Mayor Dave Bing can learn from his mistakes. The first meeting in the Detroit Works planning process was anything but productive. Nearly four times as many people attended the meeting as were expected. Attendance continues to be strong.

By the third meeting on Saturday morning, September 18, some of the most glaring mistakes had been corrected. The Mayor was visible from the beginning and spoke about the process. Saying that he wanted to “clear the air, ” he explained that by his comment “I inherited a hellhole,” he meant the administrative structure and budget deficit, not the city. Rather than trying to break us up into small groups, the facilitators conducted larger town hall meeting formats, and there were folks roving with mikes so that citizens could be heard without shouting.

Because of these improvements, the Detroit Free Press judged the meetings “productive.” The Detroit News dubbed it a “gripe session.”

But, while the organizers have dealt with some of the mechanics of the meetings, they have yet to make the kind of change in their thinking required to create a meaningful collaborative process.

The consultants seem determined to focus their listening and learning phase on individual problems. They do not realize that there is widespread consensus about our problems. We do not need to articulate these in a collective setting.

However, there is no widespread consensus on what to do about what is wrong. Such a consensus can only come from a collective conversation about what values we wish our city to reflect. This kind of conversation cannot emerge from posing small questions of who, where, what and how.

Thus far, the forum organizers have shown no understanding of how to develop a collective conversation about values and vision. Instead, at Saturday’s meeting, the facilitator asked people to discuss what city services people need. In an effort to appear responsive, the facilitator noted that department heads were in the room and ready to answer any questions people had.

It should have surprised no one that the questions that followed were “How do I get lots mowed? Why does it take so long to get police to respond? What about vacant houses? How do we get street lights turned on?” Department heads gamely tried to answer, but beyond individual problems and phone numbers to call, little was gained from the conversation.

This was not the fault of the citizens who attended. It was the direct result of the structures created for these discussions. Opportunities for values-based conversation, like “How do we engage our children in rebuilding neighborhoods?” or “What is the difference between a citizen and a customer?” were passed over with no effort at expanding understanding.

Instead, citizens were asked to talk about the city in broad, abstract terms. There was no understanding that meaningful planning about neighborhoods has to be value-based, framed by the context of living neighborhoods bounded by physical space and shared history.

As long as the planning process is removed from real community-based discussions, it will only serve to frustrate and anger people, deepening the distrust in the city.

Neighborhood conversations on values and vision are not new. They have been done countless times in design charrettes held throughout the city. The community organizers who developed the CDAD plan provided a broad conceptualization for neighborhood design. More recently, the “Motown into Growtown” architects have engaged citizens in re-imagining the Woodward-7 Mile area.

Meaningful discussion about the future of the city has to be rooted in the work that is already going on to create a fabric for living neighborhoods. Without such a shared context, vision and vocabulary, public conversation is hollow.

As presently structured, these meetings are being reduced to reassurances that “our fingerprints,” “our input” and “our participation” are valued. But what matters are our values, our vision and our ideas for how we will live with our neighbors in a specific, shared and cherished place. What matters is who decides.

The Mayor needs to do a lot more than make superficial changes in crowd management to earn our trust.