From June 15th to 16th, 2018, the 28 members of the Citizens' Council on Mobility in Vorarlberg met to develop principles and priorities in the field of mobility and transport in Vorarlberg for the next ten to fifteen years.
Problems and Purpose
This mini-public involved discussion around two main questions:
- "How can we contribute to a positive development of mobility and traffic in Vorarlberg?"
- "What do we need to do so and which developments do we have to counterbalance in order to guarantee future living quality?" [1]
Background History and Context
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The tenth regional mini-public was commissioned by the Vorarlberg regional government in order to engage citizens on the 2019 mobility plan. The mini-public was professionally organized and facilitated by the “Büro für Zukunftsfragen”. [1]
Participant Recruitment and Selection
All participants were selected on the basis of representative criteria but it is unclear which ones. 600 people were invited, 100 responded (about 1/3 positive responses), 31 registered, and 28 ultimately attended. Participants' ages ranged from 19 to 75. 11 of the 28 were women while 17 were men. [1]
Methods and Tools Used
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The mini-public created a set of recommendations, which were clustered into ten “key messages”: (1) mobility and consumption of every person is decisive – a broad discussion is needed; (2) a strategic traffic policy is needed; (3) the Vorarlberg region creates incentives and innovation; (4) transport chains should be easily connectable; (5) public transport should be further developed and used; (6) increase of bike usage for transport and mobility; (7) promote alternative mobility means to decrease usage of CO2-heavy vehicles; (8) value walking; (9) better logistic concepts are needed to decrease noise and delivery services; (10) support communes and companies to encourage their employees to look for alternative mobility means. These recommendations were presented at a Bürgercafé (Citizens’ Café) on June 20th 2018 in Bregenz (Landhaus) in front of 70 people, including participants, citizens, and politicians. In addition, the recommendations were put online to the digital platform, where everyone had one week (June 22-29) to comment and add ideas. On July 2nd, 2018, a stakeholder meeting took place to develop the new regional mobility strategy. In 2019, the regional government was to present the new mobility concept and respond to the Bürgerrat (mini-public), explaining how and why recommendations found their way into the new strategy and why others did not. Participants of the mini-public were then able to state whether they found their recommendations in the new mobility concept. [1]
Analysis and Lessons Learned
See Also
Vorarlberg Civic Council on Asylum and Refugee Policies
Citizens' Council for Dealing with Land in Vorarlberg
References
[1] Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
External Links
Notes
Data was sourced from OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
