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Inspiring Examples of Citizen Participation

03.02.2015
Photo By: Howard Lake https://www.flickr.com/photos/howardlake/

“As a citizen, you need to know how to be a part of it, how to express yourself - and not just by voting.” ~ Sandra Day O’Connor

We all want more engaged communities. Whether that is for your business or in your town, fighting apathy is struggle that many of us face. So what does it look like when your citizens are engaged and involved in the community? These citizen engagement projects will give you a little inspiration for citizen partcipation.

This list is updated regularly. Last update: March 25, 2015

Projects:

  • Springtide - The Springtide Collective is an organization dedicated to reconnecting Nova Scotians with the democratic process, and imagining ways of doing politics differently. Springtide is a non-partisan and non-profit organization. - (Canada)
  • The Bus Project - Giving people their first taste of delicious democracy, develop new leaders and use person-to-person politics to move Oregon forward. Not just left or right, but forward. (US)
  • Citizen Investor - Invest in public projects you care about. Crowdsourcing for the engaged citizen.
  • Civinomics - Giving the power of solution making back to the people.
  • Open Town Hall - Public comment platform for governments. Give your opinion on bills, policies, and procedures to your local council.
  • Open Government Initiative - How the whitehouse designed a crowdsourcing toolkit.
  • King’s Cross Community - An easy to use website for all the comings and goings in the King’s Cross area. Get involved in a local group, find an event, partner as a business and more! (UK)
  • Fix My Street - Enter your postcode and record problems in your area. The info gets passed on to your council for fixing- citizen participation at its finest! (UK)
  • Create Frankfort - A platform for a by the citizens of Frankfurt. Submit your ideas and help make Frankfurt a better place to live.
  • Smart Citizen - Connect data, people, and knowledge to create more engaged communities. (Netherlands)
  • Monitoring Marathon - A platform where citizens can monitor publicly funded projects in their area. (Italy)
  • Sensing City - Collecting open data of citizens activities to help build a better city together. An interesting look at how data can effect citizen engagement. (New Zealand)
  • Report! - Reporting problems that need to be fixed in Indonesia. Anything from healthcare to potholes can be reported.
  • Access !nfo - Access Info Europe is a human rights organisation dedicated to promoting and protecting the right of access to information in Europe as a tool for defending civil liberties and human rights, for facilitating public participation in decision making, and for holding governments accountable.
  • Amsterdam Smart City - Everything open innovation and citizen engagement in the city of Amsterdam.
  • City of the Future Lab - Smart services for the people by the people. Using citizen engagement to make the city of Milan a better place. (Italy)
  • Code for Europe - Code for Europe strives to solve local civic challenges, by enabling agile temporary teams of developers to create solutions that are easily reusable in other European cities.
  • Edinburgh Living Lab - Edinburgh Living Lab is a collaborative initiative between researchers, the public sector and communities. (UK)
  • Neighborhood Planner - Post ideas to improve your neighborhood and view projects that public officials are working on. (UK)
  • Proboscis - An independent artist-led creative studio, Proboscis attempts, by developing cultures of listening, to tease out what people value about the situation and context in which they find themselves and then to help them create communicate and share these things.
  • Government Github - Join a local group and collaborate on code, data, or policy, within your organization or with the public. (worldwide)

Tools:

  • Community Planning Toolkit - Everything you need to know about community engagement.
  • Like Minded - An online platform that connects citizens with local leaders around the world. (currently only US)
  • Open Plans - Help build walking and biking maps for your community.
  • WE THINQ - That’s us! Our platform can be used to connect citizens with government officials and collect ideas and feedback on projects and services.
  • Civic Flow - Find public opinions, get feedback, and send out questionairres from this citizen participation web app.

Anything to add to the list? Include it in the comments below!

This list is updated regularly. Last update: March 25, 2015