What does ‘City of Excellence’ mean to Cooperation Plano?

A key feature of the Municipalism is that the practice should be unique in each community it is engaged. In Plano, then, our community of Municipalist practice should be unique to and appropriate for Plano.

So what would this mean for us? How could Municipalist practice be specially adapted to and made appropriate for the ‘City of Excellence’?

Well, one way to answer that might be to work with that exact slogan, because really, what Municipalists seek to achieve is a state of excellence in the community, but probably defined differently than it would be in City marketing materials.

Putting it in concrete terms then, what might ‘excellence’ mean for Cooperation Plano?

A few possibilities:

• Plano is a world leader in modeling direct democracy
  • A highly functional and well attended network of neighborhood councils
  • A high level of organization and coordination between neighborhood councils
• Plano is a world leader in networks of mutual aid
  • A high number of Plano residents participate in mutual aid networks where resources are shared to meet acute needs
  • Homelessness entirely eliminated within our city
  • Hunger and poverty greatly reduced
  • Payday loan places go out of business because there is no need
• Plano is a world leader in co-housing and community living
  • Plano leads the nation in the percentage of residents living in some form of cooperative living arrangement
  • Given the high number of retirees, senior co-housing could be especially promising for Plano
• Plano has a globally recognized network of worker-owned business
  • Some large companies similar to Mondragon in Spain
  • Many small companies that are deliberately and avowedly worker owned
  • All worker owned companies, big and small, stand in solidarity with one another.
• Plano is a world leader in adaptation to climate change
  • Considering the effects that are already inevitable, Plano is pro-active in preparing for both the effects of extreme weather locally, and the effects of migrations and so forth from other places.
  • Considering how climate change can be ameliorated and humanity brought back into ecological balance with the biosphere, Plano can lead the way demonstrating a way for urban conglomerations to meet human needs in an ecologically harmonious way.

What are some other ways that Plano could live up to its namesake as the City of Excellence as seen through a Municipalist lens?