Governance in the Forest Zoo: An Empirical Analysis of City Council Meeting Patterns based on Geographical Intelligence in US Democracy

This white paper analyzes large-scale city and county council meeting data using the GatherGov dataset (3,000+ hours of daily council meeting recordings) to explore how local political participation varies geographically and correlates with economic indicators. The analysis identifies striking regional patterns: western and Mountain states exhibit the longest meeting hours, while New England towns lead on a per-capita basis. The work documents a moderate national correlation between council meeting activity and real-estate sector revenues, with marked divergence by city size, and finds that communities with higher average council activity tend to have higher median home values. These findings are framed through Forest Zoo Theory, which synthesizes the “Dark Forest” and “Zoo” analogies to highlight how seemingly decentralized local governance can still be governed by hidden structures of influence, incentives, and information asymmetry. The analysis underscores the value of large-scale civic data for investors, policymakers, and community leaders in understanding the quiet undercurrents of democracy in action.

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