Overview
The webinar attempted to unfold emerging models of citizen engagement, moving beyond traditional town hall meetings and exploring innovative approaches, including co-creation, artistic engagement and other engaging forms of public consultations in the context of urban local governance.
Key Outcomes
Informational
- Active in-person engagement, although time consuming and effort intensive, and requires active participation from citizens and government, is the key to enhancing citizen participation and engagement
- Technology driven platforms and youth led movements are on the rise, however, there is still a digital divide as far as urban poor and women are concerned which needs to be addressed
Actionable
- Creating safe spaces for civic participation requires: (i) combating information asymmetry: institutional formats need to be created for knowledge dissemination (ii) dedicated resources that need to be set aside by the government as part of each project/scheme that they undertake (iii) collective leadership from both local governments and active citizen leaders
- Integrate participatory research methodologies into government practices to enable communities to actively contribute to local self governance
Presentations
