“But what city leaders have been trying to reckon with recently,” writes Andrew Small, “is how representative that audience sample is of the community they represent.”

The audience sample in question here being those who show up for things like local neighborhood planning meetings and whether or not they “represent the moderate opinion of everyone who’s just okay [on] a decision but don’t have the time between work, school, and play to show up to a meeting”.

I’ve deep reservations about the use of the word “recently” there, as this was a perennial question back when I was covering local planning matters on Portland Communique back in the early-to-mid aughts, and even then it wasn’t a new issue.