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Citizen Infrastructure

On the Table: a city plans itself over dinner (Lexington)

When a city writes its long-term comprehensive plan, the public-input phase is usually a few sparsely-attended hearings. In 2022, the Lexington, Kentucky non-profit CivicLex tried something closer to the grain of how people actually talk: On the Table, a city-wide season of small, self-hosted conversations. Anyone could host one, around a dinner table, in a church basement, at a community centre, using a simple guide, and report back what their group cared about.

What happened

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The scale is the point. On the Table gathered roughly 509 conversations involving an estimated 10,000–15,000 people, and the themes that surfaced fed directly into Lexington’s comprehensive plan. Instead of asking residents to come to the city’s process on the city’s terms, it pushed the process out into the places people already gather and trust, and let a meal do the work of lowering the barrier to taking part.

Why it’s here

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On the Table is a clean example of durable civic infrastructure: not a one-off consultation but a repeatable, low-cost format a community can own and re-run. It rhymes with civic listening, the same wager that small-group, in-person conversation surfaces something a survey can’t, and with the American Conversation Project and Real Talk for Change. It also shows the other half of CivicLex’s model: the headline Lexington Civic Assembly gets the attention, but it sits on top of years of patient, everyday civic capacity-building, the part that lasts. (The “On the Table” format began with the Chicago Community Trust and has since been run by civic organisations in many US cities.)

Sources

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