Toward the Relational City: Imaginaries, Expertise, Experiments - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 192

key here is seeking more egalitarian interchange at the human/natural boundary;
an interchange that involves progressively less in the way of human autism. In
short, ecological democratization here is a matter of more effective integration of
political and ecological communication. 22
Similar to relational theorists, Dryzek argues for the rejection of essences
and an embrace of the hybrid world, although he begins with the notion
of deliberative democracy rather than a questioning of conventional on-
tological categories.
Dryzek furthers this perspective by arguing for a communicative ratio-
nality that listens to nonhuman voices. Communicating with nonhuman
actors might seem to be a perverse activity, given the limitations of these
actors to engage in conventional forms of communication such as speak-
ing, reading, writing, and emotion, but Dryzek recognizes communication
from nature on a large scale through climate change, desertifi cation, defor-
estation, and species extinction. This form of ecological communication
is evident in local hydrologic fl ows through processes of fl ooding, bank
erosion, pollution concentrations, and so on. Dryzek writes:
Recognition of agency in nature therefore means that we should listen to signals
emanating from the natural world with the same sort of respect we accord com-
munication emanating from human subjects, and as requiring equally careful
interpretation. In other words, our relation to the natural world should not be
one of instrumental intervention and observation of results oriented to control.
Thus communicative interaction with the natural world can and should be an
eminently rational affair. 23
In this view, the value of civic experts is not in the specialized knowledge
that they bring to the negotiating table but rather their ability to medi-
ate human/nonhuman confl icts through various listening processes. The
municipal staff members in Austin and Seattle are the principal “listeners”
of urban water fl ows, tasked with translating this information from the
waterways, endangered species, vegetation, and so on to venues of political
deliberation. Such experts can be understood to be, as Winston Churchill
famously stated, “on tap, rather than on top.” 24 But informal experts also
play a crucial role in translating the signals of their local surroundings for
political deliberation. Both can be considered civic experts tasked with
mediating communication between humans and nonhumans.
A Call for Civic Experimentation
Regulations are, and always should be, in a state of fl ux and adjustment—on the
one hand with a view to preventing newly discovered abuses, and on the other