A partnership between Jigsaw, this Kentucky city could be the future of civic engagement

Bowling Green, Kentucky, is known for being the city from which Corvettes roll off the production lines, and for Fruit of the Loom underwear, which is headquartered there.

But the city of 76,000 could soon be known for something else: its AI-powered mass civic engagement project that is using public surveys to chart the future of the city. 

In the next 25 years, the county within which Bowling Green sits is set to double in size, thanks largely to the growth of nearby Nashville. Figuring out what to do about that vexes the public officials in  Bowling Green and the greater Warren County. The “What Could BG Be?” project is an open consultation open to all residents in the area to share their hopes, dreams, and fears for the future of the area.

The tech-driven consultation opens today, and runs through March 17. The insights provided by citizens will be gathered by Google’s Jigsaw team, alongside Polis, a statistical analysis company, and synthesized to try and come up with concrete conclusions the local council can pursue for the future.

“Bowling Green is going through this incredible transformation,” Jigsaw CEO Yasmin Green tells Fast Company. “They’re doubling in size over the next 20 years. It sounds fantastic on the surface, but there’s a mixed bag of emotions about whether that’s going to be good or not.”

The data will be parsed by Jigsaw’s Sensemaking tools, which utilize large language models to make sense of large-scale online conversations. In an attempt to foster transparency through the whole process, all the comments, and any votes made by the public on potential options that stem from them, will be available on a website devoted to the project. The website also provides a public square for the general populace to chip in with any comments. “The publishing of the comments is very important so that people can check it,” says Green. “A summary by definition is a lossy act.”

That transparency is particularly important because of the intricacies of Bowling Green, a purple city with a Republican mayor and a diverse population. City planners and public figures say there are more things that unite city folk than divide them—but it can sometimes be difficult to discern those areas of “uncommon agreement” in this age of partisanship.

“Bowling Green is kind of a microcosm of what happens around the world,” says Green. “You feel so much change. There’s technological disruption, immigration, the changing nature of jobs, and the economy. They are going through this change.”

The ultimate goal is to try and help encourage participation with civic engagement processes—and to glean any ideas that could help the local community head into the future in a stronger position to address the challenges of rapid population growth and changing economic and social circumstances.

“I think if we can get a proof point in Bowling Green, that could be inspiring for a lot of other places to pick up,” says Green.

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