It’s been four years since the city of Lod won 5 stars in the “Beautiful City” competition but in a satisfaction survey, residents rated cleanliness as
the subject that disturbs them most – second only to security.
The city could have started a cleanup campaign or dismissed residents’ feelings and settle for the 5-star plaque in the Mayor’s office. But Yair Goldman, Director of Lod’s Operations, wanted to understand the gap.
Why did residents feel this way? In the end, Goldman learned that the feeling of cleanliness is not only about having garbage-free streets. It’s connected to how residents feel in their city and whether they trust the city to care about what impacts their lives.
“There’s a lack of trust between the residents and the city,” explains Yair. “And among different groups of residents – each group feels that others make the city dirty.”
“During the Meitzim Accelerator, we realized that if we involve residents, we’ll have a cleaner city and also higher levels of trust: cleanliness is one of the issues around which it is easiest to build consensus.”
Yair and his staff sought to understand what was bothering the residents. “We realized that if a street has potholes, the street sign is crooked, the building fronts are neglected and there’s no greenery in sight – it won’t help if we pick up the garbage around the trash cans. In the residents’ eyes, the streets won’t look cleaner.”
Work with the residents deepened Yair’s under־ standing of the connection between a sense of dirtiness and lack of trust in the municipality: “Cleanliness impacts many components of life in the city. If residents feel that the city is not clean – they also feel unsafe, that there aren’t enough green areas, that there’s no responsible government, there’s no
place for economic and business development and no opportunity for tourism.”
The lack of trust residents had in the municipality had to be addressed before the cleaning issue. Instead of cleaning first and then hoping residents satisfaction would increase, Yair created a collaboration with
residents, and thus changed feelings about the city’s cleanliness.
“Involvement of residents is the key to creating a clean city that everyone believes is clean,” Yair says. The whole system for allocating resources
changed: “The city doesn’t clean according to what we think, but instead based on real-time requests from residents.”
They initiated groups of “environmental trustees” who have a direct line to the city’s professional leadership, working together on the city’s cleanliness. A city-wide campaign of messages and activities incentivizes cooperation among residents.
The municipality is concurrently working on the next stage: enlisting all municipal divisions, with all tools at their disposal, especially education and enforcement.