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.
VoterMedia is an incentive structure for encouraging public interest media to develop, to flourish and to cover issues that matter to a voter community. A typical first-step implementation is a blog competition in a small democracy such as a student union or a municipality. Voters allocate a limited budget of community funds among various competing blogs. This can be seen as a variant of Participatory Budgeting.
Occupy Vancouver, during the occupation of the Vancouver Art Gallery last fall, needed to implement a consensus-based decision making process in order for the encampment to function in a fair and inclusive manner. The General Assembly and it's processes were developed by consensus for this pourpose.
In the context of the perpetual crisis of urban transportation in Bucharest, there is a growing population of city dwellers fighting for bicycle rights and advocating for a new, bicycle friendly infrastructure in Bucharest. The bicycle fans coagulated since the mid 2000’s into different groups and NGO’s and developed into a new movement and a powerful presence in the urban landscape, adopting several strategies of public participation.
‘Leefbaarheidsbudget’ is the name of a participatory process, launched by the municipality of Utrecht in 1987. Literally translated, it would mean ‘budget of livability’, being ‘livability’ defined by the municipality of Utrecht, as ‘the quality of the residential and living environment’. By ‘residential and living environment’ the municipality understands the following:
