Degrees of separation as an outcomes framework for a city..?

I've been musing on the results factory for disrupting poverty in leeds -(very sad i wasn't able to attend) and i've been thinking that we have complete disconnect between leadership & citizen. Probably no worse than ever before in history, but probably for the first time we have the opportunity to do something about it. 

Here's a extract from birmingham's commitment via infrastructure organisation to have no more than 3 steps between leaders and any citizen. Apologies its so long..

• A relatively small group of people – perhaps 500 in total – are directly involved in making strategic decisions about the future of the city and its people.  They include: the Leader of the City Council and their Cabinet, the Council’s chief executive and its chief officers; the Chief Constable, the NHS Primary Care Trusts, owners and chief executives of major businesses leaders of faith groups and large non-profit organisations including, for example, housing associations. The decisions these people take affect the city as a whole.  They are ‘in power’.

• A wider group of people – perhaps a few thousand – have regular links with people in power: they are ‘one step from power’.  They include people with significant executive power of their own: people whose decisions determine how schools and colleges are run or the streets of neighbourhoods are policed etc.  They also include people who have some influence over people in power: elected councillors and MPs, some people in the media, people who serve on boards and committees. More of the people in power are men, very few are under 30 years old and they are disproportionately white.  Their friends and associates may be the same.

• An even larger group of people in Birmingham either know the people in the group above or have some position which brings them into official contact with them regularly.  They include a large number of people employed in public services and business managers, trade union officials, members of political parties and some ‘active citizens’ – people who lead neighbourhood forums or resident groups or who organise community self-help.  Probably between ten and fifty thousand people in Birmingham are ‘two steps from power’. 

• The majority of citizens are ‘three steps from power’.  That is: they are employed in a job that involves some level of responsibility; or are members of a church or other faith group or a social or sports club; they may be members of a community group or a voluntary organisation.  Most vote in local elections and to some extent they keep in touch with what is going on in local society.  They will turn up to a public meeting if the issue directly affects them and might sign a petition or write an email.  If they need to, they have ways of making their voice heard in decisions that they feel affect them.

• There is a large minority – possibly as many as a quarter of a million people in Birmingham – who are excluded: there are more than three degrees of separation between them and the people making the decisions affecting them. 

The birmingham lot go on to talk about their solutions (unsurprisingly about civil society and inparticular the role of infrastructure services), but i like the idea and i think its a good framework for looking at the role of decision makers and citizens..

Any idea how we could use it as an alternative measure of progress of a city..? would we get different decisions if the powerful were closer to the powerless, and is this something to work towards..?