and to improve funding proposals. A joint ‘ethno-med’ project of Haborview Hospital and the University of Washington has found the report’s data on access to the internet among immigrants and non-English speakers useful for a grant proposal. The Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center has used data on Internet access among populations most susceptible to breast cancer in order to guide its efforts in an online breast cancer prevention strategy. Finally, the internet software company Real Networks and a local commercial television station have used the report’s data on people’s broadband internet access across the city to focus marketing strategies.37 On the other hand, the appeal of indicators to the public has been lacking in Seattle since the majority of Seattle residents remained incognizant of the projects. Moffitt’s goal for the Benchmarks program was for it to be used extensively by citizens and community groups as well as different departments within government. While some private local high schools have used the reports, Moffitt faults her limited marketing budget for the scant usage to date: “it’s just a tremendous amount of staffing and time to get people really engaged and reading [the reports] and evaluating them.” Moffitt laments the lack of awareness of the program among the general public: “people in the know, know this is really important, but the general public doesn’t know it at all. The general public doesn’t even know we have an Urban Growth Boundary line.”38 This is a problem that can be remedied, at least in part, by greater attempts at marketing and publicizing indicator reports, as is happening already in the fourth generation reports. Another aspect of the lack of public awareness of indicator projects lies in the selection of the indicators themselves. The problem of finding useful, trackable, and compelling measures for every dimension of an indicator report has plagued every indicator project in the region. There is an art and science to indicator selection and refinement; projects like the Cascadia Scorecard hope to move this development forward. Finally, at the same time as reporting on indicators can galvanize citizens and civil society groups to demand policy change, the proper loci for directing public outrage and the best policy alternatives are often unclear. Parties responsible for changing negative trends and what policies and behaviours will change them are not always even knowable.

Conclusion This article has assessed the local legacy of Sustainable Seattle’s indicator project through examining the development of indicator projects that followed S2’s early efforts with some relationship to S2. S2 has spurred ahead and helped to shape local indicator projects in the Seattle area, through direct contracted support in some cases, advisory consultation in others, and simply as a local point of reference for others. This result belies the common belief among those closest to S2 that the project’s effects have not been felt in the project’s home region.

37

See footnote no. 10.

38

See footnote no. 4.

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The experience of Seattle shows that indicator projects can be effective tools to encourage attention to community quality-of-life issues because they have wide appeal to different policy actors. Second generation projects demonstrate the value of tying indicator projects, situated within government, directly to plans and policy. Third generation projects have made inroads into extensive community engagement processes and have brought nontraditional indicators from public health and information technology fields into consideration. Fourth generation projects in particular demonstrate the nonpartisan appeal of indicators outside local government amongst the public and business leaders. Northwest Environment Watch and the Governor’s Panel have experienced broad and better-than-expected support from the public, demonstrating that cultural shift toward greater acceptance of indicators may be occurring. Acceptance and institutionalization is a type of policy effect with potential benefits for the continuance and effectiveness of a set of ideas such as those that motivate community indicator projects. Indicator projects demonstrate appeal to a wide range of policy actor groups, from elected leaders in need of validation to citizens interested in engaging more effectively in policy debate to businesses seeking better information about public preferences and conditions for marketing and development. Indicator projects also have drawbacks for particular policy actor groups, and notably in the case of Seattle, among local government employees, on whom a great deal of the work of producing and using indicator projects is put. An additional danger is that part of the wide appeal of indicator projects is that their results can be used to defend diametrically opposed views. Careful attention should be paid in the future to the impact of indicator projects on different policy actor groups and on the quality of local debate on status and trends in quality of life. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the research that led to this article and the comments provided by the journal’s reviewers.

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