What I Learned At Democracy School, Day 1: How Communities Connect

“No one thinks about bridges until they’re closed,” Giovanni Zinn told the class at our opening session. No one except for the city’s Engineering Department staff, who work to keep nearly 60 bridges sturdy and functioning throughout New Haven so that residents can cross rivers and tunnels without a second thought.

The point of a bridge is to connect people, Zinn, the city engineer, explained during the first full session of Democracy School — a city initiative to educate residents about how local government works.

I signed up for the course with my colleague Maya McFadden to learn more about the details of how New Haven’s government works. This past Thursday evening, on night one, Zinn joined four other department heads and representatives offered a series of presentations over Zoom on ​“Quality Neighborhoods.”

Their talks revealed how much work goes into maintaining public space throughout the city — and how vital that public space is for a civic community.

Bridges give people access to employment, education, loved ones, and neighborhoods on the other side of a barrier, Zinn noted. 

Engineers dream up long-term goals for those bridges, like the widened pedestrian walkway on the newly repaired Grand Avenue Bridge, along with other visions for the city’s built environment, like a peanut-shaped traffic calming initiative soon to head to Westville and a climate resiliency plan for New Haven’s coastline.

The engineers also have to attend to the the day-to-day upkeep that city infrastructure requires, Zinn explained: fixing sidewalks, managing stormwater runoff, maintaining public buildings, reviewing development plans.

Something as simple as a sidewalk can ​“create more of a sense of community” on a block, or in a neighborhood, Zinn said. And that sense of community should be accessible to everyone — including disabled residents, pedestrians pushing strollers, and the 30 percent of New Haveners without a car.

Other departments shared similar connections between their maintenance of the city’s physical environment and the social life, culture, and neighborhood identity that can spring from that landscape.

Jeff Pescosolido, who runs the recently-merged Parks and Public Works Department, spoke about his team’s work collecting waste, sweeping streets, and addressing potholes so that the city’s streets are sanitary and safe. Bill Carone, the department’s deputy director in charge of Parks and Trees, shared that the city has over 180 parks. The Trees division removes about 400 sickly or precarious trees each year, Carone said, and Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative replaces each one of them with a new tree suited for the environment: small trees below power lines, salt-tolerant trees near the ocean.

Maggie Fernandez, a neighborhood specialist covering the East Shore for the Livable City Initiative, spoke about her department’s anti-blight and housing code enforcement efforts. As a neighborhood specialist, Fernandez spends a lot of time coordinating between various departments to ensure that private, vacant, and city-owned properties remain welcoming, safe, and in good condition.

Finally, City Librarian John Jessens spoke about the New Haven Free Public Library system — which has come to serve not only as a book repository, but as a gathering space and resource hub for all members of the public to use.

While the 20 or so New Haveners who signed up for Democracy School 2022 represent nearly every neighborhood in the city, we didn’t need to traverse a bridge, road, or crosswalk to convene for the lesson. We gathered as a grid of Zoom squares, each within our own homes, most with our cameras turned off. The online format of Democracy School mirrored many other public meetings since the start of the pandemic. 

The Zoom meeting came with some advantages. I could take periodic stretches, sip herbal tea, and scratch my cat’s ears while learning about the responsibilities of each presenting city department. I could pull up online maps of the city to help visualize where the city’s parks are located and where the obvious bridges are. I am sure that for parents of young kids, immunocompromised participants, or others who have difficulty leaving their homes from 6 to 8 p.m., the online format made Democracy School more accessible. In some ways, that’s how democracy should be: easy, convenient, and available to as many people as possible.

But throughout the meeting, especially as my fellow Democracy School students shared meaningful comments and questions about their own neighborhoods, I found myself wishing I could meet everyone in person. The temptations of texting and social media aside, even the most attentive version of myself has trouble feeling fully present on Zoom when my physical body is in my own room, far away from everyone else. The online format of the meeting made me appreciate the physical spaces that the city works so hard to maintain: sites of the chance encounters and shared experiences that make us feel invested in the city, and in each other, to begin with. As the officials who spoke on Thursday all suggested, public space is a necessary ingredient for civic life.

Stay tuned for more updates on Democracy School lessons as the program continues.