Participatory Governance and The Spatial Representation of Neighborhood Issues

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Participatory Governance and the Spatial Representation of

Neighborhood Issues
Kyu-Nahm Jun and Juliet Musso
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Spatial Representation http://uar.sagepub.com
of Neighborhood Issues
Kyu-Nahm Jun1 and Juliet Musso2
Abstract
In democratic theory, community-representing organizations play a critical
role in mediating between citizens and elites. While proponents argue that
neighborhood governance can improve efficacy and responsiveness of urban
governance, critics warn that socioeconomic bias privileges the parochial
interests of higher-income residents. There is limited knowledge, however,
concerning the specific types of activities community-representing organiza-
tions undertake. This study illuminates the community mediation process
through an analysis of the agenda orientation of community-representing
organizations. An analysis of actual meeting agendas from Los Angeles neigh-
borhood councils demonstrates that these community-representing orga-
nizations engage with varied issues including community improvement and
other types of service needs or preferences in addition to land use. The
findings suggest a more complex relationship between income and agenda
orientation than is generally acknowledged. In particular, lower-income
communities focus heavily on internal maintenance and capacity develop-
ment activities that may displace engagement with more substantive issues.
In contrast to the conventional wisdom that these organizations are likely to
channel middle-class NIMBYism, the analysis reveals a U-shaped relationship
between income and land-use emphasis, evidence that engagement in land
1
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
2
University of Southern California, Sacramento, CA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Kyu-Nahm Jun, Department of Political Science, Wayne State University, 2071 Faculty
Administration Building, Detroit, MI 48202
Email: kn.jun@wayne.edu

72 Urban Affairs Review 49(1)
use is also emphasized in lower-income communities that historically have

been the target of locally undesirable land uses.
Keywords
community-representing organizations, neighborhood councils, citizen
participation, urban governance
Introduction
A growing literature on participatory urban governance argues that the inte-
gration of secondary associations in local policy making can make up for
weaknesses in the American representative system (Barber 1984; Berry,
Portney, and Thomson 1993; Burns 2000; Fung 2004, 2006; King 2004;
Thomas 1986; Yinon-Amoyal and Kallus 2005). In contrast, critics contend
that local participatory systems are vulnerable to parochialism and represen-
tative bias, and that localized participation is likely to exacerbate class biases
in urban policy. Purcell (2006) offers a particularly damning critique, argu-
ing the literature on local participatory governance falls prey to a “local
trap,” assuming that “local is desirable” without theoretical or empirical
grounding to support the claim. Purcell calls for scholars to justify how local
scale may achieve particular ends, such as enhancing democracy or promot-
ing social justice.
The debate about community participation centers on important theoreti-
cal and empirical issues concerning the ability of local institutions to elevate
spatially differentiated residential preferences to urban decision makers. On
the one hand, a wide-ranging literature argues that participatory governance
can communicate important information about residential preferences and
“street level” conditions to administrators and elected officials (Berry,
Portney, and Thomson 1993; Box 1998; Thomas 1986). This function can be
particularly important in large urban areas where patterns of service delivery
may poorly reflect local needs and preferences (Levy, Meltsner, and
Wildavsky 1974). Neighborhood-level feedback thus has the potential to
improve local satisfaction with urban service distribution (Kelly and
Swindell 2002).
In contrast, a critical focus emphasizes socioeconomic biases that may
give wealthier neighborhoods disproportionate capacity to organize and act.
From this perspective, local participation may simply exacerbate inequities
already endemic in local governance. Other critics stress the vulnerability of

Jun and Musso 73
participatory governance to the pocket-book concerns of not-in-my-backyard

(NIMBY) activism that may prevent adoption of policies and land uses that
benefit the larger city. The literature falls short, however, in not considering
the demand side of the spatial patterns of policy needs—that is, the role of
participatory associations in representing community issues. A rather limited
empirical literature tends to emphasize the characteristics and general politi-
cal role of neighborhood associations rather than analyzing their actual activ-
ities to illuminate the role they play in urban governance (Fontan et al. 2009;
Lelieveldt et al. 2009).
This article contributes a much-needed empirical dimension to the debate
about local representation by investigating the agenda orientation of community-
representing organizations (CROs) and considering the implications for
urban governance. The study builds on theories of agenda setting and urban
participatory governance to investigate the agenda orientation of CROs, uti-
lizing data from a content analysis of meeting agendas for neighborhood
councils (NCs) in Los Angeles. As the NC system sought to increase com-
munity involvement in city governance, it is an apt case for assessing the
types of issues engaged by local boards to illuminate the influence of com-
munity and board member characteristics on issue orientation. Specifically,
the study considers whether there is evidence of spatial differentiation of
agenda orientation and explores the manner in which board member and
community characteristics appear to shape problem orientation, with particu-
lar attention to the role of socioeconomic status (SES). The results suggest a
more complex relationship between SES and issue engagement than is gener-
ally suggested in the literature.
The Role of Community-Representing

Organizations in Urban Governance
As early as 1918, Mary Parker Follett ([1918] 1998, 245) proposed a “new
method” of achieving democratic legitimacy through the development of
neighborhood organizations:
Every neighborhood must be organized; the neighborhood groups must

then be integrated, through larger intermediary groups, into a true
state. Neither our cities nor our states can ever be properly adminis-
tered until representatives from neighborhood groups meet to discuss
and thereby to correlate the needs of all parts of the city, of all parts of
the state.

By the late twentieth century, it would appear that Follett’s vision of

neighborhood democracy was beginning to take hold, as systems for neigh-
borhood consultation developed within many American and European cities.
In a 1990 survey, for example, Scavo (1993) found that 60% of cities with
populations greater than 100,000 had systems for neighborhood-level policy
consultation. These systems typically take the form of community boards or
NCs that engage local community members with city government (Berry,
Portney, and Thomson 1993; Farrelly 2009; Thomson 2001).
Most local participatory governance institutions have primarily advisory
power, or very limited delegated powers over particular realms (Berry,
Portney, and Thomson 1993; Thomson 2001). They generally are composed
of voluntary civic associations, characterized as “locally based and basically
autonomous, volunteer-run, nonprofit groups that have an official member-
ship of volunteers” (Smith 1997, 269, as cited in Meyer and Hyde 2004, 77S).
These organizations have a uniquely hybrid character (Raco and Flint 2001)
inasmuch as they are staffed by local volunteers but are part of a larger gov-
ernance system, so that they are both “of” and “onto” government.
Multifaceted Role of Local Participatory Institutions

A wide-ranging literature argues that localized participatory associations will
address the democratic legitimacy questions inherent in the administrative
state (Berry, Portney, and Thomson 1993; Fung 2004; John 2009). This lit-
erature makes claims of a constitutive nature, for example, arguing that
participation fosters a more informed citizenry and develops social capital of
a Toquevillian sort, contributing to increased social trust and norms that
promote collective action. Other claims are of a more instrumental character,
holding that community stakeholder input into the delivery of services can
help local administrators to manage more effectively the complexity of prob-
lems that occur in urban settings (Berry, Portney, and Thomson 1993;
Bovaird 2007; Box 1998; Fontan et al. 2009; Lelieveldt et al. 2009; Luckin
and Sharp 2004; Thomas 1986).
From an instrumental standpoint an important role of NCs is to act as
mediating organizations (Berger and Neuhaus 1977) in communicating spa-
tially differentiated preferences to local leaders. The hybrid and spatially ori-
ented character of NCs distinguishes this approach to participatory governance
from social movement organizations that are increasingly taking a metropoli-
tan focus (Pastor, Benner, and Matsuoka 2009; Purcell 2008; Purcell and Brown
2005), and which frequently engage in more confrontational community-
organizing tactics, seeking the empowerment of indigenous leaders in a

