Environment & Local Government
A visual breakdown of the barriers to civic engagement
OBJECTIVE
Design a visualization utilizing quantitative data accumulated from one year of interviews focused on understanding the best way to address environmental concerns in any given community. This research revealed two key insights:
1. Citizens have the power to make or break government policy.
2. The most power individuals have for influencing environmental policy is on the local level.
The research then shifted focus to how to increase citizen engagement with local government, and further empower citizens to address their concerns.
“Citizens have substantial power to influence what government does on the local level.”
“Some people think you can’t make a difference, but local government is a place you can. ”
The data
“I have a predetermined notion that the political machine is pretty big and powerful and that my input is just not going to be that big of a deal.”
This chart was built based on data from 440 interview insights. Interviews were conducted with individuals across the United States to understand their personal experience addressing environmental concerns in their communities.
The interviewees included everyday citizens with diverse political affiliations, ideological backgrounds, and gender identities. We also conducted interviews with a diverse group of subject matter experts. This included policy experts, elected officials, political candidates, political and civic educators, and environmental advocacy organizations.
The raw data was sorted into a hierarchal dataset, falling first under an opportunity or barrier category, then into more specific themes, such as communication, role of individual, role of government, and local issues. The number of insights within each category were then calculated as a percentage of the total dataset and the diagram was designed with each category size proportionate to its percentage of frequency within the data.
“I feel helpless and hopeless even when I make small changes. I worry about the amount of actual wide-scale impact.”
Interviewee Quotes
By clicking on a specific subcategory, the viewer can see direct quotes from our interviews that supported the category.
Key Learnings
“Successfully reaching the deep emissions reduction goals called for by scientists will require action at all levels of society. Local governments are uniquely situated to implement measures at the community level that impact everyone’s ability to reduce their emissions in cost-effective ways.”
1. FEAR
Citizens across the country feel overwhelmed, afraid, and lost in the face of the catastrophe of climate change. Because the focus on climate change and sustainability comes from a global perspective, we learned individuals are paralyzed by the belief that their individual actions don’t matter. Across the country, individuals are caught in the tension of wanting to make an impact, yet not sure where or how.
2. CITIZEN POWER
We learned repeatedly of the power and impact individual citizens have within local government. Local elected officials are more likely to implement policies, processes, and projects that emerge from a collective community voice. Local politicians lean heavily on their community’s priorities to set their campaign strategy and subsequent priorities within office. In essence, citizens have a direct line into the heart of local government, helping set priorities and initiatives that have a tangible impact on their communities.
3. LOCAL KNOWLEDGE
Despite this reality, citizens have very little knowledge of how, when, or where to get involved. Across all levels, from federal to local, government is complex, often inefficient, and inconvenient. Civic engagement requires someone to have the time, variety of skills, and unlimited drive to do so successfully. This means, despite the potential, citizens rarely actualize their power.
The interactive data can be viewed in its entirety below