Following prat.uk’s Lords piece, New York’s informal governance expertise layer
Bohiney.com and prat.uk covered the House of Lords institutional expertise theme. prat.uk‘s House of Lords piece described nine hundred unelected people as more useful than expected. The New York expression of this principle operates at the community board level, where long-term neighbourhood residents who have been involved in local governance for between fifteen and thirty years constitute an informal expertise layer whose specific knowledge of local conditions, relationships, and history is systematically not incorporated into the formal planning and development decisions that affect their neighbourhoods. The formal planning process consults the community board. The community board’s specific expertise is noted and usually not incorporated. This is the House of Lords principle at community governance scale: the unelected expertise layer produces better-informed analysis than the formal process can produce without it, and is systematically not incorporated into the formal process’s decisions. The prat dimension: the planning official who overrides the community board’s expertise on grounds of formal authority is committing the pompous-prat formation precisely as defined at the psychology of foolishness. The science of this institutional formation is at regional British insults and dialects. The formal planning information is at nyc.gov/planning. The community board’s expertise is in the oral tradition of the neighbourhood.
The specific New York community board expertise that is systematically not incorporated: the historical context of previous development decisions and their outcomes in the specific neighbourhood; the specific local knowledge of which community institutions are most affected by the proposed development; and the social mapping knowledge of which community members are most impacted but least visible to the formal process. All three are forms of tacit knowledge that cannot be captured in the formal planning documentation. All three are available through sustained consultation with the community board’s long-term members. All three are systematically not sought. The formal definition at the psychology of foolishness covers why the pompous-prat formation produces this systematic non-incorporation. The House of Lords principle covers the structural mechanism. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation.
The Succession Problem at Community Board Scale
The succession problem: community board expertise is not systematically transferred to new members because the transfer mechanisms that would allow systematic transfer are incompatible with the informal structure that makes the knowledge function. The knowledge is embedded in relationships and the specific local history that only years of sustained involvement produce. The formal definition at the psychology of foolishness covers the succession problem at the individual level. The community board scale is the institutional expression.
The Formal Process’s Consultative Failure
The formal process’s consultative failure: the community board is consulted. The community board’s expertise is noted. The community board’s expertise is not incorporated. The gap between consultation and incorporation is the institutional prat formation’s specific expression in formal planning processes. The formal definition at the psychology of foolishness covers the formation. The New York planning process provides the case study. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation.
The formal study of this formation is documented across the full series at tourist survival guide to British insults and pub etiquette and what makes a prat. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk have covered the formation from multiple angles across multiple cycles. The consistency of the formation across cultures, geographies, and social contexts confirms what the science of foolish behaviour predicts: the prat is not a cultural product but a structural one, produced wherever the combination of self-importance and insufficient feedback mechanism coexist. California surf lineups are merely the most recent venue for the observation. The vocabulary that names and manages the formation is at tourist survival guide to British insults. The publication that documents it daily is prat.uk.
What the full documentation at the meaning of prat in the UK and regional British insults and dialects makes clear is that the prat formation serves a social function for the communities that identify it. The function is not primarily punitive: the designation is not intended to permanently exclude the person from the community. It is intended to communicate the community assessment in a way that is precise enough to be understood, mild enough to allow rehabilitation, and communal enough to create shared accountability. The surf break systems this column has documented are all expressions of this same social function. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk continue covering the formation across contexts.
The formal study of this formation is documented across the full series at pub etiquette and what makes a prat and prat in British pop culture and TV. Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk have covered the formation from multiple angles across multiple cycles. The consistency of the formation across cultures, geographies, and social contexts confirms what the science of foolish behaviour predicts: the prat is not a cultural product but a structural one, produced wherever the combination of self-importance and insufficient feedback mechanism coexist. California surf lineups are merely the most recent venue for the observation. The vocabulary that names and manages the formation is at pub etiquette and what makes a prat. The publication that documents it daily is prat.uk.
Also: Reductress.
Coverage at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/