Public opinion

Understand why some persuasion levers are under your control and others will never be.

“Serving the public interest” sounds like a noble phrase stamped on local government letterhead or painted on the door of the public works trucks. It rings of “we’re here for you.” For me, it became one of many bits of jargon that I heard so often I didn’t pause to think about. 

Here’s a definition of “public interest,” courtesy of Law Insider: 

Public interest means demonstrable environmental, social, and economic benefits which would accrue to the public at large as a result of a proposed action, and which would clearly exceed all demonstrable environmental, social, and economic costs of the proposed action.

In the urbanism context, serving the public interest has nothing to do with opinions about what a community likes or dislikes. It’s about what’s good for them. But I think you’d agree that it’s a lot easier to get community support for a project that serves the public interest if the community has a positive opinion about the project. 

Persuade a group of neighbors that a roundabout is safer than a bloated signalized intersection? Convince a group of business owners that parking minimums are hurting the bottom line? Convert a NIMBY property owner to a YIMBY?

Easier said than done. 

Walter Lippmann penned Public Opinion over a hundred years ago. It was a profound exploration of how media, culture, and personal bias shape our perceptions of the world. Today, as then, public opinion continues to mold the framework of politics, society, and, significantly, the planning and development of our built environment. 

Lippmann, the father of modern journalism, wrote in an era dominated by newspapers and radio, a time when the world was reeling from The Great War and dramatic social changes. But Lippmann's observations about human nature, psychology, and sociology remain remarkably relevant. His exploration of how public opinion shapes and is shaped by our shared environments provides crucial insights for those shaping neighborhoods, small towns, sprawling suburbs, and big cities. We infrastructure professionals get wrapped up in the details of what we wish people would support without taking a break to learn how people form opinions, when and how they change their minds, and our role as educators and persuaders. 

If the community meeting is the loud and pounding waterfall of questions, comments, and accusations about a project, I want you to walk upstream to the quiet area where opinions form. 

Color commentary now moves at the speed of the internet, directly impacting the work of professional planners, engineers, and policymakers. It’s frustrating when a community rejects your ideas outright, and rewarding when they speak up in support. But in all cases, it’s puzzling that the results of community engagement are so unpredictable. Why do residents oppose that traffic calming project but support this one? Why do voters beg for housing options but shut down rezoning requests? And why do some very intelligent decision makers seem to be the real life version of the elderly character in Tommy Boy, who after listening to Chris Farley’s desperate story about guaranteed auto parts says, “Ok, I’ll buy from you.”

In contrast to that scene, critical thinking is a disciplined process of evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing information gathered from observation, experience, or communication. It involves applying logic and reasoning to identify strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions, or approaches to problems. 

The American Philosophical Association emphasizes core skills such as interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation in critical thinking. Or as best-selling author Peter Boghossian says, critical thinking has two main components: a skill set and an attitude. The skill set takes work, but is probably the easiest for most people to build. We’re all capable of distinguishing between opinion and fact, considering a source's bias, and cross-referencing information with other reliable sources before accepting the news as true. But the attitude part, being willing to change our mind as a result of inquiry, that’s hard work.

Critical thinking is a rarity in our day. An inquiry process like the Socratic Method is rarer still. Perceptions of the world are not based directly on the raw experience of reality but through a collection of mental images formed by our individual experiences, family life, socio-economic background, type of education, media consumption, and other influences. The "pictures in our heads” is a metaphor at the center of Public Opinion and it’s one of Lippmann’s most significant contributions. He understood that we humans are wonderful but funny creatures. 

I want you to read this book to learn about Lippmann’s observations and ideas, but I don’t want you to think his worldview is worth copying. 

Lippmann held a deep skepticism about the average citizen's ability to direct public affairs. Since he wrote so much during his lifetime, we can see his decades-long struggle with the pros and cons of democracy. He argued that society’s complexities (before and after the world wars) far exceed the individual's capacity to understand and manage. Or as Jack Nicholson’s character from A Few Good Men said, “You can’t handle the truth.” 

He observed that people tend to operate not on direct knowledge of the world, but through a collection of images and stereotypes provided by the media and culture—the pictures in our heads. Lippmann saw that these pictures were manipulated by those in power and distorted by the media, leading to a pseudo-environment that could vastly diverge from reality. But not everyone’s pseudo-environment is the same. In fact, our realities can look completely incompatible with each other depending on the sources we trust. Dilbert creator and trained hypnotist Scott Adams describes this outcome as two movies playing on one screen. Two different people, each with pictures in their heads, will look at the exact same news report and draw completely different conclusions about what was reported. 

After making observations about how the public is influenced and manipulated, Lippmann’s worldview shaped what came next. He had an intellectual home with early 20th century progressives who were concerned with reforming political, economic, and social systems to make them more efficient, rational, and just. They believed that experts and scientific methods could address the problems created by industrialization, urbanization, and corruption. One reason Lippmann was so consumed with the subject of public opinion is that he believed elites needed to guide the ill-informed masses. 

He argued that because individuals are not equipped to comprehend or directly engage with every nuance of every issue, a specialized class of experts should do the decision making. Obviously that’s menacing to anyone in favor of individual liberty, but he was correct that no one has the time or resources to become an authority on every issue. 

Back in the 1920s and now in the 2020s, the average person is surveyed as if they have limitless subject matter expertise:

• “Read this flyer and decide how the architect should design the school.” 

• “Listen to this homeowner, and decide whether or not they’re allowed to rent out their basement.” 

• “Select the best location for the regional train station.” 

• “Determine the minimum hourly wage for a retail employee.”

• “Compare these street designs and identify the safest.” 

No expert of industry has a deep understanding of all the niches of their industry. Economics, electronics, autonomy, astronomy—we’re nudged to have decision-maker confidence in all of our opinions about all issues. In that disconnect, Lippmann saw an opportunity for power brokers. 

The 30 years following Public Opinion included the Great Depression, World War II, and the early phases of the Cold War. With the luxury of hindsight and the internet, it’s clear that elites played major roles in each of these catastrophic periods. The uninformed masses, as Lippmann called them, had no interest in sending troops around the world to kill strangers. The public’s opinion about major and minor events was guided by people who were very interested in launching social crusades of all kinds at home and abroad. 

Professional architects, planners, and engineers each swear to uphold a code of ethics that centers around serving the public interest. It’s no easy task to define what’s in the best interest of the public. And a professional’s work is made even more complicated when they start conflating public opinion with public interest. 

How many residents suffer life-altering injuries from traffic crashes because road diets are only approved based on a popular vote? How many development projects are stuck in limbo as residents vote on building heights? How much of a city’s budget is wasted because residents voted to subsidize a football stadium? How many small business opportunities are lost because residents voted against zoning reform?

I’m not dishing out hyperbolic hypotheticals, I’m describing existing conditions. Any of us working in public infrastructure are expected to engage with the public, which makes it all the more puzzling that public engagement is something left to trial and error from one project to the next. Professionals leave some of the most important aspects of the built environment to public opinion without understanding how public opinion is formed. In technical terms, that’s bonkers.

Most of us need a better understanding of how the average person develops their opinions. Just think how great it would be to understand why some persuasion levers are under your control and others will never be. 

As a way of teaching while learning, I’m updating and expanding Public Opinion. I hope you’ll get a chocolate<>peanut butter satisfaction from the way I’m blending 1920s and 2020s commentary. Public Opinion is a book that needs to be read by a modern audience, and public opinion needs to be understood by modern infrastructure professionals.

You’ll be the first to get updates. In the meantime, ask me anything!