One City is pretty un-democratic. You can't put yourself forward to take part in things that interest you. Its not obvious that City Hall compiling a list of people is going to produce the right results. Its not obvious that it is better than the much more volunteer-based system it replaced. City Hall has enorormously uglified the city over the past 8 years - what for? To anyone who knows anything about urbanism it is obvious that the people in City Hall lack the appropriate training and are the patsies of the developers. This has been a very damaging period.