Participatory budgeting as an inclusive placemaking driver. Different European and American practices

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a paradigm that empowers residents to directly decide how a portion of the public budget is spent. Specifically, residents deliberate over spending priorities and vote over how the budget should be allocated to different public projects. As such it is a mechanism of top-down transfer of decisions on the part of budgetary expenditure to citizens. In recent years, PB has become a central topic of discussion and an important field of innovation for those involved in local development, considered one of the most successful democratic innovations of the last 25 years. Participatory budgeting contributes significantly to participatory democracy, inclusiveness processes and placemaking, but some factors limit the scale of these aspects. However, a relatively simple idea – that “ordinary citizens” should have a direct say in public budgets that impact them – has travelled the world by the most unexpected routes and landed in unlikely sites. There is no precise model for PB programmes. While there are similar tenets and institutional mechanisms, PB programmes are structured in response to each city or state’s particular political, social and economic environment. Therefore, it is necessary to consider to what extent PB strengthens the discussed processes, whether it allows reaching new, inactive groups of citizens and includes them in the decision-making process regarding shaping public spaces. The popularity of this tool carries the risk that it will be used to build the image of local government instead of significantly increasing the participation of citizens in deciding on local public spaces. The chapter aims to present and analyse participatory budgeting practices in four European and North American countries (Switzerland, Poland, North Macedonia and the United States of America) to show the role of PB in placemaking processes by the levels and forms of participation, the analysis of representativeness of PB participants (inclusiveness), placemaking impact and its level of digitisation. The proposed comparative analysis allows for assessing the importance of the tool for increasing social participation, which is participatory budgeting, for understanding its limitations and suggesting directions for its improvement to shape more inclusive, friendly and open public spaces.

Keywords

Citizens' participation, Citizen-oriented cities, Urban governance, Limitations, Social innovation

Subject (DDC)

300 - Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie

Project

Placemaking through Idealizations and the role of local knowledge and practices in the age of digitalization

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Exhibition start date

Exhibition end date

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Date of the last check

ISBN

978-90-04-69191-9
978-90-04-69190-2

ISSN

Language

English

Created during FHNW affiliation

Yes

Strategic action fields FHNW

Publication status

Published

Review

Peer review of the complete publication

Open access category

Gold

License

Citation

POLKO, Paulina, Asma MEHAN, Kinga KIMIC, Simone TAPPERT, Aline SUTER und Aleksandar PETROVSKI, 2024. Participatory budgeting as an inclusive placemaking driver. Different European and American practices. In: Francesco ROTONDO, Aleksandra DJUKIC, Preben HANSEN, Edmond MANAHASA, Mastoureh FATHI und Juan A. GARCÍA-ESPARZA (Hrsg.), Placemaking in practice. Engagement in placemaking: Methods, strategies, approaches. Leiden: Brill. S. 42–68. ISBN 978-90-04-69191-9. Verfügbar unter: https://doi.org/10.26041/fhnw-11633

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