Following country-wide citizen protests on a range of social issues, the Chilean Association of Municipalities (the AChM), has launched a large-scale citizen consultation. The Citizen Consultation of 2019 is a large-scale, non-binding consultation that aims to gauge people’s opinions on various social topics. These topics impact both national and local...
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CitizenLab has been awarded the “Best Social Impact Startup in Europe” prize at TechCrunch’s Disrupt Conference in Berlin, on December 11-12, 2019. The DT50 prize recognizes Europe’s top entrepreneurial talent. Over 600 startups from all over Europe applied to award, and 8 start-ups were shortlisted in the “Social Impact” category...
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Participatory budgeting has spread across the world with successful cases in Vancouver as well as cases in Europe, but did you know that it all originated in South America? This participation method is a democratic practice in which a government gives citizens the opportunity to take part in deciding how...
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In October 2019, the city of Kortrijk (76.265 inhabitants) was the setting of the very first digital referendum in Flanders. The key question: “Do you agree that the centre of Kortrijk should be car-free for a fixed Sunday every month?” The people of Kortrijk (aged 16 or older) had one...
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Citizen initiatives are gaining popularity, citizen assemblies are proposed as a solution to defrost polarised debate, and overall, there are more participation methods to choose from than ever before. We see that citizens are becoming increasingly more vocal about their concerns and opinions, even outside of election times. The two-yearly...
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From London to Hong Kong, people around the world are demanding that their voices be heard by their government. Citizen initiatives are the practice in which citizens speak up to counter how their current government is functioning. This citizen participation method presents a lot of opportunities for both governments and...
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At CitizenLab, we want to shape digital citizen participation. As cities are increasingly becoming more important than nations, it’s time to unlock that powerhouse of collective intelligence. CitizenLab’s mission is to make tomorrow’s governments more citizen-centric. So, who better than citizens to tell us how they would like to see this...
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