Our thinking is a byproduct of the questions we ask. This is one of the reasons Steve Jobs was not a big fan of asking the customers what they wanted. Customers don’t know what they want, at least when it comes to something innovative. Something different.

I was in a public meeting last week that was representative of so many others I’ve experienced. It was a focus group, of sorts, with some youth. The team that was steering the community planning process rightly felt that this was a group of people they needed to chat with, not only because youth are not represented on the committee, but because the needs of younger residents are so poorly understood—and those needs are especially critical to the future of the city.

The meeting started out with the standard public policy questions planning professionals like to ask. What do you like about the city? What do you not like? If you could change one thing, what would it be? The answers were worse than worthless, and it was painful to watch non-policy people trying to answer questions that weren’t designed for them.

After a bit of pain, we got around to asking the kind of questions Steve Jobs would have asked. How did you get here today? (A: Walk or bike.) Is this how you get around in the winter when it’s twenty below zero? (A: Yes.) Do you feel safe walking? (A: No.) Do you feel safe biking? (A: No.)

These were valuable questions, not only because they provided great data, but they also made the people listening to the answers uncomfortable. Do you ride transit? (A: No.) Why not? (A: It takes longer to ride the dial-a-ride than to walk/bike.)

Time and again, the ones there to ask questions and listen tried to put things back into a policy box, to bring the conversation back on to comfortable ground. If you were to cut something from the budget to pay for a skate park, what would you cut? If we created a job training program at the college, would that help you get a better job? If we added more lighting to the street, would that make it safer to walk? The answers were the same type Steve Jobs would have received if he asked people what they wanted in the years before Apple invented the iPod: a better Walkman.

I was even guilty of this myself. I asked the youth in attendance if they thought we had enough parking, something I’m obsessed about. I got the answer Jobs would have predicted: a bunch of young people who don’t own cars and don’t drive informed me about how it’s not convenient to drive unless you can park near where you want to go, so we should build more parking.

I’m a planner and I’m a policy nerd. I had all the training in how to hold a public meeting and solicit feedback through SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) questions. I’ve been taught how to reach out to marginalized groups and make sure they too have a voice in the process. That is, so long as that voice fit into the paradigm of a planner and a policy nerd. Or so long as I could make it fit.

Modern Planner: What percentage of the city budget should we spend on parks?

Steve Jobs: Do you use the park?

Our planning efforts should absolutely be guided by the experiences of real people. But their actions are the data we should be collecting, not their stated preferences. To do the latter is to get comfortable trying to build a better Walkman. We should be designing the city equivalent of the iPod: something that responds to how real people actually live. It's a messier and less affirming undertaking.

I’ve come to the point in my life where I think municipal comprehensive planning is worthless. More often than not, it is a mechanism to wrap a veneer of legitimacy around the large policy objectives of influential people. Most cities would be better off putting together a good vision statement and a set of guiding principles for making decisions, then getting on with it.

That is, get on with the hard work of iteratively building a successful city. That work is a simple, four-step process:

Humbly observe where people in the community struggle. Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle? Do that thing. Do it right now. Repeat.

It’s challenging to be humble, especially when you are in a position, or are part of a profession, whose internal narrative tells you that you already know what to do. It’s painful to observe, especially when that means confronting messy realities that do not fit with your view of the world. It’s unsatisfying, at times, to try many small things when the “obvious” fix is right there. If only those around you just shared your “courage” to undertake it (of course, with no downside to you if you’re wrong). If only people had the patience to see it through (while they, not you, continue to struggle in the interim).

Yet what if we humbly observe where people in our community struggle—if we use the experiences of others as our data—and we continually take the actions we are capable of taking, right now, to alleviate those struggles? And what if we do this in neighborhood after neighborhood across the entire city, month after month and year after year? If we do that, not only will we make the lowest risk, highest returning public investments it is possible to make, we won’t help but improve people’s lives in the process.

That is the essence of a Strong Towns approach.

Read a response article by Strong Towns member, Ruben Anderson: "Most Public Engagement is Worse Than Worthless."

(Top image courtesy of the Department of Defense.)