EngagingCities

EngagingCities helps urban planners understand and use the internet. We write about new online developments and give practical advice. How can new technologies make your planning processes more participatory, collaborative or effective? Which online tools best suit your needs and how do you use them effectively?

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Traditional engagement has advantages that will never grow obsolete. Even for tech-savvy citizens, real live public meetings, events, and workshops hold the value of the human touch. Face-to-face...

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When it came time to engage citizens in a recent Master Planning process, the City of Lowell, Massachusetts opted for an unorthodox approach: an interactive online game. In order to engage a...

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When it comes to online conversations and forums, the role of the facilitator has become essential in supporting a participatory process. But how has the role of the facilitator evolved with the...

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Social media and new technologies can bring new ways for communities to interact. Yet the growth in online technologies is a fast moving picture with potentially good and bad outcomes. In recent...

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The City of Christchurch, New Zealand was devastated by a series of earthquakes. The largest, on the 4 September 2010 wrecked havoc in the central city, but the second quake on 22 February killed...

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At some point in time, planners might have had the option to create their plans without including the public and to simply present the final product at a workshop. And we know how that goes, duck...

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Storytelling has long been used to connect people to each other and to celebrate the past, but a handful of communities today see storytelling as the way to a better future. The three communities...

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As planners, architects, and passionate urbanists, we regularly ponder new ways to engage the public and get them motivated to be involved in planning projects. Besides the new tools for public...

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Many municipalities across the country have been exploring recent Gov2.0 tools, including “ideation” platforms, in hopes of finding ways to help combat common issues of towns losing money, property...

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In small towns, citizens can attend town hall meetings, and vote directly on major changes to the community, while in larger cities, allowing every resident to have a voice in shaping his...

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Across the globe, urban planners and community decision-makers are embracing new technologies as a way of broadening and diversifying participation in local processes. But how do we design for...

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We just relaunched EngagingCities as an online magazine and moved to a custom website. You can access the full site at EngagingCities.com and we'll start syncing updates here to Tumblr. Thanks for your continued interest and support!

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Part of the film series American Makeover at www.AmericanMakeover.tv. "Built to Last" won first place in The Congress for the New Urbanism CNU 17 video contest. This short film explores the connection between New Urbanism and environmental issues. Created by independent filmmaker John Paget (www.pagetfilms.com)

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Participatory Budgeting Processes Taking Hold in the U.S.

First implemented in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990,  Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a planning process which allows citizens to decide directly how to allocate all or part of a public budget, typically through a series of meetings, work by community “delegates” or representatives, and ultimately through a final vote. While the process has been widely utilized worldwide, especially in Europe over the past two decades, only recently has it been implemented in a few U.S. cities -- including Chicago. Last spring, Chicago’s 50 aldermen each received slightly more than $1.3 million to spend on infrastructure improvements in their jurisdictions, at their discretion. After attending a workshop at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta where the Participatory Budgeting Process was introduced to him, and having time to carefully consider alternative budgeting methods, the city’s 49th Ward Alderman, Joe Moore, decided to put this innovative new process to the test within his own community. Alderman Moore invited community leaders from diverse civic, religious, and political organizations in the 49th ward to form a participatory budgeting steering committee, who worked initially to develop rules and procedures for their process. Then, a series of nine community assemblies were held, in eight different neighborhoods, including one meeting held specifically for Spanish-speaking constituents. At the conclusion of these meetings, which were meant to explain the principles behind the Participatory Budgeting Process and to engage participants in brainstorming sessions regarding infrastructure within the ward, the steering committee was left with a multitude of ideas that came directly from the community, in addition to many citizen volunteers eager to become community representatives. Over the next four months, community representatives met regularly in six thematic budget committees -- Streets, Transportation, Public Safety, Traffic Safety, Parks & Environment, and Art & Other Projects. Projects were proposed using the ideas suggested at the neighborhood assemblies as well as by assessing community needs. Ultimately, 36 project proposals were included on the participatory budgeting ballot,  all of which were then handed over to the community -- everyone over the age of 16, regardless of legal status -- to vote upon for implementation. While all the other residents of Chicago, outside of Alderman Moore’s jurisdiction, would have to wait an entire election year to have their say about proposed projects, the 49th ward had over 1600 community members show up last April to place their votes. Overall, the process seems to have been a success, regardless of the city bureaucracy the ward’s steering committee had to navigate throughout. The process has been praised by some participants and observers for its “empowering” and “transformative” potential. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the 49th Ward PB process was that it encouraged original and deep thinking about ward infrastructure among “ordinary” residents. To find out more details of Chicago’s 49th Ward’s Participatory Process, including which projects won the vote and how the implementation phase is going, or how the ward plans to face challenges with the process such as how to build on the knowledge and perspectives gained by the representatives and steering committee this year, while at the same time keeping the process open to new-comers, read the full article over at Shareable.

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Low-Cost & High-Value Ideas for Cities

Guest post by José Carlos Mota. Jose is a researcher and assistant in the field of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Through his experience as an Urban planner consultant, Jose has worked extensively with municipalities from the central and northern region in Portugal participating in the development of town and city plans. Inspired by the idea of  a 'Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper' approach to planning, 'Urban Acupuncture’, 'Tactical Urbanism' DIY Urbanism , 'Emergent Urbanism' or 'Bottom-up Planning',  the recent level of global participation on our IdeasforCities facebook page  has really taken off. As part of a broader project promoted by a Portuguese civic group called 'Cidades pela Retoma',  Ideas for Cities is an opportunity to collect and organize interesting and pertinent low-cost and high-value ideas for cities, which are particularly important in these hard economic times. In phase one of this project, our Ideas for Cities Facebook page  and blog were launched in hopes of creating a global forum to discuss the concept, it’s potential and limitations, and to create a small ‘community of practice’. Phase two of this project will include launching a public engagement microsite to organize ideas/projects in a geo-reference base and to organize a community funding system similar to  http://www.kickstarter.com/.

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Craigslist Foundation Recently Launched Likeminded.org

Inspired by local community success stories that had yet to be shared beyond the community itself, the Craigslist Foundation, well known as a catalyst for individual and collective action for the public good across America, set out a little over a year ago to develop an online platform which would help spread these powerful stories to a broader audience. The concept behind this public engagement tool was to create a new type of forum especially for people who wanted to change something in their community but were unsure of where to start. The end result? After months of collaboration with stakeholders in local communities -- such as mayors, city managers, museums, libraries, churches, and local businesses -- gathering stories of local innovations as proof of the great work being done in cities around the nation, the foundation launched its new online engagement tool, Likeminded.org, last month. Funded through the Technology for Engagement Initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundations, the site was developed with the intent of spreading local community stories so that non-local planners, community members, and others may benefit from them as well. During the development of this site, the Craigslist Foundation hosted more than a dozen community discussions in cities throughout the country (San Francisco; Minneapolis; Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; and Oakland, New York) to determine why ideas are not making it out of the local areas and impacting more communities nationwide.   Currently the site is set up for discovery and sharing among community members in several specific areas including art, health, education, crime and safety, environment, economy, government, and community, to name a few. In the beta phase, users can discover two kinds of information about local issues that they care about. The first, Projects, is where the stories behind community change can be found. Projects include visibility for the people and organizations that did the hard work, and information about where and when it all happened. They are a great way to get a snapshot into how people addressed issues in their neighborhood. The second, Resources, is where articles, videos, tools, and audio from around the web can be found. The site is free to use and no login is required to browse; however, individuals and organizations can sign in to the website to contribute local community stories, which is highly encouraged.    Continuous updates and improvements are being made to the Likeminded site, based on user feedback, including the most recently added feature, User Profiles, which gives visitors the ability to upload a picture (or pull a photo from their Facebook account), and also the option to share social media links with registered users within the system. Check out what Likeminded.org has to offer, and contribute your local stories at http://likeminded.org.

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A short film about #opendata from the Open Knowledge Foundation. For more information, see: opengovernmentdata.org.