Listening cities

Active listening allows us to transform diversity into an opportunity for knowledge and not for taking sides, through methodologies that pass through personal and collective commitment: here’s where it is already applied and how, from the words of two experts

The pauses, the silences, the way of moving or standing still. The distance between bodies. The timbre, the tone of the voice, the rhythm of the words that follow one another quickly or one at a time, and you could feel the rush, the dance or the weight, the fall. The gaze, straight in the eyes, fixed on the floor or looking for something in the air. Listening is the art of interpreting how all these signs combine with each other and with the meaning of the words that are spoken. Meanings that each culture only partially codifies.

The art of listening does not involve immediate reactions but the ability to make space, to tune into the other person’s world and discover their needs, fears, desires. Those who are excellent at it always give you back something about yourself that you didn’t know. Really meeting presupposes a good dose of mutual listening. How much do our cities enable this?

The benches of Düsseldorf

A bench, a person, a sign: “Zuhören Draussen”, that is “Outdoor listening”. There are twelve of them all over Düsseldorf, in the western part of Germany. They are activated according to a calendar established twice a month and organized by the association of the same name born after the pandemic.

«We offer to listen to people in the public space: those passing by can scan the QR Code on the bench and find information on the initiative, or we ourselves, all volunteers, explain what it is about» says Alexandra Perl.

«We listen to whoever shows up: sometimes it’s just an elderly lady who goes shopping, sits down for a moment and has a chat, sometimes it’s people who feel alone, who haven’t spoken to another person for a week and they come to share their state of mind. Someone says they have found an apartment, someone else says they are about to become a grandmother or have gotten their driving licence» recalls Perl. “Zuhören Draussen” in addition to Düsseldorf is also present in Ratingen and Bonn, plans to open in other cities within the year and is not the only listening association present in Germany. The objective is to combat social isolation, which is increasing after the pandemic. «We know that to overcome it we need to talk to people in a very intimate environment, one on one» underlines Perl «Listening is the most powerful structure for overcoming prejudice, fear, anxiety, loneliness. Listening is also good for those who listen: it means gaining self-esteem, self-awareness, it changes the way of being and communicating».

The volunteers, a heterogeneous group aged from 18 to 80, receive specific training before starting, managed by Perl herself, a professional trainer. How to avoid unpleasant situations from arising before, during or after listening? «To guarantee the speakers, we never share, for any reason, what they choose to tell us. We offer a space to find the right words and express them but we are not, and we say this if necessary, a coaching space» specifies Perl «To protect our volunteers, we have a therapist on our team and several numbers to contact in case of need: so far this hasn’t happened, also because we do a check-in and check-out before and after each session. Listening is cognitively demanding work and you need to be in the best conditions to do it: but when you do it, it has a huge impact on all our relationships».

We learn early to pretend to listen, but equally we believe we are excellent listeners. In reverse, we realize almost immediately if anyone is really listening to us. «I remember a couple in the first years of my training courses» smiles Perl «He obtained a not very high score on the entrance questionnaire and turned to his wife in amazement: ‘Strange, I thought I was a good listener’. She looked at him and replied: ‘You also thought you were a good driver.’ Listening is a decision, which includes a lot of attention and mindfulness» explains Perl «But the quality of the listener also influences the quality of the speaker. Leaders who know how to listen enjoy higher prestige, with positive impacts on the psychological safety, trust and satisfaction of their teams».

With the International Listening Association Perl is structuring a special project on sustainability and climate change: «Our society is called to face enormous challenges and we must be willing to listen to those who are open to sharing their point of view» she declares «Also if you don’t agree, you can show some empathy with the other person and understand the reasons. Listening is not the solution for everything but it is always a good starting point».

The “Dialogue Citoyen” of Nantes

The metropolitan area of Nantes, a city on the Loire river, in north-west France, includes twenty-four municipalities and almost 700,000 inhabitants. Of these, almost 30,000 participated in the “Grand Débat” voted unanimously by the metropolitan council in February 2023¹ to encourage the co-planning of urban interventions towards 2030.

From March to July 2023, 125 days of debates were organized including information sessions, urban walks, public audits of experts, reflection workshops and proposals aimed at citizens and organisations, the possibility of drafting individual contributions or testifying to an organizational expertise or innovation through the Cahier d’acteur. To ensure the impartiality and correctness of the debate, a committee of seven volunteers was founded, appointed on the proposal of the seven political groups that make up the metropolitan council².

From July to November 2023, the final report was drawn up with all the proposals that emerged from the debate³, which were examined point by point by the metropolitan council in the first months of 2024, until the final discussion and vote of the council which took place on 12th April⁴. The roadmap with the established interventions will be presented on 18th April⁵.

Since 8 October 2021, the Metropolitan Council has in fact unanimously approved a Citizenship Pact which commits each elected representative to consult the territories on complex problems, through various tools of participatory democracy, and above all to study and respond in a limited time to the proposals elaborated in the consultation summary document: citizens then have the right to evaluate how much of what has been publicly decided will actually be achieved.

The various participatory democracy initiatives, and their progress, are collected in the “Dialogue Citoyen” portal⁶. «In Nantes they managed to put a process that is very similar to active listening at the basis of the entire urban governance system» comments sociologist Marianella Sclavi.

But what is active listening⁷? «We are used to communicating mainly through a judgmental listening» explains Sclavi «True or false? Right or wrong? friend or enemy? Judgmental listening transforms diversity into taking sides: if you have an idea different from mine, I try to convince you to come over to my side, to the side of reason. On the contrary, active listening is a way of transforming diversity into a resource: diversity becomes an opportunity to understand better, not to take sides».

