Inclusion, equality and collective leadership at the heart of participatory cities according to Tessy Britton
This article has been translated from French and republished with permission from 100°.
Tessy Britton, Chief Executive of the Participatory City Foundation, spoke about inclusion, equality and community leadership in participatory cities in a visit to Montreal last year where she reported on the first year of the Foundation’s flagship project, Every One Every Day.
“Participation is the key to our shared future. It gives us all a sense that the future is ours to make, not just the product of forces far beyond our control, and in so doing it provides the sense of hope and optimism for which people are searching all over the world.” — Marc Stears, Director Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney
Every One Every Day
Participatory City is an emerging model that people have used for years, and that has recently taken off. But according to Tessy Britton, these are often initiatives spearheaded by a few people who want to solve practical issues, often without any sort of funding. And, a bit like with start-ups, these people are looking try out experimental and often innovative solutions, but are not able to secure their longevity.
Britton says that the experience just shows that, despite how original or relevant these initiatives may be, they often take time to flourish, either because they lack the sustained level of participation that is needed, or because there are too few project leaders, who end up burning out.
By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of these resident initiatives, Participatory City Foundation developed a model of a participatory ecosystem in conjunction with a platform to support resident initiatives. A year ago, and for the first time anywhere, this model began testing throughout an entire community.
This five-year project was launched in the borough of Barking and Dagenham, in east London. The borough has experienced a major population influx in recent years, despite being in the throes of an employment slump. In addition to unemployment, poverty, homelessness, school dropouts and domestic violence, half of the borough’s residents belong to different cultural communities, which are often quite isolated from each other.
According to Britton, with the very essential support of the municipal council of Barking and Dagenham, the project has started setting up an open and inclusive participation system so that residents of the borough, which is one of the poorest in London, can connect and get to know each other. After just one year, the results have been encouraging. More than 2,000 people are already involved in Every One Every Day, leading to the creation of more than 70 projects. Every One Every Day has also produced a report documenting its first year of activities, as well as The Illustrated Guide to Participatory City.
Britton says they did not consider adopting the old “top-down, bottom-up approach,” which they do not believe does anything but engender radically opposing views. Instead, they have created and tested new structures and methods with a view to using all of the resources available to co-produce new resident spaces, to create new, flexible and adaptable systems centered on people and their creativity. These are systems that, from the outside, appear simple and concrete, but on the inside are complex and constantly evaluated, modified and adjusted down to the smallest detail.
Inclusion
Britton says that current small projects are often aimed at a certain type of person who already stays very involved and has the time to do so. Such projects do not necessarily reflect the realities of most people, who do not possess the same self-confidence or luxury of time. And yet, to found a participatory cultural movement, inclusion must be the goal. It must be able to draw in people who never had considered getting involved. Everything it creates must be intrinsically inclusive.
To get people to re-engage with their communities, instead of inviting them to formal meetings, Britton says we must create practical, concrete activities that are rooted in people’s day-to-day lives. We must increase the number of spaces and exchanges so they are less than a 10-minute walk from people’s homes. These small hubs will breathe new life into neighbourhoods, and they will emerge from spaces with community kitchens, a small dining hall, a workshop for sewing, repairs, carpentry, DIY object recycling, etc.
Ecosystem
Residents must have the ability to meet in pleasant spaces that are conducive to discussion, but above all, that are set up to enable everyone to express their creativity and ideas and put their energy toward a common goal. Venues where they can share their knowledge and talent. According to Tessy Britton, these are the people who must build the cities of tomorrow. All people, not just those with the most skill or ambition. All residents must take part in laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s cities. And it is the duty of specialists, urban planners, engineers, architects and politicians to assist in making these community aspirations a reality.
During the first year of Every One Every Day, Participatory City opened its very first venues, essentially shops that are open to all people. These shops have become well established, providing a glimpse into this participatory cultural movement, and will be replicated in the coming years. Soon, this year, a new warehouse will be outfitted to fulfil another key component of the strategy — to house various workshops, tools and materials, as well as a classroom, a conference room, etc. Britton says that the warehouse will look something like the inspiring Bâtiment 7, which she also visited during her stay in Montreal.
