Citizen Engagement: Expansion and Scale
Clare Devaney looks to international examples of citizen engagement for breadth and depth, uncovering key challenges, barriers and space for improvement.
By Clare Devaney
Follow Clare on Twitter @ClareDevaney
Our US fieldwork uncovered instances of exciting innovation and interest in approaches to citizen engagement, but on the whole, this is a relatively new space for the US and initiatives are either young, and as such untested in terms of long-term impact, or project-based, or both, offering only isolated examples of best practice . In recognition of this, our second phase of research has sought international examples of cities where innovative and inclusive methods have been either employed for some time, or where there is evidence of a more mature strategic approach toward co-ordinating multiple projects within an overarching system.
Building on a complementary programme of literature review, we have developed case studies in this phase to draw on learning from Porto Alegre, in Brazil, where city-wide participatory budgeting has been practiced since 1989; Helsinki, which has recently recruited its first Chief Design Officer, Anne Stenros, to lead the Helsinki Lab project, an initiative designed to open and digitalise the built environment of the city as an interactive ‘living lab’; and from Barcelona, where a new type of political discourse has seen the landslide election of Barcelona en Comú, a citizen platform and grassroots coalition, under the leadership of Ana Colau, the city’s first female Mayor
Taken collectively, the direction of travel we see emerging from our case studies and initial literature review indicates a shift toward more agile and open approaches to strategic development, harnessing the human resource, capacity and capital of a place — its people — in shaping and delivering strategies which directly meet the needs of those places and people; and as a result driving an organic, collective, and potentially self-sustaining growth model.
The emergence of these ‘ground up’ approaches mirrors a conceptual move through place-blind and latterly place-based strategies to place-driven; emitting upward and outward from a place , rather than being contained by the confines of a territory; a distinction mirrored in the ‘city lab’ approaches, and on which we might reflect further ahead of UK devolution.
Whilst in our broader review we have found isolated examples of transition from one-off engagement projects to longer-term influence (such as Dubuque, Iowa, which has integrated its citizen committee Sustainable Dubuque into its decision-making infrastructure), evidence from our case studies reveals limited scope for scaling and replication of participatory approaches. There are a number of common factors in this challenge, including reliance on project-limited public grant and charitable funding, a prevailing characterisation of projects as ‘social investment’, ‘community development’ and ‘outreach’ to be delivered in suburbs and neighbourhoods, and a continued reliance on fiscal evaluation and ‘cost benefit’ to demonstrate impact. Attempts to replicate the successful participatory budgeting exercise in Porto Alegre at a state level, for example, came at the cost of opening it up to political and corporate agendas, with budget-led decisions resulting in economies being made in the depth of engagement (one open assembly per issue, as opposed to two), and the adoption of district councils as mediators in the process, collectively and quickly resulting in the failure and cessation of the state-level programme.
Supporting impactful engagement
Both our case studies and desk-based evidence suggest that impactful engagement is supported by open and transparent governance in which citizens have direct agency and the expectation of agreed levels of accountability. The successful roll-out of the Pol.is model in Taiwan is one example of an effective open governance structure, where actions are initiated by citizen consensus, but in which nominated panels or policymakers and experts have the power to veto those actions, dependant on a detailed account of their rationale being accepted by the citizens. Programmes such as the Community Council in Jacksonville, Florida, provide a platform for citizens to directly inform economic and public policy decisions, and to unlock city-wide collaboration. In the absence of such open governance, the relationship between citizens and formal institutions can become strained.
Success is also generated by a broad engagement of citizens from across all sectors of the community. By far the most widely reported challenge with participatory budgeting is a limited engagement of marginalised groups. A chronic lack of diversity can result in platforms for civic engagement becoming barriers to the very engagement they are designed to support. In Seattle, the city’s network of neighbourhood councils was disbanded in 2016, with Mayor Ed Murray describing the councils as ‘Exclusionary, self-interested cartels’. A key challenge for Barcelona’s neighbourhood strategic governance model is reconciling individual and community priorities across the city’s ten districts and seventy-three neighbourhoods.
Broad engagement requires an understanding of ‘community’ which is not confined to the suburbs. Citizens living within city-centres are routinely overlooked in ‘community’ initiatives, and those initiatives tend to be dominated by representation from the public and third sectors. Our understanding of ‘citizens’ must support a more holistic view of what that means. Similarly, distinctions between ‘professionals’ and ‘ordinary people’ are over-simplistic, and can contribute to a falsely polarised positioning. By bringing multiple players together in setting mission-oriented goals for cities, and by working collaboratively toward those goals, it becomes clear that issues such as public health, housing and good quality public spaces are of broad-scope interest and benefit. Breaking down the divisions between ‘professionals’ and ‘citizens’ is essential in order to navigate the increasingly networked forms of governance that shape our social and economic lives. The complex challenges we face cannot be resolved by working in silos.
Space: the final frontier
In a number of our case studies cities, but acutely demonstrated in Boston and Seattle, there is evidence of what is (euphemistically) referred to as the ‘unintentional social impacts’ of hyper-investment in ‘innovation hot-spots’, particularly universities, corporate campuses and suburban science parks. These ‘innovation districts’ are very often neighboured by significantly poorer areas, with a notable correlation between negative impact and proximity. In its role at the forefront of Finland’s Innovative Cities programme, and via its Helsinki Lab initiative, Helsinki demonstrates a clear alternative, avoiding this phenomenon by supporting open, dynamic, non-territorial innovation platforms, underpinned by open data sharing.
Social innovation in all of our case study cities is strengthened by the presence of a new breed of anchor institutions such as Impact Hubs, which operate more openly than traditional anchors such as universities. In Detroit, this redefinition of innovation anchors has been taken one step further to include parks and social spaces as ‘civic commons’. Maurice D. Cox, Detroit’s Director of Planning and Development at the City of Detroit describes how:
“Through the Civic Commons initiative, we hope to rekindle the sense of pride current residents should have living in a neighbourhood adjacent to such wonderful institutions of higher learning. Vacant lots turned into a park and greenway connecting Marygrove College and University of Detroit Mercy complement our effort to rehab and reoccupy 100 vacant homes in the neighbourhood, and to help strengthen the entire fabric of the community.”
The importance of squares and public spaces as places to meet, interact, debate and share ideas is a marked feature in a number of our case study cities — in Detroit, through its civic commons, Helsinki’s Lab project and its focus on digitalised ‘slow spaces’, and in Boston, where the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a central greenspace created by landfill over a former central highway which runs through the core of its downtown, was transformed in 2016’s inaugural Hub Week as an outdoor innovation hub. Interacting with its streets and an awareness of the fabric of the city is part of Barcelona’s cultural profile, and has been critical in the development of the city and its story of citizenship. Its ‘Superblocks’ initiative, which is set to be enforced this year, and which is predicted to cut the city’s air pollution by a third, is designed to eradicate non-citizens from driving within designated 12-block square areas, is implementable with ease thanks to the famously pedestrian-friendly grid model of spatial development (designed by the urban planner Ildefons Cerdà in the late nineteenth century). Barcelona en Comú rose from those same streets in the 2011 civic action and street protests fuelled by the economic crisis.
The digital and virtual space is potentially transformative in terms of citizen engagement, but also has clear implications for inclusion — which must be managed . Cities are recognising the potency of online platforms, and through our case studies we demonstrate how digital initiatives can augment every aspect of citizenship, from open data, increased democratic participation and live-streamed policy making, to digitalised built environments, open-sourced tech-based innovation challenges and online real-time evaluation. The digital space offers an open and independent space which sits beyond the limitations of ‘place’ and, as such, which arguably lends itself more readily to scaling and replication without the challenges other modes of engagement meet at scale. The evidence points to the importance of an appropriate mix of digital and face-to-face engagement (‘high tech’ and ‘high touch’). Engaging citizens in economic decisions that have a major impact on their lives requires building trust and empathy, and fostering a different set of relationships. This cannot be achieved by digital means alone.