Jun and Musso 75
broad-based progressive agenda. In theory, the local orientation of NCs sup-

ports several features of their democratic function as mediating institutions.
First, networks of neighborhood organizations have the potential to support
social and organizational capacity that can be mobilized for collective action
(Chaskin et al. 2001; Sampson and Graif 2009). In having an official connec-
tion to government, neighborhood boards constitute an arena for local action
and provide opportunities for networks to develop within the community.
Because they have formal attachment to government, neighborhood partici-
patory structures are likely to support community capacity that enables an
“insider game” of collaborative coproduction or public–private partnership
activities (Ferman 1996; Stone 1989).
Second, as the Follett quotation suggests, an important function of neigh-
borhood governance organizations is to play an intermediary role in elevat-
ing local needs and preferences that otherwise might not be well represented
within formal institutional structures (Berger and Neuhaus 1977; Coaffee
and Healey 2003; Jones 1981). Such mediating organizations play a particu-
larly important role when formal democratic structures poorly represent
neighborhood-level interests. This is likely in the case of at-large election of
city officers, or if city council district lines ignore community identity.
Furthermore, as Levy, Meltsner, and Wildavsky (1974) suggest, seemingly
neutral administrative procedural rules may result in systematic biases in
service delivery patterns. Lastly, the dispersed interests of residents in a
large city tend to impede coalitional politics so that neighborhood stakehold-
ers have difficulty countering the well-funded and organized interests of
business and developmental elites.
To the extent that there is spatial differentiation of residential preferences
as might happen due to socioeconomic sorting around spatial amenities or by
virtue of the highly localized character of neighborhood problems, cities may
achieve greater responsiveness and efficiency in service delivery by creating
institutional means of differentiating service demands (Box and Musso 2004).
Indeed many cities create special tax or fee districts in order to provide locally
tailored services. Thus, a neighborhood governance system has the potential
to constitute a sort of “quasi-federalist” structure within a larger metropolitan
area (Musso 1999). Whereas NCs typically do not have fiscal authority, they
nonetheless provide opportunities for adaptation to spatial preferences, a func-
tion particularly important in the case of land use. Moreover, they provide a
forum for community networks to mobilize around spatially differentiated
preferences and to exert political pressure on city officials.
There is moreover a high valence attached to the interests of territorial
space, which in turn may overcome some of the challenges to collective

action. Thus, participatory structures may support a reinforcing cycle in

which community members mobilize around shared spatial interests and
develop networks that reinforce a sense of community identity and shared
space. Under such conditions, community stakeholder input into the delivery
of services may help local administrators to manage more effectively the
complexity of problems that occur in urban settings (Berry, Portney, and
Thomson 1993; Bovaird 2007; Box 1998; Fontan et al. 2009; Lelieveldt et al.
2009; Luckin and Sharp 2004; Simonsen and Robbins 2000; Thomas 1986).
The Dangers of Parochialism

Localized participation is not without skeptics. Purcell (2006), for example,
has propounded a critique of reliance on localized democracy in his “local
scale trap” thesis. Purcell’s local trap critique emphasizes the socially con-
structed and politically contended nature of jurisdictional scale. Because
scalar arrangements are not fixed, he argues, there is a tendency for reform-
ers to focus on modification to scale without specifying clear goals and
specific scalar strategies. Hence, Purcell argues, the local trap is involves a
priori privileging of localism, ignoring the ends intended by local democ-
racy much less the relationship between scalar arrangements that might meet
these ends (Purcell 2006, 1928-9; for related critiques also see Swindell 2000
and Luckin and Sharp 2004). Purcell draws on social movement theory to
argue that there is a need to mobilize citizens across urban neighborhoods
rather than privileging the scale of neighborhood level to bring about societal
change.
A correlate of Purcell’s argument is that territorial mobilization may
aggravate rather than ameliorate power inequalities (also see Kearns 1995;
Raco and Flint 2001). A commonly recognized danger in local politics is that
socioeconomic bias in participation will lead to decision-making processes
that privilege parochial concerns of the wealthy rather than engaging a diver-
sity of stakeholders in coming to judgment. The most obvious form of this
phenomenon is when localized NIMBYism prevents placement of develop-
ments or services that benefit the larger community (Dear 1992). Although
NIMBY activism need not be the purview of the wealthy, in practice it often
protects property values and prevents attainment of equitable outcomes (e.g.,
opposition of wealthier communities to affordable housing).
From a theoretical standpoint, the association and promotion of interests
based in geographically demarcated space can be a double-edged sword. On
the one hand, organization at the neighborhood level may initiate voluntarism
and contribute to expression of spatially differentiated preferences. If this

Jun and Musso 77
were the case, neighborhood associations would pursue spatially differenti-

ated agendas that focus on local concerns. While it is not necessarily the case
that local policy makers will act upon expressed neighborhood agendas, a
neighborhood voice would appear to be important in articulating spatially
differentiated preferences that may occur because of differing neighborhood
problems or opportunities or because of clustering of residents or other com-
munity stakeholders with particular interests or political preferences.
At the same time, it is possible that agendas vary because residential seg-
regation by race and class causes community capacity or incomes to vary
from one community to the next, in which case neighborhood governance
may have the normatively less favorable effect of aggravating socioeconomic
bias (Meyer and Hyde 2004). What is more, the spatial inequalities found
within cities have the potential to aggravate the socioeconomic biases found
in most forms of political participation (Luckin and Sharp 2004; Verba,
Schlozman, and Brady 1995). The joint effects of socioeconomic bias in par-
ticipation and localized politics thus may result in parochial and protectionist
“NIMBYist” actions that privilege pocketbook issues such as protection of
the property values of middle-class homeowners and pose an obstacle to
equitable urban outcomes such as placement of needed community services
(Dear 1992). Thus, to the extent that problem orientation is predicated by
income, a neighborhood participation system may empower wealthier or
middle-class neighborhoods to protect against undesired land uses and leave
less wealthy communities struggling to address any problems at all.
Socioeconomic Influences on Neighborhood Agenda Setting

The empirical evidence on neighborhood organization activities is limited
and provides mixed findings as to the range and orientation of activities
engaged by neighborhood associations (Martin 2004; Oropesa 1989). A
number of studies suggest that neighborhood associations predominately
focus on land use (Logan and Rabrenovic 1990; Martin 2004), although oth-
ers find that neighborhood associations conduct a wide range of activities,
including political activities that might influence broader health and social
well-being (Checkoway 1985; Lenk et al. 2002; Martin 2003). In a qualita-
tive study of six homeowner associations in Los Angeles, for example,
Purcell (2001) finds neighborhood activism not solely directed toward eco-
nomic interests but also an attempt to “reshape local and citywide material
space to fit their conceptual-space image of how the neighborhood and
the city should be” (p. 189). Evidence of a parochial stance was found by
King (2004) in a content analysis of 173 newsletters from 44 neighborhood

associations in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These studies focused primarily

on community-centered issues, with a strong focus on the physical character
of the community.
This article contributes to the limited empirical literature on neighborhood
governance by exploring the socioeconomic factors that structure the orienta-
tion of CROs. Formulating a positive theory of the agenda-setting activities
of CROs is fraught with difficulties. Most CROs are voluntary bodies in
which personalities and individuals with idiosyncratic interests play promi-
nent roles. Moreover, many such organizations—including those under study
here—have open mandates under which they can work on a broad set of
issues from community beautification, to policing, to land use, and so on.
Thus, there is certainly much variance to explain. In addition, Kingdon’s
(1995) influential work on agenda setting within federal-level public bureaus
has suggested that agendas are the result of a complex interaction between
the political saliency of issues, decision-making processes, and available
policies. In a garbage can model of decision making, the issues that surface
in agenda setting arise through complex dynamics that make prediction dif-
ficult. Nevertheless, the literatures on democratic participation and commu-
nity organizations have identified a number of constraints under which CROs
operate that serve as the basis of a theory.
It is important to note that as voluntary associations, CROs must invest in
a wide array of operational activities, including internal maintenance, com-
munity outreach and capacity development, and external relationship with
other organizations and city entities. This introduces potentially serious
forms of socioeconomic bias related to community capacity, defined by
Chaskin (2001) as “the interaction of human capital, organizational resources,
and social capital existing within a given community that can be leveraged to
solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of a given
community” (p. 295). While there has been little systematic research on the
effects of capacity challenges on participation in neighborhood governance,
a substantial literature suggests that lower-income individuals are less likely
to participate across a range of different types of activities (Verba and Nie
1972; Verba et al. 1993; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Thus, the
upfront costs of organizing will impose differential burdens on communities
with differing initial endowments (Jun 2007). In turn, there are likely trad-
eoffs between operational and substantive activities in that CROs that focus
heavily on concentrated internal organizational and community capacity
development have less ability to focus on more substantive community
concerns.