Britton says that her team has enabled this network of shops and warehouses to continuously provide spaces, support and guidance to some 250 projects. These projects will be created for and by the people. The Every One Every Day project’s platform is designed to help people get their projects off the ground while sheltering them from administrative hassles and bureaucracy, which all too often stifle the spontaneity that comes from a community’s creativity. The idea is to set up an institutional infrastructure that provides the freedom needed for people’s projects to emerge.
All of these initiatives will evolve over time, explained Britton. Some will wither, others will stall, and still others will be taken up elsewhere, which might be for the best. Britton says that the most important thing is to maintain this participatory ecosystem that changes and evolves organically over time. Ultimately, the project’s wish is for the ecosystem to create stable, foreseeable outcomes for communities, so they can work together to build the types of cities they want to see.
Three takeaways
Britton went on to tell the audience about the part of her childhood that she spent in South Africa, where she saw firsthand one of the most destructive social experiments in history based on exclusion and inequality. She compared this to Costa Rica, which opted for an entirely different type of social experiment. In 1948, this small Central American country boldly abolished its army to become even stronger by making massive investments in health and education. Britton has drawn some important lessons from both examples.
- If a society can be built on the basis of exclusion and inequality, it is just as possible to build one on the basis of inclusion and equality.
- A great deal of leadership is needed to create this change — not just individual courage and gumption, but collective leadership that withstands the test of time.
- We must build upon each other’s work, particularly in the fields of sociology, psychology, education and urban planning, and draw upon the knowledge that all these people have acquired over a lifetime of studying how people function and learn, what they need and how they can organize.
One thing is clear: we need each other. We need to find ways to get to know, understand and trust one another!
Tessy Britton sees the Participatory City Foundation as being much greater than one person and therefore declined to be photographed to avoid drawing attention away from the ideas, of which she is but a messenger.
Participatory Montreal!
A conference jointly organized by La Pépinière | Espaces collectifs, the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal (Montreal Urban Ecology Centre), LANDE and Solon, with financial support from the McConnell Foundation and Cities for People, was held on November 14, 2018 in one of the most fitting locations for the occasion: The Decade Building, an empty warehouse in Mile-Ex that was converted into a design office and event venue. More than 200 people, mostly from community groups, attended the event despite the bitter cold temperatures in Montreal that day.
Hosts Jérôme Glad, of La Pépinière, and Véronique Fournier, of CEUM (Montreal Urban Ecology Centre) kicked off the evening by giving a presentation on the situation in Montreal. Glad reminded the audience that all these resident initiatives emerging in the city are important and serve to bolster the culture of participation to change society at its core. He went on to speak about the growing number of “ruelles vertes” (green alleys), which are the founding places of our renewed community life, in addition to the movement to reclaim abandoned spaces, such as the Champ des possibles and the Village Au-Pied-du-Courant, and the work done by Incredible Edibles. In short, he argued that resident initiatives, even if small at first, can sometimes even reshape a neighbourhood, such as the case of Milton Parc, which is now home to the largest community of housing co-operatives in Canada.
Véronique Fournier focused on the structural changes that came along with the creation of a new Ville de Montréal, and that, combined, have given us tools and mechanisms to create change. Since the Montreal Summit in 2002, which led to the creation of the Task Force on Democracy, Montrealers now have the Office de Consultation Publique de Montréal (Montreal public consultation office), the Montréal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities, and the city’s Right of Initiative to Public Consultation and its Public Consultation and Participation Policy. These appear to be the right conditions for civic participation to flourish.
The audience won over by Tessy Britton, Jérôme Glad returned to the stage, declaring that we are now at a turning point brought on by the myriad of community groups, spreading of ideas and tools available to us. He believes that we are at the right point to start testing the Participatory City model. Just one question remains: do we scale it to a single borough, or to the entire Island of Montreal?
