Preparing for the unexpected: the role of citizen engagement
Ensuring citizen engagement is done intentionally, thoughtfully and holistically will ultimately help lead to better and more effective implementations.
While none of us could have been fully prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic and its downstream impacts, cities with a strong foundation for inclusive citizen engagement may have been better prepared to recover and thrive in current times. For instance, the city of Grenoble, France, which included a three-stage citizen participation process and citizen engagement charter during the development of its energy transformation roadmap, was recently awarded the European Commission’s European Green Capital Award 2022 to recognise its achievement of being at the forefront of sustainable urban living — an award which comes with a €350,000 financial incentive to kick-start its European Green Capital year.
As highlighted by this example, when citizens are engaged, everyone can benefit. In this case, Grenoble was praised for factors including its innovative ‘participatory democracy approach’, enabling the city to achieve significant progress in areas including increasing cycling rates, developing eco-neighbourhoods, addressing noise pollution, implementing climate change mitigation strategies and enhancing energy performance.
Citizen engagement should be a priority for everyone involved in implementation, even when those doing the implementing may not be the ones directly doing the engagement. However, often accomplishing this engagement can be easier said than done, which can lead to those looking for a place to start feeling a little bit lost.
How can citizen engagement best be accomplished? And what are a few examples of cities and specific tools being used to achieve meaningful citizen involvement?
Principles and examples for ensuring meaningful, representative participation
For cities like Grenoble, the process of citizen engagement is well-integrated into city governance and democratic processes. But where does a city start when citizen engagement has not previously been at the forefront of regular processes and priorities?
A few key principles* can guide how those working within and with cities view, understand and implement effective citizen engagement. In alignment with these principles, there are several well-documented and emerging examples of tools and methods cities are pursuing; a few are shared here with a particular focus on digital engagement given the current contexts necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic:
1. First and foremost, work to ensure representative participation, meaning that the citizens involved should be representative of the target community or broader citizen population. This can involve developing mechanisms to ensure those most vulnerable are able to participate, as they may often be those who experience the most barriers to participation.
One framework that can help to ensure representative citizen participation is the CitiVoice Framework, which provides a structure for organising and evaluating citizen participation in smart cities. This framework recognises that it can be challenging to integrate citizen input and the process may require a city to rethink its internal processes in order to be able to integrate an additional layer of complexity.
Additionally, specific to the COVID-19 context, Connect the Dots Insights has developed a framework based on four key values (relevant for both virtual and in-person interactions) to ensure a robust, truly inclusive engagement process: be creative, be inclusive, act sustainably and drive with insights.
2. Create motivation to participate by both (a) directly incentivising participants and (b) addressing underlying barriers preventing participation, such as lack of childcare, transportation or digital technology. This motivation involves not only the initial engagement but also considering how to keep the participants actively involved. Creativity and ‘out of the box’ thinking is essential in some cases, such as with this gamified approach recently implemented by the city of Prague, Czech Republic, to help its citizens better understand the city’s challenges of operating on budgetary restrictions. By making the exercise into a game, the city is incentivising its residents to learn about city spending and municipal budgeting in a way that is fun and appealing.
3. Do not assume that you know the most pressing concerns, needs and problems citizens are facing or presume that you know what solution(s) should be implemented. Citizens are experts of their own lived experiences, and their concerns could extend beyond, e.g. the privacy and surveillance concerns that are typically discussed in relation to smart city initiatives.
Facilitating open dialogue can help to achieve this principle; for example, the city of London, UK, recently hosted the OneLondon Citizens’ Summit, which brought together 100 Londoners to debate and deliberate complex issues, including how health data should be used, accessed and the reasons why. The effort is an example of deliberate public engagement to give residents a chance to ‘inform policy and practice in a way that builds legitimacy and trust’.
4. Be agile. It’s okay to return to the drawing board when something is not working. Recognise the problem, gather feedback from your citizen stakeholders and work to fix the issue with their input. It can be better to hit ‘pause’ then to force an implementation that will later face sustainability issues due to underlying problems that were never properly addressed. For example, in 2018 the city of Milan, Italy, chose to suspend plans to reopen city waterways in favour of reallocating funding to other community projects once it became evident that there was insufficient support for the waterways project.
5. Simplify. A ‘mobile-first, one-click’ mantra has reminded Milan’s Digital Transformation team to ‘simplify, simplify, simplify’, a message which other cities can also learn from. For example, in Milan, this has included the launch of a simple WhatsApp chatbot to answer common citizen questions instantly during the pandemic, rather than depending on a more complicated tool or system.
Simplification involves not only creating simple digital technologies but also addressing the underlying assumption that digital technology is necessary in the first place. Remember that while digitalisation is often what we associate with smart city implementations, ‘smart cities’ do not fit any single mould and not every initiative must have a digital component.
6. Address the digital divide and upskill citizens to participate in digital engagement and/or discussions around smart technologies. It is unfair to expect citizens to participate when they do not understand or have access to underlying digital software or tools. This is currently very relevant, e.g. as cities around the world have asked students to go digital; even when students understand the technology, not everyone has connectivity at home.
Looking back to Milan again as an example, the city’s digital innovation team realised they ‘couldn’t boost innovation without being sure that every single citizen could be able to use the new technology’. With private partners and other public entities, the city has implemented projects such as partnering with Samsung to implement over 100 additional telephone operators for the city’s call centres, specialising in assisting older people and citizens struggling with digital services.
7. Ensure that any technology deployed is fair, open and explainable, meaning that citizens understand what is being done, why, how and for who. As an example, the DECODE project (funded by EU H2020) aimed to tackle the problem of loss of control over citizen personal information by creating and providing tools to put people in control of their personal data. With the DECODE app, users can store their personal data and control how it is accessed and used, helping to build a trustworthy and privacy-aware digital society. The project is transparent in both the methodology and technology behind its tools while it empowers users with ownership and understandable information about their personal data.
The bottom line: putting the needs of citizens first
Ensuring citizen engagement is done intentionally, thoughtfully and holistically will ultimately help lead to better and more effective implementations that solve the most pressing problems and needs of citizens and communities at large.
Once cities — as well as the external partners working to drive innovation with cities — have first recognised the importance of citizen engagement, then they must move a step further and prioritise this engagement. Citizen engagement cannot just be an afterthought after the design phase of an implementation; rather, citizens should take an active part in the entire process from design to implementation and finally evaluation. This may mean that if the right people aren’t at the table to facilitate this process, then it could be time to seek external support. Ensuring citizen engagement is done intentionally, thoughtfully and holistically will ultimately help lead to better and more effective implementations that solve the most pressing problems and needs of citizens and communities at large.
On a related note, remember that engagement is often a complex process and in reality will not be as simple as following a step-by-step process. Anyone leading or assisting with citizen engagement efforts need to be prepared for dealing with this complexity, which could include the varying needs and desires of diverse groups, the influence of political interests and opposing world views, etc. However, the principles presented above can help to guide this work. By putting citizen engagement at the forefront, cities — and all in them — will be better prepared for the next unexpected crisis and be better positioned to build communities that are more equitable and create an environment of better urban life for all.
*Note: The principles and examples highlighted in this article are a sampling curated by the author for this opinion piece and are not intended as an all-inclusive list.
