Participation at your doorstep

Abstract

Citizens experience a growing gap between their lived world and that of governmental institutions. The historical low turnup rate of last municipal elections in Rotterdam, 39%, reflect the low trust people have in the municipality and how they feel unrepresented by the city council. Because of this, municipalities are striving to bring politics closer to citizens and are increasingly working more participatory; including citizens in city- and policy making.

The public good became something that is not created publically anymore. The interaction between the municipality and citizens is characterised by distance: civil servants are used to design services without citizens and citizens are used to a municipality that does its own thing. Both are not used to approaching each other in order to collaboratively make better public spaces, services and policies. If the municipality does not put effort in finding new ways to actively invite people to participate the distance will become bigger, making cities less inclusive and neighbourhoods less liveable.

Participatory activities strengthen the social network of people within a neighbourhood and through this a neighbourhood becomes more resilient. Also through a stronger local network, people tend to engage more in participatory activities. It’s an ongoing challenge for the municipality to include less obvious citizens in this local network of participation processes. The municipality should be a facilitator of community building and actively approach people in order to connect to them.

The Wijkbox concept is an intervention that combines these social and participatory aspects. In this box, citizens can leave their opinion, dreams and concerns about the neighbourhood. The box is handed out by civil servants in the neighbourhood and later passed on from citizen to citizen. As the boxes travel through the neighbourhood, more opinions are collected, more social connections are formed and new people enter the local network. The Wijkbox is a starting point for collaboration related to the topics proposed in the boxes. It allows civil servants to approach citizens more personally and provides citizens an accessible way to form their opinion about the neighbourhood, possibly stimulating them to join other participatory activities.

The Wijkbox was tested in two pilots with both citizens and civil servants. The Wijkbox shows potential in reaching ‘not-yet-active’ citizens and stimulating social connection within the neighbourhood. Citizens evaluated the form of participation as positive and civil servants were enthusiastic about the personal approach the Wijkbox initiates. At the moment, the concept is being implemented by the municipality in two local projects. It shows that the concept can potentially contribute to the more local approach that the municipality wants to take. The results of these experiments, which will be available after this graduation project, will show whether the concept benefits real-life projects and if it contributes to a long term relationship forming between Rotterdammers and the municipality.