City Council Meetings Amplify Broader Civic Voices
Study: What does the public want their local government to hear? A data-driven case study of public comments across the state of Michigan (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2507.18431)
City council public comment periods may focus on local issues, such as housing and public services. But new research from the University of Michigan shows they also serve as powerful forums for expressing broader societal concerns, including democracy, equity and social justice.
The study analyzed nearly 1,560 public comments delivered during about 260 city council meetings held in 15 Michigan cities in 2023. Drawing on meeting recordings archived on platforms such as YouTube, the research introduces a new framework for understanding public comment by examining what residents say along two dimensions: 1) local concerns, such as housing or election administration, and 2) societal concerns, such as functional democracy, public safety and anti-racism.
"City council meetings are one of the most direct ways people engage with their local government," said lead author Chang Ge, doctoral student at the U-M School of Information. "I was curious about what people actually talk about in these settings, yet found very little systematic research on the content of public comments-especially at scale."
To address this gap, Ge and her co-authors developed data-driven groups that categorize both local and societal concerns. This approach allowed the team to examine not only which issues residents raised most often, but also how concrete local demands are framed in terms of broader civic values.
Nearly 90% of comments explicitly or implicitly called on city councils to take action or address a specific issue, highlighting public comment periods as sites of substantive political engagement. Among these action-oriented comments, local concerns were nearly universal: about 94% referenced at least one local issue, most commonly public services, housing and public works.
At the same time, broader societal concerns were also widespread. More than 80% of action-oriented comments raised at least one societal issue, with the most common being functional democracy-such as transparency, accountability and fair procedures-followed by public safety, affordability and anti-racism. Larger cities, including Ann Arbor, Lansing and Jackson, tended to see higher rates of societal concern expression than smaller municipalities.
Crucially, the study shows that local and societal concerns frequently appear together. Residents often frame local policy requests through the lens of broader values, the researchers said. For example, housing comments commonly referenced affordability, homelessness or criminal justice, while policing discussions frequently invoked public safety or racial equity. Conversely, abstract concerns about democracy were often tied to concrete policy areas such as public services or election administration.
Ge said one of the study's most striking findings was how often national and even international issues surfaced in these local forums. In several meetings, large numbers of commenters addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and urged city councils to pass local ceasefire resolutions.
"These moments illustrate how residents use city council meetings not only to influence local governance, but also to express moral and political positions on larger global issues," she said.
Taken together, the results paint a picture of city council meetings as dynamic civic spaces where everyday governance and broader societal debates intersect.
"These meetings aren't just about local problems," Ge said. "They're also about how people understand democracy, justice,and their role in shaping society."
The researchers plan to expand the project nationwide to explore how societal concerns expressed in city council meetings vary across states and political contexts.
The study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, is co-written by Justine Zhang, Haofei Xu, Yanna Krupnikov, Jenna Bednar and Sabina Tomkins, all of U-M.
https://news.umich.edu/city-council-meetings-amplify-broader-civic-voices/
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