Jun and Musso 79
The socioeconomic influences on substantive agenda setting are important

inasmuch as local participatory entities such as CROs have drawn criticism
for channeling middle-class prerogatives and engaging in NIMBYistic oppo-
sition to social services and affordable housing (Buckman 2011; Hiner and
Galt 2011; Lyon-Callo 2001; Oakley 2002; Pendall 1999; Segal, Baumohl,
and Moyles 1980; Zippay and Lee 2008). This literature supports several
hypotheses regarding the relationship between SES and agenda, under the
assumption that socioeconomic influences will differ for operational activi-
ties and substantive policy engagement. In particular, operational activities
are assumed to be monotonically related to income, whereas the relation-
ship between income and substantive policy engagement is expected to be
nonlinear.
Given the challenges of maintaining a voluntary association in the face of
lower participation and fewer resources, there will likely be more attention to
internal maintenance and initial capacity-building types of activities among
lower-income communities. These factors suggest that SES characteristics
will differentiate the investment of CROs in agendas related to internal main-
tenance and capacity-building activities. Thus it is hypothesized that:
Hypothesis 1: CROs in lower-income communities will have a greater

orientation toward internal maintenance and community capacity-
building activities than those in higher-income communities.
Another important function of CROs is to develop networks of social and

political association that connect neighborhoods to external parties, includ-
ing stakeholders within the community, other NCs, and agents of city gov-
ernment (Musso et al. 2011; Weare, Musso, and Jun 2009). The costs and
benefits of establishing such networks depend on the capacity and commu-
nity contexts within which CROs operate. If these organizations are strug-
gling with internal maintenance or conflict, such external networks afford
minor benefits. Consequently, the same socioeconomic biases that impede
organizational capacity and shape policy interests are likely to dampen exter-
nal networking, with the implication that lower-income communities are less
connected to external organizations. Hence, income will be inversely related
to external networking. A related important factor is the role of homophily
or the tendency of socially similar individuals to associate with one another
(Weare, Musso, and Jun 2009). These factors would also predict that there
would be less networking within communities that are socially or economi-
cally diverse. It is hypothesized as follows:

Hypothesis 2: Agenda focus on external relations will be negatively

related to economic heterogeneity and to income, receiving less
attention in diverse and lower-income communities.
Both the problems faced by and the demands of citizens vary by region.
The most salient issues faced by neighborhood organizations—zoning and
development, local nuisances, street and park amenities—have highly local-
ized impacts, suggesting that different neighborhoods will have different
issue foci. In addition, demands for public services are a function of indi-
vidual characteristics that vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, sup-
porting variation in demands. However, in general, the literature on CROs
suggests that residential interests tend to concentrate on land-use issues as
well as on advocacy for municipal services such as public safety, economic
development and on providing direct assistance to community matters in need
such as education and crime prevention (Berry, Portney, and Thomson 1993).
Socioeconomic characteristics will be associated with land-use concerns
(Dear 1992), with a nonlinear relationship between income status and land-
use issue orientation. Whereas higher-income communities are likely to have
a stake in maintaining local land values, lower-income communities are
likely to be the focus of locally undesirable land uses such as treatment facili-
ties and higher density housing (Nguyen 2009). This suggests a U-shaped
relationship between income and land-use attention, with more land use–
related activity in the lower and higher ends of the income spectrum. A
related hypothesis is that homeownership will be strongly associated with a
land use–oriented neighborhood agenda (Fischel 2005; Takahashi and Gaber
1998). More specifically, because homeownership correlates with civic and
community involvement and because homeowners have a larger financial
stake in community attributes (e.g., congestion, crime), they are more likely
to be involved with planning issues. Thus it is hypothesized:
Hypothesis 3: CROs in areas with a higher proportion of homeowners

should have a greater focus on land-use and planning issues.
Hypothesis 4: Agenda focus on land use and planning will have a cur-
vilinear U-shaped form where issue attention is higher among low-
and high-income communities.
Lastly, socioeconomic characteristics are expected to have a nonlinear

relationship with agenda attention to municipal services. From a standpoint
of general municipal services, a standard economic model would predict that
demand for services would likely to increase as a function of income. Yet at

Jun and Musso 81
very high levels of community income, residents may have less interest in
advocating for public services because they are able to substitute privately
produced services (e.g., security guards rather than police; private recre-
ational memberships rather than parks). The interaction of income and sub-
stitution effects (private for public services) suggests an inverse U-shaped
relationship between income and advocacy for community services. This
argument is consistent with Oliver (1999), who observed an inverse U-shaped
relationship between income and civic participation generally at the city
level. It is hypothesized as follows:
Hypothesis 5: Agenda focus on other municipal services will have a

curvilinear inverse U-shaped form where issue attention is lower
among low- and high-income communities.
Empirical Focus: The Los Angeles

Neighborhood Council System
This study explores the issue orientation of CROs by analyzing meeting
agendas of the local voluntary boards constituting an NC system in Los
Angeles, a community advisory system enacted in 1999. The system is ambi-
tious with respect to scale (encompassing a city of 466 square miles and 3.6
million residents) and scope (providing multiple arenas for engagement of
neighborhood stakeholders in deliberation of community and citywide
issues). The NCs have advisory input on policy-making, budgeting, and ser-
vice delivery, and currently each NC receives $45,000 in annual support
from the City. At present there are 88 certified boards composed of represen-
tatives elected from an NC boundary area certified by the City. The NCs are
in effect hybrid voluntary organizations that while regulated by the City, find
their origins in grassroots organizing.
The scope and diversity of Los Angeles make it a good case for consider-
ing the spatial orientation of issue attention as well as the socioeconomic
determinants of agenda orientation. The challenge is how to measure NC
activities in a system with a relatively large number of active NCs. The
focus on formal meetings of the NCs provides a systematic means of assess-
ing NC focus in that most activities are conducted and/or reported at these
meetings. Meetings typically engage reports on substantive work conducted
outside of the formal meetings by means of subcommittees often chaired by
a member of the board. These subcommittees include outreach and land-use
and planning committees as well as an array of other groups such as beauti-
fication committees, public safety committees, and other ad hoc or regular

committees that support volunteer activities. Moreover, the NC board meet-

ings frequently engage discussion of citywide policy matters or local com-
munity issues such as land-use controversies with the intent of adopting a
formal policy position communicated to City Council or agency boards or
commissions. A further advantage is that state open meeting laws require
publication of agendas in advance of meetings and require all action items to
be included in the agenda.
Methodology
The analysis relies on multiple sources of information, with the primary data
source a coded random sample of 467 meeting agendas collected from 73
NCs for the period of 2003 through 2005.1 Neighborhood councils in Los
Angeles are legally subject to state open meeting laws that require them to
circulate an agenda that includes all items of discussion 72 hours in advance
of meeting. Thus, NC meeting agendas offer a relatively consistent and reli-
able means of comparing the types of issues engaged by NCs across the city.2
Supplementing the meeting agenda content analysis is qualitative field
research and documentary evidence collected during the period of 2003 to
2006. The field research included observation of NC and the City and semi-
structured interviews with city officials and community members. Researchers
compiled field notes using standard meeting note and interview note proto-
cols. Table A1 in the appendix explains sources of data in more detail.
Development of the content coding scheme entailed an iterative integra-
tion of theory on local participation with field observation, newspaper arti-
cles, and a review of a pilot sample of meeting agendas (see Table A2 in the
appendix). The agenda items were content coded into categories using
dummy codes by a single coder. After this process, a mean score for each
type of activities was calculated by dividing the total number of items within
a category by the total number of meeting agendas gathered from the respec-
tive NCs. Although the mean scores are not a direct measure of relative
importance or impact, a higher mean score will indicate a more frequent
appearance of an activity on a meeting agenda, which serves as a proxy mea-
sure of its relative importance in the agenda of a particular NC. That is, if
issues related to assistance to the community appear on the meeting agenda
more often than other items in an NC, this indicates interest in the item on the
part of the NC board and community members, as well as greater tendency to
provide advice and engage with that type of issue or activity.
Next, using the mean scores for each agenda items, the first step of the
analysis was to construct a typology of NC issue agendas using principal

