The project “The Shop of the Future” was designed to create a public debate with citizens through participatory processes and dialogue. The objective was to harvest ideas and proposals for improving quality of life, involving people from all social backgrounds. Thus the project was designed for citizens, city officials, and businesspeople. It took place in the municipality of Casamassima, a small city with 18,000 inhabitants in the province of Bari in Puglia.
Participatory decentralization is the process of handing out legitimate political authority to the citizens. It contributes to democratization by bringing the government ‘closer to the people’, imparting the citizens with political knowledge through their participation in local management, and making the government more accountable. [1]
In 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), a Japanese governmental administration, organized a National Consensus Conference on genetically- modified foods in Tokyo.
ConsiderIt is an internet-based platform that stems from the basis of personal deliberation into a form of public deliberation. It allows users to examine trade-offs and the vantage points of other users on proposed actions such as ballot measures, by forming deliberation around a list of pro and cons authored, adopted, and shared by various people using the platform. The design process began with the goal of supporting a voters guide written by community members in the 2010 U.S. election.
Habitat Conservation Planning (HCP) in the U.S. is a plan that prepared under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by nonfederal parties who want to obtain permits for the incidental taking of threatened and endangered species. They are planning documents that describe the anticipated effects of the proposed take permit. It must also describe how those impacts will be minimized or mitigated and how the HCP is to be funded. They have to ensure that the species will be conserved and that they will contribute to their recovery.
A workers’ council is a method of governance by workers of themselves through selected delegates sent to represent them either through direct positions of leadership or through communication with those in positions of power or management. The management of a workplace or an enterprise comes together with the selected delegates to negotiate and bargain on issues selected by the workers to be the agenda of the discussions.
