Mike McCollum

Fascinating and thought provoking. Although it is hard to imagine our country throwing out its current system even with all its flaws in favor of a new system like this. I know that in California they use county civil grand juries which are citizens convened to act as an investigative body into local policies. Maybe there is some tradition for these juries in our current system that can be gradually built upon toward what you describe.

Thank you for this. I’m not sure how this is sustainable or capable of being replicated given this involved a huge national investment into a town that had been designated a European cultural capital. I like the idea of the future involving interconnected economically viable villages and towns (I think 60,000 is more like a town or small city), and perhaps this story is inspiring
because it involves a town branding itself with its local history and culture and perhaps that sort of micro branding is how towns stand out. And I agree with Orlando that the strategy can’t just be tourism, so I would be curious to learn how small towns can become competitive in manufacturing or making or providing specific services for export….maybe one idea is a town develops a particular craft and then hosts digital nomads or people who want to spend a season learning that craft. Mixing tourism with economic production.

Arnold Toynbee writes in one of his books about cities that the Athenians believed they needed slaves to do a lot of the farming and other work so that the citizens had the leisure time to participate in their democracy. This may have influenced some of the founding fathers in excusing slavery. So today of course technology allows us, without slaves, to live better than Jefferson in Monticello with slaves. But the flip side is society and government are so complex now and there seem to be more and more demands on our time and attention such that mass direct participation in the minutia of governance of our local town or neighborhoods seems like it would be infeasible. But there is something to be said about learning democracy by doing it, and people coming together to solve local problems and how that would make our broader democratic society more healthy. And so why can’t we do that if we theoretically have more time and leisure today than in Jeffersons’s time due to advances in technology?