Jun and Musso 83
components analysis, with the goal of reducing observed variables to “a

smaller number of artificial variables (called principal components) that will
account for most of the variance in the observed variables” (Hatcher 1994, 2).
Based on the rotated solutions, factor-based scores (DiStefano, Zhu, and
Mîndrilă 2009; Hatcher 1994; Pett, Lackey, and Sullivan 2003) were derived
and mapped in support of a qualitative discussion of NC problem orienta-
tion.3 The factor-based scores were employed as dependent variables in
regression analyses relating problem orientation to community and board
member characteristics.
The content-coded agenda data were supplemented with data from several
additional sources. Data on individual board member characteristics and
issue identification were derived from an NC board member survey con-
ducted in between 2005 and 2006. The overall response rate of this survey
was 47%, with 710 board members responding to the survey; approximately
600 observations were aggregated at the NC board level for the purposes of
the analysis. The multivariate analysis included aggregated data from the
individual board member surveys, as well as 2000 U.S. Census data charac-
terizing the communities in which the NC boards operated. Table 1 provides
variable definitions and descriptive statistics for the variables included in the
regression analyses. The variables of primary interest are measures of SES
and heterogeneity of NC board members and communities. Income was
included in quadratic form to test the extent to which the relationship between
SES and issue orientation is nonlinear. Income heterogeneity was calculated
using the Lieberson index of dispersion (Lieberson 1969), where a higher
value indicates greater diversity of income groups. The data also include an
index of board-level social capital that is a sum of the average score on three
relational items: the number of days a board member visited neighbors in a
year; the number of different city offices contacted; and the number of differ-
ent stakeholder groups contacted. To control for other fixed regional geo-
graphic influences, the analysis included regional dummy variables for the
seven Area Planning Commissions in the City of Los Angeles with the base
case the South Los Angeles Planning Area.
Findings
Perhaps the most common critique of the place-based organizations that
constitute neighborhood participatory systems is that they tend to attract
higher-income individuals who are more likely to promote pocket book
issues and protectionism as opposed to a broader array of community inter-
ests. There is clear evidence of such socioeconomic bias in the membership

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics

Standard
Variable Descriptions N Minimum Maximum Mean Deviation
Dependent variable
Internal maintenance 73 0.000 7.545 3.057 1.625
Community relations 73 0.000 4.500 1.385 0.950
External affairs 73 0.000 9.143 1.783 1.595
Land use 73 0.000 10.000 1.744 1.572
Other services 73 0.000 3.667 0.762 0.632
Board characteristic
% satisfied with neighborhood 73 0.167 1.000 0.811 0.184
Education in years 73 12.000 17.429 16.005 1.065
Average income in $100K 72 0.292 1.863 1.009 0.400
% Blacks 73 0.000 1.000 0.136 0.262
% Latinos 73 0.000 1.000 0.114 0.191
% very liberal 73 0.000 0.600 0.166 0.162
% homeowners 73 0.200 1.000 0.683 0.185
Social capital index 73 15.000 183.750 95.627 33.759
Community characteristic
Natural log of total population 73 9.424 11.711 10.457 0.480
Average income in $100K 73 0.145 1.478 0.448 0.217
% Blacks 73 0.006 0.801 0.118 0.171
% Latinos 73 0.042 0.947 0.406 0.250
% college and graduate 73 0.053 0.692 0.317 0.174
education
Income heterogeneity 73 0.626 0.831 0.784 0.045
% homeowners 73 0.019 0.917 0.407 0.209
Regional dummy variables
North Valley 73 0.000 1.000 0.123 0.331
South Valley 73 0.000 1.000 0.192 0.396
Central 73 0.000 1.000 0.178 0.385
East 73 0.000 1.000 0.137 0.346
West 73 0.000 1.000 0.123 0.331
Harbor 73 0.000 1.000 0.096 0.296
of the NC boards in Los Angeles; as Table 2 shows, NC board members are

considerably wealthier, more educated, and more likely to be White and
homeowners than the average resident of Los Angeles. These class differ-
ences appear to be reflected in the individual problem orientation of board
members, who identify land use, transportation, and public safety as the most
important neighborhood issues, in contrast to city residents, who identify

Jun and Musso 85
Table 2. Socioeconomic Characteristics of NC Boards and LA City

2000 Census 2005-2006
City of LA NCs
Income
$100,000+ 13.6% 41.4%
Education
% with BA and up 25.5% 72.4%
Homeownership
% Owners 38.6% 80.2%
Ethnicity
% White 29.5% 64.0%
% Black 10.9% 13.3%
% Latino 46.5% 11.7%
% Asian 9.9% 4.1%
education, jobs, and public safety to be most critical. The question motivat-
ing the current analysis is the extent to which these individual substantive
foci appear to be expressed in the actual meeting agendas of NC boards.
Overview of Agenda Orientation

The analysis of meeting agendas suggests that the observed individual board
member orientation toward a locally “protectionist” agenda of land use,
transportation, and public safety does not appear uniformly at the system
level. Figure 1 summarizes the results of the content analysis of more than
4,000 agenda items found in 467 meeting agendas for the period of 2003-
2005. Neighborhood council meetings focus on an array of discussion items,
and display a strong internal maintenance orientation. The single most com-
mon agenda item (35%) consisted of operational items, perhaps reflecting
the relatively new status of most NCs and the difficulties of operating a
volunteer board with limited help from the city. Operations items include
procedural or bylaws changes, appointment and procedural management of
committees, electoral arrangements and appointment of officers, and in some
cases, discussion of grievances. The heavy emphasis on internal operations
suggests the multifaceted challenges facing NCs as they work to recruit and
manage volunteers, set goals, run meetings, and manage debate on contro-
versial issues while attempting to avoid acrimony.
To advise the city effectively and help make the city more responsive to
community needs, NCs must develop the capacity to grow and manage the

Government Relations
19% Internal Operations
35%
Environment
2%
Economy
1%
Neighborhood
Beautification Public Safety
4% 3%
Outreach
11%
Land Use
Alliance Building
17%
3%
Community Assitance
4%
Figure 1. Neighborhood council agenda orientation (2003-2005)
organization and to develop external relations functions that connect the NC

to other entities in order to get things done. Meeting agendas suggest that
during the study period many NCs were preoccupied with capacity develop-
ment and internal operational concerns such as bylaws changes, managing
committees, and appointing officers, as well as community beautification and
outreach activities oriented toward stakeholder recruitment and development
of community recognition and support for the NC.
About 19% of agenda items concerned external government relations,
which frequently involved invitations for city officials to make informational
reports, and in other cases, discussion of citywide issues, such as providing
feedback to the Department of Water and Power on a proposed fee increase.
Land use–related items represented about 17% of all items and encompassed
general land-use, housing, and transportation issues. Contrary to perceptions
that NCs are reflexively oppositional, NIMBY-oriented activities entailing
opposition to particular developments accounted for only a small fraction
(4%) of all land-use agenda activities citywide as indicated in Figure 2.
Nearly half the land use–related agenda items involved NC procedural over-
sight of specific project-related matters such as requests for zone change and
other project-level variances from zoning regulations. Many of the remaining
agenda items entailed transportation-related planning (more than one-fourth

Jun and Musso 87
General
11%
NIMBY
Transportation 4%
27%
Housing
5%
Specific Site
40%
Proactive Planning
13%
Figure 2. Specific breakdowns of land-use agenda items
of land-use agenda issues) and proactive planning (13%), suggesting that

working constructively (rather than merely reactively) to solve community
planning problems appeared to motivate NCs. “We can only encourage
[developers] to come see us,” one NC land-use committee volunteer said.
“But if we had a design review board . . . ,” he added, “There’s no power in
‘Just say no.’ Instead, just say ‘what’” (personal interview, January 23, 2005).
To support mapping and multivariate analyses of problem orientation,
principal components analysis extracted a smaller number of factors to indi-
cate the orientation of NC agendas. The initial analysis found a clustering of
items in four components (see Table A3 in appendix). However, the variable
“internal operations” had a “complex structure” in that it loaded high on both
the first and last component, respectively, 0.406 and –0.417.4 Based on this
initial result, the internal operations variable was removed and the principal
components analysis was repeated and is reported in Table 3. Four dimen-
sions are labeled as community capacity development, external affairs, land-
use, and other services; these components explain 64% of the variance. The
“community capacity development” component displays positive loadings
for agenda items oriented toward community-oriented capacity-building

