Whose City Hall Is It?

000000">The purpose of this talk session is to engage workshop participants in a discussion about the city hall as a symbolic stage on which of civic life unfolds.  The talk session will be utilized to gather conceptual data that will be useful for advancing  a digital civic identity project focused on the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) metropolitan area.  Central to the project is an understanding of whether or not the idea of a physical “city hall” remains central to an engaged citizenry, providing a central location for activism and engagement.  From the monumental wedge of the Dallas City Hall to the informal ranch house of Denton’s City Hall, the more than 200 city halls of the DFW region provide a laboratory for exploring how citizens engage with and impact local policy.  This project  will map and catalog the city halls of each locality as a means of assessing both the efficiency of local government and, more abstractly, whether or not this myriad of city halls effectively represents an idealized civic identity or sense of place that allows diverse and authentic citizen engagement.