If you’re here because you grabbed the site URL off a sticker, well, this is why you’re seeing it!
The 311 project was cooked up around the time I got back from a large group gathering. I was inspired by the high level of go-getter mentality people there had. I started thinking about, what would society look like if every individual had a little bit more of a push to participate in their locality?
Initial Ideas
I first considered state elections. The turnouts are very low. This is for the current Texas state election(early votes only right now):
And here’s a turnout for the statewide amendment votes the last few decades.
And keep in mind these numbers are for the state, not even as small as a city-wide elections.
People likely aren’t voting in general because they feel no point in it. The news reels are all about the highest levels. Federal, presidential. The modern view of politics is extremely top-down. It’s all so big, the individual feels like they don’t matter in the net. Scale is a huge demotivator.
The top-down view removes a sense of involvement, it makes everything on the smaller scale, seem like peanuts, and it’s not. The opposite is actually true. Local government has such a huge say-so in what the shape of the daily life of a citizen. City buses, road paving, good signage, bike lanes, etc, all of these are provided from the city as a service to the citizens. Parks, rec centers, public spaces, these too, provide flow for the citizenry.
So one key point is, what would get people more involved, feel more like they have a say?
Another thing I was inspired by, is the prevalence of the Hide, Lock, Take signage in the Houston metropolitan area. It’s ubiquitous, and after 3 years of living there, I would say it’s rather ingrained in me. The model is effectively an advertisement campaign, seeping into your actions by prevalence. For me, it worked, and their front page claims an 85% reduction in car theft nationwide. Hefty effect for a bunch of signage!
What could I make an ad campaign for, and could I also measure the impact of that campaign?
311 as a Service
There’s a lever next to the metaphorical hand of every citizen. 311, the local, non-emergency hotline. Call them, they can put a ticket in to have potholes fixed, street signs repaired, and record noise complaints. Even if you call in with something another department might handle, they can forward you to the right folks. It is the method by which the city can work with citizens to get eyes on the ground and attend to structural problems.
Ask a given citizen if they know about it, and you’ll get a mixed bag of replies. Some people are aware, and call often. Many have no idea it exists, and some simply don’t bother.
I want to know, what could work for 311? An ad campaign would serve a dual purpose of making people aware that 311 existed in the first place, and to push them to use it. When people get to know their own influence better, maybe some of them will feel empowered to be invested in local politics, maybe voter turnout would bump up as a secondary effect? And what about living satisfaction scores? Those bring in more money to the area, and they’re at least partially downstream and upstream of infrastructure quality.
Then, what’s a good way to test if municipality-oriented ads would work?
This is how I arrived at the 311 project. Using stickers, put signage around a city district, and monitor to see if the ratio of tickets goes up over say, a 6 month period. It’s a small investment on my part, but I see it as a way for me to try and improve things.
Ideals and beautiful words about community are nice to hear. However, I am also very aware that Doing is how the world is changed. I also know if you want co-conspirators later, you need to show you’re serious, now. So what do I have access to that could not only assist the campaign, but also validate the efforts?
Researching Austin’s 311 data
It turned out, the city of Austin hosts a lot of public data in easily digestible format. You can peruse a number of interesting datasets at https://data.austintexas.gov/
The 311 ticket dataset dates back as far as 2014. It’s pretty hefty at 2.4 million rows too. I was also able to find city demographic profiles by district. This allowed me to marry data and calculate ticket ratios. 311 usage in the last 6 months (really, any arbitrary time period), and per district population, per 10k estimated persons.
Evaluating the data
Below, I provide a map of the city districts. You can hover over each to see how many tickets they’ve had in the last 6 months(April 24 to October 23).
If you turn on the ticket volume layer, what you’ll see is a heatmap of ticket counts per 10k population in each district. Red is fewer tickets per 10k population, green is more. This is how I’m choosing to strategize canvasing.
With these numbers in mind, now it’s time to canvas. The target will be district 8. Why not 6? 6 is in an area that’s relatively new and taken care of, and is more suburban, less foot traffic. I want to target a more established district, with more foot traffic, maximizing effect size. The strategy is to place stickers in the most visually obvious spots, so the most people see them the most frequently while walking around.
And check it out, I just got my batch of 200 stickers.
Absolutely Mint
Goal
The primary goal is to see if something appreciable/measurable happens.
In order to account for other factors, the effect size should be hefty. Ballpark, it’d be good to get the ratio closer to what other districts have. Up from ~850 tickets per 10k persons, to say, 1500. A little more than a ~50% increase. For a comparison point, we’ll look at the previous year’s 6 month period in the same time frame. That should control for major things like weather and annual events.