Table 3. Pattern Matrix from the Final Principal Component Analysis on NC

Activities
Components
Community External Other
Activities Capacity Affairs Land Use Services
Community relations 0.868
Community beautification 0.678
Government relations 0.875
Alliance building 0.650
Environmental quality 0.871
Land use related 0.755
Economy 0.765
Public safety 0.729
Assistance 0.480
Note: Extraction method: principal components analysis. Rotation method: Promax with
Kaiser normalization. Extracted principal components with eigenvalues are greater than 1.
Factor loadings <0.4 are suppressed.
activities such as streetscape beautification and community festivals, typi-

cally volunteer-heavy initiatives. The “external affairs” component has a
positive loading of items oriented toward networking with other NCs and
with city-level (as opposed to neighborhood-level) agencies, officials, and
interest groups. The “land use” component has positive loadings for both
land use– and environmentally oriented agenda items. Next, the “other ser-
vices” component has positive loadings for economically oriented agenda
items (e.g., jobs development), public safety, and public assistance.
Lastly, meeting agenda items related to “internal maintenance” (e.g., by-
laws, committee formation, and other procedural items) are considered as a
separate dimension of NC agenda activity. Thus, five dimensions of NC
agenda activities, internal maintenance, community capacity development,
external affairs, land use, and other services constitute the dependent vari-
ables in this research.
The Spatial Orientation of NC Agenda Focus

The analysis first considers the spatial differentiation of NC agenda orienta-
tion throughout the City to consider whether there is descriptive evidence
that NCs elevate spatially differentiated residential preferences in urban
policy-making processes. The analysis considers first operations and then
turns to substantive issue agendas.

Jun and Musso 89
Operations: internal maintenance, community capacity building, and external

affairs. Figure 3 illustrates maps of NC factor-based scores for the internal
maintenance dimension (left panel), community capacity dimension (middle
panel), and external affairs dimension (right panel). The maps demonstrate a
high level of regional variability in the focus on operations and support sev-
eral observations. First, there was a stronger focus on internal maintenance
across the city than on external relations or community-oriented activities,
likely because the system was relatively young during the study period and
required more attention to procedural concerns. Field research also supported
this observation, as much of the internal maintenance activity during the
study period centered on procedural issues that at times devolved into con-
flict and grievances. In an NC meeting attended by one of the authors, for
example, nearly the entire meeting involved discussion of individual griev-
ances among board members. The NC system drew criticism in the press
during the study period for infighting and personality conflicts (Garcia 2004;
Nash 2003), and in survey responses, the NCs identified internal concerns to
be one of their greatest challenges.
Internal procedural conflict is a problem common to collective action
organizations and particularly challenging for participatory associations
because of their hybrid nature. Neighborhood councils are volunteer organi-
zations but must be inclusive because they are also creatures of city govern-
ment. The mandate for inclusiveness and multi-issue character of NCs
implies that they are more likely to encounter conflicting views than volun-
teer associations formed around single issues (Jun and Shiau, 2012). Their
legal status as city entities requires open forums and makes the boards vul-
nerable to dissent and procedural infighting.
Second, the community capacity–oriented activity appears most heavily
clustered in downtown Los Angeles and peripheral communities in Northeast
Valley, East, and West Los Angeles areas. For instance, field observation
revealed that several NCs in East and Northeast Los Angeles were particu-
larly active in event planning and beautification projects with the goals of
creating a sense of community and promoting interest in the NCs in these
communities. Furthermore, one of the NCs located in the downtown area
regularly hosted public events as a vehicle for outreach.
Third, a patchwork of NCs across the City focused heavily on external
relations. The external affairs agenda appears to support a different dimen-
sion of capacity, networking with other NCs and government officials. The
meetings frequently included informational visits from city officials includ-
ing City Council staff members, presentations from representatives of adja-
cent NCs, or representatives of various regional alliances. Field observation

90
Figure 3. Operations factor-based scores: internal maintenance, community capacity building, and external affairs
Jun and Musso 91
at NC meetings revealed distinct styles of external relations, as some NCs

worked closely with city council and agency staff, while others appear more
focused on participation in NC alliances. For example, meeting notes from
the Bel-Air/Beverly Crest NC, with a very high score in external relations,
demonstrated that the NC engaged detailed discussions with City Council
field staff. Councils in the Harbor Area, with close attachments to City
Council member Janice Hahn, a promoter of the reform, also met regularly
with city officials and field staff. In contrast, NCs in the Valley, a hotbed of
local secession, developed a Valley Alliance of NCs, and met regularly to
monitor city-level political activities. This external networking agenda argu-
ably contributes to the development of “bridging social ties” (Granovetter
1973; Putnam 2000) among NCs that promote capacity for political
advocacy.
Finally, several NCs, mostly located in the periphery of the City, tended to
have relatively higher scores on all three dimensions. These NCs historically
have been politically active and include several councils that had a strong
focus on secession (Harbor Area; Northeast Valley), or on environmental
issues (Westchester/Playa Del Rey), suggesting the importance of historical
and regional context in shaping NC agenda orientation.
Issue engagement: land use and other services. Figure 4 provides maps of
factor-based scores for two types of substantive agenda foci: land use and
other types of services. The mapping illustrates spatial differentiation of issue
agenda emphasis throughout the city. For example, NCs in the Valley, West,
and Harbor area of the city concentrated highly on land-use types of agenda
items but did not neglect a service-oriented agenda discussion. These com-
munities harbored long-simmering dissatisfaction with the development
agenda of the City Council, as well as a perception that outlying communities
have not received a “fair share” of city services. A land-use orientation was
also evident in several areas of the City adjacent to politically controversial
development areas: the Harbor; beach areas; and communities adjacent to a
controversial landfill site in the North Valley, the Sunshine Canyon landfill.
In contrast to the land-use agenda common to the peripheral coastal, hill-
side, and northern communities, there appeared to be a more singular focus
on a services agenda in several parts of the Central City and East Los Angeles,
reflecting an emphasis on public safety concerns and funding for local pro-
grams and support for education within the community. For instance, sub-
committees in an NC would propose to fund after-school programs or senior
citizens’ programs. Oftentimes, nonprofit organizations in the community
were present at NC meetings to seek assistance from the NC operating funds.
Moreover, police officers attended many meetings to provide crime reports
and discuss neighborhood watch programs.

Figure 4. Issue engagement factor–based scores: land use and other service
Socioeconomic Influences on
Neighborhood Council Agenda Orientation
In a socioeconomically divided city, the geographic differentiation of agenda
focus may relate to class-based concerns or other characteristics of board
members. The conventional wisdom and frequent critique among City offi-
cials and critics has been that NCs privilege high-income concerns about land
use to the exclusion of other community concerns. To understand the extent
to which board and community characteristics relate to a spatially differenti-
ated neighborhood governance agenda, a series of OLS regressions associate
community and board member SES and other characteristics with factor-
based scores for each of five dimensions of agenda activity: internal mainte-
nance, community capacity development, external affairs, land use, and other
services. The analysis focuses on board and community socioeconomic vari-
ables, as well as other control variables including community racial/cultural
composition and prior experience in community volunteer activities.
The regression analysis for internal maintenance in model I, shown in
Table 4, has good explanatory power, with an adjusted R-squared of 0.29 and
a significant F score of 2.90 (p < .01). Both at the board and community level,
the income measure is statistically significant and negatively associated with

Jun and Musso 93
Table 4. Multiple Regression Results: Factors Associated with NC Agenda

