Content about Public participation

We’ve been keeping our eye on "Community Engagement", a LinkedIn group that encompasses discussion on community building, education, public participation, participative democracy and working in partnership. One of the most popular ongoing discussions has revealed some of the group members’ go-to websites for community engagement in terms of urban planning, support for citizen dialogue, and innovation. Here’s a list of the highlights:

Open Government Initiative is a collaborative project which was established by a familiar group of passionate advocates of open government, including CityCamp, Colorado Smart Communities, Code for America, the Sunlight Foundation, OpenPlans, in late 2010. Guided by their commitment to transparency, participation and accessibility in government, the group has made significant progress in the movement to build the public’s trust and satisfaction by creating new opportunities for innovation. Recently, Open Government Initiative published their Candidate Open Government Pledge and Declaration of Open Government Principles, in an effort to make it easier for local governments to better implement open government policies. The sample templates, highlighted below, echo President Obama’s collective call for open government, in his address to the United Nations in September 2010. 

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 success with these technologies -- and how do we measure that success? Far too often, indicators such as participant satisfaction surveys and rote number of participants are used to assess the impact of a project.

Public space (read: social, civic, democratic) is not easy to grasp, create or sustain. It is eternally becoming as it changes with social flows and physical interventions.  Participation is a similarly slippery term, especially since it has become diluted and misused. In many ways, you cannot have public space without participation.