Citizen participation may be hot and happening right now, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Besides heading to the ballot box every few years, citizens have been showing up to town hall gatherings or collecting signatures since the birth of modern democracy. Offline vs. online participation The rise of the...
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In tackling the challenges of affordable housing, the Canadian city of Vancouver put the decision-making power where it belongs: with its people. The 2,530,746 Vancouverites were encouraged to share their ideas on the allocation of the estimated $30 million revenue generated by the Empty Homes Tax. The appeal led to...
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The reason why so many cities and municipalities use digital platforms? A decision-maker always strives for the greatest possible transparency, inclusiveness and responsiveness. This is not only the case for daily political work in the field, in the municipal council or in other administrative bodies, but also online. Politicians usually...
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As we are currently finalizing our platform’s new module for participatory budgeting, we researched this emerging domain extensively and listened to more than 20 city councils. From the Canadian Toronto (2.8 million inhabitants) to the Belgian Wortegem-Petegem (6.000 inhabitants). Some had years of practical experience behind them, others just worked hard on...
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As you may have understood by now if you are a regular reader of the CitizenLab blog, enhancing your citizen engagement processes by adding a digital component is crucial. It is the answer to most of your questions regarding civic engagement: how do I reach more people? How do I...
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Marche-en-Famenne, a small town with 17.401 inhabitants in the Belgian province of Luxembourg, did a fantastic job at launching its CitizenLab participation platform. In less than one-week time, their e-democracy platform welcomed 4.500 unique visitors and turned >1.000 of these into active users. Discover in this article which 3 key acquisition...
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As a policy-maker, you are aware that citizen participation is key to building inclusive municipalities. To collect the ideas of your fellow citizens, you know the drill: paper polls, town hall meetings, and even sometimes wandering around the town market on Sunday mornings to fetch your citizens input. But are...
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