Orientation: Operational Items
Model I Model II Model III
Internal Community External
Maintenance Capacity Affairs
Independent Variables B SE B SE B SE
% satisfied with 2.109* 1.202 0.144 1.183 0.334 1.183
neighborhood
Education in years 0.253 0.240 –0.037 0.284 –0.033 0.284
Average income in –3.974*** 0.010 –0.300 0.013 –1.269 0.013
$100K
% Blacks –0.744 1.549 –1.141 1.126 –0.819 1.126
% Latinos 1.133 1.229 –1.555*** 1.340 –0.799 1.340
% very liberal –2.540** 1.125 0.286 1.342 0.663 1.342
% homeowners 2.577* 1.356 0.028 1.185 1.962 1.185
Social capital index –0.011* 0.006 0.002 0.007 0.001 0.007
Natural log of total 0.445 0.417 –0.056 0.338 0.927*** 0.338
population
Average income in –9.999*** 0.025 –3.788* 0.030 –0.122 0.030
$100K
% Blacks –1.161 2.944 0.822 1.868 0.703 1.868
% Latinos 4.616 3.571 2.942** 2.784 0.030 2.784
% college and graduate 18.843** 6.988 7.021** 5.737 1.042 5.737
education
Income heterogeneity –21.352*** 6.749 –6.722 5.541 –7.393 5.541
% homeowners 8.646*** 2.470 2.761 3.270 0.926 3.270
North Valley –0.345 1.133 0.457 0.886 1.175 0.886
South Valley 0.296 1.021 0.347 1.111 1.969* 1.111
Central 0.556 0.987 0.468*** 0.895 1.314 0.895
East 0.609 1.102 1.299 1.021 2.226** 1.021
West 0.103 1.051 0.411 0.825 1.650* 0.825
Harbor 0.900 0.900 0.793 1.175 2.832** 1.175
(Constant) 6.011 7.181 4.671 7.143 –4.226 7.143
N 72 72 72
R2 0.498 0.464 0.320
Adjusted R2 0.287 0.239 0.035
F 2.900*** 4.070*** 2.300***
Note: Unstandardized coefficients and robust standard errors (SE) are reported; *p < .10;
**p < .05; ***p < .01.

the dependent variable, suggesting that boards with higher-income members

and in higher-SES communities invested relatively less agenda attention to
agenda measures related to NC internal maintenance. This is consistent with
hypothesis 1 that higher-income individuals have external resources to deploy
and may not need to devote as much attention to activities related to internal
operations. Other independent variables at the board level are also statisti-
cally significant. For instance, the coefficients for the percentage of board
members that were satisfied with their neighborhood and percentage home-
owners on the board are positively associated with internal maintenance–
related agenda activities at the 10% significance level. The social capital
index, which is a measure of previous volunteer experience, is negatively
related to the dependent variable at the 10% significance level, suggesting
that prior experience reduces the level of effort required toward internal
maintenance. Contrary to expectations, two other measures of SES, educa-
tion and homeownership in the community, are positively associated with an
internal maintenance orientation. Income heterogeneity has a negative coef-
ficient, significant at 1%, suggesting a lessened focus on internal organiza-
tional capacity development in more heterogeneous communities.
The regression analysis for community capacity development (in model II)
has an adjusted R-squared of 0.24 and a statistically significant F score of 4.07
(p < .01). Board member income characteristics are not related significantly to
a focus on community capacity development. Community income is nega-
tively associated with capacity development, suggesting that boards in higher-
SES communities invested relatively less agenda attention to agenda measures
related to NC community capacity development, consistent with hypothesis 1.
The percentage of Latino members of the board is negatively associated with
capacity development, whereas the percentage of the community population
that is Latino is positively associated with attention to community capacity
development. It is unclear why Latino board membership should show this
relationship, as the spatial mappings (Figure 3) suggest that east- and north-
east Los Angeles NCs, in heavily Latino-populated communities, demon-
strated higher-than-average factor-based scores for community capacity
development. Higher community educational levels also positively relate to
community capacity development at the 5% significance level.
The regression for external affairs (model III) has poor explanatory
power,5 and the hypothesized positive relationship (in hypothesis 2) between
SES and external affairs is not present. Nor do the findings demonstrate the
hypothesized negative relationship between heterogeneity (measured as
income) and external affairs agenda attention. Only the size of the commu-
nity and the regional dummy variables for the South Valley, West, Harbor,

Jun and Musso 95
and the East areas are statistically significant at 5% or 10%, which reflects
the strong orientation toward an external affairs agenda revealed in Figure 3.
The Harbor Area NCs were the first to be certified by the city, and during the
study period, were represented by City Council Member Janice Hahn, a
strong NC supporter. This part of the City, along with the Valley area, had
also sought secession because of strong dissatisfaction with City land-use
and environmental policies.
The regression model IV for a land-use agenda orientation is significant at
1% (adjusted R-squared = 0.17; F = 3.91) as indicated in Table 5. Regional
dummy variables, such as North Valley and Harbor areas, are statistically
significant at 10%, confirming the regional focus on land use displayed in
Figure 4. The level of homeownership in the community is not associated
with the dependent variable, which fails to support hypothesis 3 that NCs in
communities where there are more homeowners would tend to focus on land
use–related issues. Nor do the results show the hypothesized positive rela-
tionship between homeownership and the land use factor–based score, per-
haps in part because of high covariance between income and homeownership.
This also may be because such communities are more likely to have active
homeowner’s associations that provide an alternative venue for advocacy on
these issues. The quadratic terms for community income demonstrate a
U-shaped relationship with the orientation toward land use, consistent with
hypothesis 4 that there is more attention to land use in communities that are
relatively low income or high income. While the focus on land use in high-
income communities is consistent with the conventional wisdom, the interest
in land use among lower-income communities is perhaps less acknowledged
in the literature, with the exception of a small number of studies on environ-
mental justice (Lake 1996) and local growth control (Nguyen 2009).
Observations from the field research provide texture for these findings. In
particular, higher-income communities in Los Angeles were focused more on
issues around density of development or commercial uses that contribute to
traffic congestion, while lower-income communities were concerned with
attracting a desirable blend of development (grocery stores and cafes) and
opposing land-use proposals with negative externalities (halfway houses,
strip joints, and liquor stores). Neighborhood councils in low-income neigh-
borhoods in the North Valley, East Los Angeles, and South Los Angeles
opposed a homeless shelter, motel, slaughterhouse, and a proposed dump-
site. They also blocked increased liquor permitting—a particular issue that
found resonance among low-income communities. At an August 3, 2004,
Area Planning Commission meeting convened by the city to present a pro-
posed inclusionary zoning ordinance, Dorothy Fuller, Secretary of the 8th

Table 5. Multiple Regression Results: Factors Associated with NC Agenda

Orientation: Substantive Agenda Focus
Model IV Model V
Land Use Other Services
Independent Variables B SE B SE
% satisfied with neighborhood 0.422 1.112 0.044 1.112
Education in years 0.010 0.258 –0.113 0.258
Average income in $100K –0.659 0.023 1.084 0.023
Average income in $100K squared 0.240 1.157 –0.396 1.157
% Blacks 1.727 1.712 –0.019 1.712
% Latinos –1.029 0.987 –0.551 0.987
% very liberal 1.378 1.104 0.413 1.104
% homeowners 0.378 1.345 –0.333 1.345
Social capital index –0.005 0.006 0.002 0.006
Natural log of total population 0.242 0.319 0.101 0.319
Average income in $100K –24.885**†† 0.100 –2.500†† 0.100
Average income in $100K squared 12.260***†† 4.096 2.785†† 4.096
% Blacks –2.358 3.052 0.450 3.052
% Latinos 1.959 2.570 1.457 2.570
% college and graduate education 10.952 9.260 1.705 9.260
Income heterogeneity 1.679 16.131 –0.630 16.131
% homeowners 6.987 5.642 0.174 5.642
North Valley 1.557* 0.924 0.281 0.924
South Valley 0.937 0.796 0.187 0.796
Central 0.441 0.596 0.223 0.596
East 0.899 0.667 0.253 0.667
West 1.317 0.990 0.196 0.990
Harbor 3.059* 1.717 0.121 1.717
(Constant) –2.059 11.371 0.351 11.371
N 72 72
R>2 0.440 0.472
Adjusted R2 0.172 0.218
F 3.910*** 13.890***
Note: Unstandardized coefficients and robust standard errors (SE) are reported:
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01; †p < .10; ††p < .05; †††p < .01 jointly. Joint significance
is calculated for the income variables in the board and the community. For example, we
test whether Average income in $100K and Average income in $100K squared are jointly
significant.

