Source: Humid Haney

How do you fix a broken city? One blogger I came across recently reports from ongoing meetings where concerned citizens discuss just that:

This conversation was the 3rd in a series whose attendance had grown from 4 to 8 to 16. The conversation was 2 hours or so long. We examined the current state of the city and region and looked seriously at how a city with so many broken and mismanaged institutions before Katrina can possibly address the mountain of responsibility with little help from government or outside forces. Namely, how do the people and civic institutions address the 4 main areas of importance: Education, Economics, Safety and Participation. In other cities the instruments and organizations exist to keep the government in check and responsive to the needs of the people. Their systems are self correcting and run reasonably well. But if all the systems in your city are broken or don't operate as they are intended before a catastrophe, how do you then "fix" things afterward? Do you start over from scratch or re-examine how to fix the mechanisms for running your city? What can one citizen do to help create this needed change?

He poses many more pertinent questions in this post. The list is a daunting one — so much to do and so little support from outside. Yet they push on.