How can citizens have their say in the decision making of urban public spaces?

Photo by Jaime Lopes on Unsplash

It has been a major question for urban designers, urban strategists, politicians how to overcome the difficulties to implement projects with the active intervention of the citizens.

September 10-11, 2020 I attended an Action lab for citizens to develop a framework of indicators for Safe and Inclusive Cities, organized by Red Dot Foundation,  The Urban Vision from India and the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation. This hands-on approach event was included in the Urban Thinkers Campus  (UTC) initiative of UN-Habitat.

Cities often lack disaggregated data for decision-making and indicators for measuring performance. In order to effectively implement projects on safe and inclusive cities, it is critical to co-create and develop a multi-sectoral process for identifying indicators and collecting data to measure success. This action lab highlighted some of the existing frameworks and good practices in community organizing for engaging civic authorities in local change.  The lab enabled the participants to identify existing indicators for safe and inclusive cities and gave voice to organizations leading such efforts and crowd-sourced citizen indicators for safe and inclusive communities on a collaborative web app.

First day keynote speaker, Dr. Angel Hsu, explored the intersection of science and policy and the use of data-driven approaches to understand environmental sustainability, particularly in the areas of climate change and energy, urbanization and air quality. Her research projects apply large-scale datasets derived from satellite remote sensing and other spatially explicit sources to evaluate environmental policies.

Debolina Kundu ( NIUA), Arpan Mazumder (GIZ India) and myself reacted to Dr. Hsu intervention sharing our experiences on how to use the indicators to  connect citizen’s daily life and outcomes and how to encourage participatory mechanism when designing indicators for safe and inclusive cities. It is compulsory to ensure that all voices are heard and that digitalization helps to make this inclusion more practical and it does not become a divider.

Photo by Rewardy Fahmi on Unsplash

Second day keynote speaker was Isabelle Anguelovsky . She focused her talk on the intersection of urban planning and policy, social inequality and development. Her research examines the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities, and how community groups in distressed neighborhoods contest the existence, creation, or exacerbation of environmental inequities as a result of urban (re)development processes and policies.

She also presented the Manifesto for the reorganization of the city after the COVID19, recently addressed to the Mayor of Barcelona. The pandemic and the experience of confinement have made evident the urgent need for deep change in the organization of the city. In order to address future pandemics, and respond proactively to the serious climate crisis affecting the planet, all commodification of the city must be replaced with the centrality of life in all its forms without delay. 

Photo by Austin Blanchard on Unsplash

The Manifesto was used as a starting point for understanding campaign methodology to engage civic officials and community members and for the definition of participants’ action plans for their cities. The final goal is that citizens can drive change in their communities by drafting, endorsing and implementing their own indicators via “citizen Manifestos”. Participatory community processes were explored, too, and some digital tools to ease the research and the cocreation of projects shared. It was a really powerful experience and a good bunch of great organizations had the chance to present their work. The lab is still open online for the participants to set up some specific proposals to be presented next October.

It was really inclusive and person centered approach to start the action!

Author: Carme Gual, member of the IFHP Council and Director of the Catalan Agency for Cooperation and Development (ACCD) of the Government of Catalonia. Carme has for years acted in high profile roles in the field of urban development in various posts in Catalonia / Barcelona. She has managed various international cooperation and solidarity projects between Barcelona and cities such as Gaza, Tel Aviv or Sarajevo. She created and directed the Irregular Settlement Plan of the city of Barcelona and has participated as an expert in projects of the World Bank, UN Habitat and the Inter-American Development Bank in matters related to sustainable urban development and citizen participation.