Toward the Relational City: Imaginaries, Expertise, Experiments - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 190

A Call for Civic Expertise
Both public problem solving and democratic governance, especially when they
apply to value-laden policy issues, would be better served if the technically ori-
ented, top-down expert-client relationship were replaced by a more profession-
ally modest but politically appropriate understanding of the expert as “special-
ized citizen.”
—Frank Fischer 9
The fostering of civic or ecological imaginaries is an important fi rst step
to enact a relational perspective of urban nature. In addition, there is a
need for a variety of actors to turn this newfound understanding of rela-
tions into concrete projects and practices. John emphasizes the need for
a “shadow community” of experts from government, business, and civil
society organizations to foster collaborative political activities. 10 Although
this label has a somewhat sinister air, the mission of these individuals is
actually one of humble expertise , where specialized knowledge informs
rather than dominates political deliberation. Fischer argues for a similar
model of civic expertise, where specialized knowledge is oriented fi rst
and foremost toward democratic empowerment. 11 This approach follows
Dewey's vision of the expert in society as that of researcher, clarifi er, hy-
pothesizer, and general assistant to resolve publicly determined problems.
The public formulates a problem defi nition and experts then provide sce-
narios and possible courses of action for the public to deliberate. 12 The
role of the civic expert is not to dictate political activities but rather to
facilitate and guide as necessary; the civic expert is committed fi rst and
foremost to making the process successful rather than advocating for a
particular outcome. 13
This arrangement results in a blurring of the boundary between ex-
perts and nonexperts, with experts understood as specialized citizens and
citizens as local experts. 14 I do not argue that specialized knowledge is no
longer necessary; natural and social scientists are crucial to civic politics,
although their specialized knowledge constitutes only a portion of the
relations that exist in a particular locale. The tendency of these individu-
als should not be to fall back on the certainties of natural science or the
detached gaze of social analysis, but rather to work toward elucidating
relations, both contested and consensual, and to speculate on the potential
consequences of reworking those relations into new confi gurations. Latour
writes, “So the sciences are going to put into the common basket their
skills, their ability to provide instruments and equipment, their capacity to