Local governments across the country are facing a growing set of challenges that are complex, polarized, and resistant to resolution through traditional public engagement alone. While traditional approaches such as town halls, open houses, and surveys can be helpful for gathering input, they do little to foster shared understanding and can leave decision makers feeling stuck. Issues such as housing affordability, climate resilience, land use conflicts, childcare shortages, and infrastructure investment increasingly require not just public input, but public judgment – the ability for residents to weigh tradeoffs, learn together, and arrive at well-informed and broadly acceptable decisions. Civic assemblies – which have roots dating back to ancient Greece – are making a comeback as a tool to help communities do just that.