ScaleCitizens

In a period of growing public distrust of public institutions and authorities, it seems all the more necessary to improve citizens’ understanding of public policy-making processes and thereby strengthen their ability to participate in public decision-making. 

Citizen participation is often heavily focused on consultations regarding local projects – at the level of a neighbourhood, a block or a street – in the later stages of the process, and on silo-based issues.

The aim of the ScaleCitizens project is to move beyond consultation at the local level alone, and to complement this with participation at a more comprehensive level, on cross-cutting issues affecting all the policies and strategies of local authorities. 

It is therefore a question of offering citizens, as well as local authority departments, the opportunity to incorporate the opinions of residents and users into the early stages of developing cross-cutting public policies. Rather than merely asking for opinions on local projects that are immediately relevant to individuals, the aim is to seek advice and recommendations on supra-local, cross-cutting issues which, by their very nature, require a broader perspective. It is also a question of successfully mobilizing a large number of residents across a vast supra-local area such as the Greater Paris Metropolis

To encourage active participation on strategic issues, this project aims to develop participatory tools based on three pillars: 

• Better informing residents about the public policy-making process.

• Better training public officials in strategic participation on cross-cutting issues.

• Experimenting with flexible and smart methods of participation.

We are looking for towns and cities with cross-cutting, supra-local participatory democracy initiatives, which are keen to try out new methods.