And how does it work? «When someone expresses opinions, has a behavior that is divergent or that I even perceive as opposite to mine, instead of reacting by thinking that he is wrong, through active listening I try to understand what his assumptions are. And so I can see things from his point of view too» explains Sclavi. «To make decisions on a complex problem, we need to see how it is experienced by a plurality of absolutely divergent subjects. And then, through active discussion, identify mutually agreeable solutions».

And how did you start listening like this? «I come from a family of travellers, so at the age of nine I had already lived three years in Brazil. And then I started traveling alone and went to America when I was 16. You can live in many ways immersed in a culture different from your own, but in my family we used the humorous method: smiling at ourselves and at denied expectations, without getting frustrated. My parents told a lot of anecdotes, laughed about them and showed what they had learned from those situations” recalls Sclavi.

From these experiences of “urban ethnography” the books A una spanna da terra and The Italian lady goes to the Bronx were born: the first one is a report of the differences between the US and Italian school systems, the second one is a testimony of the stay in one of the neighborhoods considered the most problematic in the world. «Emotional self-awareness is important in active listening: in the early days in the Bronx, when I was there on the subway alone, my fear made me think of the worst possible scenarios» recalls Sclavi. «I let them emerge and I began to reflect on the characteristics of the potential attacker, which obviously made me look at all the people who were there on the subway with me with different eyes. At that point I said to myself: ‘You deserve to be attacked by a middle-aged woman who looks like an employee!’. This helped me to be aware that my emotions were revealing a framework to me that was not mandatory. Maybe probable, but not mandatory».

A great classic of Sclavi’s training on active listening is the game of nine points: given a square made up of nine points, how to join them all with four segments without removing the pen from the paper? «It’s the difference between change one, within a range of possibilities taken for granted, and change two, the change that takes you out of the frame, the script, the usual emotional dynamics» explains Sclavi.

But after trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, what happens? How do we find a common path? «In America they call it consensus building but in Italy the word doesn’t work, it is taken as agreeing to something that has already been decided, and therefore I called it creative comparison» recalls Sclavi «After the first session of mutual listening, according to the ordinary process starts a stalemate phase, because if you accept all the options you won’t get anywhere. With creative comparison, instead of narrowing it down further, you multiply the options, look for ideas and good practices that have addressed the same problem in a new way compared to what has already emerged. We then arrive at another session of comparison with what we found and generally one or two ideas emerge that everyone likes. A committee is then built which is responsible for drawing up a project which is subsequently discussed for improvement. In short», concludes Sclavi, «to arrive at a solution starting from the divergence it is necessary to multiply the options available».

A simple principle: before deciding, know all the alternatives available. «Instead, with judgmental listening we stop immediately as soon as a difference emerges, we start discussing what is right and wrong to choose one and eliminate the conflict with the majority» underlines Sclavi. «Of course, active listening is also knowing how to stay in the discomfort that accompanies research in which no one has a ready solution».

Do you think that the “Dialogue Citoyen” of Nantes could be a model? «I am studying them in depth, I will write publications on this» replies Sclavi «Certainly, when each of us feels listened to, it sends positive emotions of empowerment into circulation, when it is not, vice versa, it releases frustration and closure. Creating contexts of mutual learning through active listening is everyone’s responsibility».

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1. Metropolitan Council of Nantes. (February 10, 2023). Resolution of the “Grand Debate”. https://dialoguecitoyen.metropole.nantes.fr/media/default/0001/01/ddd7edf1e37d1793aadf0cb38ad6d901d11e143e.pdf. ↩︎
2. Metropolitan City of Nantes. Handbook of the “Grand Debate”. https://dialoguecitoyen.metropole.nantes.fr/media/default/0001/01/64f1f76ab78a258c2d557ae5ab73d03fbe4db982.pdf. ↩︎
3. Metropolitan City of Nantes. (April 12, 2024). Final Report of the “Grand Debate”. https://metropole.nantes.fr/files/live/sites/metropolenantesfr/files/presse/espace-presse/2024-04-11%20DIALOGUE%20CITOYEN%20-%20Feuille%20de%20route%20Grand%20D%c3%a9bat%20Fabrique%20de%20nos%20Villes.pdf. ↩︎
4. Metropolitan City of Nantes. (April 12, 2024). Final Discussion and Vote of the Metropolitan Council. .https://dialoguecitoyen.metropole.nantes.fr/media/default/0001/01/ced87a8ed9a7b52bad96f05972fc34880f0b74c4.pdf. ↩︎
5. Metropolitan City of Nantes. (April 18, 2024). Closing Evening of the Grand Debate “Factory of our cities. Together, let’s invent tomorrow’s life”. https://dialoguecitoyen.metropole.nantes.fr/events/soiree-de-cloture-du-grand-debat-fabrique-de-nos-villes-ensemble-inventons-la-vie-de-demain. ↩︎
6. Metropolitan City of Nantes. Citizen Dialogue Space, City of Nantes and Nantes Métropole. https://dialoguecitoyen.metropole.nantes.fr/. ↩︎
7. There is a vast bibliography on active listening. For further information: Rogers, C. R., & Farson, R. E. (1957). Active listening. Chicago, IL: Industrial Relations Center of the University of Chicago. Itzchakov, G., & Kluger, A. N. (2018). The power of listening in helping people change. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-power-of-listening-in-helping-people-change. ↩︎