Problems and Purpose
The Council of the City of Brussels issued a charter about citizen participation in 2019 in which it justifies the need for citizen participation with two reasons. First, citizens want to be involved beyond the mere elections in their neighbourhood’s political life. Second, it observes a rise of populism and electoral absenteeism which indicates a citizen distrust against the democratic system. In order to address both issues, the city of Brussels wants to reinvent its local democracy. The randomly selected neighbourhood council of Neder-Over-Heembeek and Mutsaard is one of the first step in this direction
Background History and Context
After the 2018 local elections, a coalition of socialist, green and centre left political parties formed the new local council of the City of Brussels. One of its aldermen, Arnaud Pinxteren (Green party), has been put in charge of the citizen participation. In this context, he developed a charter for citizen participation which sketches a plan to achieve three objectives: to build together the city, involve citizens, and encourage social and citizen innovation. In order to build together the city, the City Council intends to implement progressively seven neighbourhood councils (NCs) by 2024. The first NC is taking place in the neighbourhood of Neder-Over-Heembeek and Mutsaard. Essentially, the council is a group of randomly selected inhabitants involved in the district decision-making, by assessing its priority issues and needs and proposing concrete projects that are subsequently submitted to the district’s participatory budget (1 million € budget).
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The alderman receives the support from two entities. First, there is the administration of Bruxelles Participation, which is recently created and is entirely devoted to citizen participation. Second, the alderman contracted a consortium consisting of Particitiz, Ecores, Studio Saskia and a PhD researcher.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
The council sent invitation letters to 2000 randomly selected residents older than 18-year-old residing in the neighbourhood (which has a total population of 30.160 residents). It receives 79 positive answers. Five additional candidates were recruited on the street in order to improve the statistical representativeness of the candidates. It then randomly selected 11 participants with stratification. Regarding the civil society representatives, the council sent letters to 129 organizations and received 19 positive answers, before selecting 6 representatives via a selection process in which after they analyze their different profiles so as to keep a balance between their social objects and commitments.
Methods and Tools Used
Due to the Covid-19 crisis, the NC’s convenors decided to organize it online with the software Zoom. Each meeting features the participants, a few facilitators from the consortium, and a few civil servants from Bruxelles Participation.
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
The NC is mandated by the city council and has several functions. First, it identifies issues that are living in the neighbourhood and it can submit recommendations to the city council. Second, the city council can mandate the NC to deliberate on a specific issue and to provide it with recommendations. Finally, the NC also accompanies in three different ways the participatory budget of the neighbourhood. First, it identifies the participatory budget’s main topics upon which citizens can propose ideas. Second, it helps the citizens that have suggested an idea to develop it into financeable and doable projects. Third, it also deliberates on the voted projects and submits them to the City Council.
The NC was supposed to start on 21 March 2020, but due to the sanitary crisis and the lockdown, the city council decided to postpone and organize it online on April 25, 2020. The 17 participants thus deliberated online with the help of professional facilitators and, by the end of the meeting, in presence of the City’s Mayor (Philippe Close, Socialist Party) and the Alderman for citizen participation. Since the first meeting, the NC has gathered 2 times online, and has met in person for the first time on 27 June.
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The NC has identified six topics for the participatory budget (green spaces; children’s playground; public space and disabled people; safety of pedestrians and cyclists; youth involvement; activities to reinforce the social cohesion). The participatory budget is now collecting ideas from all inhabitants of the Region of Brussels that are at least 16-year-old. On July 15, 2020, the collection will close. On the 26th of September 2020, a co-creating event will be organized so as to develop the participatory budget’s selected ideas into workable projects. This event will be open for the broader public and will gather the NC’s participants, the citizens whose ideas have been selected. In October 2020, these projects will be submitted to the vote of the neighbourhood’s inhabitants. Next in November 2020, the most popular projects will be debated within the NC to check whether they respond to their initial needs. Afterwards, the most popular projects that were validated by the NC will subsequently be validated by the city council and integrated in the city budget for 2021.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The digital launch of the NC has led to the integration of digital meetings in the overall participation approach of the City. Within the project of the NC, the digital format will be used for task-oriented meetings. Live meetings are still needed to articulate the role and internal organization of the NC.
See Also
References
External Links
https://www.fairebruxelles.be/NOH-Mutsaard/p/quoi-wat
http://www.bruxelles.be/charte-de-la-participation-citoyenne