Jun and Musso 97
District Empowerment Congress, articulated community sentiment about

being a social service provider of last resort:
The 8th district has endured a downward spiral . . . things that people
don’t want in the City of LA find their way into the 8th district. We
understand the need for affordable housing—and the lowest cost hous-
ing is in this area. . . . Exclude the 8th district—we’ve been the brunt—
and we don’t want it anymore.6
Hence, the NCs would appear to provide an institutionalized venue for orga-
nizing lower-income communities to attract new development or to resist
inequitably distributed undesirable land uses.
The pattern of findings with respect to other services suggests that a posi-
tive and weak nonlinear relationship between community income character-
istics and focus on a municipal services agenda. The overall regression has an
adjusted R-squared = 0.22 and an F value of 13.89 (p < .01) as shown in
Model V. The community income characteristics appear to drive the model,
as the quadratic terms are jointly significant and simulated results display a
positive relationship with an agenda oriented toward basic municipal ser-
vices. That is, in the case of other basic services, the analysis suggests a posi-
tive relationship between community income and issue orientation, such that
there is a greater orientation toward municipal services as the average com-
munity income increases. Although these income effects do not confirm
hypothesis 5 that there will be an inverse U-shaped relationship between
community income and other service-related agenda items, they do suggest
that board members in higher-SES communities tend to be more interested in
services, such as funding other nonprofits in the community, police protec-
tion, and economic development. In light of the findings with respect to inter-
nal maintenance, it is likely that NCs in higher-SES communities had the
advantage of being able to concentrate collective efforts on more substantive
community issues rather than investing efforts in maintenance activities. In
lower-income communities, the need to invest in internal organizational and
community capacity development displaced to some extent engagement on
more substantive concerns. The opportunities for NCs in lower-income com-
munities to mobilize around basic community development type of concerns
thus may be constrained by challenges related to organizational capacity.
Concluding Discussion
This analysis documents a nuanced portrait of the activities of local partici-
patory organizations while emphasizing the constraints related to community

capacity. Contrary to the implications of Purcell’s “local trap” thesis, that

CROs privilege the property interests of middle-class homeowners, the find-
ings suggest that lower-income communities also employ these venues to
prevent the burden of locally undesirable land uses. At the same time, the
high costs of internal maintenance and community capacity development
may hamper the focus of lower-income communities on substantive activi-
ties. Thus, the findings suggest that local participatory reforms should pay
particular attention to capacity development and support of operations.
During the study period, NCs focused on a variety of activities that cluster
into five general areas: internal maintenance, community capacity develop-
ment, external affairs, land-use and transportation advisement, and other
types of service needs, with a particular focus on community assistance and
public safety. Community capacity activities were oriented toward developing
a sense of community, such as community beautification projects, streetscape
improvement, and community events. These types of activities are likely to
support development of community capacity in the manner suggested by
Chaskin et al. (2001).
The agenda orientation of NCs expressed spatial differentiation in a man-
ner that varied with respect to geographic location and community character-
istics. Agenda orientation toward community capacity–related agendas and
external relations appeared most strongly in East Los Angeles, as well as in
regions that were involved in earlier, unsuccessful secession movements: the
western and eastern San Fernando Valley, the Westside, and Hollywood. In
contrast, South Los Angeles and parts of central San Fernando Valley paid
weaker attention to community capacity-related activities and outreach.
Strongly evident in the meeting agendas was a focus on NC maintenance,
and particularly, procedural matters and elections. The orientation toward
internal operations was particularly strong—about one-third of all agenda
items—illustrating the high costs of organizing and operating voluntary orga-
nizations. These internal maintenance requirements were likely to be a par-
ticular burden on lower-income communities, as evidenced by the inverse
relationship between board and community income and agenda focus on
internal maintenance. The vulnerability of neighborhood governance
appeared more related to the hampering effects of poverty on organizational
capacity than substantive biases toward pocket-book politics.
There was greater attention to land use in coastal and northern communi-
ties, as well as in East Los Angeles, where NCs mobilized against a number
of unfavorable land uses. This suggests that the patterns of agenda focus vary
in a logical way with local problems and provides some evidence that

Jun and Musso 99
local participatory institutions can provide a mechanism for aggregating and

communicating local demands. While land use was clearly a prominent con-
cern, it would appear to be a mistake to frame NC involvement in land use as
a straightforward case of middle-class NIMBYism. Many NCs proactively
participated in project review through dedicated land-use committees that
interacted closely with developers and City Council staff. Creating an envi-
ronment for project review and deliberative debate that “enhances participant
views” and encourages tolerance of other viewpoints (Halvorsen 2003, 541)
would appear to be key to enhancing NC credibility in project review, and
reducing the potential for reactionary opposition on the part of NCs. It should
be noted that this study does focus on agenda setting; future research
should consider the success of participatory organizations in acting on such
agendas.
Overall, the analysis uncovers a complex relationship between substantive
issue orientation and board member and community income levels. Field evi-
dence suggests that higher-income communities did not have a uniformly
oppositional stance to development, but rather a professionalized approach to
zoning oversight and proactive planning engagement through engagement of
land-use or design review committees with developers and city officials. In
contrast, a more oppositional land-use politics was observed in East Los
Angeles and the North Valley, where NCs served as a forum to resist place-
ment of locally undesirable land uses. In the case of service orientation, there
was more attention to issues around public safety, economics, and commu-
nity assistance among NCs in wealthier communities.
The nuanced findings with respect to land use confirm findings from sev-
eral environmental case studies that stress the benefits of community involve-
ment in the placement of sensitive facilities. Armour (1991) found that when
the community is involved in the initial phase of siting a low-level radioac-
tive waste management facility, the process allowed for “more of an open-
ness of learning about the problem and the process” (p. 64). In the case of a
high-level radioactive waste repository, Kraft and Clary (1991) similarly
argue that “the nature and extent of participation” was a key factor or success
in participatory planning efforts. Other studies have argued that neighbor-
hood participation had effects beyond the land-use controversy at hand, con-
tributing to formal or informal rules or norms of participatory planning in a
neighborhood. For example, Martin (2004) conducted a case study of hospi-
tal expansion plan in Athens, Georgia, and found that neighborhood associa-
tions did not have a great impact on the matter at hand but did influence
subsequent hospital management processes.

In sum, the analysis of meeting agendas provides a portrait of richly varied

NC engagement in an array of local issues, including proactive planning and
project oversight, community assistance, and discussion of public safety mat-
ters. While land-use issues were clearly prominent, they did not dominate,
and many NCs appeared more interested in shaping land-use decisions than
opposing them outright. Thus, the study suggests that CROs can serve as
mediating institutions that provide differentiated policy inputs in the urban
policy processes. The challenge is to overcome socioeconomic differences
that require lower-income communities to struggle more with internal main-
tenance and building community capacity. In diverse cities such as Los
Angeles, the fairness and efficacy of local participatory governance will
require targeted technical support to lower-income communities, so that
attention to building capacity does not divert organizations from pursuing a
more substantive policy agenda.
Appendix
Tables A1 and A2 include detailed information on the sources of data
and coding scheme adoption in the content analysis of NC meeting
agendas.
Table A1. Sources of Data

Source Description
Newspaper Total of 243 newspaper articles analyzed from 2003 to 2004
articles
Meeting notes • Field observations and notes from NC and City meetings
attended between 2000 and 2006:
–80 community and neighborhood council meetings;
–16 citywide or regional alliance meetings;
–20 city meetings (City Council; Council committees; Board
of Neighborhood Commissioners)
Interviews 132 semistructured interviews with city officials and community
members conducted between 2000 and 2006
Surveys • NC board member survey from 2005 to 2006: 710
respondents with a response rate of 47%
• U.S. Census 2000, summary file 3
Meeting agenda Total of 467 meeting agendas from 73 NCs analyzed from 2003
collection to 2005

Jun and Musso 101
Table A2. Content Coding Scheme

Value Activities Examples
1 Outreach (Specify below)
1.1 Community outreach • Activities to promote NCs
• Newsletters, e-forums, stakeholder surveys
• Door-to-door leafleting and posting of regular
meeting notices
• Community outreach and awards;letters of
thanks
1.2 Government • NC-initiated contact with City Council office
relations deputies
• Presentations from City Council office deputies
• Meetings with City Council office
• Department relationship-building
• NC-initiated contact with departments for
liaison appearance at meeting(s)
• Department presentation at meetings
• Assigning a representative to the MOU
committee
1.3 Alliance building • On Congress: Assigning a representative to the
Congress
• Alliance of NC participation/reports
• Valley (or other regional) alliance participation
• Meetings with other NC board members
2 Internal operations • Administrative (hiring of office staff; finance and
budget actions; 501c3 formation)
• Guidance/Instructions to committee
• Operations (allotting funds to committee; board
retreats; town halls; bylaws changes; elections;
board member nonattendance or removal;
grievance procedures; committee formation or
appointments)
• Capacity building (participation in training, ethics,
or leadership programs; hiring of consultants;
purchasing of tools [computers, traffic control
devices, etc.]; strategic planning not related to
land use)
3 Community event • Street festivals, pancake breakfast
planning • Dia de Los Muertos
• Parades, block parties etc.
• Political events (e.g., Mayoral debate)
• Town Hall meetings
• Participation of events of others
(continued)

Table A2. (continued)

4 Land Use–Related (Specify below)
4.0 Land use 0: General • General mention of land use; not action items
4.1 Land use 1: NIMBY • Don’t do it in my backyard but do it in
someone else’s
• Social services (e.g., halfway houses; resident
treatment facilities)
4.2 Land use 2: NIABY • Not-in-anybody’s-backyard
• Threats to public safety (e.g., natural gas tanks)
• Transport of hazardous materials (e.g., “Nuclear-
free zone”)
4.3 Land use 3:YIMBY • Yes-in-my-backyard
4.4 Land use 4: All others • Specific proposed development or other usage;
variance
5 Proactive planning • Developing planning review criteria or signage
and guidelines
land-use policy • Initiating a neighborhood planning process
• Developing neighborhood plans
• Proposed ordinance
• Visioning and strategies around land use
• Position, master plan, community specific plan,
amendments
6 Economy • Economic development (improvements
specifically to attract businesses)
• Government regulations
• Jobs; unemployment
• City and state budget; deficit; taxes
• Energy/utility costs (e.g., DWP rate hike)
7 Education • Education; schools
• Youth activities/Programs (e.g., Cultural, field
trips, Museums….)
8 Environmental • Environment; pollution (e.g., air, noise)
quality/resources • Garbage; dumping; waste management
• Brush clearance
• Resource management
• R.E.N.E.W. LA
• Water; water quality; water availability
(continued)

Jun and Musso 103
Table A2. (continued)

9 Community • Streetscape improvement, façade improvement
beautification • Tree planting; park and recreation facility
improvement etc.
• Facility improvements
• Public arts
10 Community • Support for community organizations, NGOs
assistance
(health and welfare) • Health care; health costs; HMO reform
• Homelessness
• Poverty; the poor; welfare
• Social programs (e.g., senior citizen)
• Support for other areas (need not be own
neighborhoods): Katrina
11 Housing • Housing costs; housing availability; housing quality
• Code violations and enforcement (e.g., building)
• Inclusionary zoning; adaptive reuse projects
12 Public safety • Crime; gangs; public safety; policing
• Drugs
• Fire
• Graffiti
• Guns; gun control
• Public safety education; public safety/crime
prevention assistance
• Terrorism; security issues
• Safe passage
• Spending on surveillance camera
13 Transportation • Street maintenance; sidewalks/paths/bike lanes
• Signs; safety reflectors
• Traffic; transportation
• Parking
• Transit shelters; transportation furniture
14 Others • Animal rights; civil rights; gay rights; women’s
rights
• Position on federal/state/local legislation on
issues not covered by 4-13 above
15 Unknown

Table A3. Pattern Matrix from the Initial Principal Components Analysis on NC
Activities
Components
Activities 1 2 3 4
Community relations 0.884
Community beautification 0.639
Internal operations 0.406 –0.417
Government relations 0.885
Alliance building 0.652
Environmental quality 0.880
Land use related 0.731
Economy 0.690
Public safety 0.671
Assistance 0.555
Note: Extraction method: principal components analysis. Rotation method: Promax with
Kaiser normalization. Extracted principal components with eigenvalues are greater than 1;
factor loadings <0.4 are suppressed.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge and thank the editors and three anonymous reviewers for
constructive comments and suggestions that substantially improved this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research received generous support
from the National Science Foundation, the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes
Foundation, and the James Irvine Foundation.
Notes
1. Requested agendas for monthly meetings were selected randomly from each quar-
ter for which the NC was meeting in the three years prior to collection efforts in
mid-2006. We received every agenda requested from only 15 NCs; for 28 others
we were able to gain most of the requested agendas by request or via the NC
website. A total of 467 of the requested 794 agendas were received.

Jun and Musso 105
2. These data are limited in that they do not support the measurement of the time
spent on each agenda item or actions taken on specific issues. Unfortunately,
because there is no requirement that NCs produce minutes of their meetings, we
were unable to obtain a sample of meeting minutes. Hence, the agendas are the
best available representative sample of the issues engaged by Los Angeles NCs.
3. Factor-based scores are created by summing raw scores or items loading on
specific component or factor (Pett, Lackey, and Sullivan 2003). In other words,
factor-based scores are “linear composite of the variables that demonstrated mean-
ingful loadings for the component in question” (Hatcher 1994, 31).
4. To finalize the principal components analysis, one needs to make sure the rotated fac-
tor pattern shows a “simple structure” and not a complex one. According to Hatcher
(1994), a simple structure requires that “most of the variables have relatively high
factor loadings on only one component” (p. 27). If there is an item that loads more
than one component, one should repeat the process for the remaining variables.
5. The model explains 4% of the total variance in the dependent variable (F = 2.3, p < .01).
Low explanatory power of the model for the external affairs may arise because our
regression model is not fully specified. External tie building is likely to be also
determined by the willingness of the city officials to be working with the NCs and
our model was unable to include measures of city council attitude toward NCs.
6. South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission hearing, August 3, 2004.
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Bios
Kyu-Nahm Jun is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. Her research interests include community-
based citizen participation and local government responsiveness. Other research
interests include the role of information technology between citizen and government
agencies in urban governance.
Juliet Musso is the Houston Flournoy Professor of State Government in the Sol Price
School of Public Policy at University of Southern California. She has expertise in
federalism and urban political economy, with specific research interests in intergov-
ernmental fiscal policy, local institutional reform, and community governance.

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Urban Affairs Review

Participatory 49(1) 71­–110

Kyu-Nahm Jun1 and Juliet Musso2

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use is also emphasized in lower-income communities that historically have

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participatory governance to the pocket-book concerns of not-in-my-backyard

The Role of Community-Representing

Every neighborhood must be organized; the neighborhood groups must

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By the late twentieth century, it would appear that Follett’s vision of

Multifaceted Role of Local Participatory Institutions

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broad-based progressive agenda. In theory, the local orientation of NCs sup-

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action. Thus, participatory structures may support a reinforcing cycle in

The Dangers of Parochialism

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were the case, neighborhood associations would pursue spatially differenti-

Socioeconomic Influences on Neighborhood Agenda Setting

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associations in Albuquerque, New Mexico. These studies focused primarily

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The socioeconomic influences on substantive agenda setting are important

Hypothesis 1: CROs in lower-income communities will have a greater

Another important function of CROs is to develop networks of social and

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Hypothesis 2: Agenda focus on external relations will be negatively

Hypothesis 3: CROs in areas with a higher proportion of homeowners

Lastly, socioeconomic characteristics are expected to have a nonlinear

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Hypothesis 5: Agenda focus on other municipal services will have a

Empirical Focus: The Los Angeles

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committees that support volunteer activities. Moreover, the NC board meet-

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components analysis, with the goal of reducing observed variables to “a

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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics

of the NC boards in Los Angeles; as Table 2 shows, NC board members are

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Table 2. Socioeconomic Characteristics of NC Boards and LA City

Overview of Agenda Orientation

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Figure 1. Neighborhood council agenda orientation (2003-2005)

organization and to develop external relations functions that connect the NC

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Figure 2. Specific breakdowns of land-use agenda items

of land-use agenda issues) and proactive planning (13%), suggesting that

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Table 3. Pattern Matrix from the Final Principal Component Analysis on NC

activities such as streetscape beautification and community festivals, typi-

The Spatial Orientation of NC Agenda Focus

Participatory 49(1) 71–110